How to improve speed reading skill foreign language

               How to improve your speed-reading skill foreign language becomes easy if you know the tricks and tips. Reading will be fun. You don’t have to open your dictionary very often. Your skill will improve gradually. What you need to do you just follow the steps from practicing intensive reading and extensive reading. 

               Reading is an activity to grasps ideas from a passage or text. Reading a foreign language is not different from reading native language. It is not translating into your mother language. You need to read full sentence to catch the idea of the sentence. You can use your dictionary to read a foreign language but using it very often will interrupt your thought. How to improve speed-reading skill a foreign language as quickly as reading your native language becomes the focus on this passage. 

               There are two methods of reading skill a foreign language. These two methods have correlation. The first is intensive reading. It is slow and careful reading. You need to note the difficult words and structures. You also need to reproduce your understanding on your own. You can in turn use construction in your speaking or writing to imitate the vocabulary, sentence structures and phrases you obtain in your reading. You cannot apply intensive reading technique in quick and fluent reading but this technique helps you develop the ability to improve your speed-reading skill foreign language. 

               The second is extensive reading. This is rapid and fluent reading. You have to practice the technique by reading easy materials and familiar topics.  Your goal is not to learn vocabularies, sentence structures and phrases but to understand the idea of a passage or a text. Your basic skill in intensive reading will speed up your improvement in developing your skill. You are expected to understand the idea of foreign language texts as quickly as to understand your native language.

               You may face hard problems to improve speed-reading skill foreign language. Most people have difficulties in understanding vocabularies, structures. In general, non-native language learners have basic vocabularies of some three thousand words.  (Language and life in The USA, Gladys G. Doty, Janet Ross, Happer and Row, Publishers, New York, 1968).  To help you overcome these obstacles you should practice reading materials designed for foreign students.  You will be stressful of you read time magazine articles while you are a beginner. 

               Learning vocabularies is not difficult. You should have a dictionary. When you are learning English language, you can use American College dictionary, Websters dictionary or Longman dictionary.  You do not need to look up your dictionary too often but you note the difficult words and continue reading until you finish the sentence or paragraph. You connect the idea with the difficult words. If you still find problems, you can open your dictionary.

               You may have some problems to understand sentence structures. You have to mark your difficult spots then reread the selection until you understand the meaning. You do not need to spend too much time on the problems as long as you do not lose you’re the idea of a paragraph you can skip and finish your reading until the last sentence. When you think that it is important, you can reread the difficult sentence structures. You have to practice to improve your reading skill and you will not realize that your skill is getting better after that.

               These are some steps of reading for fluency for beginners. I hope these tips will be useful for you.

1. Mark the difficult vocabularies and sentences. You do not have to spend too much time in finding the meaning of a word. You can continue reading until you finished the paragraph. You can reread if you need.
2. Go back to the difficult words and sentences. You will know the meaning of the words or sentences after you finished reading. You get the meaning from the correlation of the whole idea of the text. You will find the difficult words or sentences become clear after all.
3. Reread the difficult words and structures. You may not get the meaning of the words at fist. You can get the meaning when you reread them. If you still find difficulties in understanding the meaning, you can look up your dictionary or you grammar books. Take a note, write down the case and keep it. You need to open your note someday.

               Practicing reading foreign language will help you improve speed-reading foreign language. You should start from easy materials to ones that are more difficult. You can also practice with your friends or lectures to improve your reading skill. Your friends or lectures will help you every time you find difficult words and structures. The best of all to improve your reading skills you always practice because practice makes perfect.

              

How to make children like learning school lessons

How to make children like learning is not an easy work. Children tend to choose playing better than learning school lessons. They also enjoy watching TV and playing with their computer. Many gadgets have variety of games and entertaining social media like face book, twitter and many others. Those games and new fun entertainments add more tasks that are complicated for parents to make children like learning school lessons. 

            Many students prefer watching TV to studying school lessons at home. I did a little survey how students spend their free time. I did not surprise of the result of the survey. Most my students that I took the survey spend their time watching TV, only a few students study school lessons at home.

            This is the percentage of the survey. I am an elementary School teacher in Bekasi. It is a city in the east of Jakarta, Indonesia. 14 % students watch TV more than three hours. 11 % students watch TV  one to two hours 4 % students watch TV fewer that one hour.  No students can stay away from TV. You can do little survey to your students if you are a teacher. 

There are some points that you can do to nurture your children learning habit. Here they are, first, you have to pay attention or care about your children school activities. How can you give this attention?  You can ask some questions after your children arrive home from school. Well, you’d better not ask these types of questions “ How was your math lesson?” “ What did you study this morning?” If you often ask these questions your children may throw their bag and hit the door of their room. Instead of asking these questions you can ask “ How was your day?, did you have fun?”  “ How was your friend, Nico?”  Did he tell a funny story this morning? “  Your children will start to talk with these types of questions. Listen, response and give comments to keep the conversation going.

            Second, you have to create a family, which likes learning. Family learning habit will be a model for your children to copy. You do not have to ask your children to do their homework everyday. You just need to turn off your TV or video games at learning hours. You can make schedule when no members of the family watch TV at the hours. If you can create this situation, your children will take their initiative to do their homework and open their schoolbooks.

            Third, you pay more attention if your children suffer from reading deficiency. The level of reading deficiency may vary. You as a parent must know your children condition. You can talk to a physician if your children have physical factors that cause reading backwardness.

            Last, you can you can take your children to bookstores, museums and tourism objects which have values of learning. These activities give image that learning is fun. Your children will remember their visit to a museum and compare with their history lesson at school. Going to bookstores give opportunities for your children to explore their interest in reading, Let your children sort their favorite book and bring the book home.

            Learning does not have to open books but it can be a fun activity how to think and to solve a problem. Your children will love learning if they have perception and image that learning is like playing games. You cannot make children learning school lessons instantly. You need time to make your children get used to learning activities. You and your member of family have to be a model. A model that gives images to your children that learning is entertaining.