Reading Process From Understanding To Teaching

The Reading Process –

from understanding to teaching

Broader sociolinguistic contexts

Immediate situational contexts

The reading process –

a transactional view

TextReader Transaction

Source: Weaver C, 1988

Reading Behaviours of a

Proficient Reader

Develops anticipation; activates prior

knowledge

Decodes and samples with sufficient

speed

Predicts as he reads

Reads on, re-reads, confirms or

corrects

Reading problems of our

students as novice readers

Little anticipation

Read word by word

Got stuck with a difficult word and give up

reading

Skip difficult words and read on despite

loss of meaning

Seldom re-read and self-correct

The Cueing Systems of the

English Language

1. Graphophonic cues

2. Semantic cues

3. Syntactic cues

Graphophonic Cues (Visual)

Questions to ask:

Letter-sound correspondences

Do I know the beginning / ending sounds?

Are there pronounceable parts?

Do I know any words of similar spelling?

Semantic Cues (Meaning)

context of the sentence / passage

background knowledge / prior experience

Questions to ask:

What word would fit the meaning here?

Does this word make sense?

Syntactic Cues (Structural)

grammatical patterns

Questions to ask:

What word would fit into the structural

pattern here?

Does it sound like English?

Miscues – What caused them?

I can sleep those hiccups.

Elephant gives it a toy.

I can‟t do out and I have nothing to do.

Can I read you a story, mum? // No, I‟m tiger.

Grandma makes a hot in the castle.

(stop)

(try)

(go)

(tired)

(hole)

Miscues – What caused them?

(sleeping)

(All)

All animals are sleep.

As the animals go back to sleep.

Do you want to do you homework? (your)

Quality miscues – substitutions

that preserve meaning

(summer)

(elephant)

“Why not clean your room?” Mum asks.

It‟s a hot sunny afternoon.

Poor animal has the hiccups.

I can stop her hiccups. (those)

(tidy)

(has)

Quality miscues – self-corrections

(he)

(our)

“Boo!” her shouts.

We like sharing or candy.

He was the hiccups.

Explicit and planned instruction for

reading skills

Emphasis on interactiveness of reading

process – anticipation, prediction,

personal responses, critical and

reflective thinking, etc.

Wide reading of easy and interesting

materials

Implications for teachers

A balanced reading

program –5 essential

components

1. Phonological awareness

2. Phonics

3. Sight words & vocabulary development

4. Reading fluency

5. Comprehension strategies

- Phonological awareness &

phonics skills

A balanced reading programme

Phonological awareness ---

Phonological awareness &

phonics skills

awareness of constituent sounds of written words in learning

to read and spell

knowledge of phonemes, onsets and rimes and syllables

influences the development of word decoding & reading

Phonics skills instruction ---

a way of teaching reading that stresses learning how letters

correspond to sounds and how to use this knowledge in

reading and spelling through various skills like decoding and

blending

Phonics skills

Phonics skills are means to the end of

successful reading ---- „a catalyst which

triggers the process of learning to read‟

---- Maclean (1998)

Teaching phonics in our context

Questions to ask:

Why do we teach phonics to our very young

learners?

What should we teach? (knowledge of sounds or

skills)

How can we teach phonics effectively?

Who is the best person to teach phonics in

school? ………..


Characteristics of our learners

inadequate language environment, limited prior

knowledge and repertoire of words

Q: What can we base on? Where should we start?

Different approaches e.g. part-to-whole, whole-to-part,

phoneme-by-phoneme, onsets & rimes

Q: What are the rationale & purposes? How effective are

they? How should the teachers and learners make their

choice?

Different phonological characteristics between Chinese and English

Q: How should we focus on potentially problematic sounds and letter combinations?

Learner needs and differences e.g. background, learning styles, attitude, relationship between phonics and other areas of learning

Q: How should we cater for our learners‟ needs and differences?

How can we help our learners learn phonics effectively?


active phonics skillsproactive teaching


Phonics should be a meaningful and integrated

part of our curriculum (reading program), with

ample opportunities for learning, application and

solving learning problems.

Teaching must build on what students already

know and give them space to see patterns and

draw inferences.


Q: Is it advisable for teachers to use a separate

package to help students learn phonics and

tackle their learning problems?

Q: Should phonics be treated in isolation and

handled by one teacher alone e.g. NET?

What are the problems?

1. Unfamiliar vocabulary --- difficult to draw analogy

2. Unrelated to their studies --- extra burden & can‟t help to solve learning problems

3. No application --- no explicit teaching of skills and how to apply them in new texts

4. No feedback or assessment

Integration

Planning: phonics & our

curriculum

Variation

Application

Textbook(framework/ context/

language focus)

Activities / tasks

Games ……..

Other resources:

Supplementary /

Grammar / Phonics worksheets …..

Big Books

Small readers

Poems / Plays

Reading / Listening materials….

guided writing / free writing / reading aloud / reading interest / project…….

output

authentic and meaningful use of language

Curriculum Restructuring & Integration

TextbookUnit 5: Telling the time, describing

habitual actions

Unit 6: Days of the week

Unit 7,8: Weather and seasons

Activities : songs & rhymes,

sharing of students’ work

Other resources:

• teacher’s diary

• worksheets

• sounds (ay, og,

ice)

Big Books:

1.What’s the time ?

2.Every Monday

3.All through the week with cat and dog

4.What’s the weather like today?

5. Weather machine

Small readers:

1. The busy giant

2. Winnie and the cat

free writing — ‘My diary’: describing particular activities & expressing feelings in short paragraphs

output

authentic and meaningful use of language

Connecting with the Natural World

Planning: phonics & our

curriculum

Embed phonics with all other areas of learning & make full use of all existing resources ---textbooks, big books, readers, sound books ….

Build on what students already know & encourage active learning --- analogy

Teach different essential skills explicitly

Give feedback and reflect on student learning ---observation, formative and summative assessment


-- Sight words

Words that are recognized

as wholes, on sight

What are sight words?

one, two, you,

have, father, the,

they….

Words that cannot be

phonically produced

the, and, I, book,

play, happy, big….

High-frequency words

Words of special interest

witches, spell,

magic, frogs,

castleSnow White,

Billy Goat Gruff,

Biff, Chip

The role of sight words in

reading

Quick word recognition reasonable

reading speed less interference with

comprehension better meaning construction

Good sight words more attention on new

words vocabulary expansion

see the word in context many times

hear the word and say it aloud

identify the word, in context and in

isolation

To learn a sight word, the

students must:

Learning sight words through

games and activities

• Reading sight word cards with partner

• Snap cards and Pelmanism

• Snakes and Ladders

• Dominoes

Useful ways to „anchor‟ words:

word walls / semantic mapping

class dictionary / personal vocabulary

books

word building /word analysis (tied in with

phonics)

using words in writing

Vocabulary Development

through intensive and extensive reading

-- Reading Fluency


Fluent oral

reading (with

expression)

(SILENT)

READING

FLUENCY

Access to

models of

expressive

reading

Comprehension Word recognition

(fast & accurate)

Chunking words

(syntactic cues)

(Source: Oakley, G. 2001)

Repeated Reading

reading of short, easy & interesting texts over

and over again

well-researched method to improve fluency

(Samuels 1979, 2002)

often results in improved comprehension

(Hasbrouch, Ihnot, & Rogers 1999)

most students enjoy it; a favoured activity

among low-progress readers

(Lipson & Wixson 1997)

-- comprehension strategies


“…. Reading comprehension

has come to be viewed as the

„essence of reading‟”

---(National Reading Panel, 2000, p.4-1)

Different approaches

linear approach (comprehension takes place

through progressive analysis of small units,

beginning with the word and ending in the

sentence) v.s.

psycholinguistic approach (emphasizing the

paragraph as basic text unit and focus on

mental process leading to global

comprehension)

Transactional view of reading:

Meaning is constructed through multiple & evolving complex

transactions between the reader, text and context

Reading is a „psycholinguistic guessing game‟

--- from hypotheses to confirmation/rejection

--- a „cyclical process of sampling, predicting, confirming

& correcting‟

--- K.S. Goodman

Comprehension is not just the by-product of accurate word

recognition… comprehension is a complex process which

requires active and intentional cognitive effort on the part of

the reader.

Transactional view of reading:

Both the outcomes of comprehension and the

process itself are interactive and dynamic.

Q: How can students work actively to integrate

textual information with preexisting knowledge

structure / schemata?

Current practice

„Teachers taught comprehension less than one

percent of the time, and that this instruction was

more than a matter of „mentioning‟ than actual

explanation or demonstration‟ ------ Dolores Durkin

(1978-79)

Comprehension instruction remains inadequate in

our classrooms. ---- Michael Pressley (1998)

Current practice

Reading ---- „the most thoroughly studied and least understood process in education today‟

Reading has been sorely neglected in foreign language classrooms, and most recent methodological innovations have little to say about the development of reading comprehension.

Comprehension of text is not a visible act, nor is it audible.

Current practice

A typical comprehension lesson:

1. Start with word-by-word decoding and translation (using

controlled vocabulary)

2. Followed by comprehension questions (who, what, when,

where etc) most of which involve direct-lifting answers

(literal comprehension)

3. End with checking answers with little/no explanation

Repeated practice = teaching=good performance

in comprehension??

Current practice

Problems:

no training of higher-order comprehension skills:

interpretive (read between the lines)

critical (read for evaluation)

creative (read beyond the lines)

no development of students‟ skills in syntactical, semantic, lexical, stylistic analysis and making excursion to their knowledge of the world to confirm meaning

loss of contextual focus, overview, and immediate frustration as soon as the reader encounters an unknown word

What do our students think?

„I used to believe that I have to know all the words in the

English readings in order to understand the readings.

Therefore, I read in English with the dictionary beside me all

the time. I read English readings only for homework before I

came to this reading class. I never read any English readings

because I wanted to read them….. I like to read in my first

language, but I just could not read in English with the same

feeling as I read in Chinese. The belief that I have to know

all the words in order to understand the reading made

me lose interest…..’ ---- Li, an ESL student

„Younger and poorer readers often rely on a single criterion

for textual understanding: Understanding of individual

words‟ ---- Garner & Alexander (1989)

What affect comprehension?

students‟ experiential background

students‟ sensory & perceptual abilities

students‟ thinking abilities

students‟ affective aspects (self-concepts,

attitudes & interest)

word recognition strategies

comprehension strategies

* greatest obstacles to comprehension are students’ dispositions towards reading---- Villaume & Edna

Transactional strategies

instruction

Help students to

activate their prior knowledge

make predictions

generate questions, answer questions and draw inferences

monitor their comprehension & seek clarification when confused

create pictorial mental imagery & mnemonic imagery

create summaries of what they have read

evaluate what they have read

Transactional strategies

instructionPredict:

think about the title, the illustrations, and what you have read so far;

Tell what you think will happen next or what you will learn

Question:

Ask yourself questions as you read

Monitor/clarify:

Ask yourself if what you are reading make sense

If you don‟t understand something, reread, read aloud, or use the illustrations

Summarize:

Think about the main ideas or the important part of the story

Tell the important things in your own words

Evaluate:

Ask yourself

Do I like what I have read?

Do I agree or disagree with it?

Am I learning what I wanted to know?

How good a job has the author done?

Explicit teaching

Direct explanation (describe what the strategy is and

explain why the strategy should be learned and used)

Modeling (model it and provide examples of the

circumstances under which the strategy should be used)

Guided practice & scaffolding

Feedback

Application

* increase students’ metacognitive awareness and use of

reading strategies


Issues to consider:

comprehension or psycholinguistic guessing skill can & should be taught

students‟ comprehension is developmental

reading comprehension should be a dynamic interactive exchange between teacher & students

students can compensate for a lack of English proficiency by increasing their awareness of reading strategies

extensive reading practice is essential in building both fluency & knowledge (extensive v.s. intensive reading practice)


Things to do:

draw in / activate students‟ prior knowledge

develop students‟ awareness of clue-searching

strategies

select text based on students‟ interests and

knowledge and make comprehension an

integrated part of the curriculum

use different reading materials (including

readers) and design a variety of tasks for

different purposes

Not so ‘typical’ comprehension

exercises ---

guessing game & confirmation / correction

brainstorming & mind-mapping

semantic webbing & story mapping

cloze --- with specific purposes focusing on particular skills

e.g. reference skills, using semantic or syntactic clues

matching e.g. vocabulary skill

proof-reading questions

personal response

reading-writing connection

Conclusion

It is important that a full range of

instructional approaches be considered

within a variety of contexts that address

both developmental and cultural differences

in how children best learn to comprehend.

The Reading Process

(Source: Burns, Roe and Ross, 1999)

See and perceive the symbols

Follow the sequence of words

Relate ideas to past experience

Make inferences/evaluate

Deal with personal interests and attitudes

that affect reading

Associate symbols and sounds

Associate symbols and meanings

Follow the grammatical patterns

Transaction

Putting everything together to construct a

personal meaning for the text

Communicating thoughts and emotions

between reader and writer

Reading sight word cards with

partners

Snap cards and Pelmanism

Snakes and Ladders

Dominoes

Fluent oral reading (with expression)

Models of expressive reading

(Silent) Reading Fluency

Education

Reading Process From Understanding To Teaching