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A Review of

Developmental
Reading 1
What is Reading?
READING is a complex process that requires a great deal of active
participation on the part of the reader.

Huffman (1998) defines reading as “asking questions of printed text


and reading with comprehension becomes a matter of getting his
questions answered.”

Reading is a basic life skill. It is a cornerstone for a child’s success in


school and throughout his life.
What is Reading?

It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing


information and ideas.
Reading According to Anderson (1998)
“The process of constructing meaning from written texts.”

1. Reading is CONSTRUCTIVE: learning to reason about written


material using knowledge from everyday life and from disciplined
fields of study.
2. Reading is FLUENT: mastery of basic processes to the point where
they are automatic so that attention is freed for the analysis of
meaning.
3. Reading is STRATEGIC: controlling one’s reading in relation to one’s
purpose, the nature of the material and whether one is
comprehending.
Reading According to Anderson (1998)

4. Reading is MOTIVATED: able to sustain attention and learning that


written material can be interesting and informative.

5. Reading is a LIFELONG PURSUIT: continuous practices, development,


and refinement.
Why do students need to have good
reading skills?

Over time, learning becomes more complex, with heightened demands


on the learners to use reading skills to analyse or to solve problems.
Good reading skills are required to study geography, do math, use
computers, and conduct experiments.

Even motivated, hard-working students are severely hampered in their


school-work if they cannot read well by the end of third grade.
Ways How Children Define Reading
(Harste, 1978)
• Filling out workbooks.
• Pronouncing the letters
• Putting sounds together.
• Reading is learning hard words.
• Reading is like thinking…it’s understanding the story.
• It’s when you find things out.
Reading Concepts
1. Teach the child what each letter stands for and he can read. The
goal of reading is constructing meaning in response to text. It
requires interactive use of grapho-phonic, syntactic, and semantic
cues to construct meaning.
2. Most of the contemporary definitions of reading include the
following: reading is a process, reading is strategic, reading is
interactive, and reading instruction requires orchestration.
What is the essential skill in reading?
The essential skill in reading is getting meaning from a printed or
written message. Reading specialists would generally agree that
reading skill includes the following components (Cooper, 1986):

1. Knowledge of the language to be read


2. Ability to separate spoken words into component sounds
3. Ability to recognize and discriminate the letter of the alphabet
4. Understanding of the principle of reading from left-to-right or right-
to left
…Cont’d.
5. Understanding of the correspondence between letters and sounds

6. Ability to recognize printed words from a variety of cues such as


context, analogy, syntactic, or letter shapes

7. Ability to comprehend a text


Learners as Effective Readers

Learners must become effective readers to meet the demands of


literacy and learning for the 21st century. Children need and deserve an
aggressive approach to ensure their right to read.
Facts About Reading
• Children’s literacy development begins long before children start
formal instruction in elementary school.
• More than 4 in 10 pre-schoolers, 5 in 10 toddlers, and 6 in 10 babies
are not read to regularly.
• Children benefit from experiences in early childhood that foster
language development, cultivate a motivation to read, and establish a
link between print and spoken words. Later, students need to develop
a clear understanding of the relationship between letters and sounds,
and an ability to obtain meaning from what they read.
Facts About Reading
• Reading aloud to children helps them develop and improve literacy
skills – reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
• Reading and writing are a developmental continuum rather than
acquired skills.
• Children learn to read and write by being read to, reading simple text,
and experimenting with writing.
• Due to different brain signature, 20-40% of the population does not
acquire phonemic awareness.
• Certain abilities must be developed that work together to create
strong reading skills.
Facts About Reading
• Learners become engaged in literacy as they grow more strategic,
motivated, knowledgeable, and socially interactive.
• Some researchers describe two levels of literacy: emergent and
conventional. More traditional researchers define three levels: early
reader, transitional reader, and fluent reader.
• Reading and writing rely on a specific set of cognitive skills such as
attention, memory, symbolic thinking, and self-regulation.
• Children’s reading and writing abilities develop together.
• All children need to have high-quality children’s books as a part of
their daily experience.
Facts About Reading
• Teaching with a flexible mix of research-based instructional methods,
geared toward individual students, is more effective than strict adherence
to any one approach.
• A well-organized, comprehensive approach to the teaching of reading that
includes systematic teaching or specific reading skills produces better
readers.
• Teachers need to know and understand the most up-to-date reading
research and be able to implement it in their classrooms.
• Teachers must be able to identify reading difficulties in the learners early
on and arrange appropriate and effective interventions in response. Young
learners need continuing encouragement and individualized instruction to
succeed in learning to read.
What is Developmental Reading?

• A kind of reading in which the materials are scientifically prepared


and aimed at developing the reading skills of learners. Vocabulary and
sentence structures are controlled and follow a set of criteria for
sequencing.
Techniques in Reading Scientific
Materials
• SKIMMING
a. Preview – the reader needs to find out if the book or the
material is written by a specialist in that certain field and must see
whether it contains the needed information.

b. Overviewing – the reader has to find out the purpose and


scope of the material. He must look the sections that are of interest to
him.

c. Survey – the reader has to get the general idea of the material.
Techniques in Reading Scientific
Materials
• SCANNING – this technique helps the reader to search quickly for the
information he wants. The following are the procedures:

a. Focus on the specific information needed.


b. Know what clues to find in the information.
c. Move your eyes quickly down the page to find the clue.
d. Read the section that contains the clues to get the information
needed.
Kinds of Reading Skills (Anderson, 1994)
• WORD ATTACK SKILLS – let the reader figure out new words.

• COMPREHENSION SKILLS – help the reader predict the next word,


phrase, or sentence quickly enough to speed recognition.

• FLUENCY SKILLS – help the reader see the larger segments, phrases
and groups of words as wholes.

• CRITICAL READING SKILLS – help the reader see the relationship of


ideas and use these in reading with meaning and fluency.
What is Comprehension?
It is the ability to grasp something mentally and the capacity to
understand ideas and facts.

Comprehensibility in writing is related to comprehension in reading.


Comprehension is based on:
1. knowledge that reading makes sense;
2. reader’s prior knowledge;
3. information presented in the text;
4. the use of context to assist recognition of words and
meaning
Strategies for Improving Comprehension
(Before Reading)
• ACTIVATE PRIOR KNOWLEDGE – this strategy helps pupils as they
make and confirm predictions. It also helps them make connections
between the texts and their lives. Pupils are provided information or
given activities to link what they are about to read to something
within their realm of knowledge.

• UNDERSTAND PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE – this skill helps pupils


identify the parts of paragraph, the topic sentence, the details and
conclusion. Pupils are provided information or given activities to
assist them in using the structure of paragraphs to enhance their
comprehension of the material.
Strategies for Improving Comprehension
(Before Reading)
• UNDERSTAND TEXTBOOK STRUCTURE – understanding the basic
structure of a textbook can also be used as an advantage. Most
writers of textbooks put each section in for a purpose, to help the
reader understand the subject matter most efficiently. By
understanding what each part of the textbook is for, it can be easier
to study the material.

• IMPROVE VOCABULARY – this skill helps pupils become better reader


by improving their vocabulary and ability to understand context.
Pupils are provided information or given activities to enhance their
understanding of vocabulary that is essential for comprehension of
the assigned material.
Strategies for Improving Comprehension
(Before Reading)
• ESTABLISH PURPOSE FOR READING – this strategy improves pupils’
comprehension by focusing reading. Pupils who understand why they
are reading and know what they are expected to understand have a
much higher comprehension rate than those who read without this
knowledge. Learn how to move from having learners “collect
knowledge” to having them wondering about the significance of the
knowledge.

• GENERATE QUESTIONS – this strategy improves inferencing skills and


leads pupils to expanded learning activities. Pupils generate a list of
questions they would like answered about the topic; teacher
generates a list of questions that should be answered as students
read.
Strategies for Improving Comprehension
(Before Reading)

• USE ANTICIPATION GUIDE – this strategy draws upon prior


knowledge, improves inferencing skills, and provides motivation for
reading. Pupils are given a list of statements pertaining to the “big
ideas” that they should understand after reading the text. Pupils
indicate whether they agree or disagree with statements.
General Framework for Teaching
Reading Comprehension
Before Reading During Reading After Reading
1. Set objectives for 1. Stop periodically 1. Strategic integ-
instruction. to ask questions. ration of comprehen-
2. Identify and pre- 2. Map text structure sion instruction.
teach difficulty to elements. 2. Planned review.
read word. 3. Model ongoing 3. Assessment of
3. Prime students’ comprehension moni- students’ under-
background know- toring. standing.
ledge
What is Critical Reading?
• Critical reading as a goal includes the ability to evaluate ideas socially
or politically.

• Critical reading skills are the ability to analyse, evaluate, and


synthesize what one reads. They are the ability to see relationships of
ideas and use them as an aid in reading.
• E.g. SEEING CAUSE AND EFFECT
“If you drop it, it will b----”
The Reading Act
• THE READING PROCESS

Many people have tried to understand and define the reading


process. Over the years, theoretical assumptions regarding the reading
process have varied greatly. Nevertheless, definitions of reading are
generally divided into two major types:
1) those that equate reading with interpretation of experience
generally, and
2) those that restrict the definition to the interpretation of
graphic symbols.
The Reading Act
Understanding the reading process will help in the areas of:
a) Material production
b) Teaching
c) Training teachers

The most successful reading instruction is that which is based on a


solid understanding of the reading process itself, and which promotes
the acquisitions of good reading strategies.
Reading Stages
• PLEASURE – this involves a willing suspension of belief as the reader
inhabits the created world.
• NATURALIZATION – this involves translating the text into situations or
persons that seem familiar to the reader. Elements in the text which
do not naturalize easily are often ignored or even distorted.
• RESPONDING – this refers to sympathizing or hating, accepting or
resisting the situation and/or characters. Such response generally
begins with “I like…” or “I don’t like…”
• RECOGNITION – this is the act of appreciating it being put in words.
Reading Stages
• IDENTIFICATION – this refers to the various connection with the
characters, events, situations, making them part of the world rather
than joining them.
• CRITICAL DIALOGUE – to some degree, this refers to re-writing,
teasing out a hidden story or implications.
• ANALYTICAL-CRITICAL – this involves text analysis, self-analysis, and
analysis of literary and cultural repertory of both.
• QUESTIONING THE TEXT – looking for oppositions, contradictions in
the text as well as challenges of initial oppositions, conflicts.
Reading Stages
• YOUR OWN RESPONSE – the changing focus, approach, and
identification.
• INTRATEXTUAL-DRAMATIC – the relation of the part to the whole, the
primary level of understanding.
• AUTHORIAL – the relation of text to the author, and the author’s
other works. This requires being familiar with the author’s life, works,
and recurrent preoccupations.
• HISTORICAL – the relation of the text to milieu. How has a text
reflected or help to create its culture.
• ALLUSIVE – the relation of text to other texts, past and present or
intertextuality.
Reading Stages

• GENERIC – the relation of text to other texts of similar kind.


• PHILOSOPHICAL – the relationship of the text to the world of ideas. It
may include how the world can be mapped onto specific religious or
ideologies – Christianity, Marxism, Freudian, of Jungian psychology,
Feminism).
• SUBJECTIVE – the relationship of the text to the reader’s experience.

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