As a researcher, Wang Jian picked two band 2 students. One is called Liu Wanli, and the other is called Lin Yanqing.
Wang first observed how Liu acquired a higher-level proficiency reading. He found that Liu used an interactive model of reading. Liu is more aiming at a global interpretation of the text. According to Liu, he said, “I skim it and choose the cream of it.” Wang also commented that, “Liu’s strategy of contextualizing vocabulary interpretation is not only evident in his guesses at new words but also in his awareness of potential new meanings of learned, familiar words in the context.” Just by reading Liu’s strategy, I realized that both him and I have a high tolerance of ambiguity in guessing. For example, he wrote down 49 new words. However, he only looked up two in the dictionary. Other than that, he would just guess or skip it. In addition, the way how he made guesses in this session was quite interesting -- he only wants the outline of its meaning.
Later on, Wang observed how Lin studied. Unlike Liu, Lin ignored the title. He felt like there’s no connection between the title and the text. Gradually, he found out the vocabulary was overwhelming and during his first attempt, he produced nothing but a word list. He also noticed that Lin read every paragraph twice, and there was some misinterpretation during the reading. Thus, Wang concluded students like Lin can be seen as “locally oriented reader,” which means their reading was interfered by personal experience. When it comes to vocabulary, Liu looked up every word and didn’t guess.
By going over these two participants in Wang’s article, I felt my reading style was more like Liu’s. But that is because I have already stored a dozen of vocabularies in my mind in my earlier age. I have vocabulary as my foundation and therefore, I can have a way much higher tolerance towards ambiguity. More importantly, both Liu and I focused more on the spirit or the content of the article instead of wanting to know the article word for word.
Wang first observed how Liu acquired a higher-level proficiency reading. He found that Liu used an interactive model of reading. Liu is more aiming at a global interpretation of the text. According to Liu, he said, “I skim it and choose the cream of it.” Wang also commented that, “Liu’s strategy of contextualizing vocabulary interpretation is not only evident in his guesses at new words but also in his awareness of potential new meanings of learned, familiar words in the context.” Just by reading Liu’s strategy, I realized that both him and I have a high tolerance of ambiguity in guessing. For example, he wrote down 49 new words. However, he only looked up two in the dictionary. Other than that, he would just guess or skip it. In addition, the way how he made guesses in this session was quite interesting -- he only wants the outline of its meaning.
Later on, Wang observed how Lin studied. Unlike Liu, Lin ignored the title. He felt like there’s no connection between the title and the text. Gradually, he found out the vocabulary was overwhelming and during his first attempt, he produced nothing but a word list. He also noticed that Lin read every paragraph twice, and there was some misinterpretation during the reading. Thus, Wang concluded students like Lin can be seen as “locally oriented reader,” which means their reading was interfered by personal experience. When it comes to vocabulary, Liu looked up every word and didn’t guess.
By going over these two participants in Wang’s article, I felt my reading style was more like Liu’s. But that is because I have already stored a dozen of vocabularies in my mind in my earlier age. I have vocabulary as my foundation and therefore, I can have a way much higher tolerance towards ambiguity. More importantly, both Liu and I focused more on the spirit or the content of the article instead of wanting to know the article word for word.