FULL NAME: Rania Anaïs Mokhtari 🎀

Writing assignment: citing and referencing

The interactive model of reading:
Essay:
Reading is a prolonged process that requires high order thinking skills and active thinking
during rehearsals. As many argue about its efficiency while using a model of its kind like
bottom-up and top-down models of reading, another one of these might intervene as an
alternative to guarantee full comprehensibility of texts such as the interactive model of
reading.
The interactive reading model is basically a combination of both top-down and bottom-up
approaches. The model attempts to address the short comings of each, and a reader may
switch between approaches and use them in conjugation with one another as needed. Top-
down processing, sometimes referred to as the concept-driven approach, stresses contextual
elements such as sociocultural knowledge and works from whole to part, according to Paran
(1996). To put it another way, top-down processing occurs when the reader uses his or her
schema to help them understand the text. Contrarily, in the bottom-up reading approach, the
focus is on the written or printed text, and reading moves from part to whole. In the
interactive model of reading, Readers create meaning by using information from the text as
well as information they already know; they also embellish what they read; they continuously
check to see whether they comprehend; and they utilize the situational context to shape their
goals and attitudes toward the literacy experience. A framework for assessing reading
difficulty may be created using the interactive reading model.
Some teachers may take the bottom-up approach as the model and think that students must
first learn the basics of lexis and syntax, and only after they master this can they understand
bigger concepts like themes and symbolism. The latter statement might be logical, but while
an emphasis on comprehending each word can get students good at spelling a variety of words
and be skilled at quickly reading a text, understanding graphical, visual letters, words and
sentences in a text does not concur the fact that students will be missing the ability to fully
understand what they are reading. On the other hand, the interactive model emphasizes on
both approaches which encourages students to attempt and make a perfect reading experience
by focusing on meaning and words simultaneously in order to achieve full understanding.
It’s quite understandable that other teachers may take the opposite direction and side with
the top-down approach of reading, saying that it’s irrelevant to try to decode every word on
the page and to drill students on vocabulary words before exposing them to really good and
interesting literature, claiming that getting students engaged with a book's topic and relating to
its themes is much more interesting as students bring so much of their own context to reading.
That makes sense, however; according to the interactive theory of reading, readers
automatically recognize words and concepts that engage their lower-level comprehension
processing, but ultimately incorporate the logic and background information that engages
their higher-level comprehension processing. (Pearson & Johnson, 1978) writes, by reflecting on
what they already know, readers might predict what the text will say. They make use of both this
theory and the textual data to intentionally create meaning. Meaning instead of limiting reading to
only two narrowed types, the alternative model plays as the major role for allowing approaches and
processes of reading to take place simultaneously in order to execute a successful effective and
profound reading.

To sum up, reading approaches are useful for learners to adopt during the reading process be it
either bottom-up, top-down, or interactive. Given the variety of cognitive and metacognitive
processes that readers participate in, reading has been described as an interactive activity based on
recent research findings and academic assertions. So, limiting readers to only one way of reading will
negatively affect their reading progress as well as their full understanding of a text and the
interactive model is the alternative which aim for the best of both worlds that will connect both
cognitive, metacognitive, and schemata in process.

References:

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED315726.pdf

file:///C:/Users/Dell/Documents/6359-Article%20Text-8716-1-10-20140113.pdf