Pre-reading: What It Is, Characteristics And Functions
It has happened to all of us, especially in high school and university, that we have to read a book, scientific article or text commentary. This task is not very fun and motivating because we know from experience that it is very likely that we will not understand what we read.
This is something that, unfortunately, is very common but, interestingly, it would be relatively easy to fix. Simply documenting ourselves in advance about what the text is about, who its author is or general aspects of what we are going to read can make reading much easier for us.
This is called pre-reading, and it is a very useful tool to improve our reading comprehension and motivation Let’s take a closer look at what it consists of, what its characteristics and functions are.
Pre-reading, also called exploratory reading, is a strategy allows us to understand a text in a more exhaustive and detailed way Pre-reading is the first of the three phases into which the exhaustive reading process is divided, with the reading phase and the post-reading phase being the next two. It consists of preparing what you are going to read in order to understand it better, helping your reading comprehension and the effectiveness of the activity.
The objective of pre-reading is to discover what the general idea of a text is before delving into it, so as to know what its secondary themes are. In this way, by proceeding to read the text in a normal way, word by word and phrase by phrase, we will more easily understand its details that, without due prior preparation, would perhaps escape us.
The pre-reading It is usually a spontaneous process, doing a quick reading of the text, looking a little at what is going on, looking at how many pages and chapters the book has and other similar actions. However, on other occasions it is done in a more conscious and structured way, documenting what is going to be read, learning the specific terminology of the text, the context in which it was written and acquiring the basic idea of the text, making it easier to read.
The most common pre-reading action is “scanning”. For example, applied to a book, it would consist of looking at its cover and back cover, looking at the index, looking at the names of the chapters and turning the pages to see if there are photographs or graphics that help us understand what we are going to read. In this way, the reader prepares to move forward safely.
Characteristics
Regardless of how we do the pre-reading, this process has the following characteristics.
1. It is usually done with short and complex texts
Although pre-reading can be carried out practically on any type of text, the recommended ones are short and complex ones. This type of text is preferred because Their size allows them to be addressed in more depth before they are read an action which is necessary because the difficulty of the text requires it.
It is for this reason that it is usually a widely used tool in areas such as education and science, in which texts can be presented with new and complicated terminology that require some prior familiarization.
An example of pre-reading would be reading the abstract of a scientific article and finding out who did it. As the article is relatively short (15-25 pages) but highly specialized, abstracts help the reader prepare for what he is going to read.
2. Understand the main idea of the text
All pre-reading Its main characteristic is to try to understand the main idea of the text to be read In this way, when we read the text normally, we will be more attentive to the details and nuances found in it, nuances that we would ignore without having done prior preparation.
Before reading a text normally and trying to understand what is said in it, pre-reading allows us to get an idea of what we are going to read. We may discover something that we didn’t know or that interests us giving rise to us wanting to expand our knowledge on our own.
Pre-reading is a tool that involves carrying out prior research, which can be more or less exhaustive. Within this investigation, it may be possible to document the life of the author of the text, to which branch of knowledge the content of that reading belongs, when and in what context it was written, learning the specific terminology…
We can also collect opinions and comments made by other people, to have a better idea of that work and see if reading it motivates us. Thanks to this we will be able to collect a lot of information that will help us better understand what we read
Pre-reading functions
Pre-reading fulfills the following functions.
1. Increase reading comprehension
As we have mentioned, the main objective of pre-reading is to help us deeply understand the text we are going to read. It is for this reason that this technique is especially recommended in areas in which a difficult text is going to be read, with complex themes or too specific terminology
When we read something that is full of academic terms and the topic is complex, it is very likely that we will lose track, we will not understand what we are reading and reading will become a waste of time and effort. When we finish the text we will realize that we do not remember anything and we will have to read it again.
On the other hand, if we have done a little prior research, they have explained to us what the text is about, what its meaning is or what terminology there could be, it is more likely that the reading will be more fluid, we will understand the ideas better and we will learn something. .
Reading a text that we do not understand is a heavy, boring and exhausting task. No matter how addicted to books we are, If the text stops us from wanting to read it from the beginning, it will be difficult for us to understand it or even be able to finish reading it Motivation is one of the fundamental aspects in reading.
One of the reasons why middle and high school students do not read the texts they are given for homework, both literature and science, is that the text they have to read has not been previously and adequately explained to them.
This is especially visible in language and literature subjects, since there are many teachers who assign as homework a literary work that they do not know what it is about and already think that it is going to be another unfathomable book. We start unmotivated, making the reading not rich in nuances
For this reason, the way in which the teacher introduces the work is essential, since if he manages to awaken the interest of his students, they will have a more fluid reading. Furthermore, if you already know what the book is about, while reading it you will be able to relate ideas that have been discussed in class.
3. Helps to better establish information
As he reads the text in a better documented way and with greater motivation, The reader is able to more easily relate the ideas presented therein. Thanks to this, it is easier to remember what the text was about
One of the fundamental ideas of socioconstructivism is that significant learning is established when the learner has information that they can relate to the new information that is presented to them. Thus, he builds new knowledge based on what he already masters, something fundamental when reading an educational or scientific document.
