Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Understand reading as a process that involves finding purpose, choosing a reading strategy, analyzing underlying meanings, and integrating prior with new knowledge.
2. Learn and use words and phrases found in advanced-level academic and everyday texts.
3. Accurately read advanced level academic and everyday texts which include long complex sentences and paragraphs.
4. Choose from a range of strategies and use them to monitor and/or improve text comprehension.
5. Form and express an opinion and draw conclusions based on the information found in advanced-level academic and everyday texts.

Suggestions for Assessing Outcome #1:

1. Assess Read With Understanding Diaries to see how students use the process
2. Conduct a Listening In Assessment while students are reading
3. Assess students Reading With Understanding Self-Evaluation
4. Complete a Teacher Observation/Evaluation (Read With Understanding)

Suggestions for Assessing Outcome #2:

1. Assess individual student vocabulary logs
2. Evaluate students’ ability to complete fill-in-the-blank exercises using target vocabulary
3. Assess students’ ability to determine the meaning of new vocabulary words from the

context

           4. Assess student knowledge of collocations through matching exercises

           5. Evaluate student performance on online vocabulary level tests for both recognition                     and production vocabulary

           6. Evaluate students use of new words in a culminating activity (presentation, essay,                    report etc)

           7. Assess students ability to complete word sorts, prefix/suffix sorts, or concept sorts

Suggestions for Assessing Outcome #3:

1. Assess student ability to distinguish meaning based on differences in sentence structure  (punctuation, word form, clause structure, modifiers, etc.)
2. Assess student ability to mark a text for appropriate pausing
3. Assess student progress based on a speed and comprehension log
4. Assess student comprehension of the same text after one, two, or more readings
5. Assess performance reading for pacing, phrasing,  intonation and expression (in readers theater, as an introduction to large group or book club discussion,  in individual presentations of poetry, short stories, drama, or novels)
6. Use an Oral Reading Fluency Assessment or the Multidimensional Fluency Scale to rate each aspect of fluency (accuracy, pace, phrasing/expression).

Suggestions for Assessing Outcome # 4:

1. Assess students’ ability to identify and define commonly-used reading strategies
2. Evaluate students’ awareness of metacognition as it relates to the reading process and the selection of strategies
3. Evaluate students’ use of appropriate pre-reading strategies before reading a text
4. Evaluate students’ use of fix-up strategies when comprehension is not occurring during  reading
5. Evaluate students’ use of appropriate post-reading strategies to analyze and integrate new learning

Suggestions for Assessing Outcome #5:

1. Assess written and oral summary-responses for clarity and development of ideas, opinions, and conclusions based on readings
2. Evaluate student presentations for ability to make comprehensible logical inferences, predictions, connections, and conclusions based on readings
3. Evaluate essays for critical analysis of settings/ characters/ events/ symbolism/ themes in texts
4. Evaluate students’ work from a literature circle/book club where they demonstrate their ability to summarize, define vocabulary, create and answer discussion questions, and make connections to the text
5. Test students’ ability to identify and interpret the organizational structures and rhetorical features of a text
6. Assess students’ ability to integrate information from multiple sources provided by the instructor in a culminating activity (presentation, essay, report, etc)

A. Content Comprehension
B. Textual Analysis
C. Critical Thinking Skills
D. Study Skills
E. Language Analysis
Competencies and Skills

A. Content Comprehension

1. Identify, paraphrase, and summarize topics, theses, main ideas, and supporting details
2. Identify rhetorical styles including descriptive narrative or descriptive process, comparison/contrast, cause/effect, classification, problem/solution, discussion, and definition
3. Correlate information from multiple sources as a basis for a response, paper or presentation.

B. Textual Analysis

1. Identify paragraph and essay organizational structures for pre-college-level literature, academic texts, essays, and newspaper and magazine articles
2. Identify rhetorical features such as plot, setting, character, theme, point of view, narrative and descriptive techniques, symbolism, motivation, tone, and intended audience
3. Interpret basic maps, tables, graphs, and figures and their relationship to the main ideas in texts
C. Critical Thinking Skills
1. Make logical inferences, predictions, connections, and conclusions in and among readings
2. Relate readings to the needs and experiences of self and others
3. Distinguish fact from opinion and fiction from non-fiction
4. Express in one’s own words ideas and opinions related to readings
5. Analyze and examine the validity of sources
D. Study Skills
1. Read, understand, and follow directions
2. Use previewing techniques including tables of content, indexes, and glossaries
3. Use note-taking techniques including outlining
4. Use skimming and scanning to find specific information
5. Develop questions based on readings
6. Work in groups to define, analyze, and solve problems
7. Use a monolingual, adult dictionary of American English and other references
8. Read for comprehension under time constraints
E. Language Analysis
1. Identify the structures found in pre-college academic and general interest readings and understand their functions there. Structures include (but are not limited to) passive voice, adjective, adverb and noun clauses, modifying phrases, and quoted and reported speech
2. Identify, understand, and apply knowledge of vocabulary items and their word families, word forms, and prefixes, stems, and suffixes in new contexts
3. Recognize rhetorical devices, including similes, metaphors, and incomplete and ungrammatical structures