Teaching L2 Reading

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Teaching L2 Reading

• Robert L. Davis
• Romance Languages
• University of Oregon

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Five erroneous ideas

• 1. Thats how I learned it...
• One has to be open to new methods, techniques,
  and research results.

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Five erroneous ideas

• 2. Mechanical exercises help to master grammar
• Mechanical exercise no attention to the meaning
  of the utterances
• declarative knowledge (explicit)
• procedural knowledge (implicit)

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Five erroneous ideas

• 3. Explicit language instruction is necessary.
• NO, but it is better than a natural environment
  because we can guide students, provide summaries
• In sum, its more efficient for adults

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Five erroneous ideas

• 4. L1 is the source of all errors
• Tranfser is only a limited source of L2 errors
• Production strategy when task is far above
  existing proficiency

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Five erroneous ideas

• 5. Acquisition takes place through paradigms
• Human beings dont organize linguistic knowledge
  in paradigms
• Good for summaries and organizing information

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Important concepts

• Comprehensible input
• Mechanical / meaningful / communicative exercises
• Causes of errors
• The role of instruction
• Orders of acquisition (What features are learned
  first?)
• Stages of development of the L2 interlanguage
  (What happens with a specific language feature?)

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What happens when we read?

• psycholinguistic guessing game

formulate hypothesis
look for data
confirm / reject / reformulate
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The reading process (Cohen 1994, 212)

• 1. Whereas readers may think that they remember
  sentences that they read, they most likely
  remember the meaning and not the exact words or
  grammar. This explains why they may have
  difficulty precisely identifying which sentence
  they have read when presented with a set of
  similar sentences.

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The reading process (Cohen 1994, 212)

• 2. Whereas readers may think that they are
  reading thought a text without regressions (i.e.
  visual cycling back over words or phrases already
  read), they may actually be moving back and forth
  in the text more than they thinkalmost as though
  they would do when observing a picture they have
  never

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The reading process (Cohen 1994, 212)

• 3. Whereas readers may think they are reading in
  a smooth, linear, word-for-word fashion, their
  eyes actually jump from one fixation point to
  another. This helps explain why we do not
  necessarily notice repeated words or typing
  errors in a text. This is the same "sampling"
  phenomenon referred to in Goodman's description
  of reading as prediction, sampling, and
  confirmation.

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The reading process (Cohen 1994, 212)

• 4. Whereas readers may think that they cannot
  understand a text with a number of unknown words
  in it, they may well find that it is possible to
  understand the text without the use of certain
  unknown words and to make reasonable guesses
  about the other words on the basis of the context
  and possibly through analysis of the words
  themselves.

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Think out loud (Taylor, Harris, Pearson, García
1995, 11)
Business had been slow since the oil crisis. Oil
crisis... must be some business related to oil.
Lets see... service stations? (no, they boom in
crises) Cars? Could be anything affected by
inflation! Ill wait and see. Nobody seemed to
want anything elegant anymore. Aha! Expensive
cars!... or recreational vehicles... probably
Cadillacs, though. Suddenly the door flew open
and a well-dressed man burst onto the showroom
floor. This must be a salesman. But it could be
the potential buyer ... Ill wait and see.
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John Stevens looked up from the want-ad section
of the morning paper, adjusted his now
loose-fitting coat to hide the frayed sleeves of
his shirt and rose to meet the man... Now this
is the salesman, right? Times are hard, therefore
the want ads, frayed shirt, and weight loss. So
the other guy must be the customer, the
well-dressed one, I mean. ...whose hand-painted
tie and rhinestone stickpin seem incongruous
amidst the array of steel-gray and black... That
guy is the customer. And hes one of those
got-rich-quick kind of guys. And I bet hes going
to buy either a Mercedes or a Rolls Royce,
probably a Mercedes. Hell probably pay cash,
too.
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...Mercedes sedans. Ill take it, cash on the
line, the man asserted, pointing to the most
expensive model on the floor. I knew it! He is
nouveau-riche. Later, as he completed the
paperwork, John muttered to himself, Im glad I
didnt blow that one. Then he added, What does
he know about elegance, anyway? What does anyone
know about elegance anymore? Aha! We have an
existential cynic. He probably remembers better
times, and definitely, better customers. He seems
resigned to his new fate in life, though.
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Implications for L2 reading instruction

• Connection with students real lives
  (comprehensible input)
• Reading is more than grammar
• Traditional comprehension questions are not
  enough

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Two models of reading
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What is comprehension?

• Comrehension is the accomodation of new
  information to the existing cognitive structures,
  or the creation of new cognigtive structures.

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A metaphor of reading Architecture

• The architect designs a building.
• The plans are the incarnation of the design.
• A contractor builds the structure based on the
  architects plans.

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A metaphor of reading Architecture
writer

• The architect designs a building.
• The plans are the incarnation of the design.
• A contractor builds the structure based on the
  architects plans.

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A metaphor of reading Architecture
writer

• The architect designs a building.
• The plans are the incarnation of the design.
• A contractor builds the structure based on the
  architects plans.

text
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A metaphor of reading Architecture
writer

• The architect designs a building.
• The plans are the incarnation of the design.
• A contractor builds the structure based on the
  architects plans.

text
reader
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A metaphor of reading Architecture
writer

• The architect designs a building.
• The plans are the incarnation of the design.
• A contractor builds the structure based on the
  architects plans.

text
reader
comprehension (constructed meaning)
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12 jugliatsi 2004 E nó Mse. Smith, Ki mi e
phonen ery apitsk i discus nóy sopit undink asker
jerkas kopeja valintsa reops mekoseó. Ki ery mi
skulas sdupsesk refinat nó e livepiós koi
4885.99 er reignosk je eii kin eró. Inet kejer,
U er nó juer eko eii reops i blanket. Ki U sier
vorrei spegheiri otringa cusinet, ki valintsa
dobroyueski. Si seuóbruinga, Robert L.
Davis Robert L. Davis Pruffessoru Assokiatski,
Direktór Programa Spagnoli Universitót
Oregón Eugene OR 97403 USA
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What is a schema?

• A schema (pl. schemata) is a mental
  representation of the background knowledge of a
  situation, topic, logical sequence, etc., in the
  real world.
• Schemata provide us with expectations about the
  content of readings.

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Two types of schemata

• Thematic
• greetings (script)
• sports
• travel
• meals / restaurant
• telephone call (script)
• pastimes
• studies
• sales transaction
• classroom rules
• doctors office
• etc.

• Genre
• letters
• journalistic article, news
• poem, lyrics
• short story, novel
• drama
• movie script
• journal
• instructions (e.g. recipes)
• textbooks
• ads
• etc.

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Taking advantage of schemata

• Existing schema
• Missing schema

activate
authentic texts
create
adapted texts
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Reading strategies
Successful readers tend to use a unique
combination of strategies, calling up the
appropriate ones to construct meaning from a text.
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Reading performance tasks

• Why do we read in the real world?
• Practice and assessment tasks should mirror
  real-world, authentic reading tasks.

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Motivation to read

• Interest inventories
• Reading journals
• Teacher- and student-generated reading lists
• ???

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Reading performance tasksWhy do we read?

• To get specific information (scanning)

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Reading performance tasksWhy do we read?

• To get the main idea (skimming)

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Reading performance tasksWhy do we read?

• Pleasure reading

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Reading performance tasksWhy do we read?

• To nourish our interests

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Performance task examples
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Extensive vs. intensive reading

• More text
• Readers sets pace
• No traditional evaluation instead, discussion,
• Adapted texts

• Less text
• Teacher-directed pace
• Focused activities, requiring more preparation
• Authentic texts

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Mixed reading types

• Jigsaw format
• Use answers from comprehension questions as a
  summary of the
• Give a synopsis before students read
• Prediction exercise
• Skip parts using a film to fill in the plot gaps

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Guided reading

• Convert text into drama (works best when there is
  lots of dialogue)
• Draw the scene (works best when there is rich
  desciption in the text)
• Students write the comprehension questions
• Black out 1-2 sentences, students have to figure
  out the content of the missing piece

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Guided reading
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Two models of reading