Types of Reading Styles and Its Effects to Writing Skills

Among all the other skills, reading perhaps is the most intricate subject of much research conducted extensively and intensively by well-known scientists in the field of language. The result of the study for many years, particularly in the learning context – how learners extract and comprehend written text and organized it into well-founded ideas, giving birth to various different theories and techniques substantial for improvement of learners in the light of the idea of which works best, especially when it comes to improving the other areas of language skills which are deemed as complicated and difficult as the reading skills. As a result, educators have been offered many choices to choose from for student learning, particularly in their SL/FL subjects, starting from method to different styles and techniques to make the other skills be enhanced greatly in accordance with all its components. 

In countries where learners are required to learn the second language, particularly the English, reading can become a great medium of acquisition in all its aspects, be it in listening, and speaking. However, poor reading comprehension could affect one's performance in the same other areas. For instance, in the Philippines-one of the English-nation in the far-east and uses English as the official language for legal proceedings, business and education, reading has always been the center of concerns in the education sectors as they treat is the vehicle for language learning and reinforcement for many subjects. The importance of reading in other areas was manifested last 2018, amidst the controversial issues on the rank of the Philippines in the assessment of the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) when the 2018 results were released—the Philippines coming out second to the last in math and science, and the last in reading, among 79 countries and regions (Hong Kong and Macau had separate ratings even if they are part of China). PISA reported “Low performers in reading struggle with recognizing the main idea in a text. In mathematics, they cannot compute the approximate price of an object in a different currency or compare the total distance across two alternative routes. In science, low performers are unable to use basic or everyday scientific knowledge to interpret data and draw a valid scientific conclusion.” Published in Inquirer.net.

Reading, proving its influence in all other subjects could be of great support for developing the area of writing, where most learners also find their selves in a difficult situation. Heaton pointed out that writing skill may be an advance ability that is typically tough to be learned, the learners should need not only mastery grammar but also sharing the information and writing elements. Richard and Renandya explain that “writing is the most difficult skill for learners to master and the level of difficulty is not solely in formulating and organizing ideas, but also in the translation of the ideas into readable text. They strongly acknowledged that writing can seem exhausting to be enforced attributable to several issues and thoughts that need adequate attention, namely, structure, vocabulary, content, organization, and mechanic. It is a vigorous creation of text that involves, on the one hand, lower-order transcription skills that are tutored and practiced till they'll be performed with a high degree of automaticity Berninger et.al.

Reading has been highly recognized as one of the underlying factors in language learning and skills enhancement. This notion has been supported by many claims in the field of language, arts and sciences. It is said that its complex interplay of cognitive processes, including attention, pattern recognition, memory, knowledge, reasoning, and problem solving, play a great role in writing processes. Broek, et.al states that, In order to understand the text presented, the reader visually process the individual words and make access to their phonological, orthographical and semantic features to form a meaningful interpretation, same as through with the process of understanding the text as whole, reader will try to comprehend and unite individual ideas and unit resulting to the understanding of the underlying meaning of the text, which in turn, can be transfer when the reader will write his own text.

Subsequently, Krashen pointed out that writing styles and conventions of writing are both gained through reading. Besides, reading consists of words that also contained phonemes, morpheme, and graphemes that are essential for determining meanings. Sentences have syntactic propositions, compositions and stylistic features that can enrich one's linguistics knowledge essential for an effective writer to produce desirable outputs. Moreover, reading provides a good avenue for domain knowledge enrichment, while shaping one’s ability to formulate ideas and execute logical and coherent paragraphs employed on their writing. A research conducted by Safitri found that students fond of writing also make a good writer. As reading strengthen their critical analyses, support diction development, profound theories and so on.

All in all, incorporating reading and writing provides a medium of interaction for learners as a reader and a writer. As such, the ties between the two have been identified. Cognitive processes underlying of the two share the same features, as it both involves planning, setting goal, tapping stored knowledge and experiences , rising questions, and developing connections , monitoring, revising meaning, relating reflecting and evaluating. In relation to meaning formation, the two skills possess the same features, as both requires drafting, re-drafting and negotiation with its meaning, thus compelling the reader and writer to keep each other in mind.

Realizing how crucial reading is to improve writing skills, experts come up with range of different styles providing choices for teachers to use and employ in their respective classes. Below is the list of the chosen reading styles based in the book of Brehm to be compared in the light of the idea of which works best and to specify its purpose and usage, providing a better understanding on how reading can be execute under a specific situations and circumstances.

1. Skimming - is the process of reading which mainly focuses on getting a general idea, what the text is all about, from the text given. So to speak, it centers on the theme or the global information provided in the text.
2. Scanning - this involves the act of looking through a text with finding specific information in mind. The reader already knows what he wants from the text, of what they call local information.
3. Extensive reading - this is a kind of style in which the primary goal is to read for pleasure. It is also a quick reading without much focus on words. It is a fluency act and centers on extracting global information. This is mainly done in reading novels, short stories.

Hence, Krashen emphasized that reading could alleviate these issues in writing and already has a proven positive impact in all other areas of language use, particularly in writing. It can enormously enhance one's grammatical correctness, vocabulary development, spelling and even writing style.  Subsequently, the elements have also been in the midst of the debate, particularly in terms of components pertinent to writing. As faults in writing competency continue to arise, a study concerning adult literacy stated that a writer must possess the ability to execute correct grammar coinciding with the ability to organize and formulate structures logically for explicit outputs. There’s also a need for learners to face challenging, engaging and meaningful texts that will provide a good avenue for the learners to practice and have deeper collaboration for the above skills. Thus, requiring more than just instructions and facilitator but the combination of both along with the proper tools and execution incline with the needs of the learners in the learning context. In line with Poorsoti, S. the text should be in the range of the learners’ linguistic comprehension. Also, those careful measures should be implemented for monitoring the developments undertaken so-far by the students in response to difficulties faced by the learners.  

Another research had been conducted by Çileli and Özen, inquiry on the effects of an extensive reading program on the writing skills development of intermediate-level university students. The study reported that the learners in the experimental group exposed to attain a higher level of writing proficiency post-test scores. The findings of this study suggested that the comprehensive reading program played a facilitative role in writing proficiency, Çileli & Özen. As the key concept for acquiring information, reading can provide a good source of information for the writer to write on, and styles to be used as a basis and eventually employ in their own piece.  In support of Krashen that writing styles and conventions of writing are both gained through reading. Consequently, reading consists of words that also contained phonemes, morpheme, and graphemes. Sentences have syntactic propositions, compositions and stylistic features that can enrich one's linguistics knowledge essential for an effective writer to produce desirable outputs, Danielle S. McNamara. Moreover, the effects of reading are manifested in writing as the learners engage himself in the text presented, hence enabling a more established connection paving a way for linguistics knowledge absorption, styles, and conventions, Zarei, et.al. In line with Stephen King claims that the real importance of reading is that it creates an ease and intimacy with the process of writing. Constant reading will fuel one's eagerness to write and losing on the text himself.

Finally, reading like a writer is a necessity for every aspiring writers not only to boost their topic knowledge but also to understand closely how ideas and words are being put and fit together using certain styles in a way that can drag the attention of the readers without losing their interest up to the later part, as well as how these choices of words might arise in their writings, and what to do next if it happens, like whether to adopt or copy to produce positive effects from the potential readers. 

Though numerous studies have shown the foregrounding pieces of evidence in relation to the significant effects of reading to develop one’s skills however after extensive reading, those have targeted EFL learners mostly and no study has ever conducted regarding types of reading styles its effect to writing simultaneously, leaving a room for doubt that questions which will really works better. Thus, the researcher desires to commence an investigation with regards to the matter at hand: types of reading styles and its effect on writing.