Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. Demonstrate an ability to determine the purpose, analyze and outline rhetorical structures and textual features, and identify inferred meanings in a broad range of advanced academic and everyday texts.
2. Identify, select, and employ a range of active reading strategies, like SQ3R, KWL, or other frameworks, to enhance textual comprehension and the appropriate integration of prior knowledge across a broad range of reading texts and reading purposes.
3. Acquire and demonstrate an ability to use words and phrases found in advanced level academic and everyday life texts.
4. Summarize, paraphrase, and respond to advanced level academic and everyday texts in ways that support the development of stronger overall academic skill. 

As part of assessing Outcomes#1 and #4, students will submit one paper based on ESOL’s Signature Assignment for Level 8 Academic Reading.

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 outside sources/ research in a culminating activity (presentation, essay, report, etc)

Students will be tested regularly on previously unseen readings and expected to apply process skills to the material (see “Competencies and Skills – Textual Analysis” below). In order to pass the course, students must be able to write a satisfactory summary/response. In addition, students must receive a combined average of 70% on in-class exams in order to pass the course.
 

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, cause/effect, classification problem/solution, discussion, persuasion, argument 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 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 theory, fact from opinion, and fiction from non-fiction
4. In one’s own words express 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 contents, 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 including library resources
8. Read for comprehension under time constraints
E. Language Analysis
1. Identify the structures found in college-level readings and understand their functions there. Structures include (but are not limited to) adjective, adverb, and noun clauses, and quoted and reported speech
2. Identify, understand, and apply knowledge of vocabulary items and their word families, word forms, and prefixes and suffixes in new contexts
3. Recognize rhetorical devices, including similes, metaphors, incomplete and ungrammatical structures, and obsolete terms