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
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Macroskills
Active
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Receptive
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Listening
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Reading
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Productive
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Speaking
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Writing
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Participants in the reading process.
There are at least three
participants in the reading process: the writer, the text and the reader.
The reader
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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:
- What did I read/write/learn today?
- What puzzled or confused me?
- What would help to clarify things for me?
- What did I enjoy, hate, accomplish in reading/writing/class today?
- How did I learn from reading/writing/class today?
- 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
