Reading Tips

Try some of these tips to develop your language skills. Add your own ideas too. If you find that a particular activity works very well for you, tell your teacher and your classmates about it. They might have some interesting techniques to share with you too.

• Think about the process of reading. Remember that there are different ways of reading. You skim articles in a newspaper when you are deciding whether you want to read them in detail later. When you skim, you just get a general idea about the content. If you are looking for something particular, for example the name of your team on the sports pages, you scan the text. You are trying to find a specific piece of information.

• Reading for pleasure is an example of extensive reading. You don't worry too much about every word. You get involved in the story in a novel, for instance, and are eager to find out what happens. In contrast, if you are reading a text intensively, you are focusing on the details and the exact meaning. You might need to do this with instructions for a new computer or a school or university textbook, for example.

• When you do any reading, you need to make it an active process. Predict what the text is going to be about from the title or the pictures. After you have read a text, do something with the new information you have.

• With every article from a newspaper or magazine you read, think about these questions:

- Who is the article about?

- Where and when is the article talking about?

- What are the main points of the article?

- What kind of people would find the article interesting to read?

- What is your opinion of/reaction to the article?

If someone you know has read the same article, talk about it with them. What do they think? Do you agree with them?

• Read the same material in English as you would in your language. If you enjoy reading about fashion in your language, read about fashion in English too. You will already understand some of the vocabulary and ideas and have a good background knowledge. Conversely, if you hate films and never go to the cinema, reading an English-language film review will probably not be a useful exercise for you because you won't enjoy it.

• If you have access to the same material in your language and in English, compare the two versions. How has the translator expressed the same idea in the new language? Is it a good translation? What would you change? Are the texts exactly the same?

• Set yourself a reading target. Reading one article every day is better than reading a whole paper only once a fortnight. Ask your teacher to recommend suitable materials.

Activity 1

Make the most of your dictionary

Parts of speech – practice

Read this newspaper article. Then look at the underlined words. What part of speech are they?

Life's a gas, but laughs not free

It looked like a children's birthday party – brightly coloured balloons were being filled with gas and boisterous young people were waiting to get hold of one.

But instead of carrying away 1.their balloons with beaming faces, they pressed 2.them to their lips and 3.greedily sucked them empty. Then they turned giggling back to 4.the pounding, electronic techno beat on the dance floor.

The techno dance music scene has discovered a new drug – 5.for these balloons are filled with nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas. They are 6.now a familiar sight at techno parties throughout Germany.

7.Outside a techno club in Hamburg (Germany), partygoer Sabrina described the effects: "I was completely out of it for a moment, then somehow I 8.just had to grin. The feeling is not all that intense, but you feel dizzy and 9.think funny 10.thoughts."

The 11.high is short-lived. It fades within just a few minutes. But the happy effect lasts a lot longer 12.for laughing gas dealer Tom Wheecks. He earns five marks (HK$21.50) per balloon and his 10-litre canister contains enough gas to fill three hundred of 13.them. After paying a small fee for his stall, he still walks away with a tidy profit of 1,350 marks a night.

Mr Wheecks, 30, from Cologne, has no ethical problems about selling the gas. It is not 14.illegal and he argues that in normal doses it is not poisonous.

Yet he does 15.advise a little caution. With each balloon he sells, he also presses a little instructions leaflet in his customers' hands, explaining how best to inhale the gas. "16.Breathe in steadily, hold your 17.breath momentarily and then slowly breathe out," it says. It also warns that "epileptics, people under the influence of alcohol and people with ear illnesses must not in any circumstances 18.consume laughing gas!"

Activity 2

Reading – reference words

One way to use a short article more actively is to study the reference words. These are words which refer to something else in the text. They are often words like "it", "that", "them", and "this".

Read the following text. Then, look at the underlined words. What do they refer to?

Astronomical cost for weightless thrill

ORLANDO: 1.It will take 2.you higher than Disney's Space Mountain and drop you farther than the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.

The latest attraction planned for central Florida will give tourists a taste of space – at an astronomical price of US$10,000 (HK$78,000) for a day's training and about four minutes of weightlessness.

A roller-coaster-like ride in a modified aircraft will simulate the astronauts' weightlessness, officials from Casey Aerospace said yesterday. Flights could start in the spring of 1998. "It's time to bring these types of experiences to the general public," Casey president Ed Gibson, a former Nasa astronaut said. The thrill is probably not for 3.those who would baulk at the US$136.74 price of a four-day Disney World pass.

The US$10,000 price includes a familiarisation course and participants will go home with a videotape of the zero-G experience and a Nasa-style, light-blue flight suit. "At the end of the day 4.you will have experienced the thrill of a lifetime," said Mr Gibson, who spent 84 days in orbit aboard Nasa's Skylab.

The aircraft will be similar to the 5.one Nasa used to give astronauts a taste of weightlessness before 6.they went on a mission.

7.It will provide 30-second periods of weightlessness as it reaches the top of a steep climb before it plunges about 1,220 metres. During the 2 to 3 hour flight, the aircraft will make about 10 of these so-called parabolic manoeuvres. A

ny more than 8.that and the riders may find the experience stomach-churning.

"We want people to come away from 9.this with a very pleasant experience," Mr Gibson said.

Activitiy 3

Meaning from context

When you meet a new word, it is often possible to guess its meaning from the context, that is, the words and sentences that come before and after it. The context may, for example, show you whether it is positive or negative in meaning or what part of speech it is. Therefore, it is not always necessary to look up every word you don't know – in fact, if you have ever tried to do this, you will know how time-consuming and irritating it can be.

Read this article without using a dictionary and guess the meaning of the underlined words. Only when you have finished the article should you check your guesses in a dictionary.

South Korea freezes to make way for exams rush

Roaring police motorcycles, taxis, buses and even ambulances ensured more than 800,000 South Korean students showed up on time yesterday for the biggest event of their lives – college entrance exams.

In a country obsessed with academic attainment, the exams are the culmination of countless hours labouring over homework and suffering in after-school crammers.

The entire nation froze to make way for students racing to testing centres for an 8.10am deadline. Latecomers are turned away.

Government offices, banks and financial markets delayed opening for 30 minutes to ease rush-hour congestion. Private citizens were asked to report for work an hour late. Extra subway trains and buses were laid on.

"Five hours sleep: failure. Three hours sleep: success," goes a South Korean maxim born out of hellish preparations for the tests.

In all, 824,368 students are vying for 568,875 college places, according to the Education Ministry.

College entrance exams are the key to life for many South Koreans, dictating not only careers but even marriage partners. Graduates of elite colleges are much sought after as wives and husbands.

Television pictures showed one student, apparently badly hurt in an accident, hobbling from an ambulance to his testing centre on crutches and wearing a neckbrace.

A young girl in traction was pictured in a city hospital clutching a notebook during last-minute cramming. Gruelling study robs millions of South Korean children of a carefree adolescence. Mothers abandon their social lives in the months before exams to focus on preparations: failure is regarded as a family embarrassment.

"The stress of these exams is a national problem," clinical psychologist Kim Yon says. "In Korea, there's a belief that it's impossible to succeed without a college degree. So these children face stress at home from parents who demand that they live up to their expectations." Exams-induced ailments include insomnia and digestive problems, Ms Kim says. Suicide is not unknown.

Police on motorcycles waited at school gates ready to rush highly-strung and confused students turning up at the wrong place to the correct testing centres.

Outside the centres, mothers huddled in thick winter coats, clasping their hands in prayer.

Churches were packed on Tuesday night and fortune-tellers did a brisk business.

Crowds of children shouted encouragement to their elder school mates as they scurried past.

"We're singing, we're dancing, we're praying for your success," trilled a group of eight clean-cut boys, jumping up and down in front of Seoul's Yongsan Middle School.

The domestic Yonhap news agency said 43-year-old Lee Soon Dong, a provincial councillor in the southeastern city of Pohang, was the nation's oldest examinee. He was fulfilling a campaign promise to go to college if elected.

Answers

Activity 1

1 (possessive) adjective, 2 pronoun, 3 adverb, 4 article, 5 conjunction, 6 adverb, 7 preposition, 8 adverb, 9 verb, 10 noun, 11 noun, 12 preposition, 13 pronoun, 14 adjective, 15 verb, 16 verb, 17 noun, 18 verb

Activity 2

1 the latest attraction/the modified aircraft, 2 the readers of the text/the potential participants, 3 the people, 4 the participants, 5 the aircraft, 6 the astronauts, 7 the aircraft, 8 (about) ten, 9 the activity (in the aircraft)