Words&Phrases

1.Jump the gun

Act before the proper time.

e.g. people should not "jump the gun" over whether or not the UK's Trident nuclear weapons system is to be replaced.

2.Self-defeating

A plan or action that is self-defeating is likely to cause problems or difficulties instead of producing useful results.

e.g. jumping the gun is usually self-defeating.

3.It is of paramount importance to do sth

Something that is paramount or of paramount importance is more important than anything else.

e.g. it is of paramount importance to recognize that the four stages outlined here are all stages of the first level of reading, as outlined in the previous chapter.

4.Carping

If you say that someone is carping, you mean that they keep criticizing or complaining about someone or something, especially in a way you think is unnecessary or annoying.

e.g. We do not want to seem to be mere carping critics.

Summary

1.The first stage of elementary reading—reading readiness—corresponds to pre-school and kindergarten experiences.

2.The second stage—word mastery—corresponds to the first grade experience of the typical child (although many quite normal children are not “typical” in this sense), with the result that the child attains what we can call second-stage reading skills, or first grade ability in reading or first grade literacy.

3.The third stage of elementary reading—vocabulary growth and the utilization of context—is typically (but not universally, even for normal children) acquired at about the end of the fourth grade of elementary school, and results in what is variously called fourth grade, or functional, literacy—the ability, according to one common definition, to read traffic signs or picture captions fairly easily, to fill out the simpler government forms, and the like.

Bold: subject+veb; Italic: appositive; Strikethrough:parenthesis

4.The fourth and final stage of elementary reading is attained at about the time the pupil leaves or graduates from elementary school or junior high school. The child is a “mature” reader in the sense that he is now capable of reading almost anything, but still in a relatively unsophisticated manner.

Reflection

With a plan of becoming a mandarin immersion program teacher in the United States, I have already received an admission letter from a university in California, which means if I accept this letter, I am going to spend the next two years—maybe even my whole life—studying first level reading and helping kids to go through the four stages of learning to read. The memories of my elementary school learning have already gone blur; therefore, I cannot recall how I managed to finish these four stages in my early teenage. What I do remember is the assignment, given by Chinese teacher, of copying down good expressions and sentences from newspapers and books. I believe the most important and toughest one among the four stages is the third, and there should be more means than just simply copying down words. I am still not sure how much I like being a teacher and how I will react to the pedagogy, but I am on the way to find it out. Hopefully, the tuition I am going to pay will be worthy of what I get in return.