1 Barriers to Reading

Introduction
Just because a learner looks normal, do not assume that he has the equipment needed to
read and spell. Language is a learner`s master key to communicating and interacting with his
world. The ability to read and spell competently is the vehicle which transports the learner into
the world of learning. Staying motivated and positive is a challenge many learners, parents and
educators face on a daily basis when it comes to learning.
According to Jensen (Jensen, 1995), humans are created to survive, and their most important
competitive advantage is their ability to learn. So, why then, do so many learners struggle to
read and spell accurately? The answer: They face many barriers to learning.

What is Reading?
Reading is the decoding, interpreting and understanding of printed marks on paper. At first,
these marks look like „squiggles‟ on a page. Over time, the learner comes to realise that each
„squiggle‟ represents a sound, and that each group of „squiggles‟ represents a word or a
phrase.

Literacy eludes learners and adults when the following basic skills are not
developed:

* Language (receptive and expressive) * Crossing the midline

* Gross Motor skills * Fine Motor skills
* Rhythm * Spatial Orientation
* Drawing on an experience * Abstract reasoning
* Auditory Perception * Visual Perception
Sensory integration refers to a learners senses and how they integrate to give him a
complete understanding of: who he is, where he is, and what is happening around him. His
brain uses information received from sights, sounds, textures, smells, tastes and movement in
an organized manner so that he knows how to behave and respond accordingly. For many,
sensory integration occurs naturally and does not require conscious thought or effort. For
others, sensory integration can be inefficient. These learners have difficulty working out what
is going on inside and outside their bodies. A learner with inefficient tactile sensory
integration may, for example, avoid getting his hands dirty with paint, sand or glue.

Gross motor skills refer to the movement and control of the body`s large muscles which
are involved in daily activities such as walking, running, kicking and catching. Gross motor
development is a reptilian response and is made up of a number of skills at a level of
unconscious competence in order to maintain posture and a sense of independence.

Fine motor skills refer to the small muscles of the body which are involved in learning
activities such as tying shoelaces, undoing buttons, cutting, drawing, gluing, and writing.
Fine motor skills are the result of well developed gross motor skills. The inability of a learner
to stack blocks, control a pencil, tie a shoe lace or fasten buttons is an indication that the
fine motor skills have not adequately developed.

Crossing the midline refers to the imaginary line separating the right and left side of the
body. When a learner is able to cross the midline, then he has integrated the left and right
hemispheres of the brain. By doing so, the learner is preparing his two eyes, ears and hands
to work together in front of the body so that optimal learning can take place. The ability to
cross the midline is essential if the learner is going to be able to draw, cut, build puzzles,
write, read and spell with success.

Spatial Orientation is essential to a learner`s motor planning, i.e. his ability to organize
himself, his immediate environment and his possessions. This is an important skill which
assists in building the bridge to abstract reasoning. A learner who is able to copy down work,
write, read, spell and do mathematics accurately, has a well developed sense of spatial
orientation.

Auditory Perception is when the brain and ears work together and enables a
learner to absorb and understand verbal information, and carry out instructions
accurately.
Visual Perception is when the brain and eyes work together and enables a
learner to read, spell, write and do mathematics accurately.
Left / Right Eyed Dominant An learner`s dominant eye also plays an important
role in his ability to read and spell accurately.

Tips to effective reading:

 Stimulate the ears
 Stimulate the eyes
 Look at the word – break it up
 Sound the word out
 Write down
 Pronounce again and again

A good foundation in reading and spelling is basic to all academic learning. It

enables the child to progress through life with enjoyment and confidence.
(D.Maree & M.For)
 2 Types of Reading
Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive
meaning (reading comprehension). It is a means of language acquisition, of communication,
and of sharing information and ideas. Like all languages, it is a complex interaction between the
text and the reader which is shaped by the reader’s prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and
language community which is culturally and socially situated. The reading process requires
continuous practice, development, and refinement. In addition, reading requires creativity and
critical analysis. Consumers of literature make ventures with each piece, innately deviating from
literal words to create images that make sense to them in the unfamiliar places the texts
describe. Because reading is such a complex process, it cannot be controlled or restricted to
one or two interpretations. There are no concrete laws in reading, but rather allows readers an
escape to produce their own products introspectively.

The four main types of reading techniques are the following:

 Skimming
 Scanning
 Intensive
 Extensive

Skimming
Skimming is sometimes referred to as gist reading. Skimming may help in order to know what
the text is about at its most basic level. You might typically do this with a magazine or
newspaper and would help you mentally and quickly shortlist those articles which you might
consider for a deeper read. You might typically skim to search for a name in a telephone
directory.You can reach a speed count of even 700 words per minute if you train yourself well in
this particular method. Comprehension is of course very low and understanding of overall
content very superficial.
Scanning
Picture yourself visiting a historical city, guide book in hand. You would most probably just scan
the guide book to see which site you might want to visit. Scanning involves getting your eyes to
quickly scuttle across sentence and is used to get just a simple piece of information.
Interestingly, research has concluded that reading off a computer screen actually inhibits the
pathways to effective scanning and thus, reading of paper is far more conducive to speedy
comprehension of texts.Something students sometimes do not give enough importance to is
illustrations. These should be included in your scanning. Special attention to the introduction
and the conclusion should also be paid.
Intensive Reading
You need to have your aims clear in mind when undertaking intensive reading. Remember this
is going to be far more time consuming than scanning or skimming. If you need to list the
chronology of events in a long passage, you will need to read it intensively. This type of reading
has indeed beneficial to language learners as it helps them understand vocabulary by deducing
the meaning of words in context. It moreover, helps with retention of information for long periods
of time and knowledge resulting from intensive reading persists in your long term memory.This
is one reason why reading huge amounts of information just before an exam does not work very
well. When students do this, they undertake neither type of reading process effectively,
especially neglecting intensive reading. They may remember the answers in an exam but will
likely forget everything soon afterwards.
Extensive reading
Extensive reading involves reading for pleasure. Because there is an element of enjoyment in
extensive reading it is unlikely that students will undertake extensive reading of a text they do
not like. It also requires a fluid decoding and assimilation of the text and content in front of you.
If the text is difficult and you stop every few minutes to figure out what is being said or to look up
new words in the dictionary, you are breaking your concentration and diverting your thoughts.
 3 Qualities of A Good Speaker

Good public speakers are a breed apart. They are not perfect--in fact, some are deeply flawed
human beings.
A good speaker needs:

1-Know-How
Good speakers need to know what ancient wisdom and modern science have to say about
the best practices in constructing and delivering talks that work. If they don't know this--the
principles of rhetoric and oratory--they wander around in the dark trying to reinvent what was
long ago invented.
2. Passion and Purpose
A good speaker is driven to know his stuff and care about a particular topic. His passion will
cause others to be convinced, not just because of his force of reasoning, but also because he is
visibly enjoying the beliefs he wants his audience to accept.

3. Personality
A personality is what makes a person distinct. We all get one at birth, and many of us lose ours
when we set foot on a stage. It doesn't have to be a warm personality, although warmth is an
attractive quality. It just needs to be real, determined, and accessible. Listeners crave intimacy
with speakers.

4. Make Connections
Listeners live on an island of their own interests. Good speakers build a bridge to that island:
They can make the conflict in Ukraine rattle the dishes in your cupboard.

5. Speak Plainly
Good speakers keep it simple. They use short sentences. They use everyday language to make
complicated topics clear and understandable. They don't show off their expertise by using a
specialized vocabulary. They use metaphors that appeal to all of us, such as, "On
healthcare.gov, you can buy a Rolls Royce, a Chevrolet, or a jalopy policy, and they all cost
more than they used to."

6. Not Be Afraid to Fail

Like every other human being, good speakers walk forward on two legs: trial and error. There is
no such thing as a perfect presentation. Every effort is a new experiment. Good speakers must
be willing to fail their way to success. A speaker who is not willing to fail is not going to be great.
7. Not Be Afraid of Hard Work
A good speaker will have the constitution of a horse. Laurence Olivier said this about actors.
Life on the stage takes a lot out of you. You need high energy, low tension. Your adrenal glands
will work overtime. You'll have to get up early, stay up late, and wake up in the middle of the
night--to write, to get it right, to make it work for a different audience.
8. Not Take Things Personally
Good speakers need rhino hides. You need to be tough. You've got to believe in yourself and
your message, and even though your success depends on the opinions of others, you can't care
too much about what people think of you. And by the way, the more popular you get, the more
people dislike you. Look at the president. If 51 percent of the people like him, 49 percent don't.

9. Be Vulnerable
There's nothing worse than an old workhorse of a speaker with rhino hide who loves to hear
himself talk. It was Warren Harding's speechwriters who invented the word bloviate to describe
the president's ability to talk much and say little. Vulnerability can help a speaker say a lot
without talking much. It can make him more sensitive, real, and accessible, which are appealing
traits, as long as he's not too wimpy.
And I also think you should work on these "extras" to really shine:

10. An Expressive Voice

The voice of a good speaker sparkles with change: changes of pitch, volume, and speed. A
great speaker's voice is animatedly alpine: It goes up and down, it purrs and it roars. Since it's
the only instrument in the orchestra, the voice of a great speaker is never monotonous. Its pitch,
volume, and rhythm are always changing.

11. A Sense of Humor

You don't have to tell jokes, but it's nice if you can come across as having a sense of warmth
and ease. When asked what are the most important elements of any speech, Kennedy's
speechwriter, Ted Sorenson, said, "Brevity, levity, and charity." I don't think he put them in rank
order, but if you can make people laugh, you have an unfair advantage over speakers who
can't.

12. A Decent Wardrobe

Men first. I am not a big fan of men's pants that are wrinkled in the front. And men, unless you're
built like a whippet, you look better in a jacket. You don't need a tie all the time, but a couple of
really nice-fitting standard-issue suits in gray and blue will do the trick. You should be able to
button your jacket and wave your arms around without busting your buttons. Leaders of large
companies and large Western nations tend to wear black shoes with their conservative suits
and ties. In certain regions, brown shoes are permissible. As for women, formal business attire
is a business suit or pants suit, or dress and jacket. Business casual is a shirt with a collar
and/or a sweater, khakis or dress pants, and nice shoes. Watch the height of the heel.

13. Stories to Tell

And yes, you should tell stories--to demonstrate who you are, and to illustrate your points. They
should be your own stories, not borrowed from another source. Your own stories have a sterling
ring of truth.
 4 How To Improve Reading Skills
“There is a total incompatibility between the joy of reading, a vagabond experience, and the
experience of reading in order to answer questions, and explain what you understood.”
– Rubem Alves, Brazilian educator.
What is most likely to influence your success at school or at a job? The ability to read well. And
that goes for your kids too. The declining literacy of our society has been a major concern of
educators for a while now, and yet things are not getting better. One reason might be a failure to
recognize that reading and literacy are personal skills, best acquired when associated with
pleasure.
In most cases, how well we learn to read will depend largely on our exposure to language as
children. If we hear people around us talking about a wide variety of subjects as children, we
naturally pick up the words and phrases they use. If we pick up a lot of words, we will have an
advantage when we start reading, and we will learn to read better. This, in turn, helps us to
acquire more words, leaving the poor readers, who know few words, further and further behind.
The literacy divide usually begins early in life, and can only be overcome by lots of reading later
in life.
Much of the traditional advice to struggling readers, these days, seems to involve developing
“cognitive strategies”. In this approach, readers are asked to focus more, to think, to be curious
and ask questions, to analyze, to predict, to infer, and to monitor their understanding, or worse
still to answer questions on their comprehension of what they have read. In other words they are
asked to become self-conscious readers.I do not agree with this approach.

Here are my seven strategies for reading improvement.

1. Read about things that interest you.

If you are interested in what you are reading about, the words will come alive, and you
will be motivated to understand. You will feel satisfaction in accomplishing a task that
you enjoy, and which you consider meaningful. The more you read, the better you will
become at reading. Just get started and it will become a habit, as long as you are
interested in what you are reading.

2. Read material that is at your level, or just a little difficult for you. Read
material that you find easy to read, or just a little challenging. Looking up many
unknown words in a conventional dictionary is tedious, and the results of the dictionary
search quickly forgotten. It is better to stay within your comfort zone and keep reading.
Soon you will be able to take on more difficult content.
3. Learn to read in depth, stay on the same subject for a while. If you are
familiar with the subject you are reading about, you will understand better. Do not just
read short articles. Commit to books. Stay with one author for at least one book. If the
subject matter is new to you, you should even try to read a few different books or
articles about the same subject, before you move on. This way you will meet the same
vocabulary and ideas often, helping you to learn. You will also be able to get deeper into
the subject and your reading confidence will grow.
4. If you have trouble reading, listen first. Many great works of literature
were written to be read out loud. Learn to appreciate the art of the narrator. Listen to
audio books or audio files of the material that you are reading. This will help make
difficult content seem more familiar. If you can hear the new words and phrases that you
are reading, you will have an easier time understanding and remembering them.
Hearing the rhythm of someone reading a text will help your own reading.
5. Let your imagination get involved. Good readers get engrossed in
their reading and let it trigger their imagination. Learn to enjoy your reading without
asking too many questions or analyzing too much. It will just spoil the sensual
enjoyment of the reading experience. You do not need to predict or analyze. Just enjoy
and look forward to absorbing the information, ideas and thoughts expressed by the
writer.
6. Don’t worry about what you don’t understand. Most of your
reading should be for pleasure. You can enjoy reading without understanding all of what
you read. You may even understand some things in your own personal way. Neither
you nor a teacher needs to “monitor” your understanding. Learn to enjoy reading, even
while feeling that you do not fully understand or remember what you have read.

7. Recognize that the key is to read a lot. You may develop a system
for keeping track of new words that you encounter in your reading, using lists, or Flash
Cards, or other memory systems available on the Internet or elsewhere. However, the
main growth in your vocabulary and reading skill will come just from reading as much as
you can. So learn to enjoy reading and read a lot. Keep reading, and you will become a
better reader.
Unfortunately not all reading is just for pleasure. When you are reading a textbook or
manual, or report or other material that have to read for school or work, you may need
to underline, take notes, and read some parts over again, in order to retain what you are
reading. However, if you have developed the habit of reading for pleasure, you will find
that the cognitive techniques you need will come naturally, and that you will understand
a lot better than before.
 5 Barrier In Speaking
You are driving down the road to your presentation destination, and invariably there
are barriers to public speaking success.
In the ABC’s of your presentation destination, you’ve assessed your audience, your
goals and your strengths. Now comes the hard part figuring out what holds you
back from your ultimate goals in your career or business. Those pesky roadblocks
that send us on a detour away from our dreams.
When I speak to clients about what they would like to improve upon in their
speaking, I’ve heard these three barriers come up repeatedly.
FEAR & ANXIETY
The biggest barrier to presentation success is fear and anxiety. Standing-up in front
of a group of people stimulates our fight or flight instincts. We might as well be out
in the open waters swimming with great white sharks. Our body is going to have the
same reaction to sharks as it does to public speaking. Fear can be faced and anxiety
dealt with. The trick is understanding how your body NATURALLY reacts to the
anxiety caused by a presentation and how to cope with the anxiety during
presenting. In fact, fear can actually be the fun of speaking. It gives a bit of an edge
to our performance. You just have to understand what is happening to you and how
to effectively deal with the fear.

SELF-LIMITING BELIEFS
As I practice my own presentations, I have this conversation with myself: “This
presentation is sucks. No one is going to find this useful. Why are you doing this?
You are going to fail!” I then argue back with myself: “No, this is going to be great. I
just need to press on!” You might think I am insane or you might notice that you do
this too! You have to exorcise those public speaking. You are often your own worst
enemy. You must identify those beliefs and replace them with new ones in order to
reach your presentation destination!

LACKING EXPERIENCE
Sometimes you just need a win under your belt. Often times the people I work with
just haven’t had enough experience presenting. When they took their job, they
didn’t think presenting to clients was in the job description. Malcolm Gladwell’s
book, Outliers, he says you have to do an activity for 10,000 hours before you can
be an expert. Unless you started your public speaking career when you were 10,
you are most likely hosed for that presentation or workshop you are doing next
week or next month. Hiring coach can dramatically cut down the time you spend to
get you to an expert level. If you have a longer time frame to get ready for a
presentations (say 6 months), Toastmasters is a great way to get experience. In
order, to reach your presentation destination you need to get experience
presenting. If you know the barriers that stop you from getting speaking success,
you can overcome those. Summit your fear, quite the voices of your inner demons
and get the experience you need!

6 Qualities of A good Writer

Creative writers craft new worlds, producing descriptions of places and people that send
readers on trips in their minds. They do this with nothing but their brains and some form
of writing implement -- be it an old-school notebook or a more modern laptop. While no
two writers ply their craft in the exact same way, some characteristics are common for
many who are successful.

Efficiency
Creative writers rarely work in offices. They most commonly work alone, making it easy for them
to slip off task and while away a day that should be filled with writing. For success, creative
writers must be efficient and focused, says writer, editor and ghostwriter Michael J. Dowling.
They must be able to force themselves to do work, despite the distractions that may fill their
work spaces, which are often at home. Those lacking this quality will likely find their writing
dreams fruitless.

Research Abilities
Though creative writers include fictitious details in the yarns they spin, they must still
engage in research to make their pieces believable. If writing historical fiction, for
instance, writers must research the time periods in which they set their stories to
accurately portray all of the details. Similarly, writers must research the physical places
in which they set their tales, acquiring the knowledge necessary to paint an authentic
picture of that place in readers’ minds.

Imagination
To dream up the stories that make compelling creative fiction, creative writers must
have highly developed imaginations, according to Helena Blakemore, professor at the
University of East London. Writers can engage in exercises to bolster their imaginative
skills, but possessing a pre-existing ability to imagine and invent is a benefit to those
beginning in this field.

Express ideas clearly

Writing is in some way being able to sit down the next day and go through everything you
wanted to say, finding the right words, giving shape to the images, and linking them to feelings
and thoughts. It isn’t exactly like a social conversation because you aren’t giving information in
the usual sense of the word or flirting or persuading anyone of anything or proving a point; it’s
more that you are revealing something whole in the form of a character, a city, a moment, an
image seen in a flash out of a character’s eyes.