The Reading Process

1
The Reading Process from understanding to
teaching
2
The reading process a transactional view
Text
Transaction

• Reader

Source Weaver C, 1988
3
Reading Behaviours of a Proficient Reader

• Develops anticipation activates prior
  knowledge
• Decodes and samples with sufficient speed
• Predicts as he reads
• Reads on, re-reads, confirms or corrects

4
Reading problems of our students 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

5
The Cueing Systems of the English Language

• Graphophonic cues
• Semantic cues
• Syntactic cues

6
Graphophonic Cues (Visual)
Questions to ask

• Do I know the beginning / ending sounds?
• Are there pronounceable parts?
• Do I know any words of similar spelling?

7
Semantic Cues (Meaning)
Questions to ask

• What word would fit the meaning here?
• Does this word make sense?

8
Syntactic Cues (Structural)

• grammatical patterns

Questions to ask

• What word would fit into the structural pattern
  here?
• Does it sound like English?

9
Miscues What caused them?
(stop)
(try)
(go)
(tired)
(hole)
10
Miscues What caused them?
(sleeping)
(All)
(your)
11
Quality miscues substitutions that preserve
meaning
(summer)
(elephant)
(those)
(tidy)
12
Quality miscues self-corrections
(he)
(our)
(has)
13
Implications for teachers

• 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

14
A balanced reading program 5 essential
components

• Phonological awareness
• Phonics
• Sight words vocabulary development
• Reading fluency
• Comprehension strategies

15
A balanced reading programme
- Phonological awareness phonics skills
16
Phonological awareness phonics skills

• Phonological awareness ---

• 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 ---
• 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

17
Phonics skills

• Phonics skills are means to the end of
  successful reading ---- a catalyst which
  triggers the process of learning to read
• ---- Maclean (1998)

18
Teaching phonics in our context

• 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? ..

• Questions to ask

19
Teaching 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?

20
Teaching phonics in our context

• 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?

active phonics skills
proactive teaching
21
Implications 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.

22
Implications 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?

23
What are the problems?

• Unfamiliar vocabulary --- difficult to draw
  analogy
• Unrelated to their studies --- extra burden
  cant help to solve learning problems
• No application --- no explicit teaching of
  skills and how to apply them in new texts
• No feedback or assessment

24
Planning phonics our curriculum
Integration
Variation
Application
25
Curriculum Restructuring Integration
life experiences
intellectual development
aesthetic experiences
authentic and meaningful use of language
26
Connecting with the Natural World
life experiences
intellectual development
aesthetic experiences
Activities songs rhymes, sharing of students
work
Big Books 1.Whats the time ? 2.Every
Monday 3.All through the week with cat and
dog 4.Whats the weather like today? 5.
Weather machine Small readers 1. The busy giant
2. Winnie and the cat

• Other resources
• teachers diary
• worksheets
• sounds (ay, og,
• ice)

free writing My diary describing particular
activities expressing
feelings in short paragraphs
authentic and meaningful use of language
27
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

28
A balanced reading programme
-- Sight words
29
What are sight words?
Words that are recognized as wholes, on
sight
30
one, two, you, have, father, the, they.
Words that cannot be phonically produced
High-frequency words
witches, spell, magic, frogs, castle
Snow White, Billy Goat Gruff, Biff, Chip
Words of special interest
31
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

32
To learn a sight word, the students must

• see the word in context many times
• hear the word and say it aloud
• identify the word, in context and in isolation

33
Learning sight words through games and activities

• Reading sight word cards with partner
• Snap cards and Pelmanism
• Snakes and Ladders
• Dominoes

34
Vocabulary Development
through intensive and extensive reading

• 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

35
A balanced reading programme
-- Reading Fluency
36
(Source Oakley, G. 2001)
37
Repeated 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)

38
A balanced reading programme
-- comprehension strategies
39
. Reading comprehension has come to be
viewed as the essence of reading ---(National
Reading Panel, 2000, p.4-1)
40
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)

41
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.

42
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?

43
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)

44
Current 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.

45
Current 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

46
Current 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

47
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) 

48
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
49
Transactional strategies instruction

• 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

50
Transactional strategies instruction

• 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 sense
• If you dont understand something, reread, read
  aloud, or use the illustrations

• Summarize
• Think about the main ideas or the important part
  of the story
• Tell the important things in your own words

• Evaluate
• Ask yourself
• Do 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?

51
Explicit 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
52
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)

53
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

54
Not so typical comprehension 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

55
Conclusion

• 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.

56
The Reading Process

• See and perceive the symbols
• Follow the sequence of words

• Associate symbols and sounds
• Associate symbols and meanings
• Follow the grammatical patterns

• Relate ideas to past experience
• Make inferences/evaluate
• Deal with personal interests and attitudes that
  affect reading

(Source Burns, Roe and Ross, 1999)
57
Transaction

• Putting everything together to construct a
  personal meaning for the text
• Communicating thoughts and emotions between
  reader and writer

58
Reading sight word cards with partners
59
Snap cards and Pelmanism
60
Snakes and Ladders
61
Dominoes
62
Fluent oral reading (with expression)
63
Models of expressive reading
64
(Silent) Reading Fluency