READING FOUNDATIONS

OBJECTIVE: By the end of the lesson students will be able to describe the concept of Reading and the processes readers undergo in comprehending a text.

TALKING POINT
1. When presenting a reading activity, what is the first thing you ask your students to do? Do they begin the reading immediately? Why or why not? 2. What challenges do your students face when completing a reading task?

WHATS READING?
Reading is defined as an active, fluent process which involves the reader and the reading material in building meaning

Anderson, N. J. (1999). Exploring second language reading. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.

THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS

SENDER ENCODER F._________ MESSAGE ? A.________ B. ________

WRITER
SPEAKER

C. ________
D.________

THE READER AND READING MATERIAL

There are two factors that facilitate the meaningbuilding process: The reader and the reading material. When we engage in reading activities, we use information that is printed on the pages; but, we also use what we already know to create meaning.

SCHEMA
In other words, the readers ability and success with reading is influenced by the readers prior knowledge, life experiences in general, attitude towards reading or the topic, and so on.

Adams, M. J., & Collins, A. C. (1979). A schema-theoretic view of reading. In R. Freedle(Ed.), New directions in discourse processing (pp. 1-22). Nonvood, NJ: Ablex.

THE READING PROCESS

Successful readers engage in several cognitive processes. Carlos Snchez Lozano (2004) argues that reading has three stages: 1. decoding 2. making inferences 3. critical reading
Snchez Lozano, C. (2004). El desafo de ensear la comprensin lectora. Novedades Educativas, 161, Mayo,

THE THREE STAGES

1. During the decoding stage, readers translate symbols into sounds or visual representations of speech. 2. The second stage is when the reader makes inferences, or makes guesses about the meaning. 3. The third stage is critical reading. Here the reader attempts to reach a global understanding of the authors intended meaning and seeks to identify the authors underlying intentions.

The reader is able to make judgments on the message.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, N. J. (1999). Exploring second language reading. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
Adams, M. J., & Collins, A. C. (1979). A schema-theoretic view of reading. In R. Freedle(Ed.), New directions in discourse processing (pp. 1-22). Nonvood, NJ: Ablex. Snchez Lozano, C. (2004). El desafo de ensear la comprensin lectora. Novedades Educativas, 161, Mayo.

READING APPROACHES
These are the processes readers engage in when Reading.
1. BOTTOM-UP 2. TOP-DOWN 3. INTERACTIVE MODELS

BOTTOM-UP

TOP-DOWN

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chamot, A. U., & O'Malley, J. M. (1994). Instructional approaches and teaching procedures. In K. S. Urbschat & R. Pritchard (eds.), Kids come in all languages: Reading instruction for ESL students. Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Dechant, E. (1991). Understanding and teaching reading: An interactive model. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. McCormick, T. W. (1988).Theories of reading in dialogue: An interdisciplinary study. New York: University Press of America.

SCHEMA THEORY
Singhal, M, (1998). A comparison of L1 and L2 reading: Cultural differences and schema. The internet TESL journal. Retrieved March 13, 2010 from: http://iteslj.org/Articles/SinghalReadingL1L2.html

SCHEMA (SCHEMATA PLURAL)

Schema is knowledge about the topic that individuals have already acquired through various experiences. These experiences and knowledge are activated when reading and can help the reader connect previous experiences to the content of the text. In the literature, a distinction is made between three types of schema knowledge: 1. content schema 2. linguistic schema 3. formal schema (genre)

CONTENT SCHEMA
Content schema refers to previous general knowledge we have about a particular topic. We use the knowledge we have about past experiences to make connections to new information in the text. Using content schema can connect old and new information, which can help us understand the message of a text more clearly. The background knowledge that readers bring to the task can include information, ideas, beliefs and values that a reader has.

FORMAL SCHEMA
Formal schema or rhetorical patterns refer to the knowledge we have about the different organizations of text. For instance, letters, essays, newspaper articles, and postcards all have different organization. Lets consider an example. When you give your students a newspaper article and they look at it, provided they have been exposed to newspaper articles in Spanish before, they will know that it is organized in paragraphs, that it has a headline and that it can also have subheadings (if it is long). If students can use their knowledge of newspaper articles to the reading task in English, they should know that the headline gives the topic of the piece of news and that each paragraph has information introduced by the subheadings.

LINGUISTIC SCHEMA
The third type of schema is linguistic schema which refers to the linguistic information we have stored in our mind in order to decode words and their meanings. Examples about linguistic schema are the following: a) verbs are converted into past by using -ed, b) the progressive is formed by using be plus the ending -ing, c) the prefix un- is used to make the opposite of some words like unhappy, and so on. This type of linguistic schema is also considered data-driven, or bottom-up. Readers can understand the meaning by using linguistic information.

READING TASK
Read the text Reading in the TKT Course by Mary Spratt, Alana Pulverness and Melanie Willians. Find these concepts and underline them: Reading Cohesion Coherence Scanning Skimming Reading for detail Extensive Reading Intensive Reading Now discuss the meaning of these terms with a classmate. Do you understand all the concepts?

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Singhal, M, (1998). A comparison of L1 and L2 reading: Cultural differences and schema. The internet TESL journal. Retrieved March 13, 2010 from: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Singhal-ReadingL1L2.html