Journal 2

·         Journal II (4/2) (5/2 for April Practicum students)

Discuss readings skills that you have learned in this class, but have rarely used in your reading. Do you think they are really necessary ones for better reading? Why or why not?

When I remind my English lesson from elementary school to university, especially in reading class, I always heard about the scanning. Even though I didn’t know that word when I was young, my English teachers in reading class usually let me use scanning skill. So at that time, I remembered that I used scanning skill a lot. However, as I grew up, I didn’t use that skill a lot. I knew that it’s very useful skill, but in middle and high school, to read the text and solve the questions as fast as possible was quite important. Because most of the reading classes in middle and high school were focused on the test, so managing the limited time was really important to most of the students. If we use scanning, we should read the text twice and at that time, I thought it is very ineffective way.

However, as I started studying several reading skills, I recognized scanning is very effective skill when I read certain text. There are many benefits of using scanning before reading text in earnest. First, I can stimulate my background knowledge or schema from scanning. Scanning first time, it gives me the main topic of text and a few important or frequent words. From that information, I can draw my schema and they are really helpful for my main reading. I can expect overall contents of the text.

Second, ironically, I can save the time for reading. As I mentioned above, I could expect overall contents or story of the text from scanning, so, if I don’t have much time, scanning saves my time. It is same as when I read the main text one more time. Because I already scanned the text, I could read the main text faster and also more accurately! It seems that I have two options for reading. The first one is only scanning when I don’t have much time. The second one is scanning and reading main text faster and more accurately. Clearly, these are very useful options.

Third, it gives me a way to think extensively. In other words, I can have a chance to extensive reading. It is quite related with schema. From schema I can think over the text and it is connected with extensive reading. As an English learner, to read extensively is important for improving language skill, especially reading skill. Therefore, scanning gives me a chance about improving another reading skill.

I mentioned many benefits about scanning, but, I think it cannot be used in every type of text. Basically, scanning is focused on drawing information from the text. Therefore, it is quite well fitted for informational text, explanation writing, or certain texts which are related with some information or peoples’ opinion. In these kinds of texts we can draw some information or stimulate our schema for using scanning. However, when we read novel or certain story, scanning could not be a useful way. Sequencing is very important matter for reading texts based on “story”. Of course, we could scan “story”, but, it is not effective way. From scanning we could know about the topic of the story and some information. However, I think the really important thing in “Story” is writer’s feeling or mind when they wrote this “story”. And, using scanning, we cannot find writer’s feeling or mind exactly. In other words, we just read only half of the story.

Therefore, except a novel or certain “story” based text, scanning is very useful skill in English reading. I don’t use it very frequently now, but I try to use it when I read some text. And, it gives me a lot of benefits. Scanning skill is really necessary for my better reading.