1. TEACHING READING

2. Introduction
•What is Reading?
“Reading is a receptive language process.
It is a psycholinguistic guessing game” (1967).
“There is an essential interaction between language and
thought in reading. The writer encodes thought as
language and the reader decodes language as thought."
Kenneth Goodman (1988).
• Reading ability will be developed best with in association with
writing, listening, and speaking activities.
•We will focus on reading as a component of general second
language proficiency, but reading must be considered only in
the perspective of the whole picture of interactive language
teaching.

3. Outline
◊RESEARCH ON READING A SECOND LANGUAGE
Bottom-up and Top-down processing
Interactive Reading Approach
Schema theory and background knowledge
◊MICROSKILLS FOR READING COMPREHENSION
◊STRATEGIES FOR READING COMPREHENSION
Identify the purpose in reading
Use graphemic rules and patterns to aid in
bottom-up decoding (Especially for beginning
learners)
◊LINKS

4. RESEARCH ON READING A SECOND
LANGUAGE
A. Bottom-up and Top-down processing
1. Bottom-up processing
 Readers must first recognize a multiplicity of
linguistic signals,
 Then readers must use their linguistic data-
processing mechanisms to impose order on
these signals.
 From among all the perceived data, the reader
selects the signals that make some sense or
that cohere.

5. 2. Top-down processing
 Processing in which the readers draw on their own
intelligence and experience to understand a text
 The top-down model of reading focuses on what the
readers bring to the process (Goodman, 1967;
Smith, 1971,1982).
 The readers sample the text for information and
contrast it with their world knowledge, helping to
make sense of what is written.
 The focus here is on the readers as they interact with
the text.
Interactive Reading Approach
The combination of both the bottom-up and top-down
processing.
“In practice, a reader continually shifts from one focus
to another, now adopting a top-down approach to
predict probable meaning, then moving to the bottom-
up approach to check whether that is really what the
writer says” (Nuttall 1996: 17)

6. B. Schema theory and background knowledge
• Schema Theory:
The hallmark of which is that a text does not by itself carry a meaning.
• Schemata (plural form):
The reader brings information, knowledge, emotion, experience, and
culture to the printed word.

7. MICROSKILLS FOR READING
COMPREHENSION
1. Discriminate among the distinctive graphemes and
orthographic patterns of English.
2. Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-term
memory.
3. Process writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.
4. Recognize a core of words, and interpret word order patterns
and their significance.
5. Recognize grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc.)
systems (e.g., tense
agreement, pluralization), patterns, rules, and elliptical forms.
6. Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in
different grammatical forms.

8. 7. Recognize cohesive devices in written discourse and their role in signaling the
relationship between and among clauses.
8. Recognize the rhetorical forms of written discourse and their significance for
interpretation.
9. Recognize the communicative functions of written texts, according to form and
purpose.
10. Infer context that is not explicit by using background knowledge.
11. Infer links and connections between events, ideas, etc., deduce causes and effects, and
detect such relations as main idea, supporting idea, new
information, generalization, and exemplification.
12. Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
13. Detect cultural specific references and interpret them in a context of the appropriate
cultural schemata.
14. Develop and use a battery of reading strategies such as scanning and
skimming, detecting discourse markers, guessing the meaning of words from
context, and activating schemata for the interpretation of texts.

9. STRATEGIES FOR READING
COMPREHENSION
1. Identify the purpose in reading
2. Use graphemic rules and patterns to aid in bottom-up decoding
(especially for beginners)
• One of the difficulties students encounter in learning to read is making
the correspondence between spoken and written English.
• Learners have become acquainted with oral language and have some
difficulty learning English spelling conventions.
• So, they may need hints and explanations about certain English
orthographic rules and peculiarities.

10. How you might provide hints and pointers on
such patterns as these?
•“short” vowel sound in VC patterns
(bat, him, leg, wish, etc.)
•“long” vowel sound in VCe (final silent e) patterns
(late, time, bite, etc.)
•“long” vowel sound in VV patterns (seat, coat, etc.)
•Distinguishing “hard” c and g from “soft” c and g (cat vs.
city, game vs. gem, etc.)
These and a multitude of other phonics approaches to
reading can prove useful for learners at the beginning
level and especially useful for teaching children and
non-literate adults.

11. Links
 http://rbeaudoin333.homestead.com/files/sho
rt_vowels/vowelsounds_1.html
 http://rbeaudoin333.homestead.com/files/lon
g_vowels/silent_e_rule_1.html
 http://rbeaudoin333.homestead.com/files/har
dSoft_c_g/hard_soft_c_1.html
 http://rbeaudoin333.homestead.com/files/har
dSoft_c_g/hard_soft_g_1.html