Lecture 2 - Continued

BOTTOM-UP MODEL OF READING

Gough (1972):
◦Reading as a process that starts with the printed material itself
◦Reading is seen as a linear process
◦From left to right
◦The process is rapid

• Starts with basic skills such as decoding the letters,
• And the combination of the letters to form words.
• It then proceeds with a more complex processing which runs through a series of clauses to phrases to sentences to paragraphs and finally, to the text as a whole
• It starts with the letters being recognized first feature-by-feature by a visual system,
• And then transferred to a sound (phonemic) system for recognition and held until the next letter is processed in the same way.
• Consequently, when words are recognized, they are held in working memory until they are processed for underlying meaning and finally understood as sentences and text as a whole (Purcell-Gates, 1997: 2).

TOP-DOWN MODEL OF READING

• Starts with the reader making predictions about the text.
• His or her predictions are guided by his or her prior knowledge.
• Rather than decoding each symbol, or even every word, the reader forms hypotheses about the text and then ‘samples’ them to determine whether or not the hypotheses they made are correct.
• If the hypotheses are incorrect, the reader re-hypothesize and so the same process continues.

How did Goodman arrive at this model?

He used reader miscue analysis:
◦A method that looks at types of errors readers make while reading aloud
◦Research shows that reading errors related to syntactic and semantic contexts of a lexical item
◦E.g. a reader might read hoped for opened, a for the, he for I.
◦This is taken to mean that guessing and sampling are taking place as text is transformed into meaning.


Smith (1971,1994): it would simply take too much time for a reader to process all visual clues
Knowledge of the linguistic form and knowledge of the world is close and that it has direct implications on the reading process

Notes prepared by Dr. Faizah Majid

Exercise:

Read the title of an article from Reader's Digest

Are Your Normal or Nuts?

Think of the hypotheses that you may have formed, your conceptions and perceptions about the content of the article. Now read the article here and check whether your hypotheses, conceptions or expectations are confirmed.

Lecture 2 - Models of Reading

RESEARCH ON READING

• Cognitive psychologists: late 1870s - James Cattell & Wilhelm Wundt
  Reading as a means to study perceptual processes (eye movement, word recognition, etc)
  (1880s – 1910s)


• 1908 : research moved from cognitive processing to behaviorist explanatory theories
  But, did not contribute much to body of knowledge


• Then taking after Skinnerian psychology, research focused on the reading process

READING PROCESS – PSYCHOLINGUISTIC’S POINT OF VIEW

• Smith (1971) described reading as the “reduction of uncertainty”


• That is, as we progress through a text, our choices of what to select are constrained, often heavily both by features within the text itself and those external to it.

Smith (1971) has categorized this act of ‘reduction of uncertainty’ under 4 headings:

1. graphic information

2. phonetic information

3. syntactic information

4. semantic information

Frank Smith’s famous example:

“The captain ordered the mate to drop the an___”

◦Graphic information – knowledge of English spelling tells us limited possibilities
◦Phonetic information – tells us the limited possibilities of sound, thus, reducing the uncertainty
◦Syntactic information – only adjective and NP phrase can follow ‘the’
◦Semantic information – our knowledge and the context limits us on the things that can be dropped. e.g. antelope

Thus, the uncertainty is reduced to the word ‘anchor’

Goodman (1967) – looked at reading as “a psycholinguistic guessing game”

Readers make use of 3 cue system represented by 3 levels of language within the text:

1. graphophonic (visual & phonetic features)

2. syntactic (possible kind of word order)

3. semantic (meaning of words)

Goodman, K. (1967) Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game.

When reading:

• 1st readers make use of their knowledge in visual and phonetic features of English


• 2nd they draw knowledge of syntactic constraints (possible word order)


• 3rd they are aware of the semantic constraints related to the meaning of the words and their collocation

READING PROCESS – SOCIOLINGUISTIC’S POINT OF VIEW

‘Sociolinguistic factors’ – the way written language use is affected by factors both in the immediate communicative situation between reader and writer and in the wider institutional and sociocultural context.

Kress (1985:44) - “ Although from the individual’s point of view, his or her reading is ‘just a personal opinion, that personal opinion is socially constructed”Thus, in taking a process view of reading, it is important to see it as involving not just psychological processes, but also social factor related to our membership of interpretative communities.

In others, our interpretation of a text is shared with those of similar social class, or ethnic group, religious belief or political belief.

READING PROCESS – INTERTEXTUALITY’S POINT OF VIEW

The production and reception of a given text depends on the writer’s and reader’s knowledge of other texts.It may also be helpful to know how a particular text relates to other texts by the same author and other contemporary genres.

It may also be helpful to know how a particular text relates to other texts by the same author and other contemporary genres.

All texts contain traces of other texts frequently cannot be readily interpreted – or at least fully appreciated – without reference to other texts. e.g. Academic reading materials

IN SHORT, READING PROCESS IS

Interactive in several ways:

1. Interaction between the levels of language within the text

2. Interaction between reader and writer

3. Intertextuality

Notes prepared y Dr. Faizah Majid

Lecture 1 - Reading and the Reader

WHAT READING MEANS

Reading is very much related to language. How ?
a) We use it for a purpose (for both language and
reading)
b) It makes sense in a context (for both language and
reading)

Language is the most important resource for any readers.
We read for different purposes:

—A man at the airport looking the departure time screen
—A student in a library gazes intently at a textbook, occasionally making notes

Purposes are linked to physical setting
(i.e. we cannot identify the purpose for the activity without some knowledge of the setting)


DEFINITION OF READING
In defining reading, apart from looking at the purpose and the physical setting of reading, we have to take into consideration who is speaking and to whom and in what set of circumstances.

Consider what the question ‘Can you read this?’ would mean in each situation:
a) An adult is having a sight test at an optician’s and is asked to read a list of words.
— ‘Are you able to identify the words on the cards?’
b)A child is shown a flash card with the word ‘apple’ on it by the teacher.
—Can you decode the text? – Read aloud without meaning
c)An Islamic religious leader asks a congregation of boys to read aloud the Koran.
—Can you recite the verses correctly?
d)The owner of a new computer asks an experienced friend about instructions in the manual.

Can you interpret the manual?

Reading in general is defined as interpreting, meaning - reacting to a written text as piece of communication; in other words, we assume some communicative intent on the writer’s part which the reader has some purpose in attempting to understand.

WHAT BEING A READER MEANS

Experienced readers make judgments during activity about the degree of care and attention which the material warrants.

Effective reading means a flexible and appropriate response to the material in hand, and this is always guided by the reader’s purpose. (Readers have options e.g. option to give up reading)

Which of the following you carefully scrutinize, cursory read, discard?

—Agreement / contract
—Ingredients of a food product
—Road signs
—SMS
—Exam instructions
—Letter asking for donation
—Sport news
—Political news

News on celebrities

How we response to a reading material and the results of our reading activity will depend on:

—Time
—Attention
—Energy
—Purpose

READING PURPOSE

There are some reasons for reading :

1) Reading for survival
2) Reading for learning
3) Reading for pleasure
—

Survival
—Life and Death : e.g. A STOP sign
—Ladies or Gents
—Exit , Emergency Exit

Serves immediate needs and wishes

Learning

Extending our knowledge
Goal oriented

Does not necessarily take place in academic institutions only

Pleasure
—

Done for its own sake
We do not need to do it if we do not want to
Literature – meant to be for pleasure reading. Nevertheless, it is required reading for examination
Educational practices neglect the pleasure principal

Important product of reading for pleasure is FLUENCY (speed and ease of reading)
If readers do not read for pleasure in L1, very unlikely to do so in L2 or FL

A Vicious Cycle

If we do not have fluency in reading we will not be motivated to read. Not being motivated does NOT help to build fluency.

Source: Wallace, C. (2003)

Notes prepared by Leele & Hanim, adapted by Izaham