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