Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Understand the development of reading as a process that involves determination of purpose, selection and adjustment of strategies, analysis and reflection of underlying meanings, and integration of prior with new knowledge to address the purpose.
2. Acquire and use words and phrases found in high-intermediate level academic and everyday texts.
3. Accurately read high-intermediate level academic and everyday texts composed of a variety of complex sentence structures with appropriate pacing, phrasing, and expression.
4. Choose from a range of simple strategies and integrate them to monitor and/or enhance text comprehension.
5. Form and express an opinion and draw conclusions based on the information found in high-intermediate 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 responses/essays for ability to connect and compare characters, events, information, ideas or themes presented in a text with another text or own life
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

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

A. Content Comprehension

1. Identify topics, main ideas, and supporting details
2. Identify rhetorical styles including narration, description, process, comparison/contrast, and cause/effect
3. Correlate information from multiple sources as a basis for a response

B. Textual Analysis

1. Identify paragraph and essay organizational structures for unabridged 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, and symbolism
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
2. Relate readings to personal needs and experiences
3. Distinguish fact from opinion and fiction from non-fiction
4. Express in one’s own words ideas and opinions related to readings

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 ESL dictionary of American English and other references
8. Read for comprehension under time constraints

E. Language Analysis

1. Identify the structures found in basic-level authentic adult readings and understand their functions there. Structures include subjects, verbs, passive voice, adjective and adverb clauses, prepositional phases, and pronoun references
2. Identify, understand, and apply knowledge of vocabulary items and their word families, word forms, and common prefixes and suffixes in new contexts