The activities involved in pre-reading are completed for a number of reasons, such as the assessment by a teacher of the linguistic skills of a student to ensure she is able to read and comprehend the text about to be read. Pre-reading activities are completed by teachers to ensure each student understands the reasons for which she is reading a text. A successful series of pre-reading activities allows a group of students to understand the reasons for reading a text, such as to build knowledge and to elicit an emotional response to the text from the student. Pre-reading can also allow a student to make decisions about whether to read more of the text or find other works by the same author.
Pre-reading activities are designed to provide a student with information about the text and prepare a student to read a certain text, the University of Iowa reports. By providing information for students the student may be able to identify more closely with the characters and emotions conveyed by a text. An extensively prepared student can bring his own knowledge and experience to a text to allow a deeper understanding of the text. By associating more closely with a text the student can understand the events within a book by comparing them to his own experiences.
By completing pre-reading activities a student can be provided with a large amount of information to help her understand a text. This information includes any cultural information that may be needed to understand the text. By creating pre-reading activities, a student can be provided with the opportunity to work within a group framework that provides opportunities to discuss and understand the texts with her peers, the National Capital Language Resource Center reports.
Pre-reading activities can include the use of maps, pictures, diagrams or graphs to increase the understanding of the subjects of the text. The author of a text can also be a subject for pre-reading activities by discussing the background, style and common themes of the author, according to the National Capital Language Resource Center. Titles, chapter titles and divisions can be discussed with the reader to estimate what the reader imagines the text to contain.