Reading Comprehension and Reading Aloud – Connected?

1. Reading Comprehension and Reading Aloud – Connected? Miri Yochanna ETAI Conference Summer 2013 Contact: miri.yochanna@smkb.ac.il

2. Today’s topic: Lexical Retrieval Lexical retrieval is an essential process in both oral and written language production and an important aspect of fluency. It involves the selection of lexical concepts, resulting in lemmas representing a word’s syntax that are subsequently morphologically, phonologically, and phonetically encoded to be either articulated (Levelt, 1989; Levelt, Roelofs, &Meyer, 1998) or written down. In contrast to the closely related process of lexical access (“word recognition”), where forms have to be recognized in order to arrive at the correct lexical concept, in lexical retrieval concepts are transformed into linguistic forms. Although the order in which the components of the process are active is reversed in lexical access and lexical retrieval, most components are interchangeable (Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). In their influential model of the writing process, Hayes and Flower (1980) distinguished lexical retrieval (“translating”) from other processes involved in text production, such as generating ideas, planning, organizing, and reviewing. Kellogg (1996) also stressed the importance of lexical retrieval in his discussion of the processes involved in written text production. In an experimental study, Kellogg (1994) showed that lexical retrieval is highly effortful, even for native speakers. Although planning and reviewing placed the greatest demands on cognitive resources, as measured by reaction time (RT) interference on a secondary task (an auditory probe), it turned out that translating content into sentences, which involves lexical retrieval and syntactic processing, was also highly effortful and slowed reaction times about 350 ms above baseline times. As cognitive resources are limited, it is possible that devoting too much attention to lexical retrieval could have adverse effects on the writing process (for a discussion of attention limits, see Kellogg, 1999; Lea & Levy, 1999). More attention being devoted to lexical retrieval may result in less attention available to planning, reviewing, and other cognitive operations necessary for writing (Hayes, 1996; Kellogg, 1996).

3. Classwork Answer the following questions according to the text. What does lexical retrieval involve? What is the difference between lexical access and lexical retrieval? How do we know that lexical retrieval is hard work?

4. Let’s try something else … Let’s look at that same article and work on it just a little differently.

5. Today’s topic: Lexical Retrieval Within writing research, some studies have shown a relationship between resource demands and writing by experimentally increasing the cognitive load in writing tasks (for a review, see Alamargot & Chanquoy, 2001). Penningroth and Rosenberg (1995) showed that narrative writing with a higher information processing load negatively affected ratings of coherence, but not of holistic quality. Lea and Levy (1999) demonstrated that a secondary task (i.e., detecting and signaling the visual alternation of letters and digits) negatively affected both writing fluency and writing quality. Scardamalia, Bereiter, and Goelman (1982), on the other hand, only found a relationship between resource demands and text length but not between resource demands and text quality. They showed that for Grades 4 and 6 children, neither slow rate of output nor interference from mechanical demands (e.g., spelling and punctuation) led to a decline in text quality. Nevertheless, in another experiment (cf. Scardamalia et al., 1982) they found that when children were forced to retain information in short-term memory, there was sometimes information loss between forecasts (i.e., the words they intended to say) and actual writing. This finding implies that a slow writing rate may be a disadvantage in that children may forget some of the words they are going to say. Finally, in a study focusing on lexical retrieval, Brown, McDonald, Brown, and Carr (1988) showed that when lexical material had to be retrieved from memory this process usurped attention from execution processes, resulting in reduced legibility and a greater number of errors. Within reading research, there is a well-established school of thought that cognitive resources devoted to one subprocess preclude attention being given to other important subprocesses, and that this may also be reflected in the quality of the process as a whole. Evidence has also been found for the influence of high resource demands on text comprehension (Favreau & Segalowitz, 1983; Just & Carpenter, 1992; Koda, 1996; Perfetti, 1985).

6. Reading Comprehension, Why? To expose the students to language To enrich their vocabulary To enrich their language To expand their knowledge To practice reading To have a starting point for discussion To….

7. What do we want them to be able to do? Is that enough? The ultimate goal of a fluent reader is to read at a normal speaking pace while comprehending what they read (Faver, 2008). To read and understand what they’ve read.

8. How do we do this? • Bring in texts that are at level or one step above, i+1 level. • Bring in texts that are of interest to the class • Texts that they have the background knowledge for • Texts that they will remember after you’ve read it • Texts that leave them wanting more • Work on it properly with them in class. • What does that mean?

9. Pre-reading • Before you read a text with the class, ALWAYS do some sort of pre-reading activity. • The purpose of a pre-reading activity is prediction and familiarity with the topic. • The Ultimate Question is, “So, what do you think the story / passage is about?” • Pre-reading ideas: • Show title and ask the Ultimate Question • Present a few words from the passage • Present a few words from the passage and a few familiar words not from the passage • Show a picture (if available) or a series of pictures

10. While reading • Now we come to the aim of this talk  • A few options: • Divide text into sections, ask leading question about each bit and have the students read silently. • You read each section aloud and then ask questions • Ask a leading question and then read aloud the relevant section • After each option, ask many other questions to enable comprehension and multiple readings of the same section of the text. • The aim is to enable comprehension by all via discussion, scanning, skimming and rereading of the text.

11. Teacher Reads Aloud Teacher reading aloud in class has been connected with student success in reading achievement (Gatsakos 2004) Teacher reading aloud has been seen as an important aspect of the student becoming literate. Teacher reading aloud exposes the students to correct language, intonation, pronunciation, and enables comprehension via the use of emotion, drama and voice. Teacher reading aloud could encourage the students to read the same passage / book on their own, or to find a related passage.

12. What about the students reading aloud???? On the one hand… Reading aloud is something less proficient readers do naturally to enable themselves to hear what they are deciphering. Reading aloud may be useful when done in a non-stressful environment, with no time constraints and no pressure to perform. Reading aloud is easier to do with a passage that has been viewed before, either via scanning, skimming or full reading. Reading aloud becomes easier with each successive reading of the same passage.

13. On the other hand… Reading aloud something you’ve never seen before is bound to be less successful. A student reading aloud in class is more focused on deciphering what is written correctly in order to save face than on understanding what he/she is reading. A student reading aloud in class tends to read to his / her desk so that no one else can share the reading. When a student reads aloud, the others are meant to follow, which is a near impossibility most times. Reading aloud is stressful for many ESL / EFL students

14. Consider: Your students are beginners or intermediate at best. Reading in a foreign language is daunting enough without being put on the spot. Research shows that we need at least 9 meaningful encounters with a vocabulary item to make it accessible to us and to enable us to acquire it. The more our students reread something, the higher their comprehension of it will be. Reading aloud is useful when the teacher does it OR when the student is reading to him/herself.

15. How to do this in class Any text can be taught in the same manner! • Before bringing the text to class: divide the text into sections for yourself. • Go through the text and ask as many questions as you can about the content, about each line. • For example: The King • In class, before actually reading, do a pre-reading activity that is suitable for the text. • When you get to the while reading section of your lesson, go through the entire text, bit by bit, either having the class read quietly or you read aloud. • To enable them to read aloud (simply because some of them like it) ask them to read the line where they found the answer. • At the end ask general questions to make sure they all understood the text. • What can we learn from this text? • Did you enjoy the story? Why? Why not? • What was your favorite part? • What didn’t you understand?

16. Questions? Happy Reading Everyone!