The Reading Process – from understanding to teaching

The Reading Process –

from understanding to teaching

Broader sociolinguistic contexts

Immediate situational contexts

The reading process – The reading process – a transactional viewa transactional view

TextReader Transaction

Source: Weaver C, 1988

Reading Behaviours of a Reading Behaviours of a Proficient ReaderProficient Reader

Develops anticipation; activates prior knowledge

Decodes and samples with sufficient speed

Predicts as he reads

Reads on, re-reads, confirms or corrects

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 Reading problems of our students as novice readersstudents 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

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 The Cueing Systems of the English LanguageEnglish Language

1. Graphophonic cues

2. Semantic cues

3. Syntactic cues

Graphophonic Cues (Visual)Graphophonic Cues (Visual)

Questions to ask:Questions to ask:

Letter-sound correspondences

Do I know the beginning / ending sounds?

Are there pronounceable parts?

Do I know any words of similar spelling?

Semantic Cues (Meaning)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)Syntactic Cues (Structural)

grammatical patterns

Questions to ask:Questions to ask:

What word would fit into the structural pattern here?

Does it sound like English?

MiscuesMiscues – – What caused them?What caused them?

I can sleep those hiccups.

Elephant gives it a toy.

I can’t do out and I have nothing to do.

Can I read you a story, mum? // No, I’m tiger.

Grandma makes a hot in the castle.

(stop)(stop)

(try)(try)

(go)(go)

(tired)(tired)

(hole)(hole)

MiscuesMiscues – – What caused them?What caused them?

(sleeping)(sleeping)

(All)(All)

All animals are sleep.

As the animals go back to sleep.

Do you want to do you homework? (your)(your)

Quality miscuesQuality miscues – – substitutions substitutions that preserve meaningthat preserve meaning

(summer)(summer)

(elephant)(elephant)

“Why not clean your room?” Mum asks.

It’s a hot sunny afternoon.

Poor animal has the hiccups.

I can stop her hiccups. (those)(those)

(tidy)(tidy)

(has(has))

Quality miscues – self-corrections

(he)(he)

(our)(our)

“Boo!” her shouts.

We like sharing or candy.

He was the hiccups.

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

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

Implications for teachersImplications for teachers

A balanced reading program –5 essential components

1. Phonological awareness

2. Phonics

3. Sight words & vocabulary development

4. Reading fluency

5. Comprehension strategies

- Phonological awareness & phonics skills

A balanced reading programme

Phonological awareness ---Phonological awareness ---

Phonological awareness & Phonological awareness & phonics skillsphonics skills

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 ---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 skillsPhonics skills

Phonics skills are means to the end of successful reading ---- ‘a catalyst which triggers the process of learning to read’

---- Maclean (1998)

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 contextTeaching 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 can we teach phonics effectively?

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

Teaching phonics in our contextTeaching 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?

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?

Teaching phonics in our contextTeaching phonics in our context

active phonics skillsproactive teaching

Implications for teachersImplications 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 teachersImplications for teachers

Q: Is it advisable for teachers to use a separate package to help students learn phonics and tackle their learning problems?

Q: Should phonics be treated in isolation and handled by one teacher alone e.g. NET?

What are the problems?

1. Unfamiliar vocabulary --- difficult to draw analogy

2. Unrelated to their studies --- extra burden & can’t help to solve learning problems

3. No application --- no explicit teaching of skills and how to apply them in new texts

4. No feedback or assessment

Integration

Planning: phonics & our curriculum

Variation

Application

Textbook(framework/

context/ language focus)

Activities / tasks

Games ……..

Other resources:

Supplementary /

Grammar / Phonics worksheets …..

Big Books

Small readers

Poems / Plays

Reading / Listening materials….

input input

input

guided writing / free writing / reading aloud / reading interest / project…….

output

intellectual

developmen

t

life experiences aesthetic

experiences

authentic and meaningful use of language

Curriculum Curriculum Restructuring & Restructuring & IntegrationIntegration

Textbook Unit 5: Telling the time, describing

habitual actions

Unit 6: Days of the week

Unit 7,8: Weather and seasons

Activities : songs & rhymes, sharing of students’ work

Other resources:

• teacher’s diary

• worksheets

• sounds (ay, og,

ice)

Big Books:

1.What’s the time ?

2.Every Monday

3.All through the week with cat and dog

4.What’s the weather like today?

5. Weather machine

Small readers:

1. The busy giant

2. Winnie and the cat

free writing — ‘My diary’: describing particular activities & expressing feelings in short

paragraphs

output

authentic and meaningful use of language

Connecting with the Natural World

life experiences

inputinput

inputintellectual

developmen

t

aesthetic experiences

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

Words that are recognized

as wholes, on sight

What are sight words?What are sight words?

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

Words that cannot be phonically produced

the, and, I, book, play, happy, big….

High-frequencyHigh-frequency words

Words of special interest

witches, spell, magic, frogs,

castleSnow White,

Billy Goat Gruff, Biff, Chip

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

see the word in context many times

hear the word and say it aloud

identify the word, in context and in isolation

To learn a sight word, the To learn a sight word, the students must:students must:

Learning sight words through games and activities

• Reading sight word cards with partner

• Snap cards and Pelmanism

• Snakes and Ladders

• Dominoes

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

Vocabulary Development

through intensive and extensive reading

-- Reading Fluency

A balanced reading programme

Fluent oral reading (with expression)

(SILENT) READING FLUENCY

Access to models of expressive reading

Comprehension Word recognition (fast & accurate)

Chunking words (syntactic cues)

(Source: Oakley, G. 2001)

Repeated ReadingRepeated 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)

-- comprehension strategies

A balanced reading programme

“…. 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 practiceCurrent 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 practiceCurrent 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 practiceCurrent 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?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?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 Transactional strategies instructioninstruction

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 Transactional strategies instructioninstruction

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 senseIf you don’t understand something, reread, read aloud, or use the illustrations

Summarize:Think about the main ideas or the important part of the storyTell the important things in your own words

Evaluate: Ask yourselfDo 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 teachingExplicit 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 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 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 Not so ‘typical’ comprehension exercises ---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

ConclusionConclusion

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 ProcessThe Reading Process

(Source: Burns, Roe and Ross, 1999)

See and perceive the symbols

Follow the sequence of words

Relate ideas to past experience

Make inferences/evaluate

Deal with personal interests and attitudes that affect reading

Associate symbols and sounds

Associate symbols and meanings

Follow the grammatical patterns

TransactionTransaction

Putting everything together to construct a personal meaning for the text

Communicating thoughts and emotions between reader and writer

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