Page 657 - Encyclopedia of Business and Finance

eobf_R 7/5/06 3:20 PM Page 634

Reading Skills in Business

cluded that reading exercises for developing the skills of • Selecting relevant information
verifying and comprehending detail were needed.
• Recognizing main idea
The National Business Education Association pub-
lished the exercises that evolved from the studies. In the • Reading with partner to detect errors
introduction to the Office Reading Exercises, Schmidt • Recognizing errors: transpositions, typographical
describes trial use of the exercises prior to their publica- and mechanical, additions and omissions
tion. They were used with experimental and control
groups, each with more than 250 high school students. Taylor and Hancock, in a 1993 publication titled
“Strategies That Reinforce Academics Across the Business
After completing a pretest, the experimental group com-
pleted the ten exercises, using 15 to 20 minutes to com- Curriculum,” discussed strategies to help introduce, rein-
plete one exercise per day. The students were simply given force, and extend students’ comprehension, vocabulary,
the exercises and informed of expected outcomes. This and writing in three reading stages. An overview of the
group not only scored significantly higher on a post-test three stages follows.
administered at the completion of the exercises, but also
on a post-test administered after a lapse of three to five Pre-Reading Stage. Before students are assigned technical
weeks. They also scored significantly higher on the post- reading, they need to engage in pre-reading strategies to
test than the control group. Thus a research base exists to help them in understanding the material. The reading can
justify the use of the exercises. be broken into smaller segments with a variety of activities
The ten exercises were all developed from actual that promote student involvement. These might include a
office documents including a catalog page, a price list, an graphic organizer, an analogical study guide, or an antici-
insurance claim, an enrollment report, a budget allocation pation/reaction guide. This guide helps focus pre-reading
form, a meal price schedule, a program confirmation, zon- discussion and can also serve for post-reading review.
ing ordinance information, concentration banking infor-
mation, and an expense account. Schmidt provides two Reading Stage. At the reading stage, the students need to
approaches that can be used for teaching the exercises.
focus on garnering major ideas as well as important details
One is a holistic approach where the students are simply
from the material. A study guide or selective reading guide
given the exercises, one day at a time, and told the out- can help the students achieve this objective. The study
comes desired. This was the approach used in the study guide used should, unlike the text-explicit questions gen-
described above. They devise, along with their classmates, erally supplied by textbook authors, extend the students’
their own methods for achieving the outcomes. The other thinking beyond mere “parroting” of the text-explicit con-
approach is instructor-directed and is called a “Guided cepts.
Approach.” It allows the instructor to emphasize the thir-
teen component skills that are subsets of the two main
Post-Reading Stage. Once the students have read the
skills, verifying and comprehending detail.
material, they need to engage in post-reading activities to
Verifying requires comparing technical information
assure long-term retention of what they have read. The
that has been transferred from one place to another to be
sure that it has been transferred accurately. Comprehend- pre-reading strategies can again be used or students can
undertake other activities. These might include vocabu-
ing detail is reading printed technical information, then
determining if statements about it are accurate. The com- lary reinforcement activities, journal writing, or other
ponent skills or sub-skills emphasized in the Guided writing activities that allow the students to apply informa-
Approach are: tion from what they have read.
Thus, the reading of technical materials requires the
• Following directions development of unique skills that are not addressed by
• Perceiving document structure most teachers. The Office Reading Exercises developed by
• Perceiving relationships Schmidt and the strategies recommended by Taylor and
Hancock provide some approaches that can be used to
• Identifying relevant information
teach technical reading skills. However, before these
• Locating facts or specifics approaches are used, instructors should also be concerned
• Recognizing comparison/contrasting information with the extent that their students’ reading abilities match
those required for technical materials. Two methods are
• Interpreting symbols, graphics, or acronyms
available for this purpose: (a) the Cloze procedure devel-
• Recognizing sequence of information oped by Taylor in 1953, which permits the instructor to
• Summarizing or making generalizations measure the compatibility of printed materials with the

634 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BUSINESS AND FINANCE, SECOND EDITION