7 Pleasurable Ways to Improve Your Reading Ability

May 20, 2008

May 19th, 2008 by Steve Kaufmann

soldier-reading-a-book.jpg“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.

Steve Kaufmann is a former Canadian diplomat, who has had his own company in the international trade of forest products for over 20 years. Steve founded The Linguist Institute Ltd. in 2002 to develop a new approach to language learning using the web. The new LingQ system for learning multiple languages is now available in Beta. Steve speaks nine languages fluently and is currently learning Russian using LingQ. Steve maintains a blog on language learning.

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May 19, 2008

Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right. ~ Henry Ford

A penny saved is a penny earned. ~ Benjamin Franklin

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Gold safe haven for mid-term

*Added a New Category I believe worth a look for myself*

By K. K. Foong

MIERSCAN
Malaysian Institute of Economic Research

PRECIOUS metals, especially gold, are expected to act as a safe haven for investors in the medium term. This is supported by a confluence of factors.

Firstly, the ongoing subprime issues in the US and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East will raise demand for gold and thus, the upward trending gold price. The price of gold rose by 31% in 2007 (+23% in 2006), while the US dollar depreciated by 11% in 2007 (-10% in 2006).

[The weakness in the US dollar has been a vital factor leading to the surge in gold prices – Reuters]

 

In the recent credit crunch, the weakness in the US dollar has been a vital factor leading to surges in gold prices. Reflecting the loss of confidence in the US dollar, investors used gold to hedge risk independently of the dollar’s movement.

However, the depreciation of the greenback does not necessarily imply rising gold prices. For example, both gold and the US dollar weakened marginally during the bursting of the high-tech bubble in March 2000. Following the 1998 rouble devaluation and the Long Term Credit Management crisis, the US dollar depreciated, but gold strengthened.

Once the Long Term Credit Management was recapitalised, both gold and the US dollar strengthened. There were also large gains in gold prices after the Sept 11, 2001 incident. In contrast, the price of gold remained depressed during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis since gold was used to rescue governments confronted with rapidly depreciating currencies.

The US dollar is envisaged to depreciate further in the medium term due to economic woes in the US as well as its burgeoning current account deficit. In turn, this will support the demand for gold. In addition, rising crude oil prices that spilled over to higher general price levels in goods and services also increased the attractiveness of gold as a hedge against inflation.

Gold is also used to hedge against the volatile securities markets, which eroded the functioning of global financial markets. The gold market recorded its largest gain, especially after the recent crisis in the credit markets. Moreover, inflation expectations may also influence the price performance of gold. When the US Federal Reserve cut its interest rates by 50 basis points, the gold market rallied since inflation is expected to rise in the long term.

Gold reserves

Second, official gold reserves of respective countries also have a large influence on global demand for gold. As at end of March, the US has the largest quantity of official gold holdings amounting to 8,133.5 tonnes or equivalent to 79.8% of its total reserves.

Members of the Euro-zone, such as Portugal (382.5 tonnes or 90.7% of reserves), Italy (2,451.8 tonnes or 70.4% of reserves), Germany (3,417.4 tonnes or 68.9% of reserves), the Netherlands (621.4 tonnes or 63.6% of reserves) are among others who owned the largest proportion of official gold reserves.

In contrast, Japan (765.2 tonnes or 2.3%), Singapore (127.4 tonnes or 2.2%), China (600.0 tonnes or 1.1%), Malaysia (36.4 tonnes or 1.0%), and South Korea. (14.3 tonnes or 0.2%) hold proportionately smaller amounts of official gold reserves.

In general, these countries maintained relatively close international trading links with the US. It is common for these countries to hold considerably more foreign exchanges, normally the US dollars, rather than gold reserves.

However, this trend is expected to change in the medium term due to the depreciating US dollar. These nations will diversify away from US dollar reserves into gold holdings, and hence, increasing demand for gold.

The growing affluence of Chinese and Indian consumers will raise demand for gold as investment. In 2007, jewelry consumption by Chinese and Indian consumers rose by 6.0% year-on-year to 2,426 tonnes, representing 68.4% of total identifiable gold demand. Investment demand in gold will remain strong in the medium term due the falling US dollar and soaring crude oil prices.

The availability of new channels in trading gold, such as gold exchange-traded-funds (ETFs) will also ensure the attractiveness of gold investment. An ETF is an open-ended investment fund listed and traded on a security exchange. The ETF aims to track the performance of gold prices.

Falling supply

Third, the fall in global supply also contributed to the rise in the price of gold. In 2007, global supply of gold dropped 3.0% year-on-year to 3,469 tonnes.

Mine production sagged 2.9% year-on-year to a 10-year low of 2,047 tonnes (2,108 tonnes in 2006). Over 2004 to 2007, the top suppliers have cut their production levels as a result of rising exploration and mining costs. For example, South Africa, the US, and Australia cut their production by 36.3%, 15.5%, and 28.9%, respectively to 272 tonnes, 250 tonnes, and 251 tonnes by 2007.

Only China has consistently raised its production levels from 172 tonnes in 2004 to 270 tonnes in 2007.

Meanwhile, the Metals Economics Group has estimated that the exploration outlays of gold miners have risen for the fourth consecutive years since 2002.

For instance, Barrick Gold, the world’s largest producer, reported a total cost of US$361/oz for the first nine months in 2007 from US$308/oz over the comparable period in 2006.

Moreover, the Gold Fields Mineral Services, a London-based precious metals consultancy, notes that production costs increased by 24.0% in 2007.

In summary, the global demand for gold as a safe haven asset is supported by various exogenous factors as well as demand and supply conditions.

In terms of the exogenous factors, the sub-prime concerns in the US, the depreciating US dollar, the political instability in the Middle East, and volatile crude oil prices are expected to increase gold demand. Initially, the price of gold may fall in wake of financial market stresses, as trouble investors liquidate their gold holdings to gain liquidity.

Once illiquid investors are purged out, gold demand may increase again as better-equipped investors resort to gold as a hedge against further market risk and rising uncertainty.

Importantly, gold continues to attract investors’ focus because it is a universally accepted currency with zero counter-party risk. Moreover, potential official reserves diversification and jewelry consumption by Chinese and Indian consumers may account for rising demand for gold. Finally, rising costs of gold production may restrict supply and thereby, generating upward pressure on the price of gold.

The writer is a Senior Research Fellow of the Malaysian Institute of Economic Research

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