Pre-reading: what is it, its characteristics and functions?

A technique widely used when reading, and that helps to understand the texts.

It has happened to all of us, especially in high school and university, that we have to read a book, scientific article or text commentary. This task is not very fun and motivating because we know from experience that it is very likely that we will not understand what we read.

This is something that, unfortunately, is very common but, curiously, it would be relatively easy to solve. Simply by documenting ourselves beforehand about what the text is about, who the author is or general aspects of what we are going to read can make reading much easier.

This is called pre-reading, and it is a very useful tool to improve our reading comprehension and motivation.. Let's see more in depth what it consists of, which are its characteristics and its functions.

What is pre-reading?

Pre-reading, also called exploratory reading, is a strategy that allows us to understand a text in a more exhaustive and detailed way. a strategy that allows us to understand a text in a more exhaustive and detailed way.. Pre-reading is the first of the three phases in which the process of comprehensive reading is divided, with the reading phase and the post-reading phase being the next two. It consists of preparing what is going to be read in order to understand it better, helping in its reading comprehension and in the effectiveness of the activity.

The objective of pre-reading is to discover what the general idea of a text is before going into it, as well as to know what its themes are.The objective of pre-reading is to find out what is the general idea of a text before going into it, as well as to know what its secondary themes are. In this way, when we proceed to read the text in a normal way, word by word and sentence by sentence, we will understand in a simpler way its details that, without the due previous preparation, would perhaps escape us.

Pre-reading is usually a spontaneous process, doing a quick reading of the text, looking over what it is about, looking at how many pages and chapters the book has, and other similar actions.looking at how many pages and chapters the book has, and other similar actions. However, on other occasions it is done in a more conscious and structured way, documenting what is going to be read, learning the specific terminology of the text, the context in which it was written and acquiring the basic idea of the text, facilitating its reading.

The most common pre-reading action is "scanning". For example, applied to a book, it would consist of looking at its cover and back cover, looking at the table of contents, looking at the names of the chapters and turning the pages to see if there are photographs or graphics that help us to understand what we are going to read. In this way, the reader is prepared to move forward with confidence.

Features

Regardless of how we do the pre-reading, this process has the following characteristics.

1. It is usually done with short and complex texts

Although pre-reading can be done with practically any type of text, short and complex texts are recommended. This type of text is preferred because their size allows them to be approached in greater depth before they are read.This action is necessary because the difficulty of the text requires it.

It is for this reason that it is usually a tool widely used in areas such as education and science, where texts with new and complicated terminology can be presented and require some prior familiarization.

An example of pre-reading would be to read the abstract of a scientific article and find out who has written it. As the article is relatively short (15-25 pages) but very specialized, the abstracts help the reader to prepare for what he/she is about to read.

2. Understand the main idea of the text

All pre-reading shares as its main characteristic to try to understand what is the main idea of the text to be read.. In this way, when we read the text in a normal way, we will be more attentive to the details and nuances found in it, nuances that we would ignore without having made a previous preparation.

3. Research

Before reading a text normally and trying to understand what it says, pre-reading allows us to get an idea of what we are going to read. We may discover something that we did not know or that interests us.We may discover something we didn't know or that interests us, making us want to expand our knowledge on our own.

Pre-reading is a tool that involves doing prior research, which can be more or less exhaustive. This research can include documenting the life of the author of the text, the branch of knowledge to which the content of the reading belongs, when and in what context it was written, learning the specific terminology...

We can also collect opinions and comments made by other people, to get a better idea of that work and see if it motivates us to read it. Thanks to this we can gather a lot of information that will help us to better understand what we read..

Functions of pre-reading

Pre-reading has the following functions.

1. Increases reading comprehension

As we have already mentioned, the main objective of pre-reading is to help us to deeply understand the text we are going to read. It is for this reason that this technique is especially recommended in the following situations areas in which we are going to read a difficult text, with complex subject matter or terminology that is too specific..

When we read something that is full of academic terms and the subject matter is complex, it is very likely that we will lose the thread, we will not understand what we are reading and the reading will become a waste of time and effort. When we finish the text we will realize that we do not remember anything and we will have to read it again.

On the other hand, if we have done some research beforehand, we have been explained what the text is about, what its meaning is or what terminology there might be, it is more likely that the reading of the text will be more fluent, we will understand the ideas better and we will learn something.

2. Improve motivation

Reading a text we don't understand is a tiresome, boring and exhausting task. No matter how addicted to books we are, if the text makes us want to read it from the beginning, we will hardly understand it or even finish reading it.. Motivation is one of the fundamental aspects of reading.

One of the reasons why secondary and high school students do not read the texts they are given for homework, both in literature and science, is that the text they have to read has not been previously and adequately explained to them.

This is especially visible in the subjects of language and literature, since there are many teachers who set as homework a literary work that they do not know what it is about and they already think it is going to be another unreadable book. We start unmotivated, making the reading not very rich in nuances..

For this reason, the way in which the teacher introduces the work is fundamental, since if he manages to awaken the interest of his students, they will have a more fluent reading. Also, if they already know what the book is about, while reading it they can relate ideas that have been discussed in class.

3. Helps them to get a better grasp of the information

As they read the text in a better informed and more motivated way, the reader is able to relate the ideas presented in the text more easily, the reader is able to more easily relate the ideas presented in the text. Thanks to this, it is easier to remember what the text was about..

One of the fundamental ideas of socioconstructivism is that meaningful learning is established when the learner has information that he/she can relate to the new information presented to him/her. Thus, he/she builds new knowledge from the one he/she already masters, something fundamental when reading an educational or scientific document.

Bibliographical references:

• Grellet, F. (1981). Developing Reading Skills. A Practical Guide to Reading Comprehension Exercises. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• VV.AA. (2000). El desarrollo de la comprensión lectora en el aula de español como lengua extranjera. Carabela, 48. Madrid: SGEL.
• San Mateo Valdehíta, A. (2005). Una lectura graduada narrativa para estudiantes de E/LE de nivel avanzado. REDELE, 3. http://www.sgci.mec.es/redele/biblioteca2005/sanmateo.shtml.