Micro and Micro Skills of Reading

According to Brown (2004: 187-188), he devided micro and macro skill of reading as stated below:

1)   Microskills

a)    Discriminate among distinctive graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.

b)        Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short term memory.

c)    Process writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.

d)   Recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns and their significance.

e)    Recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verb etc.) systems (e.g. tense, agreement, pluralisation), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.

f)    Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different grammatical forms.

g)   Recognize cohesive devices in written discourse and their role in signaling the relationship between and among clauses.

2)      Macroskills

a)    Recognize the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their significance for interpretation.

b)    Recognize the communicative functions of written texts, according to form and purpose.

c)    Infer context that is not explicit by using background knowledge.

d)   From described events, ideas, etc. Infer links and connections between events, deduce causes and effects, and detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information, generalization, and exemplification.

e)    Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.

f)     Detect culturally specific references and interpret them in a context of the appropriate cultural schemata.

g)    Develop and use a battery of reading strategies such as scanning and skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words from context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of texts.