The Reading Process

from understanding to teaching

The reading process

a transactional view

Reader

Transaction

Text

Immediate situational contexts

Broader sociolinguistic contexts 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)

Letter-sound correspondences
Questions to ask: 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. (stop) (try) (go)

I cant do out and I have nothing to do.

Can I read you a story, mum? // No, Im tiger. (tired)

Grandma makes a hot in the castle.

(hole)

Miscues What caused them?

All animals are sleep.

(sleeping)

As the animals go back to sleep. (All) Do you want to do you homework? (your)

Quality miscues substitutions

that preserve meaning
Its a hot sunny afternoon. Poor animal has the hiccups. I can stop her hiccups.

(summer)
(elephant)

(those) (tidy)

Why not clean your room? Mum asks.

Quality miscues self-corrections

Boo! her shouts. We like sharing or candy. He was the hiccups.

(he) (our) (has)

Implications for teachers

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

A balanced reading program 5 essential components

1. Phonological awareness 2. Phonics 3. Sight words & vocabulary development 4. Reading fluency 5. Comprehension strategies

A balanced reading programme

- Phonological awareness & phonics skills

Phonological awareness & phonics skills

Phonological awareness --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 Who

can we teach phonics effectively?

is the best person to teach phonics in school? ..

Teaching phonics in our context

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?

Teaching phonics in our context

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? proactive teaching active phonics skills

Implications for teachers

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.

Implications for teachers

Q:

Is it advisable for teachers to use a separate package to help students learn phonics and tackle their learning problems? Should phonics be treated in isolation and handled by one teacher alone e.g. NET?

Q:

What are the problems?

1.

Unfamiliar vocabulary --- difficult to draw analogy Unrelated to their studies --- extra burden & cant help to solve learning problems No application --- no explicit teaching of skills and how to apply them in new texts No feedback or assessment

2.

3.

4.

Planning: phonics & our curriculum

Integration

Variation

Application

Curriculum Restructuring & Integration

Activities / tasks Games ..

Other resources: Supplementary /

Textbook
(framework/ context/ language focus)

Grammar / Phonics worksheets ..

Big Books Small readers Poems / Plays Reading / Listening materials.

output
guided writing / free writing / reading aloud / reading interest / project.
authentic and meaningful use of language

Connecting with the Natural World

Activities : songs & rhymes, sharing of students work
Big Books: 1.Whats the time ? 2.Every Monday 3.All through the week with cat and dog 4.Whats the weather like today? 5. Weather machine Small readers: 1. The busy giant 2. Winnie and the cat

Other resources: teachers diary worksheets sounds (ay, og, ice)

Textbook
Unit 5: Telling the time, describing habitual actions Unit 6: Days of the week Unit 7,8: Weather and seasons

output
authentic and meaningful use of language

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

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

A balanced reading programme

-- Sight words

What are sight words?

Words that are recognized as wholes, on sight

one, two, you, have, father, the, they.

the, and, I, book, play, happy, big.

Words that cannot be phonically produced Snow White, Billy Goat Gruff, Biff, Chip

High-frequency words

witches, spell, magic, frogs, castle

Words of special interest

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

To learn a sight word, the students must:

see the word in context many times hear the word and say it aloud identify the word, in context and in isolation

Learning sight words through games and activities

Reading sight word cards with partner Snap cards and Pelmanism

Snakes and Ladders

Dominoes

Vocabulary Development
through intensive and extensive reading

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

A balanced reading programme -- Reading Fluency

Fluent oral reading (with expression)

Access to models of expressive reading

(SILENT) READING FLUENCY

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)

A balanced reading programme

-- 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 instruction

Predict: 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 dont 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

Implications for teachers

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)

Implications for teachers

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

See and perceive the symbols Follow the sequence of words Associate symbols and sounds Associate symbols and meanings

Follow the grammatical patterns

Relate ideas to past experience Make inferences/evaluate Deal with personal interests and attitudes that affect reading
(Source: Burns, Roe and Ross, 1999)

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