Increasing Student Motivation

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Increasing Student Comprehension, Motivation, and Personal Connections through the use of Pre, During, and Post Reading Strategies Nicole M. Hartz Action Research Paper Dr. Linda Hanrahan Ithaca College June 2010 Why I’m Writing This Paper My topic pertains to how pre, during, and post reading strategies help students to better comprehend texts on a literary level as well as a personal level. Instead of having students simply read the text with no direction, these strategies are meant to augment the students’ learning so that they appreciate the literary elements in the text as well as critically think about their reading. Often, students are passive readers and simply search for only surface level meaning to participate in discussions or do well on the essay or test assigned after a reading. By asking students to think more critically using pre, during, and post reading strategies, their reading becomes more personal and connected to their lives. Through this personal understanding students will also come to appreciate literary devices as well as think critically about issues presented by novels that connect to current events and controversies. This topic is an area of interest to me because I feel that, too often, students simply read to get the grade or to please their teachers. Students need to find deeper meaning in texts and connect the issues and themes to their lives. This makes learning English worthwhile to students and will hopefully give them a lifelong love for reading and writing. By teaching strategies for pre, during, and post reading students will be able to gain more from their reading and not feel frustrated with misunderstanding or experience a feeling of boredom because they do not know how to critically think about the text. Personally, I have
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