Teaching reading

In the name of God

Teaching reading

Some significant issues affecting on teaching reading skills:

A. Bottom-up & top-down processing

in bottom-up the reader must first recognize a

multiplicity of linguistic signals (letters, morpheme, syllables, words…) & use their own linguistic data processing

to impose some sort of order on these signals (data-driven , field -independent)

In top-down we draw on our intelligence &

experience to understand a text.(conceptually -driven)

B. schema theory & background knowledge

The reader brings information ,knowledge, emotion

, experiences & culture to the printed word.

Content schemata :include what we know about people,the world,the

culture, the universe.

Formal schemata: consist of our knowledge about discourse structure.

D. The power of extensive reading

Extensive reading :reading for getting the general

idea ,reading for pleasure

Krashen ,Day , Bamford believe that extensive reading

is a key to students gains in reading

ability ,linguistic competence, vocabulary, spelling.

E. The role of affect & culture

F. The role of cognition in reading

H. Effective techniques for activating schemata

Types of written language:

*Nonfiction : reports, essays, articles

Fiction :novels, short stories ,jokes,

Characteristics of written language1. Permanence

spoken language is fleeting.

Written language is permanent.

2. Processing time

In writing ,the writer has more processing time to

write.

In spoken we have less time to speak.

3) Distance

The written word allows messages to be

sent across two dimensions :

physical distanceTemporal distance

The reader should interpret language that

was written in other place at other time &

with only the written words as contextual

clues.

4. Orthography

In spoken language we have stress,rhythm,

juncture ,

intonation, pauses, voice quality & nonverbal cues as

help

In writing we have only graphemes &

sometimes

pictures ,punctuation as help .

Most of irregularity in English manifests in high

frequency words .

In English, there are many bases that are written the

same .

5. Complexity

Spoken language tends to have shorter clauses connected by more

coordinate ,conjunctions,

while writing has longer clauses more subordination. (the shorter

clauses are often a factor of the redundancy we build into speech.)

6. Vocabulary

In writing ,lower frequency words often appear than

spoken because more processing time that exist in

written language.

7. FormalityWriting is quite frequently more formal than speech.

Strategies for reading comprehension

Identifying the purpose

By identifying he purpose in reading ,we know what

we are looking for & can weed out distracting

information.

Use graphemic rules &patterns to aid in bottom _up processing

It is useful for beginners and children ,non _literate

adults.

e.g. Bit/kit/pet bite/kite/pete

Use efficient silent reading for rapid comprehension

• we don't need to pronounce each word to our self

• Try to visually perceive more than one word time preferably phrases

• Unless a word is absolutely to global understanding ,skip over it and

try to infer its meaning from I’s context

Skim the text for main ideas

Skimming consists of quickly running ones eyes across a whole text for

it’s gist.

Skimming gives readers the advantage of being able to predict the

purpose of the passage.

Scan the text for specific information

Scanning is quickly searching for

some particular piece of information in a text.

Use semantic mapping or clustering

Guess when you are not certain.

Not haphazard guessing

Use compensation strategy

Use contextual clues

Analyze vocabulary• Look for suffixes • Look for prefixes• Look for roots that are familiar.• Look for grammatical contexts that may have

signal information

Distinguish between literal & implied meaningThis requires the application of top down processing skills

Capitalize on discourse markers to process the relationship

Clear comprehension of discourse markers can enhance learners reading efficiency

Reading classroom performance

Oral reading Silent reading

Intensive Extensive

Linguistic content scanning skimming

global

1. Oral reading

a. Server as an evaluative check on bottom –

up processing skills.

b. Double as a pronunciation check ,

c. Serve to add some extra student

participation if you want to highlight a

certain short segment of a reading

passage

2. Silent reading(Intensive and extensive reading)

Intensive reading :a classroom-orinented

activiy in which students focus on the

linguistic or semantic details of a message

Extensive reading: is carried to out achieve a

general understanding of a longer text.

It is performed outside of class time

Principles for designing interactive reading techniques:

1. In an interactive curriculum ,make sure that you don't

overlook the importance of specific instruction in reading

skills

ESL literate learners can use their own devices in learning

reading

e.g. silent reading is excellent method to self instruction

2. Use techniques that are intrinsically motivating

We as teachers should pay attention to

students’intersts & their goals in learning to read

English.

Language experience approach

Offering opportunities for learners to gauage

their progress through perodic instructor and

self –assessments.

3. Balance between authencitiy and readability

Use authentic simple texts in the real world.

Nuttall offered 3 criteria for choosing texts for

students:

Suitability:

Exploitability

Readability

4. Encourage the development of reading strategies

5. Include both bottom-up &top-down techniques

6. Subdivide your techniques into pre-reading,during reading &post reading

Pre reading: spend some time introducing

atopic ,encouraging skimming, scanning, predicting

and activating schemata and students’ curiosity.

During reading: we can give students some questions

and goals that the students should find them in

the reading text

Post reading:We can ask students to do some tasks after reading

7. Follow the SQ3R

A. Survey: skim the text for an overview of main ideas.

B. Question: the reader asks questions about what he or

she wishes to get out of the text.

C. Read :Read the text while looking for answers to the

previously formulated questions

D. Recite: reprocess the salient points of the text through oral or

written Language

E .Review: Assess the importance of what one has just read&

incorporate it into long term association

8. Build in some evaluative aspect to your techniques

Reading is totally unobservable.

Duplicating

Answering

Doing

Conversing

Transferring

choosing

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