What is a skill? What is a strategy?

What is the difference between a skill and a strategy in language learning?

 

Mental skills: A skill is the ability of the human mind to process information in a system methodical way. (addition, subtraction, reading  between the lines, etc.)

 

Physical skills: A skill is the ability of the human body to carry out tasks and jobs that require repeated physical training. (Basketball, driving a large truck, swimming, singing etc.)

A doctor who is a surgeon needs both mental skills (to find the reason for an illness), and physical skills (the ability to cut open and perform the operation.)

 

Why do we need to learn a skill?

Obviously the skills that we need to develop are the ones we will need for work or personal satisfaction. If you love reading, you will want to read as many books as you can in a short time and so you will want to develop reading skills. But if you want to drive a large truck as a job, you will need to develop the skills that will help you park, overtake, back up the truck but you will not need to develop extensive reading skills.

 

What are strategies?

To understand ‘strategy’ you need to understand ‘plan’. A plan is ridged and does not allow for unpredicted changes. For example, if you ‘plan’ for a battle in a war, you will certainly lose. The enemy and the conditions do not always follow all your plans. A ‘plan’ is a set of steps and conditions that are always within a predictable frame. However, a ‘strategy’ allows for new and unpredictable conditions. That’s why there are battle ‘strategies’ rather than battle ‘plans’.  See the example that will come below.

 

Why do we teach strategies?

Obviously life is made up of unpredictable conditions and unforgiving environment. Teaching strategies can improve the ability of a human to deal with his surroundings in a more effective and efficient way.

 

What reading strategies does a good reader use?

What people are going to read is usually unknown or why would they read it.  Reading strategies fall into three main categories.

1 What should we do before we start to read?

2 What should we do while we are reading?

3 What should we do after we have finished reading?

 

Since there are many different genres and text types, it is not easy to follow a plan. Instead you use strategies that you can adapt to the different texts you are reading.

 

How can you identify the reading strategies that you need to teach the students?

There are many strategies. The best way to identify them can be by thinking what your mind is doing at each stage of the reading. Another way is to ask me J.

 

How should we teach reading strategies?

Again it’s difficult to explain this briefly. However one of the best ways is to model the strategies for each type of text and genre.

 

When assessing reading, what do we focus on? Content? Strategies?

Well, when assessing reading, I think the focus should be on skills and strategies, but only if these are the reasons to make meaning of what is being read. However, if the reason is data and information and ability to gather that information, as in science, history and social sciences, then content takes precedence over in the assessment.

 

How do we teach a reading text?

The process is a complex and lengthy one. However, in short, reading is the ability to extract details, information and ideas and make sense out of them.  Extracting details is usually on a sentence level.

 

A. A simple sentence usually contains up to six details. For example, a simple sentence can tell us

1 who or what does the action,

2 the action,

3 who or what is the receiving the action or the result of the action

4 how it is done,

5 where it is done,

6 when it is done.

Thus, the first step in teaching reading is to extract the details from a sentence in a text.

 

B. The second stage is to extract information. Instead of looking at the parts of the sentence, the sentence is one complete idea. The idea could be an opinion, a conclusion, a description or a comparison. The list is longer, but this a good place to start.

For example:

I like the blue jacket. (opinion)

You must be Abdullah’s brother. (conclusion)

The blue jacket is nicer than the red one. (comparison)

It is a big white car. (description)

Thus, the second step is to help students see a sentence as a complete idea.

 

C. The third stage is to see the whole paragraph as an idea which is supported by smaller ideas which occur as sentences.  Example:

Finding the main idea

Know that the paragraph is comparing two things.

 

How do we adapt difficult texts?

There are no difficult texts. There are difficult and complex activities tasks.

For example, you can give a newspaper article to a kindergartner and tell him to find the letter ‘s’ and circle them.

You can give a children’s story to a university student and tell him to rewrite it as script for a film or a theater production. We try not to adapt the text but change the level of the activity that you give.

 

How do we choose the words in the text to teach?

The words that we choose are the words that are important to get the details in a sentence or the idea of the whole sentence.  

 

To be continued....