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Robin Voller

Struggling to stay focused when reading? Wish you could engage more with books? Want to get top marks for your English language and literature exams? Or to be able to talk intelligently about the latest novels that everyone’s raving about? This course will teach you the skills you need in order to become an expert reader, whether you are 14 years old or 40.

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Struggling to stay focused when reading? Wish you could engage more with books? Want to get top marks for your English language and literature exams? Or to be able to talk intelligently about the latest novels that everyone’s raving about? This course will teach you the skills you need in order to become an expert reader, whether you are 14 years old or 40.

Younger students who develop these skills will find themselves enjoying their English lessons more and will almost certainly achieve higher marks in school tests; adults who learn how to read more effectively from this course will find themselves wanting to fuel their reading habit and taking much more pleasure from sitting down with a good book. The well documented career benefits associated with being a strong reader (increased productivity, a stronger imagination, and a more successful career path) are yours for the taking if you develop these skills.

In this course, you will learn how to read ACTIVELY. This is the key to becoming a better, more confident reader. Active reading involves going through a series of steps to engage more with any book you are reading. At each stage of the reading process, there is a series of questions you need to ask yourself about a book, whether it’s predicting or summarising, getting the big ideas or analysing deeply. This course takes you through all the stages and organises the processes you need in simple and easy-to-understand steps. It’s clear and concise: you’ll love the way it’s arranged to turn good reading into a simple matter of getting to grips with just a few key ideas.

In the first section of the course, you will learn about why it’s so important to be a strong reader and how to set up the habits for success. The targets you will set at this stage are designed to help you set clear reading goals and stick to them.

Then, in Section Two, you will learn the Active Reading Cycle, a process you need to go through every time you read a new chapter of a book. The course dedicates ample time to each of the skills in the cycle: predicting, clarifying, questioning, and summarising. The questions you have to ask yourself to become adept at these skills are laid out clearly, and well-known stories are used as examples showing you how to go about each stage of the process.

Once you have mastered this cycle, you’re ready to move on to Section Three: the advanced Active Exploration Process. These videos show you how to think about a whole book, how to employ a simple method of understanding the big ideas and then analysing aspects of a text deeply in order to uncover profound meanings. Here, we use a poem by W.B. Yeats as our example text, and we use the Active Exploration Process to go deeply into its possible meanings.

Although the texts used in this series are all works of fiction, and the style is directed primarily towards students from the ages of 11 to 18 (with the ideal age for the third section being 14 years and above), any adult who wishes to develop their reading skills will also find the skills here to be equally valuable to them, and will readily understand that the processes explored and the questioning methods introduced here can easily be used when reading non-fiction texts too.

Far too many people think that they will become better readers by learning speed-reading skills or using a dictionary more often when they are reading but, in fact, these techniques are often counter-productive. Only by engaging with texts actively can you truly learn to love reading and become a master reader. When you buy this course, you are unlocking the door to the secrets of lifelong reading success…

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What's inside

Learning objectives

  • Learn to ask and answer better questions about the fiction and non-fiction books you are reading
  • Develop and monitor better reading habits
  • Develop greater confidence in your reading by becoming a more active reader
  • Understand and use the active reading cycle every time you sit down to read
  • Understand and use the advanced active exploration process to explore books in more depth when you have finished reading them

Syllabus

Reflect on their motivations for becoming a stronger reader, assess their current reading habits, and set weekly, monthly and yearly reading goals.
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Why should anyone bother to read in a world in which artificial intelligence will soon be able to do pretty much anything you want it to? This video explains 3 key reasons why reading is and will continue to be one of the vital skills of the future: it builds empathy, which makes us more productive and creative; it builds vocabulary, which makes us more intelligent; and it makes us more likely to become fulfilled in our future lives.

Learn about the importance of regular habits from some of the most creative and productive minds in the world, and then consider some of the key questions you need to answer in order to get yourself into great reading habits: when and where are you going to read? How are you going to concentrate while reading? And how are you going to stick to your new habits?

Now that you’ve completed Section 1 of the course, it’s a great moment to reflect on your reading habits and to set yourself some reading targets. Setting and monitoring SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time dependent) targets is a great way to achieve your goals. You’ll need to print out the attached resource and fill it in using the instructions in the video to help you. Then, you’ll need to make a regular habit of monitoring how well you are achieving your new targets.

Ask and answer questions which promote the following active reading skills: predicting, clarifying, questioning, summarising

There are 4 skills which great readers use when they are reading any text. They may not even think about it, but they’re almost certain to be reading in this way. The thing that links all these skills is that, when you use them, they make you approach any text ACTIVELY. This video simply explains what that means, and then shows you the skills in order, introducing the process in very broad terms. As you begin to master these skills, you will start to become a more advanced reader. The following videos will go into more detail with each skill.

Predicting is the first and most important of the active reading skills that you need to master to become a great reader. Predictions should be based on any knowledge you currently have of the text; they should also be precise. This video explains how to make strong predictions and introduces you to the predicting cycle, which is a mini-cycle within the bigger active reading cycle. It’s a great way to get going as an active reader.

Clarifying is probably the most straightforward of the active reading skills. To clarify means “to make clear”, so all you’ve got to do when using this skill is to make sure that you’ve understood what you’ve read. This video will teach you not only the best kinds of questions to ask to check your understanding of a text, but will also give invaluable advice about how to read so that you don’t fall into the common trap that weak readers fall into when they read. There are important tips here about your reading speed and the ways to focus when reading. The attached handout presents these clarifying questions clearly in an easily downloadable format.

Questioning deeply is what makes reading one of the most stimulating and inspiring activities that a person can engage in. It’s also not an easy skill to master because it requires asking the right questions at the right moment, and then thinking creatively and, at the same time, finding the best evidence in the text in order to answer those questions meaningfully and persuasively. This video explains the difference between clarifying and questioning, presents you with a series of great, deeper questions you can ask about any text, and then shows you how to go through the process of questioning well using a simple children’s nursery rhyme to show the power of great questioning. The attached handout presents these deeper questions clearly in an easily downloadable format.

Summarising means making a brief description of the main points of what you have just read. That’s why it comes last in the Active Reading Cycle. A good summary should describe only the main events of the section you’ve read, give brief details on the feelings or personalities of those involved, and provide some comments on the main ideas you came up with when you were doing the previous questioning activity. Using Little Red Riding Hood as an example, this video shows you the difference between a good and a bad summary, and explains how to make summarising a fun challenge.

This video starts by revisiting the overview of the Active Reading Cycle, and then runs through key aspects of each of the four skills from the cycle in a brief recap, which you can use to jog your memory or as a quick reminder of stand-out things to consider at each stage of the cycle. It’s a great 5-minute resource! Attached here you can also find the Active Reading Skills Reading Log, which you should download and use as a place to record your discussions and thoughts about all the different stages of the cycle as you read each new chapter or unit of a book. Downloading the log in digital format is probably the best way to use it, as you can then have control over the table size and can add new rows as you need.

Explore whole texts after reading them by considering the big picture ideas of the texts and then using and analysing evidence to support those big picture ideas.

The advanced reading skills which I’m going to give you in these videos are called the Active Exploration Process. This is a process you should really use after you’ve read an entire text. It’s a straightforward process with just two parts and in this video you’ll see the process outlined in its very broadest terms. The video ends with a mysterious question about a painting…

You can’t explore any written text meaningfully if you haven’t looked at it in its entirety and tried to grapple with the big ideas of the whole text first. This video shows you why it’s so important to get the big picture ideas first. It also gives you a whole series of questions you should ask yourself in order to think about what those big ideas of any text might be. In order to illustrate ways in which you might answer these big picture questions, we go through a whole text - in this case a short and beautiful poem by the Irish poet W.B. Yeats - using it as an example of how to build up a big-picture understanding of a text. Have a pen in your hand and be ready to pause the video in the middle to carry out a task. Also, you should download the attached handout in advance so that you have the big picture questions on hand when the time comes.

By analysing specific aspects of texts in depth, we can strengthen our understanding of the big ideas of that text. This longer video goes through the method of doing this deeper analysis in order to support the big picture ideas. The method is carefully explained, using diagrams to help you. It is applied to various aspects of a text in order for you to see it in action and truly get to grips with how it works. The poem being explored is again Yeats’ Song of the Old Mother. You are introduced to the concept of “Aspects of Texts” and there are two handouts to help you: one with a list of these aspects of texts that can be analysed, and the other with a range of questions you can ask in order to delve into each of the aspects. The handouts also form a key part of the diagrammatic explanations in the video, so again it is useful for you to have them printed out as you watch the video.


The third handout with this video is called "Active Exploration Process - Notes". This is for you to download and use in order to make notes any time you use the Active Exploration Process when you have finished reading a book. Here you can record all your big picture ideas about the book and there is also a space for you to include deeper analysis to support each of those big picture ideas. You should use this handout every time you complete a book. The final videos refer to it and explain how to use it in more detail.

Now that you’ve completed Section 3 of the course, it’s time to update your reflections on your reading habits and your reading targets. As with Activity One, print out the attached resource and fill it in using the instructions in the video to help you. Then, you’ll need to continue with that regular habit of monitoring how well you are achieving your new targets.

Understand the importance of carrying on using the resources from this course, and learn when it might be time to stop using the resources too.

You may have completed the course, but you will need to continue using the resources you met here over the coming months if you really want to internalise the ideas and processes you need to become an expert reader. This final video explains why it’s important to carry on using the resources as you read, suggests when you can stop using them, and encourages you on your lifelong reading journey. Enjoy your reading!

Good to know

Know what's good
, what to watch for
, and possible dealbreakers
Develops techniques that help students become more actively engaged and therefore more expert at reading
Introduces a straightforward Active Reading Cycle as a framework for new reading habits
Takes a unique and creative approach to reading comprehension
Though not specific to any age group, it may be most relevant to students ages 14 and up
Focuses on reading literature and excludes instruction in reading non-fiction texts

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Activities

Be better prepared before your course. Deepen your understanding during and after it. Supplement your coursework and achieve mastery of the topics covered in Becoming An Advanced Reader with these activities:
Create a collection of your favorite poems or short stories
Creating a collection of your favorite poems or short stories can help you to appreciate and reflect on the works that you have read.
Browse courses on Compilation
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  • Choose a theme or topic for your collection.
  • Read through your favorite poems or short stories and select the ones that fit your theme.
  • Organize your collection in a way that makes sense to you.
  • Add an introduction or preface to your collection.
Read and comprehend a novel from the 20th century
Reading and comprehending "The Catcher in the Rye" will deepen your understanding of 20th-century literature and strengthen your reading comprehension skills.
Show steps
  • Purchase or borrow a copy of "The Catcher in the Rye".
  • Read the novel at a leisurely pace, taking notes on any passages that you find particularly interesting or confusing.
  • After finishing the novel, write a brief summary of the plot and discuss your thoughts on the novel's themes and characters.
Join a peer discussion group
Joining a peer discussion group can provide you with opportunities to discuss your reading with others and to get feedback on your work.
Show steps
  • Find a peer discussion group that is focused on your interests.
  • Attend the group's meetings regularly.
  • Participate in the discussions and share your thoughts and ideas.
  • Listen to the feedback of others and be open to new perspectives.
Five other activities
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Complete regular reading exercises
Regular reading exercises can improve your fluency and comprehension skills.
Browse courses on Reading Comprehension
Show steps
  • Set aside a specific time each day to read for at least 15 minutes.
  • Choose a variety of reading materials, such as news articles, short stories, and novels.
  • As you read, pay attention to the author's purpose, the main ideas, and the supporting details.
  • After reading, take a few minutes to summarize what you have read and to identify any unfamiliar words or concepts.
Participate in guided tutorials on literary analysis techniques
Guided tutorials can teach you how to analyze literary texts more effectively.
Browse courses on Literary Analysis
Show steps
  • Search online for guided tutorials on literary analysis techniques.
  • Choose a few tutorials that cover topics that you are interested in or that you are struggling with.
  • Watch the tutorials and take notes on the key points.
  • Apply the techniques that you have learned to your own reading of literary texts.
Contribute to an open-source project related to literature or reading
Contributing to an open-source project can help you to learn new skills and to connect with others who share your interests.
Browse courses on Open Source
Show steps
  • Find an open-source project that you are interested in.
  • Join the project's community and introduce yourself.
  • Start contributing to the project in a way that aligns with your skills and interests.
  • Collaborate with other contributors to achieve the project's goals.
Write a short story or poem
Writing a short story or poem can help you to develop your creativity and your writing skills.
Browse courses on Creative Writing
Show steps
  • Choose a topic or theme that you are passionate about.
  • Brainstorm ideas for your story or poem.
  • Write a rough draft of your story or poem.
  • Revise and edit your work.
  • Share your work with others for feedback.
Mentor a younger student who is interested in literature or reading
Mentoring a younger student can help you to reinforce your own learning and to develop your leadership skills.
Browse courses on Mentoring
Show steps
  • Identify a younger student who is interested in literature or reading.
  • Offer to mentor the student and provide them with support and guidance.
  • Meet with the student regularly to discuss their reading and to provide feedback.
  • Help the student to set goals and to develop their skills.

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