Reading Comprehension in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (página 2)

According to Grabe (1997) reading is an interaction
between reader and text. Grabe claims that reading requires
efficient knowledge of world and a given topic also an efficient
knowledge of the language. As it is stated, reading requires a
rich background, and also some ability to comprehend the texts.
On the other hand Rebecca& Sadow (1985) claim that reading is
related to language and it requires being efficient in
L2.

Also other writers agree on that good readers have to do
some other jobs in order to comprehend a text: they should
connect new text with past experiences –they mean
background knowledge-, interpret, evaluate, synthesize, and
consider alternative interpretations (Pressley & Afflerbach
,1995). While doing this task, students need also some strategies
to help them make their reading comprehension easy.

Reading in EFL
Context

Reading is one of the four main skills in language
learning and also one of the hardest one for a foreign language
learner. Moreover, this situation is stated by writers: According
to Susser and Robb (1990), reading is a skill, that is most
emphasized in a traditional FL teaching.

Approaches in reading
in EFL classrooms

Some researchers defended the bottom-up approach in
order to describe the situation of the reader. In this approach
reader puts together letters to form words, clauses, sentences,
and paragraphs to catch the meaning. Thus, by doing this, reading
activity is conducted by the structure of the text that is read
by language learners. Carrell (1998) also states this issue
as:Bottom-up processing is decoding individual linguistics
[…] and building textual meaning from the smallest units
to largest, and then modifying preexisting background knowledge
and current predictions on the basis of information encountered
in the text. According to Miller (2007) bottom-up processing
helps students to become a fast and good reader but on the other
hand, without having any efficient knowledge on the second
language, this processing does not be successful. On the other
side, other researchers focus on the top-down approach that is
conceptually driven. This approach encourages students to use
their background knowledge in order to make predictions about the
texts they read (Carrel, 1998). In the top-down view of foreign
language reading, not only is the reader an active participant in
the reading process, making predictions and processing
information, but everything in the reader"s prior experience or
background knowledge plays a significant role in the process.
Miller (2007) in his study touches upon reading strategies; he
gives information about thirty years ago and recent times also.
He states that reading was based on top-down skills about thirty
years ago, the main concern of reading was "meaning". In this way
teachers were supporting students to use their background
knowledge in order to enhance their reading comprehension.
However, he says that there has been a change from bottom-up
skills to top-down ones recently; it focuses on firstly the
exact, literal comprehension of the text.

Kayashi, who researched university students in Japan
(1999,) claims that students in his study might have used various
reading strategies while doing reading activity he emphasizes the
"top-down" and "bottom-up" strategies. Besides, he also claims
that, after his study with Japanese students, in their first
stages of learning they use dictionary, memorization of words,
taking notes and translation word-for-word
into L1. In the later stage, they refer to guessing the meaning
of the word from the context. In the final stages students use
strategies such as "transitional words", "finding clues" and
using background knowledge.

The Strategies in
Reading in EFL

In order to help students their comprehension of reading
and also increase their reading ability students have to use some
skill and strategies. This review of literature will define the
difference between reading skills and reading strategies, and
illustrate before, during, and after reading
strategies.

Differences between
reading skills and reading strategies

A reading skill is a helpful tool that a student
practices in order to improve reading (Hollas, 2002). Teachers
teach various skills to improve the understanding of reading.
Unfortunely, many of the students while decoding do not
comprehend what they are reading. On the other hand, a reading
strategy is a plan or way of
doing something; a specific procedure one uses to perform a skill
(Hollas, 2002). Weinstein and Mayer (1986) defined strategies as
behaviours and thoughts that a learner engages in during learning
that are intended to influence the learners encoding process.
Further, Alexander, et al. (1985) defined a strategy as a
procedural, purposeful, effortful, willful, essential and
facilitative. They asserted that strategies are mandatory for
academic development.

Students today have difficulty getting through a short
reading assignment, such as a newspaper article. This difficulty
is associated with the lack of ability to focus and concentrate
on written words. Due to this, many students need guidance and
strategies to help focus on reading and to do more than just read
the words on a piece of paper. The skills of a strategic reader
in the content areas can be broken down into seven areas (Hollas,
2002):

1. Predict – declaring in advance or to foretell
on the basis of observation and/or experience.

2. Visualize – forming mental
pictures of scenes, characters and events.

3. Connect – to link two things
together or to associate and see a relationship.

4. Question – to inquire or
examine.

5. Clarify – to make understandable
or to become clear and free of confusion.

6. Summarize – to concisely obtain
the essence or main point of the text.

7. Evaluate – to form an opinion
about what you have read.

Hints to develop reading
skills

Grellet, F, 1981.proposed the following
hints to develop reading skills:- Teach the students to
concentrate on the text and not on the sentence. If reading
comprehension is to be achieved, the structure of long units such
as the paragraph or the whole text must be understood.- Start
with global understanding and move towards detailed understanding
rather than working the other way around.- Use authentic text
whenever possible. The authentic text does not make learning more
difficult. The difficulty depends on the activity which is
required on the students rather than on the text itself. In other
words, the teacher should grade exercises rather than texts. –
Link the different activities through the different activities
chosen.- Focus on reading skills and learning strategies and plan
comprehension exercises for each of them.- Do not impose your own
interpretation on the learners. Teach them to think by providing
enough evidences for them to follow the right way.- Do not impose
an exercise on the text. It is better to allow the text to
suggest what exercises are more appropriate to it. – Do not use
so many exercises that you might spoil the pleasure of reading.-
Help the students to time themselves and increase their reading
speed, little, by little.- Use variety of procedures when
controlling the student"s reading activities. Self-correcting
exercises are extremely useful.

These seven areas can be linked to various strategies to
improve the effectiveness of each reader. The "predicting,
visualizing and connecting" areas are implemented as before
reading strategies. The "question and clarification" areas are
implemented as during reading strategies whereas, "summarizing
and evaluating" are implemented as after reading strategies. The
goal of the teacher is to help students apply reading strategies
to become effective readers. Furthermore, strategies help
students when they are reading and strategies are used in various
tasks. For example, while students are predicting outcomes of a
reading passage, strategies assist them. Also it is the same when
students are summarizing what they read. Students use strategies
as they are looking for clues; for example, context clues and
rereading to correct what they read. They also need strategies
either in interpreting main idea of texts or in determining the
type of the texts.

Difference Between a Skill and a
Strategy

Taken from: http://www.sarasota.k12.fl.us/Sarasota/strattactics.htm#What%20is%20a%20Strategy?

Reading
Strategies

There are many reading strategies that appear to be very
important according to a multitude of researchers. It is a
difficult task to decide which strategies are the most
significant. Cunningham and Allington (1994) suggested necessary
strategies that readers need to use when reading. These are:
Calling up relevant background knowledge; predicting what will be
learned and what will happen; making mental pictures;
self-monitoring and self-correction; using fix-up strategies such
as re-reading or asking for help; determining the most important
ideas and events and seeing how they are related; drawing
conclusions and making inferences; deciding "what you
think"(opinion); comparing and contrasting what you read and what
you already know; figuring out unknown words; summarizing what
has been read.

These have been broken down into five key
strategies:

1.
        Using background
knowledge

2.
        Predicting

3.
        Self-monitoring
and self-correcting

4.
        Identifying main
ideas and summarizing

5.
        Making inferences
and questioning

Background
knowledge

As it was mentioned before, one of the most important
prerequisites for reading is the background knowledge you bring
to it. Cunningham and Allington (1994) argued that background
knowledge is a crucial component of reading comprehension. They
cited research (Pearson and Fielding, 1991) that demonstrated
that the amount of prior knowledge a reader has can be a very
strong determinant of how much he or she will be able to
understand of the text he or she is reading. Research by Pressley
et al (1990) supports this finding, as they found that readers
who had a well-developed knowledge base are more likely to have a
strong ability to recall relevant information. Background
knowledge helps students to interpret reading materials in an
individual way. Thus, it is important that teachers to teach
students how to use their own background knowledge as a strategy
for comprehending text. Closely connected to the idea of
constructing meaning and using background knowledge is the
related strategy of mental imagery (Pressley, 1990) or, 'making
mental pictures', which has been considered a strategy on its own
by many theorists. A student with a strong background knowledge
will have a better ability to understand and picture what the
author is attempting to portray in the text. As Pressley et al
(1990) argued, the ability to construct mental images has been
demonstrated to improve children's memory for literature. Thus,
it can be argued that a strong prior knowledge base is a very
powerful influence on how well a reader will comprehend text.
Imagine trying to read university level chemistry text without
having previous high school course work. Even if some of the
symbols and English words were recognizable, without prior
knowledge, none of it would make sense. If they are reading for
information, in order to gain a strong understanding, it is
crucial that they have some prior knowledge to build
upon.

Thus, students need to use background
knowledge to form a picture in their minds. Further, they
actually need to be able to see what is happening in a
story.

Predicting

When students make predictions they are deciding their
purposes for reading. Prediction activities work hand-in-hand
with background knowledge. As students synthesize what they know
with the text they are reading, it helps them determine a purpose
for reading.

Using their background knowledge their goal becomes
finding out, or predicting what is going to happen next. Further,
they are engaged in generating predictions prior to reading by
first drawing upon background knowledge. "Good readers are
constantly forming hypotheses about what is to come in the
passage they are reading… Like so many other comprehension
skills this requires prior knowledge about the content and about
the structure of what is being read." (Irwin and Baker, 1989, pp.
161)

By applying this strategy students are
given the opportunity to integrate what they know while they read
and are also faced with new information that may conflict with
their own assumptions which, in turn may bolster critical
thinking skills.

Self-monitoring and
self-correcting

When students self-monitor and
self-correct they are demonstrating an ability to recognize that
what they are reading is not making sense and applying various
strategies to solve the problem. These are also known as "fix-up
strategies", which are strategies that students use when they
realize…that their comprehension is not proceeding well
(Rosenshine and Meister, 1997, pp. 100)

Palincsar (1993) discussed critical literacy, a concept
that focusses on how readers problem solve and reason with print.
She argued that students need to become self-regulated learners.
These are learners, she asserted, who develop purposes for what
they are about to read (cited from May, 1994, pp.356). Similar to
when applying predicting skills, when readers apply
self-monitoring strategies they are constantly asking themselves
whether or not what they are reading makes sense to them. During
this monitoring process, if they find that a word or an idea does
not quite fit with what they already know they will apply their
self-correct skills in order to fix the problem.

According to Paris et al (1991) good readers are able to
expect problems in reading and fix them up as they occur. When a
student comes across an unfamiliar word, he or she needs to
decide whether to re-read the sentence, read ahead, sound the
word out, or look in the dictionary. Ryder and Graves (1998)
stated that it is important that teachers are aware of
"metacognitive behaviour and its importance as a monitoring
device as students assess their comprehension and to apply fix-up
strategies when comprehension fails.

Identifying main
ideas and summarizing

Identifying the main events or ideas in a story is
something that good readers also do. They are constantly pulling
out ideas from the text they are reading and determining what the
main points are in each segment of the reading passage. In
addition they have an ability to recognize and discuss key events
in a story. Irwin and Baker (1989) argued that skilled readers
have an ability to select the information they will need in order
to understand the reading passage. Further, these readers also
have the ability to ignore information that is not
important.

Summarizing is a strategy that many students have
difficulty with. It is very closely related to the previous
strategy discussed in this paper. However, Dole et al. (1991)
asserted that summarizing is "a broader, more synthetic activity
for which determining importance is necessary, but not sufficient
condition." Moreover, it involves the ability to call on other
strategies in order to gain a clear understanding of text. This
strategy is an important one because it helps them build an
informational framework. Brown and Day (1983: cited from Ryder
and Graves, 1998) summarizing can be defined as: Deleting
unimportant and redundant information, categorizing information,
identifying and using the author's main ideas and creating your
own main idea if the author did not clearly state his or
hers.

Clearly, summarizing brings into play all of the
previous strategies. Thus, students are involved in using all of
the reading strategies in order to build a scaffold toward
increased comprehension of text.

Making inferences and
questioning

Making inferences and questioning is another strategy
that even older students find quite tedious. This may be due to
the fact that students are accustomed to their teachers giving
them the questions. But if the teachers are asking all of the
questions, students are not going to become strategic readers.
Instead, they need to learn to ask themselves questions as they
read. Dole et al (1991) cited many studies which have shown
having students generate their own questions lead to increased
comprehension of text. It seems that by having students do this
it forces them to think more deeply about the author's words and
intentions, giving them a goal for reading.

Making inferences can be defined as the
process where the reader decides what basic facts are necessary
for a "coherent interpretation" of the author's message. (Irwin
and Baker, 1989, pp122).

Further, Gaskins and Gaskins (1996) asserted that the
meaning created by a reader will not be identical to the author's
intended meaning because it is the readers who decide what
inferences and conclusions will be drawn by creating their own
meaning from the text. This will depend on many factors including
the reader's prior beliefs and knowledge which "are used to help
confirm, reject or suspend judgements of new interpretations".
(Ruddell and Unrah, 1994, pp. 998)

It seems appropriate to consider one final point in this
discussion of the nature of reading strategies. Dole and his
fellow researchers asserted that good readers make decisions
about which strategies to use when to use it, and how to adapt it
to a particular type of text. The student may be understood as an
active reader who constructs meaning through the integration of
existing and new knowledge and the flexible use of strategies to
foster, monitor, regulate and maintain comprehension. (1991, pp.
242) Thus, the skilled reader automatically applies the reading
strategies needed to reach his or her goal of reaching a greater
understanding of the text. The expert reader who applies
strategies without hesitation in order to understand newly
introduced text can be compared to a gifted athlete who has the
ability to react automatically, while anticipating their
opponents next move.

The strategies that have been discussing so far can be
applied in the EFL clssroom. Deshler and Lenz (1989) assert that
a key assumption underlying the strategies instruction approach
is that students should be taught the process of learning as much
as teaching them specific domains of content information.
(pp.205) Further, they suggest that teachers should directly
teach students strategies to apply skills. As students become
more competent readers they will in turn become more
motivated.

First of all, it is important to teach these skills
directly to students so that they have a multitude of learning
tools available to them should they run into difficulty while
reading. Thus, students need to be encouraged to actively think
about the strategies they are using when they read. Rosenshine
and Meister (1996) assert by scaffolding information for students
the problems are broken down so that students have a better
chance of solving them. It is argued that scaffolds are
particularly useful for teaching of higher-level cognitive
strategies. Scaffolds are forms of support from a teacher that
help students to learn reading strategies.

Another important factor that must be considered briefly
is that students also need to be involved in a classroom
environment where the students are active and highly engaged
learners. It was asserted by Guthrie et al (1999) that reading
engagement should be the aim of instruction because motivational
goals will facilitate intrinsic motivational goals which are
essential to long term, self-determined reading. The problem of
motivating students to learn seems highly related to the teaching
of reading strategies. As Wong (1998) writes, students'
motivation to learn is immensely complex and continues to
challenge researchers with its conceptualization and
reconceptualization and its inclusion and operationalization in
intervention research. Further, she argues that motivation to
learn must be viewed as a concept that is intertwined with
strategy learning. Thus, our students in order to become
strategic, self-regulated readers need also to be engaged
readers. "Readers need both the skill and the will to read".
(Paris, Lipson and Wixson, 1999. Cited from Reading 44,
pp.210)

There are many effective instructional methods that
teachers can use in order to encourage students to focus on one
or more reading strategies. In reviewing much of the literature
in this area, there are numerous samples of lessons. Here are a
few that are particularly useful and can easily be applied in the
classroom:

Procedural
prompts

Procedural prompts can be used to assist students to
generate questions and gain the ability to summarize what they
have read. Rosenshine and Meister (1997) asserted that this
should be the first step in teaching students cognitive
strategies. They asserted that they serve to build upon students'
background knowledge and provide a knowledge support on which
they may build. For example, in order to generate questions about
narrative text the authors recommended providing prompts that
focus on a story's grammar:

What is the setting?

Who are the main characters?

What problem did the main character
face?

What attempts were made to resolve the
problem?

How was the problem finally
resolved?

What is the theme of the story?

K-W-L

One well-known method for accomplishing this is the
K-W-L method (Know-Wonder-Learn). This is a three-step procedure
for helping students access the
appropriate background knowledge when they are reading
informational text .

The students are first asked to access what
they know about a given topic, which prompts them to access prior
knowledge. As the students are brainstorming their ideas the
teacher can record these on the chalkboard or chart paper. Next,
they are asked to come up with learning goals, or what they want
to learn about a given topic. At the end of the activity students
write down what they have learned, and check to see whether all
of their "want to know" questions have been answered or what they
have learned and if further reading in needed. During this
procedure the students are engaged in brainstorming, generative
and organizing their ideas, specifying questions, checking what
they have learned and guided further reading. (Tierney and
Readence, 2000)

Intra act
procedure

In order to teach students to use strategies such as
accessing their background knowledge we need to use activities
such as discussion to encourage students to relate the topic to
their own experience. Since readers cannot tell everything that
is happening in an incident from what the author has written we
have to help students to infer meaning using their own knowledge.
An effective way of encouraging students to access background
knowledge is by engaging them in a pre-reading discussion.
Mazzoni and Gambrell (1996) examined ways to use informational
text through discussion. The authors looked at studies of expert
readers that analyzed self-talk before, during and after read. It
was found that these readers had the ability to better reflect on
ideas in text, make predictions and hypotheses using prior
knowledge, and were able to critically evaluate what they read.
One procedure that Mazzoni and Gambrell (1996) outline is called
the intra-act procedure. This is a four-step procedure that
stimulates small group discussion and helps students develop an
awareness of how others in the group react to the content of the
text.

First, individual students silently read a text
selection. Then, they are given four value statements relevant to
the reading selection and possibly controversial. They are then
asked to write how other group members will respond. Finally, the
students are regrouped to compare predictions and are encouraged
to challenge and support each other's responses while supporting
arguments using textual information and prior knowledge. Not only
are the students learning to access their background knowledge,
they are also been introduced to new vocabulary and concepts. In
addition, this activity allows students to monitor their
understanding and verify the accuracy of their
predictions.

W's and H (Who, What,
When, Where, Why and How)

In order to teach students how to generate questions or
make prediction Tarasoff (1993) suggests using a procedure she
calls 5 W's and H. During this procedure, the teacher asks the
students questions before reading a passage. She or he first
models the kind of questions, literal or inferential. The
students are then required to read the passage looking for the
answers. Following this, the students are put into small groups
or pairs and are asked to make up their own questions, which they
will later share with the class. Tarasoff (1993) warns that it
may be helpful to first teach students the difference between
asking questions that require one-word answers and those that
require more elaborate responses.

During this activity students are not only engaged in
questioning techniques, they are also encouraged to draw upon
other strategies such as predicting, self-monitoring and
self-correcting and summarizing what they have read.

Types of
Reading

Extensive reading

It could be defined from different points
of view (Hedge, 2003, p.202). Some authors define it as
activities of "skimming and scanning. For others, it is the
amount of reading of material. Hafiz and Tudor claim
that:

the pedagogical value attributed to
extensive reading is based on the assumption

that exposing learners to large quantities
of meaningful and interesting L2 material will, in the long run,
produce a beneficial effect on the learners" command of
the

L2. (1989, p. 5)

Extensive reading inspired by Krashen"s Input
Hypothesis, has been readopted in different EFL isntitutions and
universities since students are asked to read indenpendently
using available material online or at their reach (Hedge, 2003,
p. 200-201).

Acording to Hedge extensive reading varies according to
students" motivation and school resources. Then, the teacher has
to find the correct material to meet the students,
needs.

Extensive reading is an individual activity
that can be not only in class but also at home. It helps students
to find their way to be indenpendent . Learners can be allowed to
select their own reading materials according to their interests
and level of languagethey have." (p. 567)

Hedge describes the advantages of extensive use in the
following lines:

Learners can build their language
competence, progress in their reading ability, become more
independent in their studies, acquire cultural knowledge, and
develop confidence and motivation to carry on learning.
(ibid, p. 204-205).

Intensive Reading

Intensive reading is associated with short
texts used to make students explore

the meaning and get familiar with the writing
mechanisms. They are used to practice or focus on specific
lexical, syntactical or discoursal aspects of the target language
or to practice a selected reading strategy. However, Hedge states
that it is "only through more extensive reading that learners can
gain substantial practice in operating these strategies more
independently on a range of materials." (ibid, p. 202)
These strategies can be either text-related or learner-related:
the former includes an awareness of text organization, while the
latter includes strategies like linguistic, schematic, and
metacognitive strategies.

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Autor:

Profesor Víctor Birkner
Duarte

Master in Teaching English as a Foreign
Language