Pre-reading Techniques and Strategies for Higher Education Students

This assignment delves into various pre-reading techniques aimed at enhancing reading comprehension. It explores the significance of pre-reading strategies, such as examining titles and vocabularies, and their role in predicting the content of a text. The assignment highlights the importance of activating prior knowledge through methods like brainstorming and mind-mapping, emphasizing the benefits of group discussions. It also covers the use of pre-questions and the KWL strategy (What do I Know? What do I Want to learn? And, What did I Learn?) for organized reading. The purpose of the assignment is to equip students with effective strategies to approach and understand academic texts more effectively. The assignment also includes the bibliography of the resources used.

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Pre-reading
Student’s Name
Instructor
Institution

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Pre-reading
1. Three elements which are examined while pre-reading a text
Titles, pictures, and vocabularies
2. What to do with the information collected while pre-reading
The information collected while pre-reading is normally used in analyzing the features
given in the work and this helps the readers to have good knowledge about the given topic. With
this knowledge, they can understand and predict more about the topic covered in the work
3. How it’s helpful to generate predictions about the topic of the text
Prediction about the topic of the text is very helpful as it gives the readers the urge and
the morale to learn more to know whether what they predicted is what is actually covered in the
text or book.
4. How to activate prior knowledge and why it’s important for the understanding of
the text
The techniques of activating prior knowledge are brainstorming, group discussions, and
concept or mind mapping. Activating prior knowledge helps to improve the level of
understanding of the readers as they get to relate what they already know and what they read
5. My favorite technique

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My favorite technique is the group discussion. According to me, group discussion is the best
technique as it allows readers to know the ideas or the knowledge of the other group members on
the topic being read and discussed1.
6. A mind-map centered around the concept of academic reading
A mind map is a special type of brainstorming where the readers place the titles or subtitles
as the main and the central ideas when reading. All the other arguments are normally raised form
the titles or subtitles declared as the main and the central ideas of the reading.
7. Pre-questions and why they are useful as a pre-reading activity
Pre-questions are well-organized questions which are given at the start of new chapters for
the readers to synthesize them before they start reading the chapters. Pre-questions are useful as a
pre-reading activity as they help to gauge the readers’ understanding of the chapters to be read
and also inform them of what they expect to encounter when reading the chapters.
8. The importance of having a purpose when reading
A purpose helps to direct the readers to their goals for reading and also helps to focus the
readers’ attention to the reading.
9. Who gives the purpose for the readings assigned
The purpose of the readings assigned is normally given by the teachers who give some
questions, class discussions or brainstorming questions, or from the individual students.
10. The KWL strategy
1 Annamalai Nachal, Rajajeyakumar Manivel, and Rajendran Palanisamy, ‘Small group discussion: Students
perspectives’ (August 2015) 5(2) International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research.

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The KWL strategy is a reading strategy which consists of three steps which are supposed to
be followed by students when reading expository texts. These steps ask three simple questions
which are: What do I Know? What do I Want to learn? And, What did I Learn?2
11. The usefulness of the KWL strategy
The KWL strategy helps to organize the reading process well, and this helps to improve the
overall productivity or effectiveness of the reading process.
Bibliography
2Porter, Karla, Pre-reading Strategies. Weber State University

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Annamalai Nachal, Rajajeyakumar Manivel, and Rajendran Palanisamy, ‘Small group
discussion: Students perspectives’ (August 2015) 5(2) International Journal of Applied
and Basic Medical Research.
Porter, Karla, Pre-reading Strategies. Weber State University.