The nature of reading and comprehension

Lecture 8

Teaching Reading

1. Reading as a communicative activity.

2. What is efficient reading?

3. The technique or reading.

4. How can we teach efficient reading?

In the study of English, reading has often been at the center of debate among teachers and scholars.

What is reading?

What words will you use to give a definition of reading?

(a) understand, interpret, meaning, sense etc.

(b) decode, decipher, identify etc.

If you use the ideas reflected in group (b) you want to say, probably, that unless we can correctly recognize the words we meet in print, we cannot even begin to read.

If you use the words from group (c) you mean that the reading lesson is used as an opportunity to teach pronunciation, encourage fluent and expressive speaking and so on.

For early readers reading aloud is of course an important aid, beginners have to discover how writing is associated with the spoken words they have already learned to use.

But the early reading stage does not last long – two or three years at most, normally. What is the function of reading aloud after that?

Reading aloud is not common outside the classroom. Most of our reading is done silently, unless there are special circumstances such as reading to someone who has lost the spectacles.

If you use the words from the group (a) you mean that you read because you want to get something from the text: facts, ideas, enjoyment; whatever it is, you want to get message that the writer expressed.

So the words in group (a) turn to be the most important ones, if we are thinking of a definition of reading.

There are many definitions of reading given by researchers. I’ll give you the definition, given by С.К. Фомкина and З.И. Клычникова:

«Чтение –процесс восприятия и активной переработки информации, закодированной по системе того или иного языка». (З.И. Клычникова. Психология особенности обучения чтению на иностранном языке. М. 1973)

The nature of reading and comprehension.

Reading is a process of recognition, interpretation, and perception of written or printed material.

Comprehension is the understanding of the meaning of the written material and covers the conscious strategies that lead to understanding.

The process of reading deals with language form, while comprehension, the end and product, deals with language –content.

Reading is a process of communication from the writer to the reader. It involves the recognition of letters, words, phrases, and clauses, and in some respects, it can be considered a simpler process than comprehension.

Comprehension, on the other hand, is a process of negotiating understanding between the reader and the writer. It is a more complex psychological process and includes linguistic factors, such as phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic elements, in addition to cognitive and emotional factors. The reader receives information from the author through the words, sentences, paragraphs, and so forth, and tries to understand the inner feelings of the writer.

What abilities and skills are important in developing reading comprehension? Researches state six general component skills, and knowledge areas of reading as a process.

1. Automatic recognition skills.

2. Vocabulary and structural knowledge.

3. Formal discourse structure knowledge.

4. Content/word background knowledge.

5. Synthesis and evaluation skill/strategies.

6. Metacognitive knowledge and skills monitoring (what helps comprehension e.g. To listen to and report on, or when they anticipate the information to come from the title)

Reasons for reading

Take 5 minutes to list all different kinds of things you have read recently. Don’t forget to include things like telephone directory, tables, maps, timetable, notices, letters, instructions, etc.

Now think about the things you have listed. Why did you read each one? What did you want to get from it? Was it information only? You will find that you had a variety of reasons for reading.

How did your various reasons for reading influence the way you read? Did you read the telephone directory in the same way as the newspaper? What was the difference?

We conclude that the way you read is influenced by your purpose in reading. The quick scanning of a page in the telephone directory to find a single name is very different from the careful attention you paid to each word in a legal document. The difference in the speeds you used was no doubt very noticeable. Whatever the reasons for reading were (excluding the reading concerned with language learning), it is unlikely that you were interested in the pronunciation of what you read and it is even less likely that you were interested in the grammatical structures used. You read because you wanted to get something, a message, you communicated with the writer.