Reading on Reading - Encounters of Common Problems

University Degree Education and Teaching

INTRODUCTION

What is reading difficulties? How can we define it? According to the website, , a reading difficulty is when a reader has difficulty meeting reading milestones for a given age or grade. A child can have difficulty with one or more aspects of the reading process. A reading difficulty may also be referred to as a reading problem, reading disability, reading disorder or dyslexia. It is important for us to realize that weaknesses in one or more components of reading can affect other components in reading. For example, children who have problems with phonemic awareness almost always have problems in word decoding/phonics; children with fluency problems usually have comprehension weaknesses; and a weak vocabulary also impacts comprehension.

Learning to read is a difficult task. It involves coordination of the eye muscles to follow a line of print, spatial orientation to interpret letters and words, visual memory to retain the meaning of letters and sight words, sequencing ability, a grasp of sentence structure and grammar, and the ability to categorize and analyze. Furthermore, our brain must join together visual cues with memory and relate them with the specific sounds. The sounds must then be associated with specific meanings. For comprehension, the meanings must be preserved while a sentence or passage is read. Reading disorder occurs when any of these processes are disrupted. For that reason, the roots of reading disorder have proved difficult to isolate, and may be different in different individuals.

What are the causes for this difficulties or this disorder? According to the same website, , one pf the causes to this matter is because of the brain. The source of their reading difficulty is probably inherited and it means that their reading difficulties are much more difficult to eliminate with regular educational involvement. Children that have this second kind of reading difficulty are often identified as having a Specific Reading Disability or dyslexia. There are few symptoms that can be found in children who have reading difficulties. Those symptoms are:

difficulty in identifying a single word
problems in understanding the sounds in words, sound order, or rhymes
problems with spelling
changing letters in words
excluding or substituting words
poor reading comprehension
slow reading speed (oral or silent)

Throughout this review, we are going to focus on common reading difficulties among children which are phonological and phonemic awareness, words decoding and phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. Moreover, we will also discuss the suitable activities for each reading difficulties that can be done by teachers or parents.

PHONOLOGICAL AND PHONEMIC AWARENESS

According to Smith’s and Goodman’s approach, reading is a unitary process. Thus, it is impossible to identify which specific skills that can be built up in any hierarchical way in order to achieve effective reading. This statement can be supported by a detailed study carried out by Lunzer and Gardner (1979) of secondary school children reading in their first language. There was no correlation between generally effective reading and performance on a supposed hierarchy of different reading sub skills/elements. Therefore, it is wise to say that these elements interact with each other and the mastery of each element affects the others. The research findings can be applied to our focused target group: children.

Reading can be hard on some children. There are various elements of difficulties the children encountered in their reading on daily basis. Phonological and phonemic awareness is one of the most common difficulties for the children in learning difficulties. It is also the most significant element in learning to read in English. Children whose second language is English find that it is more complex to master compared to children who use English is their first language.

Phonological awareness refers to broad skill that includes identifying and manipulating larger units of oral language. Stanovich (1993-94) describes phonological awareness as the ability to deal explicitly and in segments of sound units smaller than the syllabus. As it addresses the sounds of language, it teaches the sounds alone but not the symbols that represent sounds. This is appropriate to the teaching of English reading due to the relationship between alphabets and its sounds. Instruction in phonological awareness can be divided into word awareness, rhyme awareness, onset and rime, syllable awareness and last but not least, phonemic awareness. These five characteristics also function to make a word easier or more difficult (Kameenui, 1995).

Word awareness defines that words have its meaning. Beginning readers must have this skill in order to understand what they read. This can be likened to schema. For instance, a child must recognize that an ‘apple’ is a fruit that is red in color and sweet or sour in order to understand the word ‘apple’. Rhyme awareness on the other hand is to understand that certain word endings sound alike, thus possess the same sound, such as the short /a/ and /p/ sounds in cap and map or the long /i/ and /t/ combination in fight and kite. Onset refers to the initial consonant in a one-syllable word whereas rime is the remaining sounds including the following sounds (vowels and consonants). For instance, in ‘might’. /m/ is the onset and /ight/ is the rime. Next, syllabic awareness is to recognize that words are divided into parts that contain separate vowel sound. An example of this is ‘but’ can be identified as one syllable and ‘butter’ as two syllables. Last but not least, the most sophisticated level of phonological awareness is phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Acquiring phonemic awareness is important because it is the foundation for spelling and word recognition skills. Phonemic awareness is one of the best predictors of how well children will learn to read during the first two years of instruction. Therefore, phonemic awareness is used more specifically compared to phonological awareness. According to recent National Research Council report, the terms phonological and phonemic awareness in reading can be distinguished by:

The term phonological awareness refers to a general appreciation of the sounds of speech as distinct from their meaning. When that insight includes an understanding that words can he divided into a sequence of phonemes, this finer-grained sensitivity is termed phonemic awareness. (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 51)

Initial phonological awareness among children generally begins as they demonstrate an appreciation of rhyme and alliteration. Thus, materials for reading beginners are most likely based on rhyme or alliteration such as the B Book by Stanley and Janice Berenstain, 1997, or Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg, 1979, (Bryant, MacLean, Bradley, & Crossland, 1990). However, their basic phonological awareness does not necessarily develop into the more sophisticated phonemic awareness according to the children’s age. It is a child's phonemic awareness on entering school that is most closely related to success in learning to read (Adams, 1990; Stanovich, 1986). While phonological awareness affects early reading ability, the ability to read also increases phonological awareness (Smith, Simmons, & Kameenui, 1995). Most children with learning disabilities have deficiencies in their ability to process phonological information. Therefore, they do not readily learn how to relate letters of the alphabet to the sounds of language (Lyon, 1995). Meanwhile, for all students, the processes of phonological awareness, including phonemic awareness, must be explicitly taught.

Children of second language who are also culturally diverse backgrounds may have particular difficulties with phonological awareness. Exposure to language at home, reading at an early age, and dialect affect the ability of children to understand the phonological distinctions on which the English language is built. Having said that, teachers must apply sensitive effort and use a variety of techniques to help children learn these skills when Standard English is not spoken at home (Lyon, 1994).

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In order to teach phonological awareness, the teacher may begin by demonstrating the relationships of each element and build it to a whole model. Next, demonstrate and model how to segment short sentences into individual words so that the students will realize that how sentence is made up by words. When the students understand part-whole relationships at the sentence level, they are ready to learn multisyllable words for segmentation into syllables. Lastly, models a specific sound and asks the students to produce that sound both in isolation and in a variety of words and syllables in order to produce phonemic ...

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According to Bra dley & Bryant, (1985); Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley (1991), phonological awareness training is beneficial to beginning readers starting as early as 4. It also applies the same to the beginning readers of later age. Teachers need to be aware of instructional activities that can help the students to be aware of the phonological aspects before they receive formal reading instruction. Only then, their phonemic awareness matures and improves reading. These are several guidelines for the teachers to look into in the classroom to enhance the students’ phonological awareness.

The following recommendations and guidelines for instruction in phonemic awareness are derived from Spector (1995):

At the preschool level, engage children in activities that direct their attention to the sounds in words, such as rhyming and alliteration games.
Teach students to segment and blend.
Combine training in segmentation and blending with instruction in letter-sound relationships.
Teach segmentation and blending as complementary processes.
Systematically sequence examples when teaching segmentation and blending.
Teach for transfer to novel tasks and contexts.

Meanwhile, Yopp (1992) offers the following general recommendations for phonemic awareness activities:

Keep a sense of playfulness and fun, avoid drill and rote memorization.
Use group settings that encourage interaction among children.
Encourage children's curiosity about language and their experimentation with it.
Allow for and be prepared for individual differences.
Make sure the tone of the activity is not evaluative but rather fun and informal.

From these general recommendations, the teacher can arrange for the students to have specific activities that would focus on whichever of that five areas they wish to improve.

WORD DECODING AND PHONIC

When ‘decoding’ is said in relation to reading process, it usually refers to the ability to figure out and fathom how to read unfamiliar words by using one’s knowledge or schemata on letters, sounds and word pattern. Moreover, decoding is also often associated with the ability to pronounce new and unfamiliar words in coherent as well as consistent with the principles on English language. Decoding is almost automatic among skilled readers, therefore the reader faces fewer problems in reading compared to amateurish readers and can devote full attention to the understanding on the reading materials. Hence, we can also assume that decoding skill is important to being fluent readers.

Some methods of teaching reading rely greatly on the teaching of decoding skills. For instance, phonics based reading instruction is a classic example of direct teaching of decoding skills. Phonics concerns with teaching beginner readers that letters formulate sounds, for that reason we can say those sounds to ourselves and that when we quickly merge the sounds in a word together, we will automatically hear ourselves saying the word. The idea is that with sufficient practice of doing this, we will soon be able to read most words without sounding it out.

The reading problem can be perceived and sensed through readers’ reaction on reading. Children, for example, will typically show their frustration and trouble to read in a common way, by using statements like “I hate reading!” or “this is stupid!”. However, if it was possible peer into their mind, these are probably how children learner would probably describe how difficulties on word decoding and phonics affect their reading:

I just seem to get stuck when I try to read a lot of the words in this chapter.
Figuring out the words takes so much of my energy, I can't even think about what it means.
I don't know how to sound out these words.
I know my letters and sounds, but I just can't read words on a page.

However, with helps of parents and teachers, children can learn strategies to overcome word decoding and phonics problems that affect their reading through:

Playing with magnetic letters. See how quickly they can put them in alphabetical order while singing the alphabet song.
Look at written materials around the house and at road signs to see if they can spot familiar words and letter patterns.
Write notes, e-mails, and letters to their friends and family. Represent each sound they hear as they write.
When they are trying to sound out a word, they should pay close attention to the print and try to look at all the letters in the word, not just the first one or two.

Meanwhile, some of the clues for parents that a child may have problems with word decoding and phonics are when parents describe certain reading difficulties occurences they notice in their children such as below:

My child often gets stuck on words when reading. I end up telling my child many of the words.
My child reading is very slow because he/she spends so much time figuring out words.
My child is not able to understand much about what he/she reads because he/she is so busy trying to sound out the words.
It's as if my child doesn't know how to put the information together to read words.
Saying "sound it out" to my child just seems to make him/her more frustrated.
My child guesses at words based on the first letter or two, it's as if he/she doesn't pay close attention to the print.

What the parents can do to help at home, for starter, is to assist their child in learning the letters and sounds of the alphabet, while occassionaly they should point out the letter and ask their child to name them. Besides that, they could help their child to make connection between what he/she might see on the environmental prints (signs, newspapers, advertisements, etc.) and the letter and soun work he/she is doing in school. Parents should also motivate their child to write and spell notes, e-mail, and letters using what he/she knows about sound and letters. Moreover, parents need to discuss eith their child about the ‘irregular’ words that he/she would usually see in what he/she is reading, such as words that do not follow the usual letter-sound rules including words such as ‘said’, ‘are’ and ‘was’. The child must know and learn how to identify these words at sight. Instead of conventional ways, parents could also consider using computer software that aims on enhancing phonics and emergent of literacy skills.

Whereas, from the teacher’s perspective, hints that a student may have problem in word decoding and phonic are when occurences such as below exist:

The student has difficulty matching sounds and letters, which can affect reading and spelling.
The student decodes in a very labored manner.
The student has trouble reading and spelling phonetically.
The student has a high degree of difficulty with phonics patterns and activities.
The student guesses at words based on the first letter or two.
Even though I taught several short vowel sounds (or other letter sounds or patterns), the corresponding letters are not showing up in my student writing samples.
Even though I taught certain letter patterns, my student isn't able to recognize them when reading words

The teacher can provide assistance to improve the student’s reading skill in school by:

Having the students sort pictures and objects by the sound that the teacher is teaching. At each stage, have children say the letter sound over and over again.
Teach phonics in a systematic and explicit way. If the curriculum materials are not systematic and explicit, the teacher should discuss it with the principal or reading specialist.
The beginning of the systematic and explicit phonics instruction are done early, particularly to first-grade students.
Help students understand the purpose of phonics by engaging them in reading and writing activities that requires them to apply the phonics information that the teacher had taught them.
Use manipulatives to help teach letter-sound relationships. These can include counters, sound boxes, and magnetic letters.
Provide more instruction to students who have been divided into need-based groups.

However, the setback of using this method is that direct teaching of decoding skills does not necessarily work for all students. This is because some students simply could not hear themselves when they try and use phonics based decoding strategies, beside the fact that they only learn to use phonics to decode after numerous number of practice. Moreover, most dyslexic readers could not make the shift from sounding out words to direct and automatic recognition of words. Thhe dyslexic students may find themselves of being in the position of sounding out every word they meet, and this stops or slows them from becoming good at reading comprehension. In relation, this is what Reading Success Software is designed to address. When the reader is faced with difficulty, a decoding test gives an evaluation of the reader’s skills to decode written words. Such test usually include pseudowords, words that are pronounceable when sounded out yet have no meaning, while poor test results might be the result of lack of phonological attention and perhaps also because of dyslexia.

VOCABULARY

Vocabulary refers to the words we must know to communicate effectively. It is the number of different words recognized and understood in silent reading whereby the size grows as the reading materials become more complex. Vocabulary can be divided into two which are ‘oral vocabulary’ that refers to words that we use in speaking or recognize in listening, as well as ‘reading vocabulary’ which refers to words we identify or use in prints.

In this case, vocabulary plays an essential role in learning to read. As beginner readers, children usually use words they have heard before to make sense of the words they see in prints. For instance, when a beginner reader comes across to the word ‘dig’, he/she would initially figure out the sounds represented by the letters d, i, g, by identifying the sounds that make up a very familiar word that he/she has heard before and said many times. For this reason, beginner readers most likely to have a more difficult time reading words that are not already part of their oral vocabulary.

Nevertheless, vocabulary is similarly essential to reading comprehension since readers could not understand what was read by them without having the knowledge of what most of the words mean. Consequently, readers must learn the connotation of new words that are not part of their oral vocabulary so that they would learn to read a more advance text.

From the children perspective, below are probably the ways in which they would describe how their vocabulary hinders their reading ability:

I heard my friend telling me what happened in the movie but I didn't really understand what he said about it.
I feel like I just use the same words over and over again in my writing.
I don't like to read on my own because I don't understand lots of the words in the book.

Among the things that children can do to enhance their reading is to find books to read on their own. The more they read, the more new words they would encounter and the more they’ll learn about the words. In addition, the children can look ahead in textbook to learn new vocabulary and concepts before their teacher goes over the section in class. In addition, the children should anticipate textbooks to learn new vocabulary and concepts before the teacher goes over the section in class. Besides that, the children could also keep a list of key vocabulary and transition words as well as practice telling stories using sequence connectors such as ‘first’, ‘then’ and ‘finally’.

On the other hand, here are some of the clues that parents can see at home that the child may have dificulties in reading as a result of his/her vocabulary:

She's unable to tell about her day in a way that makes sense.
She misuses common words.
He doesn't link words from a book to similar words from another book or from real life.
He's often not able to find the right word to describe something.

To curb this problem, parents should engage their children in conversation every day and if it is possible, new, interesting and challeging words should be included in the conversation. Furthermore, they should read to their child every day and when the reading material contains a new, interesting and challenging words, the parents should pause and give the meaning of the words to the child. As a continuation, it is recommended that after the reading is done, the parents should engage the child in a conversation about the book. Among other things that the parents can do to help build their vocabulary and understanding on words is by classifying and grouping objects or pictures while naming them. Parents could also build the child’s comprehension on language through verbal word games, jokes and stories. However, it is still considered best that the parents encourage the child to read on their own since the more the child reads, the more word they would come across and learn.

Whereas, in the classroom, teachers can observe certain traits or behavior displayed by the students which give clues to their difficulty in reading due to vocabulary. Below is how teacher might address the issue to others:

My student has questions about a lot of word meanings in a grade appropriate text.
My student seems to have a weak vocabulary.
My student is not able to make connections among words in various texts.
My student often not able to find the right word to describe something.

Among the ways that the teacher can help the students are:

Help build language skills in class by playing oral and written word exercises and games.
Teach students about the important, useful, and difficult vocabulary words before students read the text. This will help them remember the words and improve comprehension.
Offer students many opportunities to encounter target vocabulary words beyond the context in which they are taught.
Have students use taught vocabulary words often and in various ways both orally and in writing so they are better able to remember the words and their meanings.
Teach vocabulary via explicit instruction and also through independent readings.
Help students learn to use context clues to determine the meanings of words. Teach them that some context clues are more helpful than others and provide examples of helpful and less helpful clues.
Read to your class each day. When the book contains a new or interesting word, pause and define the word for your students. After you're done reading, engage your students in a conversation about the book.
Engage your students in conversations every day. If possible, include new and interesting words in your conversation.
Explicitly teach the meanings of common prefixes, roots, and suffixes.
Draw students' attention to common roots in a variety of words (for example, the similar roots and meanings of the words vision, visual, visible, invisible) and lead a discussion of the meanings of the words and how they tend to be used.

Vocabulary instruction, as proved by researches, reveals that most vocabulary are learned indirectly or and some are taught directly. Students learn vocabulary indirectly when they hear or see words used in many different context through conversation with adults, being read to or reading extensively on their own. Young children learn word meanings through conversations with other people, especially adults. As they engage in these conversations, children often hear adults repeat words several times. They also may hear adults use new and interesting words. On the other hand, the more oral language experiences children have, the more word meanings they learn. Children learn word meanings from listening to adults read to them. Reading aloud is particularly helpful when the reader pauses during reading to define an unfamiliar word and, after reading, engages the child in a conversation about the book. Conversations about books help children to learn new words and concepts and to relate them to their prior knowledge and experience. Furthermore, children learn many new words by reading extensively on their own. The more children read on their own, the more words they encounter and the more word meanings they learn.

Students learn vocabulary directly when they are explicitly taught both individual words and word-learning strategies. Direct vocabulary instruction aids reading comprehension.

FLUENCY

What is fluency? According to the article, Target the Problem, fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy and proper expression. In order to understand the text, children should be able to read fluently either they are reading aloud or in silent. Children who cannot read fluently will sound awkward and choppy. These students might have difficulties in decoding skills which they need more practice with the speed and smoothness in reading. Why does fluency consider important in reading? Fluency does not ensure the children comprehension, but comprehension might become a big problem if there is no fluency. If the children continuously stop on decoding and figuring the unknown words, most likely meaning will be disrupted and the whole process of reading will becoming longer and difficult. With supporting the children to improve their fluency, they will be able to cope with comprehension and they will also be able in analyzing, interpreting, drawing a conclusion as well as inferring meanings from a text. Fluency can be divided into three components which are accuracy, rate and prosody. Accuracy will refers to the person’s ability in reading words by words in a text. Rate will refers to the speed of a person in reading and prosody refers stress, intonation and pauses in a text. These three components are important to be focused on before conducting any kind of activities for these children.

How can we help the students to overcome the fluency problem? According to the website, , there are four components needed in fluency instruction. These four components are:

model fluent reading
using guided oral reading instruction
give the students chances in practice and perform
Apply word study activities to build accuracy.

What does it means by model fluent reading? Model fluent reading requires the students to hear and see what will fluent reading look alike. Under the model fluent reading, there will be some activities such as read aloud, book on tape and buddy reading. Read aloud is a component where the teachers reads a selection out loud to the children, often as a whole group activity. The selection could be a poem, news report, short stories and other kind of materials. The teacher will demonstrate the act of fluent reading as well as the process of comprehension. Read aloud activity is to instill curiosity, joy and excitement towards reading as well as providing motivation to the students in learning how to read. Beside than that, reading aloud can also develop a sense of story among the children and teaches comprehension and vocabulary by reading. Book on tape is where the children listen to stories on tape as they follow on the book. This is good because the students might be able to listen and read at the same time. It is quite similar to reading aloud activity where the teacher’s job is substitute by the tape. In Buddy Reading, a student who knows how to read well reads with another student who can't read as well. Together they choose a book that isn't too hard and find a good spot to read. Buddy Reading helps the students who can't read as well hear the sounds of words when someone else reads with them. When they learn the sounds of the words better, they will be able to learn the pronunciation as well as the meaning of the words. The readers can take turns reading, or read the words together. They can ask questions as they read. The buddy can give clues when the student reader gets stuck on a word. These kinds of activities help the students on the pronunciation, vocabulary and accuracy.

The second component in fluency instruction is using guided oral reading instruction. This component requires the students to be assisted, guided oral reading instruction with a teacher, adult or a peer. Activities that can be done under this component are quite similar to the first component. It just needs the students to be assisted and guided. The activities are choral reading and tape assisted reading. According to , choral reading is an interpretive reading of text by a group of voices. Students may read individual lines or stanzas alone, in pairs or in unison. The teacher also reads to help set the pace, as well as model proper pronunciation. Choral reading helps the students to decode and improve the students’ vocabulary as well as their reading skills. In tape-assisted reading, students read along in their books as they hear a fluent reader read the book on an audiotape. From the website , it is stated that for tape-assisted reading, a teacher needs a book at a student's independent reading level and a tape recording of the book read by a fluent reader at about 80-100 words per minute. The tape should not have sound effects or music. For the first reading, the students should follow along with the tape, pointing to each word in their book as they read it. Next, the students should try to read aloud along with the tape. Reading along with the tape should continue until the students are able to read the book independently, without the support of the tape.

Third, the students have to be given a chance in practice to learn on how to read and performing helps the students learn prosody. In this component, repeated reading and independent reading can be used as the activities. Repeated reading is one of the direct approaches. Repeated reading is a fluency-building strategy that consists of rereading a short, meaningful passage several times (Samuels, 1979). A fluency criterion is set and a passage of text is selected. The student reads and rereads the passage until he or she can achieve the fluency criterion. Then the process is repeated with a new passage. Other than direct approach used, the indirect approach can also be used in this components. As an example of the indirect approach is independent reading. Independent reading allows the students to choose their own text according to their level and read it loudly or silently. This way can motivate the students to be more confident in reading and improve their comprehension skills.

The last component is to build accuracy by applying word study activities. Word study is to help the students to build their sight word knowledge in order to recognize words easily during the reading process. Speed drills, flashcards activities and vocabulary activities are some example of activities that can be done in class. A teacher can provide a list of words for the students and ask them to pronounce it and memorize the meaning. Instead of using words, teachers can also use simple phrase or short sentence for repeated reading.

These are the activities than can be done in improving the students’ fluency in reading. Beside than these activities, the parents and teachers should be more alert on this matter. Children with reading difficulties need extra care. These students need specific ways in improving their fluency as well as to overcome their fluency problem. As parents, the activities can be done at home. With the supports and motivation, these children will become more interested in reading. Teachers in the other hand, have to be more creative in handling these children. Activities have to be done according to their level of reading and the three major components of fluency such as accuracy, rate and prosody have to be looked. In implementing fluency teaching into reading instruction, the teachers have to be aware of these three components.

COMPREHENSION

Comprehension is one of the most common reading difficulties faced by most children. Durkin (1973) describes comprehension as an active and intentional thinking in which the meaning is conveyed through intentional interactions between the test and the reader. Another way at looking at it is that the content of meaning is influenced by the text and by the contribution of the reader's prior knowledge (Anderson & Pearson, 1984). There are two groups of factors that bring impact to reading comprehension: Readers-based and text-based factors. Readers-based factors include phonemic awareness, alphabetic understanding, fluency with the code, vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge and last but not least, engagement and interest. On the other hand, text-based factors are narrative versus expository, genre considerations, quality of text and lastly, density and difficulty of concepts. Text-based refers to reading materials. In short, comprehension means to involve combining reading with thinking and reasoning.

In learning reading, comprehension can only be achieved only after the students able to decode what they read, make connections between what they read and what they already know and reflect on what they have read. One big part of comprehension is having a sufficient vocabulary, or knowing enough word meanings. Therefore, the teacher would need to bring into the classroom, the lessons that will cover these aspects. There are seven strategies that appear to have firm scientific basis in improving text comprehension.

First strategy would be monitoring comprehension whereby the students will know that they understand their readings by controlling their own comprehension. They will develop strategies to modify their understanding should any problem arise in their reading.Comprehension monitoring instruction teaches students to be aware of and identify what they understand and do not understand. Other than that, use appropriate strategies to resolve problems in comprehension.

Second strategy is metacognition or “thinking about thinking” Readers who use metacognitive strategies will have the control of their reading in 3 stages: before, during and after reading. Before reading, they will set their purpose for reading and preview the text. During reading, they will monitor their understanding, adjusting their reading speed to fit the difficulty of the text and "fixing" any comprehension problems they have and after reading, they will check their understanding of what they read.

The third strategy is graphic organizers. It illustrates concepts and relationships between concepts in a text or using diagrams. Graphic organizers can also be defined as maps, webs, graphs, charts, frames, or clusters. This is to help readers to focus on concepts and how they are related to other concepts. Graphic organizers also help students to achieve better reading and understanding on textbooks and picture books.

Next, Question-and-Answer session strategy also encourages students on how to reflect better. They learn to locate, explicit and implicit textual information to achieve better comprehension. Questions can be effective because they give students a purpose for reading and focus their attention on what to learn. Moreover, it helps the student to be an active reader while monitoring their own comprehension. Later, they will reflect the content based on their metacognition knowledge. Besides Question-and-Answer strategy, the fifth strategy is to generate questions. By doing this, they will be more aware of their understanding on their reading. They will also learn to combine information from different parts of the text.

The sixth strategy is recognizing story structure whereby students will learn to identify the categories of content (characters, setting, events, problem, and resolution). By following the sequence of story structure, this will enhance their comprehension. Last but not least, the student will need to master summarization skill. By highlighting important information in their own words, it will help the students to identify or generate main ideas, connect the central ideas, eliminate unnecessary information and recall what they have read

CONCLUSIONS

To conclude, there are five commonly recognized elements of reading and each area encounters difficulties of its own. These are among common reasons of why reading can be so hard to students. they are phonological and phonemic awareness, word decoding and phonics, vocabulary, fluency and last but not least, comprehension of the text. Each component responds to each other and has interrelated functions to reading. This is because; reading is a unitary process that focuses on both process and product. Therefore, problematic readers who encounter problems in reading usually lack of masterization consisting of several skills. For instance, students who face problem with phonological awareness often have comprehension weaknesses, or comprehension of a student might be determined partly by his vocabulary. Thus, as the provider of guide, a teacher or parents should look into general strategies suggested by scientific researches in order to come up with specific lesson plan to cater to the problems accordingly. In short, recognizing the problematic areas and apply appropriate strategies will determine the students’ development in their readings, thus overcome, if not eliminate their reading difficulties.

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