What is Reading?
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.It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas.
Reading According to Anderson (1998)
“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 of study.
2.
Reading is FLUENT: mastery of basic processes to
the point where 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 learning that written material can be interesting and informative.
5.
Reading is a LIFELONG PURSUIT: continuous
practices, development, and refinement.
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 out workbooks.
• Pronouncing the letters
• Putting sounds together.
• Reading is learning hard words.
• Reading is like thinking...it’s understanding the
story.
• It’s when you find things out.
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
construct meaning.
2. Most of the contemporary definitions of reading include the following: reading is a process, reading is strategic, reading is interactive, and reading instruction requires orchestration.
What is the essential skill in reading?
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 be read
2.
Ability to separate spoken words into component
sounds
3.
Ability to recognize and discriminate the letter
of the alphabet
4.
Understanding of the principle of reading from
left-to-right or right- to left
5.
Understanding of the correspondence between
letters and sounds
6.
Ability to recognize printed words from a
variety of cues such as context, analogy, syntactic, or letter shapes
7.
Ability to comprehend a text
Learners as Effective Readers
Learners must become effective readers to meet the demands of literacy and learning for the 21st century. Children need and deserve an aggressive approach to ensure their right to read.
Facts About Reading
•
Children’s literacy development begins long
before children start formal instruction in elementary school.
•
More than 4 in 10 pre-schoolers, 5 in 10
toddlers, and 6 in 10 babies are not read to regularly.
•
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 they read.
•
Reading aloud to children helps them develop and
improve literacy skills – reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
•
Reading and writing are a developmental
continuum rather than acquired skills.
•
Children learn to read and write by being read
to, reading simple text, and experimenting with writing.
•
Due to different brain signature, 20-40% of the
population does not acquire phonemic awareness.
•
Certain abilities must be developed that work
together to create strong reading skills.
•
Learners become engaged in literacy as they grow
more strategic, motivated, knowledgeable, and socially interactive.
•
Some researchers describe two levels of
literacy: emergent and conventional. More traditional researchers define three
levels: early reader, transitional reader, and fluent reader.
•
Reading and writing rely on a specific set of
cognitive skills such as attention, memory, symbolic thinking, and
self-regulation.
•
Children’s reading and writing abilities develop
together.
•
All children need to have high-quality
children’s books as a part of their daily experience.
•
Teaching with a flexible mix of research-based
instructional methods, geared toward individual students, is more effective
than strict adherence to any one approach.
•
A well-organized, comprehensive approach to the
teaching of reading that 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 their classrooms.
• 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 to read.
What is Developmental Reading?
• A kind of reading in which the materials are scientifically prepared and aimed at developing the reading skills of learners. Vocabulary and 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 must
see whether it contains the needed information.
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 the material.
• SCANNING – this technique helps the reader to search quickly for the information he wants. The following are the procedures:
a.
Focus on the specific information needed.
b.
Know what clues to find in the information.
c.
Move your eyes quickly down the page to find the
clue.
d.
Read the section that contains the clues to get
the information
a.
needed.
Kinds of Reading Skills (Anderson, 1994)
• WORD ATTACK SKILLS – let the reader figure out new words.
• COMPREHENSION SKILLS – help the reader predict the next word, phrase, or sentence quickly enough to speed recognition.
• FLUENCY SKILLS – help the reader see the larger segments, phrases and groups of words as wholes.
• CRITICAL READING SKILLS – help the reader see the relationship of ideas and use these in reading with meaning and fluency.
What is Comprehension?
It is the ability to grasp something mentally and the capacity to understand ideas and facts.
Comprehensibility in writing is related to comprehension
in reading.
Comprehension is based on:
1.
knowledge that reading makes sense;
2.
reader’s prior knowledge;
3.
information presented in the text;
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 of knowledge.
• UNDERSTAND PARAGRAPH
STRUCTURE – this skill helps
pupils identify the parts of paragraph, the topic sentence, the details and conclusion.
Pupils are provided information or given activities to assist them in using the
structure of paragraphs to enhance their comprehension of the material.
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• 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 the material.
• IMPROVE VOCABULARY – this skill helps pupils become better reader 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 assigned material.
• 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 without this knowledge. Learn how to move from having learners “collect knowledge” to having them wondering about the significance of the knowledge.
• 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.
• 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
|
Before Reading |
During Reading |
After Reading |
|
1.
Set objectives for instruction 2.
Identify and pre-teach difficulty to read
word. 3.
Prime students’ background knowledge |
1.
Stop periodically to ask questions 2.
Map text structure elements. 3. Model ongoing comprehension monitoring |
1. Strategic integration of comprehension instruction. 2, Planned review. 3. Assessment of students’ understanding |
What is Critical Reading?
• Critical reading as a goal includes the ability to
evaluate ideas socially or politically.
• Critical reading skills are the ability to analyse,
evaluate, and synthesize what one reads. They are the ability to see
relationships of ideas and use them as an aid in reading.
• E.g. SEEING CAUSE AND EFFECT “If you drop it, it will b----”
The Reading Act
• THE READING PROCESS
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 of
experience generally, and
2) those that restrict the definition to the interpretation of graphic symbols.
Understanding the reading process will help in the areas
of:
a) Material production
b) Teaching
c) Training teachers
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 reading strategies.
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Reading Stages
•
PLEASURE
– this involves a willing suspension of belief as the reader
•
inhabits the created world.
•
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 even distorted.
•
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’t
like...”
•
RECOGNITION
– this is the act of appreciating it being put in words.
•
IDENTIFICATION
– this refers to the various connection with the characters, events,
situations, making them part of the world rather than joining them.
•
CRITICAL DIALOGUE – to some degree, this refers to re-writing, teasing
out a hidden story or implications.
•
ANALYTICAL-CRITICAL – this involves text analysis, self-analysis,
and analysis of literary and cultural repertory of both.
•
QUESTIONING
THE TEXT – looking for oppositions,
contradictions in the text as well as challenges of initial oppositions,
conflicts.
•
YOUR OWN
RESPONSE – the changing focus,
approach, and identification.
•
INTRATEXTUAL-DRAMATIC – the relation of the part to the whole, the primary
level of understanding.
•
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 recurrent
preoccupations.
•
HISTORICAL
– the relation of the text to milieu. How has a text reflected or help to
create its culture.
•
ALLUSIVE
– the relation of text to other texts, past and present or intertextuality.
•
GENERIC
– the relation of text to other texts of similar kind.
•
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’s experience.