LEITURA E REDAÇÃO EM LÍNGUA

INGLESA

INTRODUCTION

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Olá!
In the end of lesson, the student should be able to:

1. Define what ´Reading` is;

2. recognize your role as a reader;

3. discuss the purposes of reading.

What is Reading?

I would like to ask you a very simple, straightforward question:

What is reading?

There is not a simple answer for this question although reading is considered, at a first glance, a concrete

observable task which employs certain functions and faculties proper to human beings in general.

In fact, reading is a complex activity, which can be developed in multiple ways, depending on its purposes.

Kern (2000) presents a definition of “literacy”, which brings the notions we believe to be essential for the

understanding of reading as a social act.

For Richard Kern, "literacy" in a second language means much more than the separate abilities to read and write;

rather, it is a complex concept of familiarity with language and its use in context-primarily written language, but

by extension also spoken communication. It requires "a broader discourse competence that involves the ability

to interpret and critically evaluate a wide variety of written and spoken texts" (p. 2).

It covers cultural pragmatic knowledge and linguistic awareness as well as basic knowledge of lexis and

grammatical structure. It is promoted through an interaction of reading and writing activities, and through the

discussion of language in use in communicative contexts. And according to Kern, literacy provides a unifying,

overarching concept describing what it is that he is trying to achieve in language teaching, and what it is that will

enable second language learners to function adequately in a literate foreign society.

Kern states that literacy in a second language involves a competence to interpret and critically evaluate a large

variety of written and spoken texts in cultural, pragmatic and interactional contexts.

I expect that the process of reading may reveal readers who perform an active role and that recognize that they

are responsible to build meanings in communicative contexts. They should also have the ability to understand

cultural differences and be able to function adequately in a literate foreign society.

But do not forget that, as an efficient reader, you should be able to do that in an autonomous way.

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What about your role as a reader?

Let´s consider that each reader owns knowledge and previous experiences which are employed to build new

meanings when reading new texts.

As a consequence, we can infer that when a group of people read a text, this reading may convey different

interpretations.

They have different interpretations from the same text due to their individual knowledge and experiences, but it

is crucial that these interpretations have a determined logical inner line found either in the text or in the context.

You should understand, then, that your role as a reader is determined either by your purposes to read a text or

by the previous knowledge of the information you are going to find in it.

When the author starts writing a text, he/she assumes that the reader may either know very little about what he

/she is going to read or that the reader has sufficient information to interact with the text.
• In the first case, authors give a lot of details about what they are writing;
• In the second, they can give implicit information because they expect the reader to be well informed
about the subject they are writing about. They expect readers to behave in an active way using the
knowledge they have to fill up the gaps in relation to the text.
In the research entitled Reading for understanding: toward a research and development program in reading

comprehension (SNOW-p.13), the author states that,

“a reader must have a wide range of capacities and abilities. These qualities include cognitive capacities (e.g.,

attention, memory, critical analytic ability), motivation (a purpose for reading, an interest in the content being

read, self-efficacy as a reader and various types of knowledge – vocabulary, domain and topic knowledge,

linguistic and discourse knowledge, knowledge of specific comprehension strategies).

In general, readers may have two main purposes to read:

reading for entertainment or…

reading to get some information.

Within these two purposes, it is possible to have more specific ones.

What is important for you to perceive is that when you read something, it does not matter what, you build

meaning or you obtain some information.

What are the purposes of Reading?

Look at the symbols below and think about the meanings you produce while you read them:

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It happens when you are reading a magazine and you just look at the words of an ad, quickly, without paying

close attention to it. Doing so you still have an implicit purpose to read.

You can read even when you do not want to.

You can read to entertain yourself for some minutes, or as a pastime while you wait for the bus or walk around.

Although, you do not have a predetermined intention to read, and the action of reading is not conscious, when

you are standing at the bus stop, looking at a billboard, you will still build meaning or get information.

At school, the purposes of reading are established by teachers. Your purposes will probably be to study

for a test, to write an article, to answer questions about a text, to reach conclusions about a specific

subject, to find relevant information, to know about the results of a research, to make summaries.

You know that you will be evaluated for your ability of building meanings or getting information. This ability will

determine if you can be considered a good reader or not.

To reach your purposes of reading and be considered good readers, next class, you will study about the

most common textual genres. You will also analyze the processing of texts during the reading act and

finally what you can and cannot do as readers.

What come next class

•The most common textual genres;

•the analysis of the processing of texts;

•the behavior of an efficient reader.

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CONCLUSÃO
Nesta aula, você:
• Understand what “Reading” is;
• recognize your role as a reader;
• discuss the purposes of reading.

Referências
SNOW, Catherine E. “Reading for understanding: toward a research and development program in reading

comprehension”. Pittsburgh: RAND, 2002 in LAPKOSKI, G. Leitura em Língua Inglesa- Textos Literários (a ser

publicado)

KERN, R. Literacy and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

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