READING COMPREHENSION

Universidad del Aconcagua- 2012

School of Foreign Languages

Reading comprehension

·     What is literacy?

Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. It is a concept claimed and defined by a range of different theoretical fields. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines literacy as “a human right, a tool of personal empowerment and a means for social and human development. Educational opportunities depend on literacy.”

Literacy is at the heart of basic education for all, and essential for eradicating poverty, reducing child mortality, curbing population growth, achieving gender equality and ensuring sustainable development, peace and democracy. There are good reasons why literacy is at the core of Education for All (EFA).

A good quality basic education equips pupils with literacy skills for life and further learning; literate parents are more likely to send their children to school; literate people are better able to access continuing educational opportunities; and literate societies are better geared to meet pressing development 

http://www.unesco.org/en/literacy/literacy-important/

·         Macroskills

	Active
Receptive	Listening	Reading
Productive	Speaking	Writing

Language may be subdivided in many different ways. One of the most obvious and helpful is into the four major skills: reading, listening, speaking and writing.

·         Reading comprehension should not be separated from the other skills.

Give examples of the following interaction:

Reading and writing: summarizing, note-taking, dictating.

Reading and listening: matching opinions and text, checking information as others read.

Reading and speaking: debates, oral presentations, lecturing.

·         The interactive nature of the reading comprehension process

Psycholinguistics and cognitive approaches sustain that meaning is construed by the interaction between the reader and the text. Based on the signs on the page, readers construct a mental model or knowledge representation of the text. Also known as schema or cognitive structure.

Schemata is  viewed as prior knowledge (content schema)and macro/ rhetorical/ discourse structures (formal schemata) in the form of genres , registers and or writing conventions are revised, rejected or replaced  as further reading confirms or invalidates readers hypothesis.

·         Participants in the reading process.

There are at least three participants in the reading process: the writer, the text and the reader.

The reader

 

The text                                  The author

Understanding reading means understanding how the reader works, what knowledge the reader brings to the text, which strategies the reader uses, what assumptions the reader has about the reading process and how reading texts can vary due to language and information organization.

1.       The reader is unique

2.       The text is static

3.       Interaction between reader and text is constantly evolving

Reading models

Top down approach proceeds from prediction  about meaning to attention to progressively smaller units.  It argues that readers bring a great deal of knowledge, expectations, assumptions and questions to the text and given a basic understanding of the vocabulary, they continue to read as long as they confirm those expectations. (Goodman, 1988)

Bottom up approach is text bound and relies heavily on linguistic information, both syntactical and semantic in nature, from the text. It states that the reader constructs the text from the smallest units, letters, to sounds, sounds o words, to phrases to sentences, to comprehension. This approach was typically associated to behaviorism.  In the 1940’s, 1950’s, readers were considered passive decoders of  graphic-phonemic-syntactic semantic systems. 

The reading cycle

1.       Pre-reading. At this important stage the teacher should make sure that students have the relevant schema for understanding the text. This is achieved by having students think, write, and discuss everything they know about the topic, employing techniques such as prediction, semantic mapping, and reconciled reading.

2.       During-reading. This stage requires the teacher to guide and monitor the interaction between the reader and the text. One important skill teachers can impart at this stage is note-taking, which allows students to compile new vocabulary and important information and details, and to summarize information and record their reactions and opinions.

3.       Post-reading. The post-reading stage offers the chance to evaluate students' adequacy of interpretation, while bearing in mind that accuracy is relative and that "readership" must be respected as long as the writer's intentions are addressed (Tierney and Pearson 1994). Post-reading activities focus on a wide range of questions that allow for different interpretations. Bloom's taxonomy provides an excellent range of simple to complex questions and activities that are perfect for this stage (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001)

Example

Birds

Pre-reading

Activate students’ previous knowledge.

Ø  Use graphic organizers

Ø  Discuss what makes different from one another

Ø  Have them predict what the book will be about

Prediction is the core of reading. All of our schemes, scripts and scenarios--our prior knowledge of places and situations, of written discourse, genres, and stories--enable us to predict when we read and thus to comprehend, experience, and enjoy what we read. Prediction brings potential meaning to texts, reducing ambiguity and eliminating in advance irrelevant alternatives. Thus, we are able to generate comprehensible experience from inert pages of print (Smith 1994, 18).

Ø  Have them draw a bird they like

Ø  Make a field trip to the zoo. Generate a discussion on the differences among different birds.

Raise rhetorical awareness

• What is the book about? (field)
• What will the book discuss and from what perspective?
• What is the purpose of the text?

Introduce the book or the text

Ø  Show students the book, the front and back cover.

Ø  Show them the images

Ø  Introduce the author

Introduce the reading strategy

Ø  Explain to students that asking questions about the text, and then looking for the answers while reading help them to understand and remember what they read.

Ø  Write students’ questions on the KWL chart under what I would like to know.

Introduce the comprehension skill: compare and contrast

Ø  Use a compare and contrast chart to organize new information in the book.

Preview vocabulary

Ø  Pre- teach vocabulary such as beak, feathers, sharp, hooked and others

While reading

Active reading tasks, on the other hand, require students to go beyond a superficial reading of the text to read “between the lines.” The tasks typically involve students working together in pairs or groups, with or without guidance from the teacher, in order to negotiate answers

to questions. Tasks considered active may include creating diagrams and filling in tables.Grabe (1997, 6) presents strong evidence that by making use of diagrams and tables when reading texts, students can better understand the coherence and logic of the information being presented, and as a consequence, “will be able to locate the main ideas and distinguish them from less important information.” The effort to teach students how to make graphic representations of texts can be time-consuming, but it can help them become more efficient readers.

Ø  Make students scan the text and find familiar words.

Scanning is a technique you often use when looking up a word in the telephone book or dictionary. You search for key words or ideas. In most cases, you know what you're looking for, so you're concentrating on finding a particular answer. Scanning involves moving your eyes quickly down the page seeking specific words and phrases. Scanning is also used when you first find a resource to determine whether it will answer your questions. Once you've scanned the document, you might go back and skim it.

Ø  Make students skim the content and find sentences in which the verb is/are appear, make students find sentences with the verb “have”

Skimming is used to quickly identify the main ideas of a text. When you read the newspaper, you're probably not reading it word-by-word, instead you're scanning the text. Skimming is done at a speed three to four times faster than normal reading. People often skim when they have lots of material to read in a limited amount of time. Use skimming when you want to see if an article may be of interest in your research.

Ø  Read each sentence out loud and discuss its grammar. Since it is a description, most sentences will describe birds in terms of “what they are..” and “what they have..”

Ø  Have students find two sentences and write them down on the board, explain that both verbs are used to identify and describe people, objects or things.  However, the verb have/has is used to indicate possession.

Ø  Draw student’s attention to the word (its) and explain its meaning.

Ø  Read some descriptions together with the students and help them with difficult vocabulary.

Ø  Make them complete a diagram to establish similarities and differences.

Ø  Post-reading activities

Why?

To bring students to a sense of closure

To support students’ integration of information in the text with their own background knowledge

To contribute to long-term retention of information

To lead students to appraise text critically

To provide opportunities for application of new knowledge

To provide opportunities for students to restructure the author’s meaning

Cognitive strategies

Answer a questionnaire

See material attached

Have them make a collage

Create an individual or class collage around themes or characters in the book

Have students write a haiku

Metacognitive strategies

How?

Direct student to re-examine their reading/writing/class work by keeping a log in which they are to record what has occurred that lesson (teachers may record the responses of very young readers). To help focus the responses, ask questions such as:

1.       What did I read/write/learn today?
2.       What puzzled or confused me?
3.       What would help to clarify things for me?
4.       What did I enjoy, hate, accomplish in reading/writing/class today?
5.       How did I learn from reading/writing/class today?
6.       How was my performance?

Bibliography

Bulleraich G. (2009) Strategies in Reading Comprehension, Buenos Aires: Eudeba

Brown, H. D. 1994. Teaching by principles: A interactive approach to language pedagogy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents.

Correia, R. (2006) Encouraging Critical Reading in the EFL. English Teaching Forum.   Number 1, Volume 44

Villanueva de Debat,E. (2006) Applying Current Approaches to the Teaching of Reading.  English Teaching Forum  Nº I,  Vol 44 Retrieved from http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/forum/archives/2006.html