Professional Development: Reflection on Reading Skills and Strategies

This report serves as a reflective analysis of reading skills, emphasizing their significance and advantages in professional development. It defines reading, highlighting its role in comprehension, vocabulary expansion, and improved writing abilities. The main body explores various reading styles, including skimming and scanning, and discusses their practical applications. The report also details the benefits of reading, such as mental stimulation and stress reduction. Furthermore, it offers insights into reading strategies for enhanced comprehension. The conclusion reinforces the importance of reading skills as an essential employability skill. This document is a valuable resource for students looking to improve their reading and professional development.

Portfolio and Reflective
Summary

Contents
INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY.............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION..........................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Reading skills are an important skill that can be defined as the ability of an individual to
read and interpret text of an article or on a page (Chee, Yahaya and Ibrahim, 2017). Having good
reading skills enables individuals to absorb a written work in a short duration of time. This report
is a reflection on reading skills, what does it mean and its advantages.
MAIN BODY
Reading can be defined as the process involving decoding of symbols or text in order to
derive meaning. Reading with a purpose helps readers to focus their attention and derive direct
information. The main purpose of reading to help the readers connect the ideas that are written
on a page as well as understand the same (Piniel and Albert, 2018). There are various reasons as
to why people read, like they read in order to increase their vocabulary as well as knowledge
regarding how to use new words correctly and clearly articulate them. Different people can have
different perspectives of reading like it helps in expanding their worldview. There are many
advantages associated with reading such as mental stimulation, reduction in stress as well as
enhancement of knowledge (10 Benefits of Reading: Why You Should Read Every Day , 2020).
Apart from this, the individuals get a chance to improve their memory and strengthen thinking
skills. I personally like reading because it helps me to maintain my focus and has improved my
writing skills. I have had a habit of reading from a very long time and this has helped me in
expanding my vocabulary. I have gained better writing skills and this has helped me
academically.
There are different styles of reading like skimming, scanning, extensive as well as
intensive. I personally have skimming style of reading. Skimming style of reading is also
referred to as gist reading and involves reading wherein the reader glances over the material so as
to gain the main idea of the same. This reading style has been very useful for me and has helped
me in knowing about a particular text and read long texts in a shorter period of time (Rivers,
2018). I usually opt skimming style of reading whenever my main goal is to preview the text and
gain a better view of the text. On the other hand, scanning is another reading style which is also
very common among people who like to read. Scanning reading style involves the reader to
quickly scuttle across the sentence and just to get a simple piece of information. There are

various reading strategies that the readers can adopt such as they must know what they are
reading and identify the key information. In order to get most out of reading, the readers should
have a control over their reading environment and try to visualize what they are reading.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it can be concluded that reading skills are considered to be an
important employability skill and can help in improving the chances of an individual of getting
their desired job. Also, there are different styles of reading such as intensive, extensive reading,
skimming and scanning.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Chee, K. N., Yahaya, N. and Ibrahim, N. H., 2017. Effectiveness of mobile learning application
in improving reading skills in Chinese language and towards post-attitudes. International
Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation. 11(3). pp.210-225.
Piniel, K. and Albert, Á., 2018. Advanced learners’ foreign language-related emotions across the
four skills. Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching. 8(1).
Rivers, W. M., 2018. Teaching foreign language skills. University of Chicago Press.
Online
10 Benefits of Reading: Why You Should Read Every Day . 2020. [Online]. Available through:<
http://capcana.com/news/10-benefits-of-reading-why-you-should-read-every-day/>.