1. Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción
English Language Department
English Pedagogy
Acquisition and learning of EFL
RESEARCH PAPER: “HOW THE APPLICATION OF STRATEGY ‘SHARED
BOOK READING’ COULD IMPROVE THE COMPREHENSION OF THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN CHILE”.
Authors: Ma. De los Angeles Betancur Murillo,
Cynthia Troncoso Ibarra.
Concepción, June 2015.

2. I. RESEARCH PROBLEM
According to the Chilean government (MINEDUC) and regarding to a study
postulated in a seminar situation imparted for the reading council “Hacia una
sociedad lectora”, 86% of Chilean people do not understand what they read.
Furthermore, the results of this study exposed that students who are in I and II
income quintile (people who do not have the necessary economic resources to
study in regard to their family income and also, attend to public schools) have less
aptitudes or abilities for reading comprehension in their mother tongue (L1).
Chilean students, who graduate from high school, should be in a B1 level of
English as a foreign language based on a reference from the Common European
Framework of references for Languages (CEFR). This agrees to the ability of
achieving the majority of objectives referring to be able to express in a range of
topics.
Claimed by the results published on MINEDUC, in accordance with the
Mediation System for the Quality from the Educational System (SIMCE) of English
made in 2012, this evaluation consist of 80 questions, which 40 of them are within
the reading comprehension area. It measures the comprehension ability to
understand short texts and identify some suitable vocabulary, in this evaluation the
score is from 0 to 100 points. To exemplify, the Gran Bretaña school of
Concepción, was taken at random in which students obtained 42 points in the
reading comprehension part. In agreement with CEFR, at being related with
SIMCE score, asserts that students from 3rd grade of secondary school are below
the A1 level of English, this indicates that after one year of graduation from high
school, these students will not accomplished the B1 level of English that the
governmental entity expects as a goal.
Therefore, there are questions to be presented within the theory area of this
research: which factors have influence in the reading comprehension process as a
foreign language in students from public schools? As teachers, which strategies
could be applied to get the objective postulated by the government? Finally, how

3. reading comprehension could be applied from one to another with the goal of
improving this process?
II. THEORY LINKED TO RESEARCH PROBLEM
The use of educational strategies for the improvement of language skill -
specifically reading skill in the English as a foreign language subject - in the
classroom has been one of the forgotten and maybe stopped aspects. Due to the
fact that this ability has been considered a passive skill (as well as listening, which
then were named ‘receptive’ skills, because of evolutionary reasons of the abilities
of the English language), it was not an important aspect when referring to
educational issues. It was like that because the development of the language
abilities was based on productive skills only – speaking and writing - in Chile the
results were at a distance of what was expected in a sort of educational utopia, and
even though there were a diversity of learning strategies to develop reading skills
around the world. This was the reality until the decade of 2000, when the
perspective about the development of the language skills was extended in order to
take into account the influence of the contextualization of written texts and the
improvement of the reading activity. That is why – according to Snow and Sweet
(2003) – from that period to the current time the development of reading skills has
been started from a ‘contextualizator’ point of view in terms of individuals, as well
as from a collective scope of communities. In words of Neuman (2001), the
emphasis must be on the act of reading in itself, but in the same way in areas as:
the post-reading reflection process and the development of mental processes that
are related to previous experiences and affective ranges. It is relevant to mention
that this idea of ought to be applied from an early age and also paying attention to
the age needs of the individual, as a way to accompany his/her physiological
growth.
To go in depth through the concept of contextualization of the reading skills’
teaching and to impulse the understanding in which the conception of the skills
developing method and reading comprehension in the research is essential to give

4. a definition of what reading comprehension is, in regard to various authors. McNeil
(1992, as cited by Budhiarso, 2014), defines the concept in general terms when he
asserts that reading comprehension is giving sense to a text out of itself, as a
result of the interaction between graphical symbols that represent the language
and previous knowledge of the reader, having the aim of interpreting and building
meanings. Furthermore, reading comprehension is a process of obtaining
information from the context and the combination of elements that compose a
whole. The previous information can be summarized in the following quote: reading
comprehension is “the process of –simultaneously- extracting and building
meanings (Snow y Sweet, 2003: 1) from a written text. It means that when
extracting meaning through the use of reading comprehension skill the focus
should be on how the texts represent words and the joined words represent a
meaning when they are translated from the paper to the voice; on the other hand,
to build meanings within the use of reading ability, mental representations of the
current information must be created in order to create new meanings that being
integrated to the previous knowledge of each individual involved in the process.
To understand the concept of ‘shared book reading’, it is going to be described
briefly the historical context of the origin of the concept.
In the mid 60’s, Don Holdaway (1979:38) in group with educational specialists
(being them professors and assessors) were looking for the possibility of
implementing a method for the development of reading that did not allow the failure
in the classroom (by part of the student), here emerges the idea of imitating the
behavior of students who are considered successful readers. One of the behaviors
observed is the use of reading in daily life in the students referred previously – in
educational context and daily routine -, furthermore, it was observed the presence
of night-reading at home, which allows the progressing of reading skills throughout
the routine. In this context, the conception of ‘shared reading book’ was born, with
which the students will have a previous familiarization with reading that driven the
readers to be successful, with the application of this strategy as the basis.

5. The focus of ‘shared book reading’ should be on three main elements to
achieve the comprehension objective; taking into account the aspects related to
the meaning that students could give to a certain written text. Those aspects are:
“1. The reader, who understands the text,
2. the text, which is understood by the reader,
3. and the activity, which involves the comprehension” (Snow y Sweet, 2003:2).
This enumeration describes the elements that composed the process of
developing reading skills in terms of reading comprehension for individual readers.
The first point is the reader, who must join different skills, knowledge and previous
knowledge to perform the comprehension. These features joined promote the
acquisition of new meanings, forming new mental nets. The second point is the text
that represents any element possible to read, it could be from handout, digital to
handwritten matter. Finally, the third point is the activity, the culmination of the
reading comprehension process. This point is subdivided into three more phases:
“purposes – why the readers read?; processes – which mental activity is involved
in the readers’ mind while they read?; and consequences – what learning or
experience the readers get as a result of reading?” (Snow y Sweet, 2003:2)
Now and then, taking into consideration those factors, it is possible that
emerges a question about the effectiveness with which they work within a ‘shared
book reading’ context. The authors Snow and Sweet (2003:3) refers to this topic
through the socio-culturalism that exists in the environment in that the strategy of
‘shared book reading’ would like to be applied pointing at what and how the
readers – in this case students – think about themselves. It means that it is
essential to know the objectives they have in terms of reading (do they pretend to
be readers of a written text? Do they value the reading skill? Do they understand
what they read?). Here, the teacher ought to pay special attention in the sort of text
that is going to be read in order to achieve the application of the post-reading
activities, due to the fact that in regard to the socio-cultural context, the age group
and personal preferences the interest in a certain kind of text could vary. For

6. instance, a group of readers in elementary education does not pay attention to very
hard texts, while a group of readers in secondary school will pay attention in
reading a comic, and a group of readers in superior education (mainly adults) could
prefer informative texts, as the news or a newspaper article. With this information it
is pretended to open the road to the reader through his/her own interests and
preferences to accomplish the aim of the comprehension.
III. OWN STANCE
To conclude, it is notorious that there are several problems related to reading
comprehension which needs to be improved.
As it was mentioned, many students do not understand what they read, because
they do not recognize some suitable vocabulary in the text. Hence, to develop this
area we can quote to Paul Nation (2013), when he proposed a series of advices for
teachers in order to improve the reading skills of students, for example:
 Give the meaning of unknown L2 words in L1, to clarify the ‘first sight’
students experiment with the words. For that purpose teacher could use
pictures, images, videos, etc.
 Put the words in a glossary, it could work as a final glossary (at the end of
the text which is going to be read), or in-text (in the same page we are going
to find the word in context.
 Give word meanings to the students while reading the text. It is important to
mention that it works in a good way, but teachers have to pay special
attention when applying this reading tip, in order to do not make the
students lose their concentration while paying attention in knowing the new
words.
We think that the main issue to be improved, avoiding the negative aspects it
contains at the current time is the content of the books. Being that, learners do not
feel interested because the topics are too general, or simply, they do not cover
their preferences. A possible solution for this problem could be creating or
suggesting students to read texts in accordance with their age and interests. In this

7. way learners would like to read, due to the fact that they will look forward to doing
it, and not because they are obligated to do it (especially in educational context).
It is essential to indicate that teachers are the change agent in the process of
reading, the entity that could promote the students to develop their reading skills. In
fact, it is not relevant the number of students; whereas which is the really important
factor, is that teachers must be able to implement strategies to teach this skill
(reading), and most importantly to catch the students’ interest in the topic that is
going to be read.
IV. REFERENCES
Agencia de la Calidad de la Educación. Gobierno de Chile. (2012). SIMCE Inglés
2012: Resultados para Padres y Apoderados. Retrieved from
http://archivos.agenciaeducacion.cl/resultados-
simce/fileadmin/Repositorio_Ingles/2012-
IPA/IPA_III_medio_ingles_2012.pdf, June 20th, 2015.
Budiharso, T. (2014). Reading Strategies in EFL Classroom: a Theoretical Review
(Cerendekia ed., Vol. n°3, pp. 191). Samarinda: Mulawarman University.
Holdaway, D. (1979). The foundations of literacy. Reviews. Toronto: Ashton
Scholastic. Retrieved from http://mje.mcgill.ca/article/viewFile/7389/5319,
June 20th, 2015.
Nation,P. [compassmedia].(2013). Dealing with Vocabulary in Class: Vocabulary
and Intensive Reading.Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Bl2kjGYeo, June 20th, 2015.
Neuman, S. y Celano, D. (2001). Books Aloud: a campaign to put books in
children’s hands’. The reading teacher. (54), 550-557.

8. Snow, C. y Sweet, A. (2003). Reading for comprehension. In A. P. Sweet & C. E.
Snow (Eds.), Rethinking Reading comprehension (pp. 1-10). New York:
Guilford Press.