Wednesday, July 23, 2008

MODELS OF READING: INTERACTIVE-CONSTRUCTIVE & NEW LITERACY APPROACHES

INTERACTION IN THE READING PROCESS


  • Basically a combination of bottom-up and top-down models of reading

  • So models of Interactive approach can either focus either on the reading process (cognitive processes) or the product of reader’s interaction with the info & prior knowledge

Important features


A) Automaticity (application of lower level skills). In other words application of lower level reading skills is done automatically
B) Interaction between text & background knowledge
▫Interaction of the writer’s intentions and the reader’s interpretations
▫For example : What are the two meanings of the following sentence:


Flying planes can be dangerous

This shows that the writer’s intention and the reader’s background knowledge sometimes do not match

C) The role of social, contextual & political variables affecting meaning making


Problems with BU and TD

Drawbacks of Bottom-Up



  • The idea of linear processing
  • Underestimated the contribution of the reader
  • Failed to recognize that students utilize their expectations about the text based on their knowledge of language and how it works
  • Failure to include previous experience and knowledge into processing

Drawback of Top-Down

  • When reading topics which are completely new and foreign, it is inefficient, impractical and perhaps impossible to make predictions about the reading
  • E.g. Imagine an ‘orang asli’ boy who has never left the village reading about MP
  • Or a boy from Hmong tribe in Vietnam reading about Halloween

INTERACTIVE READING MODEL

  • An interactive reading model attempts to combine the valid insights of bottom-up and top-down models.
  • It attempts to take into account the strong points of the bottom-up and top-down models, and tries to avoid the criticisms levelled against each, making it one of the most promising approaches to the theory of reading today. (McCormick, T. 1988)
  • To reiterate, an interactive reading model is a reading model that recognizes the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes simultaneously throughout the reading process.
  • Emphasize the role of prior knowledge or pre-existing knowledge in providing the reader with non-visual or implicit information in the text.
  • Also, add the fact that the role of certain kind of information-processing skills is also important.
  • Interactive approaches see the advent of the incorporation of bottom-up and top-down approaches to reading (Eskey, 1988; Samuels and Kamil, 1988).
  • Both modes of information processing, top-down and bottom-up alike, are seen as strategies that are flexibly used in the accomplishment of the reading tasks (Carrell and Eisterhold, 1983; Carrell, 1988; Clarke, 1979; Eskey, 1988; Grabe, 1988).
  • Hence,the interactive approaches rely on both the graphic and contextual information


RUMELHART MODEL

  • Successful reading is both a perceptual and a cognitive process
  • Stresses the influence of various sources namely feature extraction, orthographic knowledge, lexical knowledge, syntactic knowledge and semantic knowledge on the text processing and the reader’s interpretation.
  • Incorporates a mechanism labeled as the ‘message centre’, which holds the information and then redirects them as needed.
  • This mechanism allows the sources of knowledge to interact with each other and thereby enable higher-level processing to influence lower-level processing.

In his model:

  • Graphic information enters the process through a Visual Information Store (VIS)
  • A cognitive Feature Extraction Device selects the important features of the graphic input
  • A Pattern Synthesizer takes this information along with syntactic, semantic, orthographic, lexical and pragmatic knowledge (context) in order to produce the most probable interpretation for the graphic input.
  • The reading process is the result of the parallel application of sensory and non-sensory sources of information


STANOVICH MODEL

  • Stanovich introduced the interactive-compensatory reading model
  • Neither BU or TD address all areas of reading comprehension
  • But the interactive-compensatory taps into the strengths of both BU and TD
  • Says that readers rely on both BU and TD processes simultaneously and alternatively depending on the reading purpose, motivation, schema and knowledge of the subject
  • Incorporates the ‘compensatory mode’ to his model with the interaction between the top-down and bottom-up processing.
  • The compensatory mode enables the reader to, “at any level compensate for his or her deficiencies at any other level” (Samuels and Kamil, 1988: 32).
  • This model has enabled researchers to theorize how good and poor readers approach a text.
  • If there is a deficiency at an early print-analysis stage (BU), higher order knowledge structures (TD) will attempt to compensate.
  • For the poor reader, who may be both inaccurate and slow at word recognition but who has knowledge of the text-topic, TD processing may allow for this compensation
  • E.g. A beginning reader who is weak at decoding reads this and do not know the word emerald.
  • The jeweler put the green emerald in the ring
  • He will still understand the meaning of the sentence because he may use context and knowledge of gems to decide what the word i
  • States that if one of the processors (i.e, orthographic, lexical, syntactic and semantic) fails, other processors will facilitate comprehension
  • For example in a cloze vocabulary exercises:
  • Beagles, Retriever, Spaniels, as well as other ____ of dogs are favorite canines for hunting enthusiast.
  • The lexical information is absent, but students would guess the word breeds or types, since syntactic and semantic cues compensate for the absent processors

ANDERSON & PEARSON SCHEMA-THEORETIC VIEW

  • Focus on the role of schemata, knowledge stored in memory, in text comprehension
  • Comprehension = interaction between old & new information
  • Schema Theory: Already known general ideas subsume & anchor new information
  • Include: a) info about the relationships among the components, b) role of inference & c) reliance on knowledge of the content, + abstract & general schemata.

Schemata:
Knowledge already stored in memory, function in the process of interpreting new information and allowing it to enter and become part of the knowledge store
Schema:
An abstract knowledge structure
A structure that represents the relationship among its component parts

Read this:


Queen Elizabeth participated in a long-delayed ceremony in Clydebank. Scotland yesterday. While there is still bitterness here following the protracted strike, on this occasion a crowd of shipyard workers numbering in the hundreds joined dignitaries in cheering as the HMS Pinafore slipped into the water.


What is the name of the ceremony?

PEARSON & TIERNEY R/W MODEL

  • Negotiation of meaning between writer & reader who both create meaning through the text as the medium.
  • Readers as composers:
    “ the thoughtful reader …is the reader who reads as if she were a writer composing a text yet for another reader who lives within her”.
  • Reader reads with the expectation that the writer has provided sufficient clues about the meaning
  • Writer writes with the intention the reader will create meaning
  • Consider: pragmatic theories of language that every speech acts, utterance, or attempt at comprehending an utterance is an actionReading is an act of composing rather than recitation or regurgitation
  • Context is important
  • Knowing why something was said is as crucial to interpreting the message as knowing what was said
  • Failing to recognize author’s goal can interfere with comprehension of the main idea or point of view
  • Focus on the thoughtful reader with 4 interactive roles:
    Planner – creates goal, use existing knowledge, decides how to align with the text
    Composer – searches for coherence in gaps with inferences about the relationship within the text
    Editor – examines his interpretations
    Monitor – directs the other 3 roles

MATHEWSON’S MODEL OF ATTITUDE INFLUENCE

  • A model that addresses the role that attitude and motivation play in reading
  • Attitude intention to read reading
  • Attitude = tri-componential construct: Cognitive component (evaluation), affective component (feeling) , & conative component (action readiness)
  • * Conative = personality, volition, temperament
  • All these influence the intention to read, & the intention to read affects reading behaviour.
  • This model provides feedback on how motivation may change & how important it is to address affective issues in teaching reading.
  • Attitude toward reading may be modified by a change in reader’s goal
  • Examples:
    Topic of no interest
    –Examination on comprehension
  • Feedback during reading may affect attitude and motivation:
  • Satisfaction with affect developed through reading
  • Satisfaction with ideas developed through reading
  • Feelings generated by ideas from the reading process
  • Ideas constructed from in the information read
  • How the reading affects values, goals and self-concept

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

assalamualaikum wbt sir.
sir, how did u study during ur phD?
any tips?
btw, what is a viva?
tq.
oh yeah, do maintain the al-Fatihah b4 every class and hope u do a recap as well ;)
bye sir!!!!!

Izaham Shah Ismail said...

Well I studied smart first and then hard. In other words I made things easy for me first then I really work hard at it. At my age learning was so much more meaningful but studying for an exam was really hard since I'm losing a bit of my memory.

Viva Voce literary means oral examination. All doctoral students (except in Australia) must go through this process where they have to present and defend the research they have conducted. During this process the external and internal examiners will ask you questions and make comments on your research.

Ok I'll maitain the Alfatihah thingy before the start of a lesson.

Thank you for commenting. Appreciate it

squ said...

Actually, "viva voce" LITERALLY means "live voice". It consists of an question and answer session done with the doctoral candidate and (usually) a group of examiners of post-doc level.