Pines City Colleges

Senior High School Department

Grade: 11 Semester: 2nd
Core Subject Title: Engl 2 - Reading and Writing Skills Quarter: 4th

Content Standards:
The learners are expected to:
1. understands the relationship of a written text and the context in which it was developed;
2. understands the requirements of composing academic writing and professional correspondence;

Performance Standards:
The learners are expected to:
1. writes a 1000-word critique of a selected text on the basis of its claim/s, context, and properties as a written
material.
2. produces each type of academic writing and professional correspondence following the properties of well
written texts and process approach to writing.

Content:
I. Reading and Reading Comprehension
A. Introduction
Reading means reading with understanding. It is said, to learn reading is a lifelong process.
According to the research conducted by Brysbaert (2019), an average silent reading rate for adults
in English is 238 word per minute (wpm) for non-fiction and 260 wpm for fiction.

There are a lot of cognitive, physical and emotional reasons that slow down the reading capability
of an individual. Specific determinants are stated in the research conducted by Sisson (1939) as to
these factors. These include Intelligence, or the ability to comprehend the written word; perceptual
span or word perception; quality-quantity factor, or the set of attitudinal and conative determiners
of the kind and amount of product or by-product of the reading; peripheral visual factors; and
ocular reaction time and eye-movement time. 

B. Definition
a. According to Edward L. Thorndike, "The reading of a paragraph involves the same sort
of organization and analysis as does thinking. It includes learning, reflection, judgement,
analysis, synthesis, problem solving behaviors, selection inference, organization,
comparison of data, determination of relationship and critical evaluation of what is being
read”.

Thus, reading involves many tasks to be applied and manifested in the real world. It
involves real experience, real thinking and real speaking too based on the immensity and
profundity of readings. One can legally and fairly express, explain and criticize theories,
fiction, phenomena and facts if enough reading has been done.

b. According to Kenneth S. Goodman, "Reading is a complex process of which a reader

constructs, to some degree a message enclosed by a writer in graphical language".

Readers make interpretation and meaning from the written figures and forms. Reading
provides vicarious experience as a result of which we can identify reality and imagination
through reading material. In this sense reading is something more than recognition of
graphic symbols, and pronunciation of words given on the printed papers.

C. Process of Reading
a. Introduction
Briefly speaking reading is a bifold process. The first fold contains the mechanical or
sensory process in which the printed symbols are brought to the brain. The second
fold consists of the natural mental process which can be recognized as the
perceptual, conceptual or thinking process. The stimuli are interpreted after they
reach the brain of a reader. In other words, we can say that reading has two aspects;
namely physiological and psychological.

b. Two Reading Aspects

 1. Physiological
The physiology of reading relates to the visual auditory speech or articulation
with other bodily process that functions in the process or act of reading. The
primary process in reading is to establish recognition of the print. Eye
movement is one of them, and that too a leading one.

2. Psychological
The preceding discussion pertains to the length of the eye-memory span that
includes both seeing and thinking. In pausing time, the eye sees the print, thinks
on it and then takes another pause. A good and mature reader has a wide eye
memory span. He does not commit to the interpretation until he has read a
sufficient quantum of reading material. He establishes in his mind the previous
reference and the t context in order to make the best interpretation.

Follow up Question:

1. What could be remediation activities should a teacher implement to assess the reading comprehension skills
of a leaner prior giving a formal activity?

Learning Activity:
1. Reading speed with comprehension is essential in taking up specific scholarship exams, the leaners can
assess their own reading speed in the following cites:
a. https://spscc.instructure.com/courses/1345787/quizzes/2404742/take
b. http://www.freereadingtest.com/

The learners could take the exams found in the links below for actual test.
a. https://topnotcher.ph/dost-sei-english-reviewer/
b. http://www.sei.dost.gov.ph/images/downloads/SiyensyaBilidad2e.pdf
c. http://www.sei.dost.gov.ph/images/downloads/primer2020.pdf

II. Reading Comprehension Skills

A. Summarizing
It helps readers learn to determine essential ideas and consolidate important details that
support them. It enables readers to focus on key words and phrases of an assigned text that are
worth noting and remembering.

B. Sequencing:
Sequencing the ability to logically tell the components of a story, such as the beginning,
middle, and end in the order in which they occurred. Even more experienced readers may re-tell a
story by focusing primarily on the sections that were most appealing to them rather than by giving
a more complete picture of the events that occurred (Fox and Allen, 1983). Sequencing activities
also provide an opportunity for students to examine text and story structure, which, in turn,
strengthens their writing skills.

C. Inferencing:
Inference in reading is the ability to understand the meaning of a passage of text without
all the information being spelled out. From context clues within a passage, the author gives
information about plot, characters, setting, time period and other elements of story by the things he
or she infers.

Inference is drawing conclusions based on information that has been implied rather than
directly stated and is an essential skill in reading comprehension. We make inferences every day,
both in oral and written communication. Many times, this is so automatic we don't even realize the
information wasn't included in the conversation or text.

Learning Activity:
1. Search for the latest political cartoon in the editorial Page of the Phil Star. Interpret the cartoon by
relating it to the current situation of the society using actual scenarios.

D. Comparing and contrasting:

 Comparing and contrasting are ways of exploring the similarities and differences between
two things. Compare and contrast is a helpful strategy for any important decisions a reader have to
make.

E. Drawing conclusions
Drawing conclusions is using information that is implied or inferred to make meaning out
of what is not clearly stated. Writers give readers hints or clues that help them read between the
lines, since not everything is explicitly stated or spelled out all the time.

F. Self-questioning:
Self-Questioning is the ongoing process of asking questions before, during, and after
reading that are used by a reader to understand text. The questions posed are based on clues that
are found in the text and are generated to spark curiosity that focuses the reader's attention on
investigating, understanding, and connecting to the text. A self-questioning strategy is a set of
steps that a student follows to generate, think about, predict, investigate, and answer questions that
satisfy curiosity about what is being read.

a. Types of Self-Questioning Strategies

a.1. The Before Reading Self-Questioning Strategy. This strategy focuses on teaching readers
to use the self-questioning process as a way of previewing text before reading begins
and creating a set of guiding questions to check comprehension during reading.

a.2. The During Reading Self-Questioning Strategy. This strategy focuses on teaching the
readers to use a self-questioning process as they read paragraphs and sections of text.

a.3. The After Reading Self-Questioning Strategy. This strategy focuses on teaching students
to generate questions and answer questions after they have read the text. This strategy is
usually used for studying and self-testing information that should have been gained
from the text.

G. Problem-solving:
a. Two Types of Mental Skill
a.1. Analytical or Logical Thinking. It includes skills such as ordering, comparing,
contrasting, evaluating and selecting.

a.2. The creative thinking skills can be divided into several key elements:
a.2.1. fluency - producing many ideas
a.2.2. flexibility - producing a broad range of ideas. It also includes originality producing
uncommon ideas
a.2.3. elaboration - developing ideas.
a.2.4. Intuition - the ability to draw conclusions based on impressions and feelings rather than
hard facts.
a . 2 . 5 . I n c u b a t i o n - the period between stopping conscious work on a problem and the
time when we become aware of a solution or part solution.
a . 2 . 6 . I n v e n t i o n - the creation of new, meaningful ideas or concepts.
a.2.7. Innovation - putting new ideas or concepts to a practical use, as in the development of a
new product or service.

Learning Activity:
1. Read newspaper articles for the reasons of the arrest of George Floyd, a black American in Minneapolis.
2. Read the Newspaper article entitled “Black Lives Matter co-founder says what protesters want is simple:
Accountability”
3. With the current anarchy happening, explain your side or stand on this issue.

H. Relating background knowledge

Call it schema, relevant background knowledge, prior knowledge, or just plain experience, when
readers make connections to the text they are reading, their comprehension increases. Good readers
constantly try to make sense out of what they read by seeing how it fits with what they already know.

It makes good sense that to comprehend a story or text, readers will need a threshold of knowledge
about the topic. Sometimes we call it domain-specific knowledge or topical knowledge. Without such
knowledge, it becomes difficult to construct a meaningful mental model of what the text is about.

I. Distinguishing between fact and opinion

 A fact is a statement that can be proven true or false. An opinion is an expression of a person's
feelings that cannot be proven. Opinions can be based on facts or emotions and sometimes they are meant
to deliberately mislead others. Therefore, it is important to be aware of the author’s purpose and choice of
language. Sometimes, the author lets the facts speak for themselves.

J. Finding the main idea, important facts, and supporting details:

The main idea of a passage is often stated in a sentence within the passage. It helps readers
understand the most important idea about what is being read. The other sentences of the passage include
pieces of information that tell more about the most important idea. These are called the supporting details.

III. Hypertext and Intertext

A. Definition of Hypertext
Amaral (n.d) defined hypertext as a non-linear way of presenting information. Rather than
reading or learning about things in the order that an author, or editor, or publisher sets out for us,
readers of hypertext may follow their own path, create their own order-- their own meaning out the
material.

This is accomplished by creating "links" between information. These links are provided so
that readers may "jump" to further information about a specific topic being discussed (which may have
more links, leading each reader off into a different direction). For instance, if you are reading an article
about marine mammal bioacoustics, you may be interested in seeing a picture of a dolphin. Or you
may want to hear the sound it makes. Or you may even be interested in seeing what a marine mammal
sound "looks like" in a spectrogram. You might even want to find out more about sounds made by
other animals in the sea, thus leading you on a completely different, detailed path.

B. Definition of Intertext
Pisarski (2011) defined intertextuality as a structured network of text
generated constraints on the reader's perceptions, is the exact contrary of the reader-generated loose
web of free association that is hypertextuality.

Follow-up Question:
1. What evidences can a reader see to identify if a manuscript used hypertext?
2. What evidences can a reader see to identify if a manuscript used Intext?

IV. Literary Criticism

A. Definition
According to Fard (2016), it comes from the Greek verb ‘kritikos’, which means to judge
or to decide. In its original sense, a critic is simply a person who expresses an informed judgment
or opinion about the meaning, value, truth, beauty, or artistry of something. Literary criticism is
the discipline of interpreting, analyzing and evaluating works of literature aside from what was
written.

B. Approaches of Literary Criticism

1. Formalist Criticism
This regards literature as a unique form of human knowledge that needs to be examined
on its own terms. It is a literary work that can be understood only by reference to its intrinsic
literary features— the style, structure, imagery, tone, and genre. To analyze a poem or story,
therefore, the formalist critic focuses on the words of the text rather than facts about the
author’s life or the historical milieu in which it was written.

A key method that formalists use to explore the intense relationships within a poem is close
reading, a careful step-by-step analysis and explication of a text. The purpose of close reading
is to understand how various elements in a literary text work together to shape its effects on
the reader.

Example of which is Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,”. The poetic structure tells a
dramatic monologue to show intense and complex situations and emotions.

Guide Questions for Formalistic Criticism

 How is the work structured or organized? How does it begin? Where does it go next?
How does it end? What is the work’s plot? How is its plot related to its structure?
 What is the relationship of each part of the work to the work as a whole? How are the
parts related to one another?
 Who is narrating or telling what happens in the work? How is the narrator, speaker, or
character revealed to the readers? How do we come to know and understand this figure?
  Who are the major and minor characters, what do they represent, and how do they relate
to one another?
 What are the time and place of the work- its setting? How is the setting related to what we
know of the characters and their actions? To what extent is the setting symbolic?
 What kind of language does the author use to describe, narrate, explain, or otherwise
create the world of the literary work? More specifically, what images, similes, metaphors,
symbols appear in the work? What is their function? What meanings do they convey?

2. Biographical Criticism
This begins with the simple but central insight that literature is written by actual people
and that understanding an author’s life can help readers more thoroughly comprehend the
work. Anyone who reads the biography of a writer quickly sees how much an author’s
experience shapes—both directly and indirectly— what he or she creates.

Learning, for example, that poet Josephine Miles was confined to a wheelchair or that Weldon
Kees committed suicide at 41 will certainly make us pay attention to certain aspects of their
poems we might otherwise have missed or considered unimportant.

Biographical criticism focuses on explicating the literary work by using the insight provided
by knowledge of the author’s life.

Guide Questions for Biographical Criticism

 What verifiable aspects of the author’s biography show up in his or her work?
 Do places where the author grew up appear in his or her work?
 How does the author weave aspects of his or her familial life into the world of the
literary text? Does the author address relationships with parents, siblings, or significant
others? If so, how do these relationships create meaning in the text?
 What distinguishes the author from his or her persona in the text? Is there a distinction?
How can you tell?

3. Historical Criticism
It seeks to understand a literary work by investigating the social, cultural, and intellectual
context that produced it—a context that necessarily includes the artist’s biography and milieu.
Historical critics are less concerned with explaining a work’s literary significance for today’s
readers than with helping us understand the work by recreating, as nearly as possible, the
exact meaning and impact it had on its original audience. A historical reading of a literary
work begins by exploring the possible ways in which the meaning of the text has changed
over time.

Guide Questions for Historical Criticism

 How do you think historical influences are reflected in the text?

 How did the economy, politics, or social climate affect the author’s attitudes and
expression?
 What key historical figures appear or are alluded to in the text?
 What commonly held beliefs of the period are shown in the text?
 How are political, social, and economic conflicts reflected in the text?
 How are discoveries/inventions/technology of the period evident in the text?
 What do the historical elements of the text teach us about the actual history of the period?

4. Psychological Criticism
The modern psychology has had an immense effect on both literature and literary
criticism. The psychoanalytic theories of the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud changed
our notions of human behavior by exploring new or controversial areas such as wish
fulfillment, sexuality, the unconscious, and repression. Perhaps Freud’s greatest contribution
to literary study was his elaborate demonstration of how much human mental process was
unconscious. He analyzed language, often in the form of jokes and conversational slips of the
tongue (now often called “Freudian slips”), to show how it reflected the speaker’s
unconscious fears and desires. He also examined symbols not only in art and literature but
also in dreams to study how the unconscious mind expressed itself in coded form to avoid the
censorship of the conscious mind. His theory of human cognition asserted that much of what
we apparently forget is actually stored deep in the subconscious mind, including painful
traumatic memories from childhood that have been repressed.

An example is the A Freudian Analysis of Erin McGraw’s “A Thief by Skylar Hamilton

Burris Jung
 Guide Questions for Psychological Criticism
 What motivates the speaker or protagonist? Does the speaker or protagonist appear
to be consciously or unconsciously motivated?
 How do desires and wishes manifest in the text? Do they remain largely fulfilled or
unfilled? How does their fulfillment, or lack thereof, affect the character’s
development?
 Does the text chart the emotional development of a character? How?
 What archetypal narrative patterns do you observe in the text? Are there archetypal
characters in the text? What purpose do these narrative patterns or characters serve?
 Do principle characters resolve their psychological conflicts? Do they successfully
recognize their unconscious complexes, desires, sense of lack, or previously
unrecognized or unintegrated aspects of their personality?
 How do the characters in the text evoke archetypal figures such as the Great or
Nurturing Mother, the Wounded Child, the Whore, the Oppressed, the Lover etc?

5. Sociological Criticism
Sociological criticism examines literature in the cultural, economic, and political context
in which it is written or received. It explores the relationships between the artist and society.
Sometimes it looks at the sociological status of the author to evaluate how the profession of
the writer in a particular milieu affected what was written. Sociological criticism also
analyzes the social content of literary works—what cultural, economic, or political values a
particular text implicitly or explicitly promotes. Finally, sociological criticism examines the
role the audience has in shaping literature.

Guide Questions for Sociological Criticism

 Who has the power in this society and who doesn’t? Why?
 What are the official and unofficial rules (conventions, mores) of this society?
 What happens when a rule is broken?
 How are women supposed to behave in this society?
 How are men supposed to behave? How do men and women relate?
 What is valued in this society? (love, money, power, order, honesty, etc.)
 How does money affect individual’s lives in this society?
 How do opposing groups (e.g., parents and children, the rich and the poor, men and
women) relate in this society?
 What type of government does this society have? How is the ruler chosen? What
rights do individuals have?
 How is wealth distributed in this society?

6. Gender Criticism
Gender criticism examines how sexual identity influences the creation and reception of
literary works. Feminist critics believe that culture has been so completely dominated by men
that literature is full of unexamined “male-produced” assumptions. They see their criticism
correcting this imbalance by analyzing and combatting patriarchal attitudes. Feminist
criticism has explored how an author’s gender influences—consciously or unconsciously—his
or her writing. Finally, feminist critics carefully examine how the images of men and women
in imaginative literature reflect or reject the social forces that have historically kept the sexes
from achieving total equality.

Guide Questions for Gender Criticism

 How is the relationship between men and women portrayed?

 What are the power relationships between men and women (or characters assuming
male/female roles)?
 How are male and female roles defined?
 What constitutes masculinity and femininity?
 How do characters embody these traits?
 Do characters take on traits from opposite genders? How so? How does this change
others’ reactions to them?
 What does the work reveal about the operations (economically, politically, socially,
or psychologically) of patriarchy?
 What does the work imply about the possibilities of sisterhood as a mode of resisting
patriarchy?
  What does the work say about women's creativity?
 What does the history of the work's reception by the public and by the critics tell us
about the operation of patriarchy?
 What role does the work play in terms of women's literary history and literary
tradition?

7. Reader-Response Criticism
Reader-response criticism attempts to describe what happens in the reader’s mind while
interpreting a text. If traditional criticism assumes that imaginative writing is a creative act,
reader-response theory recognizes that reading is also a creative process. While reader-
response criticism rejects the notion that there can be a single correct reading for a literary
text, it doesn’t consider all readings permissible. Each text creates limits to its possible
interpretations.

Guide Questions for Reader-Response Criticism

 Who is the reader? Who is the implied reader?

 Does the text overtly or subtly ask the reader to sympathize or empathize in any way?
 What experiences, thoughts, or knowledge does the text evoke?
 What aspects or characters of the text do you identify or disidentify with, and how
does this process of identification affect your response to the text?
 What is the difference between your general reaction to (e.g., like or dislike) and
reader-oriented interpretation of the text?

References:

Amaral, K., (n.d), Hypertext and writing: An overview of the hypertext medium. Retrieved from
https://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/hypertext.html

Brysbaert, M.(2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Research Gate. DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/xynwg

Critical Approaches to Literature. p 638-669. Retrieved from http://yourbac.weebly.com/uploads/8/0/3/1/8031931/critical_approaches.pdf

Fard, S. (2016). A short introduction to literary criticism. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies. ISSN 2356-5926, p. 328-337.

Piraski, M. (2011). Hypertext and intertext: affinities and divergences. Porównania, p. 183-194.

Reading Comprehension. (n.d). Retrieved from https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/48992/7/07_chapter%202.pdf

Sisson, E. D. (1939). The causes of slow reading: an analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 30(3), 206–214. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0061393

How many words

do we read per
minute?
A review and
meta-analysis of
reading rate
A review and
meta-analysis of
reading rat