THEORIES OF READING INSTRUCTION

By: Lenie Mangubat

WHY TEACH THEORY

GUTKNECHT and KEENAN (1978) stated that “competent reading

instructors were able to do more than just follow explicit directions in reading materials.” THORNDIKE (1920)

postulated that reading is reasoning

WILLIAM S. GRAY (1939)believed that reading consisted of four

hierarchical steps or skills.

VIEWING READING AS DEVELOPMENTAL:

Word perception

Comprehension

Reaction

Synthesis

GOODMAN and SMITH (1978)reported on research being conducted

that had as its foundation on the observation of children as they learned language and reading.

The Grapho-phonemic or sound symbol system

The Syntactic or word order system

Semantic or meaning based system

THE THREE CUING SYSTEMS WERE IDENTIFIED AS:

These psycholinguistic theorists postulated that reading took place in the reader’s head where they sampled the print and made predictions about what the author would say next.

The PROFICIENT READER was defined by the psycholinguists as the reader who sampled from all three cuing systems simultaneously and predicted more accurately what the author was saying.

ADVANTAGES OF THESE THEORIES:

they would be able to organize instruction based on the systems that reader use to read

they should be able to more quickly spot the place at which the reading process broke down and then be able to provide the necessary instruction

if instruction is to be individual at a point of need, teachers must develop skills that will empower them to be careful and knowledgeable observers of children and their literary growth

if reading and the language arts are truly seen as intertwined communication skills, then teachers must be able to prepare instruction that echoes that language and reading are interactive processes

GRAYS’ MODEL OF THE READING PROCESS

Gray’s model also called a process model for its attempt to explain what goes on in the reader’s head while reading. It became the forerunner of the underlying philosophy of the first basal readers.

Looking at the model, teacher must recognize that until the child is able to visually discriminate likenesses and differences and then be able to associate those perceptions into what the word is, they cannot get to meaning.

The fallacy lies in making early reading programs training grounds for such discrimination skills as has been done in the past. Such programs spent countless valuable hours in circling on a workbook page the object s that are alike or different. This is totally artificial and does not lead to real reading. Helping children to see the words that are connected to meaningful activities produces greater reading achievements.

Children will construct develop their own discrimination skills as they read, write and print words and pictures.

SYNTHESISsuch evidence points to the step,

when pupils begin to commit to use their comprehension and reactions to a word, sentence or larger piece then they have truly read and interacted with the print.

Being unaware of a pupil’s overall reaction to the print may skew decisions that the teacher may make. This would be particularly true if the teacher uses only one sample day for evaluation and ignores the overall view

PSYCHOLINGUISTIC READING MODEL

The Psycholinguistic Model of Reading is the marriage of two disciplines; psychology the study of how the mind works and linguistic the study of language and how it develops.

USING RESEARCH FROM BOTH SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT HAS LED TO

THE FOLLOWING CONCLUSIONS:

Good readers construct a scenario as they read and predict what the author will say.

Good readers use all three cuing systems simultaneously without mediation.

The task of reading is more difficult than that of the writing of the printed piece, because the reader must assign the appropriate meaning to the passage.

There is no reading without comprehension. Readers who do not understand the test and cannot discuss or react to the text have not read the text even if they have called (pronounced) every word correctly.

Good readers bring a wealth of world knowledge as well as language knowledge to the printed page.

Reading is an active process where readers contribute as much if not more than the author.

FRANK SMITH (1973)stated that reading as a process of

communication transfers information from a “transmitter” to a receiver. It is an active process whereby the receiver , who is defined as the reader, contributes to the transfer by decoding the printed symbols and assigning the intended meaning of the transmitter, defined by Smith as the author.

GOODMAN (1976)defined reading as a psycholinguistic

guessing game where the reader reconstructs a message which has been encoded by an author as a graphic display.

INTERACTIVE READING THEORIES

DURKIN (1992)calls the common sense approach to

teaching reading.defining reading as an interactive

activity where the reader samples from the text, language knowledge, background of experiences and their own schema for a topic or narrative leads educators to teach in interactive manners. Such a theory accepts that reading involves many levels of analysis at the same time but a different levels. These varying levels include skills, reasoning, decoding and hypothesis generation, confirmation or rejection.

Interactive theory hold that reading is an active process in which to comprehend, the reader interacts with a multitude of factors related to himself, the text being read, and the context the reading takes place.

PRINCIPLES OF READING INSTRUCTION:

Reading and writing are language processes.

Literacy learning is a developmental process.

Reading and writing are interrelated and interactive processes and literary instruction should

Always capitalize on this relationship.

Early in the reading process, the learner must acquire ways of recognizing words independently.

The use of quality literature should be an integral part of literacy instruction throughout the school curriculum.

Literacy instruction needs to be an integral component in all content areas.

Teachers need to foster learner’s abilities to reason and critically evaluate written ideas.

Proper literacy instruction depends on the ongoing assessment of each learner’s reading strengths and weaknesses.

Any given technique is likely to work better with some learners than with others.

Motivation contributes to the development of literacy.

The key to successful literacy instruction is the teacher not the material or the technique

Teacher must provide for the needs of exceptional children in regular classroom literacy instruction.

Teacher must be able to create, manage, and maintain an environment conducive to learning.

Teachers of literacy must forge partnerships with the home and community to promote reading growth.

BALANCED READING APPROACHES

While balance reading programs may look different in various classrooms or school districts, there are common elements that they embody. TOMPKINS list these as:

Literacy is viewed comprehensively, as involving both reading and writing.

Literature is at the heart of the programs.

Skills and strategies are taught both directly and indirectly.

Reading instruction involves learning word recognition and identification, vocabulary, and comprehension.

Writing instruction involves learning to express meaningful idea and use of conventional spelling, grammar, and punctuation to express those ideas.

Pupils use reading and writing as tools for learning in the content areas.

The goal of the balanced reading program is to develop lifelong readers and writers.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN TO THE CLASSROOM TEACHER?

Each teacher will choose certain activities, materials , and methods to instruct the young reader. All of these decisions will be based on the teacher’s definition of reading. If the only definition of reading that the instructor possesses is one that is implied by the basal reader in use, then the teacher will be locked into grading rather than true evaluation. An instructional model consists of all the decisions that the teacher makes planning and delivering instruction. This includes but it is not limited to materials, activities, procedures, room arrangement, methods and evaluation.

The teacher’s instructional model is a very personal model that has the most direct impact on pupil learning. For this reason teacher must have developed their instructional models from sound research-based theories.

Readers need to know how to decode printed symbols into meaningful words.

Readers need to be able to assign meaning to words based on the context.

Readers need to read in meaningful texts that are free of artificial constraints such as limited phonological controls or restricted vocabulary.

Readers need to have prior knowledge of text topic or content in order to easily comprehend the reading material.

Readers need more opportunity to read real text and less fragmented “practice” of a drill nature.

THERE ARE SOME BASIC “TRUTHS” FROM WHICH ALL READING PROGRAMS

SHOULD BE DESIGNED:

THE IMPLICATIONS OF INSTRUCTION

Phonics

Sight words

Use of context clues

Structural analysis

Dictionary and Glossary Skills

All forms of decoding should be taught to readers. Both direct and indirect methods are appropriate.

PSYCHOLOGY OF READING

The following is a summary of those findings:

Reading is a sensory process.

Reading is a perceptual process.

Reading is a response.

Reading is a learned process.

Reading is a growth process.

DECHANT and SMITH (1977)stated that there were certain

principles of psychology of reading that teachers need to be aware of and use when planning and implementing reading instruction.

In summary, the factors that seem to influence the learning of reading are the child’s general intelligence, socio economic level, language facility/ability, motivation to read, physical and social development, and opportunity to practice.

Generally brighter students learn more than less bright student do.

Pupils who come from homes which have provided them with opportunities to do and see the community or world will have an advantage over pupils who come from homes that have not provided such opportunities.

Pupils who have the advantage of being healthy, well-fed, and rested will be able to achieve more in reading than pupils who do not have the advantage.

Pupils who come from homes that have read to them and have print materials around and about the home are more likely to be motivated to learn reading.

Pupils who have been read to and allowed to have their own books are more likely to be ready to learn to read than student without these advantages.

READING MODELS

KIND OF READING MODELS:

TOP-DOWN. It emphasizes what the reader brings to the text, such as prior knowledge and experiences. Comprehension begins in the mind of the reader, who already have some ideas about the meaning of the text; proceeds from whole to part.

BOTTOM-UP. Emphasizes the written or printed text. Comprehension begins by processing the smallest linguistic unit (phoneme), and working toward larger units (syllables, words, phrases, sentences.)

A reading model is a graphic attempt “to depict how individual perceives a word, processes a clause, and comprehend a text”.

THE FOLLOWING ARE SOME VIEWS OF RESEARCHERS ABOUT THE BOTTOM-UP

READING MODEL

MCCORMICK (1988)the meaning of the text is expected to come

naturally as the code is broken based on the reader’s prior knowledge of words, their Meaning, and the syntactical patterns of his/her language.

Lexical, syntactic, and semantic rules are applied to the phonemic Output which itself has been decoded from print.

LEONARD BLOOMFIELDthe first task of reading is learning the code

of the alphabet principle by which “written marks…conventionally represent… phonemes.”

PHILIP B. GOUGHreading is strictly serial process: letter-

by-letter visual analysis, leading to positive recognition of every word through phonemic encoding.

BLOOMFIELD and BARNHART (1961)Writing is merely a device for recording

speech.

EMERALD DECHANbottom-up models operate on the

principle that the written text is Hierarchically organized.

CHARLES FRIESthe reader must learn to transfer from

the auditory signs for language signals to a set of visual signs for the same signal. The reader must learn to automatically respond to the visual patterns. The cumulative comprehension of the meanings signal then enable the reader to supply those portions of the signals which are not in the graphic representations themselves learning to read means developing a considerable range of habitual responses to a specific set of patterns of graphic shapes.

SOME FEATURES OF A BOTTOM-UP APPROACH TO READING:

BOTTOM-UP ADVOCATES BELIEVE THE READER NEEDS TO:

Identify letter feature

Link these features to recognize letters

Combine letters to recognize spelling patterns

Link spelling patterns to recognize words

Proceed sentence, paragraph, and text level processing

 INTERACTIVE READING MODEL

An interactive reading model is a reading model that recognizes the interaction of bottom-up and top-down processes simultaneously throughout the reading process. An interactive reading model attempts to combine the valid insights of bottom-up and top-down models.

THE FOLLOWING ARE VIEWS OF SOME RESEARCHERS ABOUT THE INTERACTIVE

READING MODEL:

EMERALD DECHANTThe interactive model suggests that the

reader construct meaning by selective use of information from all sources of meaning without adherence to any one set order. The reader simultaneously uses all level of processing even though one source of meaning can be primary at a given time.

KENNETH GOODMANAn interactive model is one which uses print

as input and has meaning as output. But the reader provides input, too, and the reader, interacting with the text, is selective in using just a little of the cues from text as necessary to construct meaning.

DAVID E. RUMELHARTReading is at once a perceptual and a

cognitive process. It is a process which bridges and blurs these two traditional distinctions. Moreover, a skilled reader must be able to make use of sensory, syntactic, semantic , and pragmatic information to accomplish the task.

INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM

An interactive instructional program is a program for teaching reading and writing. It focuses in teacher-directed interaction between whole language and phonics activities. The rationale behind it is based on the belief that learners need explicit instruction about various reading strategies that they can use to help them understand a text.

BOTH INTERACTIVE AND WHOLE LANGUAGE INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAMS ARE BASED ON A READING THEORY THAT SAY THE FOLLOWING:

1)Readers construct meaning from text by selective use of information from a variety of sources of meaning such as:

Prior knowledge

Experience

Print

Context

2)A reader can choose to draw more heavily on any source of meaning at anytime, yet can process information simultaneously from a variety of sources.

THEORETICAL INFORMATION

SOME MATERIALS NEEDED FOR AN INTERACTIVE INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM:

Plenty of interesting text which people are highly motivated to read. These can be reprinted or student-generated, or both

A phonics or syllable-based primer with lessons linked to meaningful texts.

A teacher guide listing the sounds or syllables to be taught.

An interactive instructional program is based on the interactive model of reading.

PARTS OF THE PROGRAM

Reading readiness

Language experience

Shared reading experiences

Primer lesson (optional)

Writing lessons to teach letter formation

Writing lessons to encourage process writing

Opportunities to develop fluency

FEATURES

HUFFMAN (1998)Structured activities are scheduled to

encourage the development of various reading strategies.

The major focus of the reading program is to assist reader to construct meaning from texts.