Reading Competencies

Introduction
Pronoun Agreement
Parallelism
Active and Passive Voice
These are some of the skills that are needed to be able to properly understand
what you are reading. Whether its an article that you have to summarize,
advertisements that you see, lectures or reports that you have to attend, or simply a
book that you want to read, these factors are essential for you to know grasp what
youre reading.
First, well discuss what is reading.
Reading, from what Mr. Wikipedia says, is a complex cognitive process of
decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning. Simply put, you are reading
when you are giving meaning on any symbol which can be letters, characters or even
pictures. It is a form of communication where the sender of the message is usually not
around when the receiver is receiving or reading the message. Because of this, the
receiver might not be able to quickly send feedback or confirm whether his/her own
interpretation is true, thats why we need to hone our proper reading comprehension
skills.
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Pronoun Agreement
A little bit similar to his friend Subject-Verb Agreement, the Pronoun Agreement
states that the singular pronoun should take a singular antecedent and a plural pronoun
takes a plural antecedent.
Now for those who were snoozing in their English Class back in High School
when the antecedent is discussed by your teacher, an antecedent is a word for which a
pronoun/noun stands. Well then, lets start to give an example with this sentence.
Sentence: A parent should always keep an eye on their child.
Notice how the word parent is singular while the pronoun their is plural? This
sentence is incorrect. In correcting agreement errors involving the Pronoun-Antecedent
Agreement, we replace the singular antecedent with a plural one. So the sentence
should be like this:

Sentence: Parents should always keep an eye on their child.

Just keep in your mind that you need to make sure that the pronoun agrees with
the number of the antecedent.
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Parallelism
The term parallelism refers to a series of two or more grammatical elements of
the same type joined by the conjunction and (or sometimes or). When one of the
elements breaks the pattern set by other elements, the resulting error is called faulty
parallelism. The most common type of faulty parallelism involves the inconsistent use of
the verb forms.
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Active and Passive Voice
All action verbs occur in one of two voices: the active and the passive. Let me
give you two examples. In an active sentence, the subject here which is the teacher
performs the action which is came up and is therefore the main focus of the sentence
while in a passive sentence, the sentence is flipped and the subject receives the action.
Which is right between the two?
Well, as long as you follow the correct grammar rules, your sentence is true if
you use one between them. However, using the passive voice can lead to dull
sentences, which can turn into dull paragraphs and can later turn into a dull story that
people wouldnt want to waste their time reading it.
Student: During our trip to Boracay, a plane was taken by our family. After
arriving there, the beach is enjoyed by us. A game called volleyball was played by us
and we enjoyed it. The ball the we are using was autographed by a celebrity there.
During the evening, theres a fireworks display that was watched by us.
See how an exciting vacation story turns dull when stated in passive voice?
Unless you have a reasonable reason, do try to avoid using the passive voice unless
you want your sentence to be passive.
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So, those are the reading skills that you need to do in order to understand what
you are reading. I hope that you enjoyed and learned at the same time. Thanks for
watching.