Reading Competency Webinar Report

When the whole world is locked down and are under the grip of pandemic of Covid-19, work from home has become the routine of everyone. Schools and colleges also are closed so teachers’ known work of teaching is stopped. The most vigorous task of studying, updating and preparing for the next session (which is not considered as work by society) can never stop. ELLE Mumbai has taken initiative to organize a webinar for updating teacher fraternity of entire Maharashtra to meet the challenges of newly introduced course book of Std XII.

ELLE (English Language & Literature Explorers) Mumbai organised a webinar.

Dr.Deepak Damodare

The third session of the webinar was conducted on competencies of Reading Skill on 8th May 2020 at 4 p.m. The session was hosted by the tech-savvy pioneer of English language training Mr Nadeem Khan . Mr. Anil Bagade introduced the speaker Dr Deepak Damodare from Akola. The session was organised on Zoom Cloud Meeting. Almost 95 Jr. College teachers were the direct participants by joining Zoom. Many teachers have enjoyed the live session on FB.
Dr Deepak Damodare began his session stating about the necessity and scope of reading competencies.
What is reading?
Reading is a fluent process of readers combining information from a text and their own background of knowledge to build reading and the goal of reading is comprehension. – Nunan
Reading is built from two components word recognition and comprehension. – Anderson J.C.
He explained the purpose of reading. We read for pleasure, knowledge, information and motivation.
How to read (-----------------------------------------------)
He categorised ways of reading into general and specific. Silent reading is for self to understand the meaning, message, thoughts and ideas connected. Loud reading is for self and others for understanding and conveying information message etc. Skimming (running through lines) scanning (reading for specific information), intensive (very carefully, extensive. Classroom reading: model reading by teacher loud by teacher and silent and loud by students. Dr. Deepak Damodare shared tips for developing reading competency. Students should read in chunks, read the entire phrase, or a group of words. They should try to increase eye span. The teachers should facilitate it. While reading we need to flick backwards and forwards over the text.
In developing the reading competency reading plays a great role. Teachers should read variety of books related to his profession in the morning. At noon they should read fiction, stories and plays for pleasure. They should read motivational/ inspirational books, biographies and autobiographies in the evening or at night. He prescribed pills of reading three times a day for lifelong. He also suggested that reading can be done at any time of the day (five minutes or five hours) and any place. No excuses for the lack of time to read.
 He threw light on the area of development of reading competency. Most of the students are afraid of reading . Having less interest and remaining absent also leads to incompetency of reading. To develop the competency teachers should work on it. Pronunciation, intonation, stress and tone play a great role in reading factor. Comprehension, correctness and speed are the indicators of competency. He suggested to identify the weak and struggling readers in the class. The ways are day to day classroom reading, reading competition, reading test, reading games and calculating the reading place The process of developing the competency are alphabetic method, phonic method(pin, win, bin)word method single unit, phrase method (a group of words) , sentence method and story method.
He suggested simple Reading Techniques :

1. Read in chunks, group of words.
2. Keep appropriate distance, not too close, not too far
3. Focus/Concentration is must.
4. Read unimportant quickly and important part minutely /carefully.
5. Try to connect read part to visuals. 
6. Read the intro, preface, last page to get the overview.
7. For better comprehension ask questions what, why, when. how to yourself.
8. One should understand that different genres different speed (Novels can be read speedily while technical books slowly.)  

He elaborated classroom practices about reading competency.
Pre-reading : Give home work to read text in proper way, give samples, provide any other text related to the lesson.
While Reading : Read with proper pronunciation , stress, intonation and tone. Provide meaning of words.Bring contextual and hidden meaning to their notice . Train how to read between the lines.
Post-reading : Make students read after the teacher. Make them read properly.Let them read for comprehension creating interest.