The Reading Process – from understanding to teaching

1. The Reading Process – from understanding to teaching

2. Immediate situational contexts Broader sociolinguistic contexts 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. Letter-sound correspondences 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. context of the sentence / passage • background knowledge / prior experience 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. I can sleep those hiccups. Elephant gives it a toy. I can’t do out and I have nothing to do. Can I read you a story, mum? // No, I’m tiger. Grandma makes a hot in the castle. Miscues – What caused them? (stop) (try) (go) (tired) (hole)

10. All animals are sleep. As the animals go back to sleep. Do you want to do you homework? Miscues – What caused them? (sleeping) (All) (your)

11. It’s a hot sunny afternoon. Poor animal has the hiccups. I can stop her hiccups. “Why not clean your room?” Mum asks. Quality miscues – substitutions that preserve meaning (summer) (elephant) (those) (tidy)

12. “Boo!” her shouts. We like sharing or candy. He was the hiccups. 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 & can’t 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 input Activities / tasks Games …….. input input Other resources: Supplementary / Grammar / Phonics worksheets ….. Big Books Small readers Poems / Plays Reading / Listening materials…. Textbook (framework/ context/ language focus) output guided writing / free writing / reading aloud / reading interest / project……. life experiences intellectual development aesthetic experiences authentic and meaningful use of language

26. Connecting with the Natural World input input input Textbook Unit 5: Telling the time, describing habitual actions Unit 6: Days of the week Unit 7,8: Weather and seasons output life experiences intellectual development aesthetic experiences Activities : songs & rhymes, sharing of students’ work Big Books: 1.What’s the time ? 2.Every Monday 3.All through the week with cat and dog 4.What’s the weather like today? 5. Weather machine Small readers: 1. The busy giant 2. Winnie and the cat • Other resources: • teacher’s diary • worksheets • sounds (ay, og, • ice) free writing — ‘Mydiary’: 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. the, and, I, book, play, happy, big…. 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. Fluent oral reading (with expression) Access to models of expressive reading (SILENT) READING FLUENCY Word recognition (fast & accurate) Chunking words (syntactic cues) Comprehension (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 & evolvingcomplex 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 lessthan 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. Repeated practice = teaching=good performance in comprehension?? 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 don’t 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?