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Aklan Catholic College

Archbishop Gabriel M. Reyes St.
5600 Kalibo, Aklan, Philippines
Tel. Nos.: (036)268-4152; 268-9171
Fax No.: (036)268-4010
Website: http://www.acc.edu.ph
E-mail Add: [email protected]

Language Instructional Materials ELS Cognate 2

Lecture Note – Lesson 5

Materials to Develop Reading Skills

Results show that reading is a slow and laborious decoding process which causes poor comprehension and low self-
esteem.
 Fluent reader (Pang, 2008):
1. Vocabulary size of 10000 to 100000
2. Awareness of text type and discourse organization
3. Prior knowledge of L1 skills
4. Good at monitoring the comprehension process and making conscious use of strategies effectively

Pang (2008) investigates the studies on L2 fluent and less fluent reader characteristics, focusing on 3 dimensions:
language knowledge and processing ability, cognitive ability, and metacognitive strategic competence.

 Grabe (2009) identified four components of L2 reading fluency:

1. automaticity
2. accuracy
3. reading rate
4. prosodic structuring
Fluent reading should not only mean rapid and automatic processing but also accurate and appropriate assignment
of meaning performed at an optimal reading rate.

MAJOR APPROACHES TO TEACHING L2 READING MATERIALS:

1. The reading comprehension-based approaches
2. The language-based approaches
3. The skill/strategy-based approaches
4. The schema-based approaches

1. THE READING COMPREHENSION-BASED APPROACHES

 Rereading passages include vocabulary and comprehension test
 Vallace (2011): Comprehension is in the form of presentation of text followed by post reading questions on
the text.
 Tests: true/false, gap filling, matching, question and answer

Three possible aims:

 Check comprehension
 Facilitate comprehension
 Ensure that the learner reads the text

Underlying assumption of the Comprehension-Based Approach:

 Text has only one meaning-one intended by the writer
 Text has potential for meaning which will vary from reader to reader depending upon a multitude of factors.
 It is impossible even for L1 proficient readers to agree completely on the meaning of a text due to
individual’s experiences
 Reader achieves interpretation rather than comprehension

Mental Representation:
 Corresponds to the meaning of the text constructed in the reader’s mind
 Depends on connecting the information gained through decoded linguistic data with the knowledge already
exists in the reader’s mind.
 Each individual’s knowledge is the result of conceptual reformulation through experiences.

2. THE LANGUAGE-BASED APPROACHES

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 Recent literature on reading: the vital importance of nurturing learners’ automatic language processing
ability to facilitate successful reading.
 Vocabulary + grammar exercises

Pre-reading vocabulary activities

 reading sections start with vocabulary activities related to the texts
 short texts for mainly teaching grammar
 once learners acquire the habit of language use through learning grammar and lexis, the learner becomes a
fluent reader
 Reading being treated as a means of language practice through the use of simplified texts and graded
readers
 word difficulty + sentence length = plausible indices for predicting text accessibility
 Simple English is written in short easy sentences with not too many long words.

Criticisms
 Understanding the linguistic meaning of a text doesn’t equal understanding the textual meaning.
 Active role of the reader is important in the reading process (use of prior knowledge and metacognitive
strategies)

Supports
 It negates the claim that skillful readers use contextual guidance to preselect the meanings of the words
(meaning is selected while the language is being processed).
 Regained support for the claim that the learners need general language ability and automatic word
recognition.
 Verbal protocol: vocabulary knowledge is of primary importance in reading.

Vocabulary studies indicate that fluent reading requires:

 fast and automatic word identification;
 extensive knowledge of the lexicon;
 the ability to attribute the most appropriate meanings to lexical items in relation to their context and co-text.

Many course books use the Presentation, Practice, Production Approach (PPP) to teaching grammar and vocabulary
and to make use of reading texts for language teaching (Tomlinson and Masuhara, 2013). The current PPP
Approach combines the teaching of formal grammar with communication activities. Grammar structures or rules
are first presented. Then they are practiced in a controlled manner. Finally, freer communicative activities (involving
reading) follow.

Tomlinson (2000) recommends:

Delaying reading at the initial stage of language learning because the learners do not yet have enough language to
read experientially.
When formal reading instruction begins at school, L1 children have more or less established:
 Flexible and extensive aural/oral vocabulary
 Intuitive knowledge of English syntax

Preschoolers may have had opportunities for relaxed, proto-reading experiences, such as listening to
bedtime stories in which most of the vocabulary in the text is likely to be known and the unknown can be inferred,
explained either visually or verbally in interaction with a parent or just ignored until the preschoolers’ needs and
wants arise. In L2 reading, instruction begins simultaneously with L2 language learning. No reading instruction per se
is given but the learners are expected to read texts on the assumption that once we learn a language system, we
should be able to read well.

The importance of automatic access to vocabulary has led many course books to present pre-reading
vocabulary exercises:
 explicit pre-teaching of vocabulary can help learners acquire or recall language knowledge;
 doing vocabulary work before reading can help learners to comprehend the text better.

3. THE SKILL/STRATEGY-BASED APPROACHES

Skill learning Vs. Knowledge learning

 Skill learning: The learner acquires the sensor, motor, and cognitive abilities necessary for using a
language in an accurate, fluent, and appropriate manner.
 Knowledge learning: learn words in the target language consciously and verbally.
 Skill: an acquired ability that has been automatized and operates largely subconsciously.
 Strategy: conscious procedure carried out to solve a problem.
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A successful reader is someone who:

 is aware of the kinds of texts and kinds of suitable strategies
 can monitor and control his strategy use according to a particular purpose of reading

Reading is a complex operation that involves many potential strategies. Each strategy has sub-skills and sub-
strategies.

Strategies for vocabulary:

 Identifying part of speech, analyzing morphological components, make use of any related phrases or
relative clauses in the context.

Strategies for grammar:

 Discourse, related strategies, strategies solving ambiguity by inferring
 The efficacy of the skills/strategy approach depends on that the conscious training will eventually transfer to
become a subconscious skill.

Strategy’ emerged in the materials

 Readers are considered to be active agents who direct their own cognitive resources in reading.
 Readers’ cognitive resources: knowledge of the reading process; use of a variety of reading strategies (e.g.
scanning for specific information).

4. THE SCHEMA-BASED APPROACHES

 A theory about knowledge in the mind. It hypothesizes how knowledge is organized in the mind and how it is
used in processing new information
 Comprehension happens when a new experience is understood in comparison with a stereotypical version
of a similar experience held in memory.
 The reading process cannot be explained without acknowledging the vital importance of knowledge systems
in the reader’s mind.

Pre-reading activities:
 Ask learners to discuss, in pairs or groups, the personal experience related to the theme or the topic of the
lesson.
 Asking learners to consider statements, text titles, and illustrations.
 Activation of content information: recalling information
 Provide learners with a series of texts designed to achieve a critical mass (i.e. sufficient background
knowledge about a certain theme to enable readers to achieve successful comprehension).

Problems:
 Authentic texts are too complex to allow readers to easily select and apply appropriate schemata.
 A schema is a pre-packaged system of stereotypical knowledge and such a fixed structure may not meet
the demands imposed by the ever-changing context we find in authentic texts.
 Schema theories do not explain well how the mind creates, destroys, and reorganizes schemata or how
schemata are retrieved from the memory during comprehension.

AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO MATERIALS FOR READING SKILLS

Principles:
 Engaging affect should be the prime concern of reading materials.
 Listening to a text before reading it helps decrease linguistic demands and encourages learners to focus on
meaning.
 Reading comprehension means creating a multidimensional mental representation in the readers’ minds.
 Materials should help learners experience the text first before they draw their attention to its language.

Principle 1: Engaging affect should be the prime concern of reading materials

Good texts work on learners’ affect, which is vital for deep processing and creates reasons and motivation
to read on. Affect is occasionally mentioned in the literature as a peripheral factor, but the engagement of affect (e.g.
interest, attitude, emotions) should be given prime importance in reading materials production.
Neuroscience (i.e. the study of the central nervous system - study of the brain) provides evidence that
emotion casts a powerful influence on cognition, learning, and memory.
Emotionally charged memory makes an instant and strong impression and it stays in our memory for a long
time. In reading, the same proficient L1 reader may process the same text differently on separate occasions
depending on his/her emotional state and the interest and significance he/she gives to the text at the time.

Principle 2: Listening to a text before reading it helps decrease linguistic demands and encourages learners
to focus on meaning.
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The brain is programmed to process the sensory world, turn that into phonological representations, and turn
those into syllables, words, and phrases, and ultimately allow us to develop a written code which is the orthography
or letters that go with those sounds.
A major difficulty for L2 learners beginning to read:
1. to decode visual stimuli;
2. chunk syntactic and semantic units;
3. extract meaning from the text; and
4. integrate it with their relevant memories to create the overall meaning of the text.

A teacher can make it accessible to the learners by:

1. Taking away the cognitive load of processing scripts and sounds at the same time;
2. Chunking a text into meaningful and manageable lengths to help the learners gradually interpret the
meaning;
3. Adding prosodic features such as prominence that mark situationally informative pragmatic meaning;
4. Achieving impact through reading a text with suitable affect (e.g. humor, anger, etc).

Principle 3: Reading comprehension means creating a multidimensional mental representation

Representation in the Reader’s Mind
Mental representation’- a series of snapshots or movie-like dynamic images with possible sounds and smells as
well as what has been created in the minds of the readers. Each reader’s representation is dynamic and unique,
depending on the individual’s mental state, mood, experience, etc.

Meaning construction in a reader’s/listener’s mind is achieved in a multidimensional way, deriving from the integrated
neural interactions of the various parts of the brain (i.e. the sensory, motor, cognitive, and emotional systems).

Reading a text should allow the learners to experience images, imagine the environment and have
vague sensations, feel some sort of emotion, and remember some personal experiences from their past.

Principle 4: Materials should help learners experience the text first before they draw their attention to its
language.
Reading materials offer activities that help the learners focus on the content of the text and achieve personal
experience of it through multidimensional representation.
By experiencing the text, learners can:
o Activate the sensory, motor, emotional, and cognitive areas of their brain;
o Self-project and self-invest in the activities which lead to deeper processing and to fuller engagement;
o Have time to make errors and adjustments in connecting verbal codes and with non-verbal
representations;
o Have time to talk to themselves in their L1;
o Have time to develop inner speech in the L2 before publicly speaking out or writing.