A Review of

Developmental
Reading 1
Reading According to Anderson(1998)
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.
Reading According to Anderson(1998)
It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing
information and ideas.

“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 ofstudy.
2. Reading is FLUENT: mastery of basic processes to the pointwhere
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 learningthat
written material can be interesting and informative.
5. Reading is a LIFELONG PURSUIT: continuous practices,development,
andrefinement.
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 outworkbooks.
• Pronouncing theletters
• Putting soundstogether.
• Reading is learning hardwords.
• Reading is like thinking…it’s understanding thestory.
• It’s when you find thingsout.
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 constructmeaning.
2. Most of the contemporary definitions of reading include the
following: reading is a process, reading is strategic, reading is
interactive, and reading instruction requiresorchestration.
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 beread

2. Ability to separate spoken words into componentsounds
3. Ability to recognize and discriminate the letter of thealphabet
4. Understanding of the principle of reading from left-to-right orright-
toleft
5. Understanding of the correspondence between letters andsounds
6. Ability to recognize printed words from a variety of cues such as
context, analogy, syntactic, or lettershapes
7. Ability to comprehend atext
Learners as Effective Readers
Learners must become effective readers to meet the demands of
literacy and learning for the 21stcentury. Children need and deserve an
aggressive approach to ensure their right to read.
Facts AboutReading
• Children’s literacy development begins long before children start
formal instruction in elementaryschool.
• More than 4 in 10 pre-schoolers, 5 in 10 toddlers, and 6 in 10 babies
are not read toregularly.
• 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 theyread.
Facts AboutReading
• Reading aloud to children helps them develop and improve
literacy skills – reading, writing, speaking, andlistening.
• Reading and writing are a developmental continuum ratherthan
acquiredskills.
• Children learn to read and write by being read to, reading simpletext,
and experimenting withwriting.
• Due to different brain signature, 20-40% of the population does not
acquire phonemicawareness.
• Certain abilities must be developed that work together tocreate
strong readingskills.
Facts AboutReading
• Learners become engaged in literacy as they grow morestrategic,
motivated, knowledgeable, and sociallyinteractive.
• Some researchers describe two levels of literacy: emergent and
conventional. More traditional researchers define three levels:early
reader, transitional reader, and fluentreader.
• Reading and writing rely on a specific set of cognitive skills suchas
attention, memory, symbolic thinking, andself-regulation.
• Children’s reading and writing abilities developtogether.
• All children need to have high-quality children’s books as a part of
their dailyexperience.
What is Developmental Reading?
• Teaching with a flexible mix of research-based instructional methods,
geared toward individual students, is more effective than strictadherence
to any oneapproach.
• A well-organized, comprehensive approach to the teaching of readingthat
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 theirclassrooms.
• 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 toread.
What is Developmental Reading?
• A kind of reading in which the materials are scientifically prepared
and aimed at developing the reading skills of learners. Vocabularyand
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 mustsee
whether it contains the neededinformation.

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 thematerial.

Techniques in Reading Scientific
Materials
• SCANNING – this technique helps the reader to search quickly forthe
information he wants. The following are theprocedures:

a. Focus on the specific informationneeded.

b. Know what clues to find in theinformation.
c. Move your eyes quickly down the page to find theclue.
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 newwords.

• COMPREHENSION SKILLS – help the reader predict the next

word, phrase, or sentence quickly enough to speedrecognition.

• FLUENCY SKILLS – help the reader see the larger segments,phrases

and groups of words aswholes.

• CRITICAL READING SKILLS – help the reader see the relationshipof

ideas and use these in reading with meaning andfluency.
What is Comprehension?
It is the ability to grasp something mentally andthecapacity to
understand ideas andfacts.
Comprehensibility in writing is related to comprehension in reading.
Comprehension is based on:
1. knowledge that reading makessense;
2. reader’s priorknowledge;
3. information presented in thetext;
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 ofknowledge.

• UNDERSTAND PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE – this skill helps pupils

identify the parts of paragraph, the topic sentence, the detailsand
conclusion. Pupils are provided information or given activities to
assist them in using the structure of paragraphs to enhance their
comprehension of thematerial.
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 thematerial.

• IMPROVE VOCABULARY – this skill helps pupils become betterreader

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 assignedmaterial.
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 withoutthis
knowledge. Learn how to move from having learners “collect
knowledge” to having them wondering about the significance of the
knowledge.
Strategies for Improving Comprehension
(Before Reading)
• 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
BeforeReading DuringReading AfterReading
Set objectivesfor Stopperiodically to askquestions. Strategic integ- ration of comprehen- s
instruction. Map textstructure Plannedreview.
Identify andpre- elements. Assessmentof students’ under- standin
teach difficulty to read Model ongoing comprehensionmoni- toring.
word.
Prime students’
backgroundknow- ledge
What is Critical Reading?
• Critical reading as a goal includes the ability to evaluate ideassocially
orpolitically.

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

synthesize what one reads. They are the ability to see relationshipsof
ideas and use them as an aid inreading.
• E.g. SEEING CAUSE ANDEFFECT
“If you drop it, itwillb-----”
The ReadingAct
• THE READINGPROCESS

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 ofexperience
generally,and
2) those that restrict the definition to the interpretation of
graphicsymbols.
The ReadingAct
Understanding the reading process will help in the areas of:
a) Materialproduction
b) Teaching
c) Trainingteachers

 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 readingstrategies.
Reading Stages
• PLEASURE – this involves a willing suspension of belief as thereader
inhabits the createdworld.
• 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 evendistorted.
• 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’tlike…”
• RECOGNITION – this is the act of appreciating it being put inwords.
Reading Stages
• IDENTIFICATION – this refers to the various connection with the
characters, events, situations, making them part of the worldrather
than joiningthem.
• CRITICAL DIALOGUE – to some degree, this refers tore-writing,
teasing out a hidden story orimplications.
• ANALYTICAL-CRITICAL – this involves text analysis, self-analysis, and
analysis of literary and cultural repertory ofboth.
• QUESTIONING THE TEXT – looking for oppositions, contradictionsin
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 ofunderstanding.
• 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 recurrentpreoccupations.
• HISTORICAL – the relation of the text to milieu. How has a text
reflected or help to create itsculture.
• ALLUSIVE – the relation of text to other texts, past and present or
intertextuality.
Reading Stages

• GENERIC – the relation of text to other texts of similarkind.

• 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’sexperience.