Teaching Reading Strategies

 

Bad habits and misconceptions about reading seem to stem from its basic definition and characteristics. Being reading, as well as listening, a receptive skill may lead to the confusion that it might be a passive process in opposition to the other two macro skills, speaking and writing, which are considered active processes (Thornbury, 2006, p. 190). On the contrary, the fact that it is receptive does not mean that it is passive but it is an active and interactive process. Thorndike (as cited in Silberstein, 1994) classified reading as an active process related to problem solving back in the year 1917 (p. 6). He understood that since readers, as well as listeners, bring their own questions, experiences and background knowledge to the classroom; they interrogate the text on their own. As Smith (1988) conceives it “[m]eaning is not contained within the sounds of speech or the printed marks of writing, conveniently waiting to be discovered or decoded, but rather must be provided by the listener or reader” (p. 24).

Consequently, to comprehend a text it is necessary to add context situation to the process of decoding words. Cubo de Severino et al. (2008) support this idea by claiming that deciphering symbols is just the beginning and it is not enough to achieve understanding of texts. The author says that it is necessary to activate the knowledge of the world, knowledge of texts, and background knowledge the reader possess (p. 53). Peronard (as cited in Cubo de Severino et al.) acknowledges that to achieve this integration which aids readers to comprehend better, there are two types of questions which are necessary to accompany reading tasks at school: literal questions and inference questions. The first group consists of questions framed in such a way that the same words and expressions are found in the text so students only use their linguistic processor to identify correct answers. In the second group, neither the questions nor the answers appear directly in the text but it contains clues to build up meaning and formulate answers (2008:49).

 

Therefore, if students are given only literal questions that can be easily found because they are explicitly and directly expressed in the text, this active and interactive process may not occur. Students might be tempted to draw from the paragraph the part that is useful to answer the question in order to complete the
assignment, without combining high-order processing skills to interpret the information and “get meaning from text” (Nuttall, 2005, pp. 187-188).

Smith asserts that comprehension implies much more than reproducing the facts included in the text, assuming that the aforementioned questions with a direct reference do not foster the interaction between text and readers (1988:43). According to Hosenfeld (Alderson, 1984) this type of exercise through comprehension questioning generally emphasizes the importance of understanding the text in detail and it is “linguistically biased” in the sense that it focuses on some aspects of language such as grammar and vocabulary. Hosenfeld adds that this pedagogic practice of focusing on the language of the text could be justified as a language lesson but it may lead to undesired behaviour as a reading lesson (1984:246).

Recent research into reading skills (Nuttall, 2005; Thornbury, 2006) maintains that traditional reading tasks in the form of the so called “comprehension questions” are not enough to help students tackle texts outside the learning situation. In order to show the insufficiency of this method, a distinction has been made between “testing reading” and “teaching reading”. Thornbury (2006) stresses that the former consists of traditional reading tasks which usually involve reading a text and then answering comprehension questions about it, whereas the latter aims to help readers become more effective by training them in reading skills and teaching them reading strategies (p. 191). Nuttall (2005) coincides with Thornbury (2006) when she describes testing reading as an activity in which teachers ask questions with the purpose of obtaining right or wrong answers, whereas she defines teaching reading as the training of strategies that can last a lifetime (p. 34). As Smith (1988) cites, “you do not prove that you have understood anything by repeating it” (p. 43).

Thus, Candlin (Alderson and Urquhart, 1984) asserts that reading sets three centres into motion: a centre on the reader, a centre on the text and a centre on the interaction between reader and text. The author points out that readers cannot prevent their “extra-textual experience, their reading purposes and their affective involvement” influence the text they are reading (p. ix). What is more, when reading, readers establish a dialogue not only with the writer, but also with their previous knowledge and experience of the world. [...] In Widdowson’s terms (as cited in Alderson and Urquhart, 1984), texts have a potential for meaning which is framed by the readers. Widdowson (Alderson, 1984) enlarges this concept suggesting that the meaning of texts vary from reader to reader according to their purpose and knowledge. The author claims that “texts have predictable meanings, which can be extracted if only the reader is sufficiently skilful” (p. xix). In the light of these ideas, meaning is created by the reader in his/her interaction with texts.

Widdowson (Alderson and Urquhart, 1984) explores the interaction between reader and text by defining the communicative character of reading. He
suggests that communication is achieved when the writer formulates particular propositional content and illocutionary intent in such a way as to make it accessible on the one hand and acceptable on the other hand” (p. 218). Consequently, it can be said that writers convey information in a manner that is accessible to the supposed imagined reader, anticipating the likely reactions and negotiating meaning. And the reader, “recognizing the authority of the writing and wanting to access the information given”, will adjust his own frame of reference to that of the writer making connections (Alderson and Urquhart, 1984, p. 222).

The reader puts into practice several complex cognitive processes in his “dialogue with the writer” in order to obtain meaning from text. Therefore, teaching reading comprehension strategies to students becomes a valuable tool in their foreign language learning. (Nuttall, 2005, p. 40).

(Taken from my thesis "Teaching Reading Strategies for Successful Comprehension)


References:

Alderson, J.Ch. & Urquhart A. H. (1984). Reading in a Foreign Language. New York: Longman.

Cubo de Severino, L., De Castillo, E., Duo de Brottier, O., Ejarque, D., Mûller de Russo, G., Lacón de Lucía, G., et al (2008). Leo pero no Comprendo. Córdoba: Comunic-arte Editorial.

Nuttall, Ch. (2005). Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. Macmillan Books for Teachers. Oxford, England: Macmillan Education.    

Smith, F. (1988). Understanding Reading. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

Thornbury, S. (2006). An A – Z of ELT. Macmillan Books for Teachers. Oxford, England: Macmillan Education.    

 

Some notes about Reading

Teaching to read or Reading to test?

An important disctintion between testing reading and teaching reading should be considered. From generation to generation, students have been asked to complete reading tasks which involved reading a short text and answering “comprehension” questions based on the text. This traditional method is known as the testing approach. On the other hand, the teaching approach aims at the training of reading skills and reading strategies to help students become more effective readers of the second language and achieve the goals of independence, comprehension, and fluency. In this light Swain (1985) pointed out, “A good comprehender may be an effective and appropriate strategy user, rather than someone who necessarily extracts useful syntactic inferences from the language which is being processed”.

 

Teaching to read

No single component of the model, such as word recognition, can accurately account for the subject’s overall comprehension of the text. In other words, no one factor dominates the comprehension process. On the contrary, the data reveal that comprehension is characterized by a complex set of interacting process performed by the reader to construct an understanding of the text. (Bernhardt, 1991, 123).

Following Bernhardt’s ideas, writing questions for students to answer is not enough to achieve comprehension of written texts. In order to promote independance on students’ strategy, such as understanding the meaning of words through context, training should be included in the syllabus. Those strategies which train students to overcome problems include: using contextual and extra-linguistic information, brainstorming background knowledge, skimming the text before a detailed reading, keeping the purpose of the text in mind, guessing meaning of words through context, dictionary use, decoding strategies. Marie Clay (1991), developer of the Reading Recovery Program, encourages teachers to help children learn at least four approaches to decoding: focusing on meaning (semantics), realting sounds to letters (phonics), looking at how words and phrases are formed (syntax) recognizing sight words (visual).

Text talk

The well-known children’s author, Katherine Paterson, described the relationship between reader and writer this way:

Once a book is published, it no longer belongs to me … The work now belongs to the creative mind of my readers … It’s a wonderful feeling when readers hear what I thought I was trying to say, but there is no law that they must. Frankly, it is even more thrilling for a reader to find something in my writing that I hadn’t until that moment known was there (Paterson, 1981).

A good reader is the one who can understand the text as the writer intented (Nuttal,1996) If so, do teachers foster an inquisitive attidude in the students? Do students take an active role while reading? Can students be engaged in the interactive process of reading if they are passive readers? Reading comprehension strategies separate the passive unskilled reader from the active readers. Skilled readers do not just read; they interact with the text, they are involved as they have to work to grasp the meaning. Keene and Zimmerman (1997) stated that: “...thoughtful, active, proficient readers are metacognitive; they think about their own thinking during reading.”