Effective Reading Comprehension Teaching
Introduction
Carrell (1989a), Lynch and Hudson (1991) state that the most important skill for second language learners in academic context is reading (cited in Grabe, 1991). Thus, it can be concluded that perhaps the most fundamental skill to be taught in Iranian schools, where English is a foreign language, is reading comprehension, as well; consequently, the recent English book prepared for Pre-University students is mainly reading based. Therefore, there is a need for EFL teachers to know about the different techniques they can use while teaching reading comprehension.
In recent studies on reading comprehension, it has been found that while reading, there is an interaction between the reader’s previous knowledge and the information that is cited in the text (Hui-lung, 1991). These studies approve the top-down processing model in teaching reading comprehension which is one of the most useful models presented for teaching reading. This article is going to introduce mainly the top-down model and its techniques used in teaching reading comprehension.
Top-Down Model in Teaching Reading Comprehension
Goodman (1982) performed a research on reading comprehension and presented the Psycholinguistic Guessing Model. He believed that the process of reading the text in a letter-by-letter and word-by-word manner and picking up the information is not called reading comprehension. Rather, a good reader reads selectively and doesn’t look at every word on the page, but he uses his prior knowledge and reads the text by predicting and confirming information (cited in Grabe, 1991). Goodman’s model was a kind of top-down processing and later on other top-down models were presented.
Hui-lung (2001), Nuttall (1996) and Grellet (1981, cited in Paran, 1996) also affirm that while reading, the reader’s eyes don’t follow every word, rather he skips some words and expressions and uses his prior knowledge to make predictions about the text. Then he checks everything to confirm what he had hypothesized. In fact the reader is going to get an overall understanding of the text and then move towards bottom-up approach to check their understanding.
In a similar vein, Doff (1990: 67) discusses the value of teaching readers to take in whole sentences. He says that
When we read for meaning, we do not need to read every letter or every word, not even every word in each sentence. This is because, provided the text makes sense, we can guess much of what it says as we read it. To see how this happens at the level of individual words, try reading this sentence:
A m- - was walk - - - d - - n the s - - - - t, c - r - - ing a gr - - n - - - - - - - - .
Even though more than half the letters were missing, you could probably read the sentence without difficulty, and even guess the last word without the help of any letters. You may also have noticed that as soon as you guessed the second word, it helped you to guess the whole of the first part of the sentence.
Johnson (1982) argues, although most teachers prefer prereading vocabulary exercises, they cannot help students to improve their understanding of the text. In fact, he believes that this kind of teaching may lead to word-by-word translation that is detrimental to comprehension.
So what is the duty of the EFL teacher? The teacher should help the students set goals for reading and provide them with effective prereading activities to motivate them. In addition, the teacher should present them some strategies to be able to deal with difficult syntax and vocabulary (Grabe, 1991).
According to Hui-lung (2001), there are some activities that can help the EFL teachers to teach reading comprehension more efficiently:
1. Semantic Map
As Freedman and Reynolds (1980, cited in Hui-lung, 2001) state, semantic mapping is an activity through which the teacher can activate students’ background knowledge of the topic which is going to be taught. The teacher writes the topic on the board and asks the students to make free associations with it. In fact, the students write down whatever vocabulary they know about the topic and then the teacher helps them to put the words into categories. Finally, they read the text and sometimes may be willing to revise the map. Then, the new map is the integration of the students’ prior knowledge and acquired knowledge from the text.
The following is a sample of semantic map on the topic of North American Indians (Hui-lung, 2001, 22)
Hunting: buffalo, spear, bow and arrow
Lifestyle: normal, riding horses, tent
Clothing: animal skin, long hair, feather
Ceremony: chief, dance, song, legend
Movie: Dances with Wolves, Pocahontas
2. Questioning
As Williams (1987, cited in Hui-lung 2001) argues, questioning is another top-down processing activity in which the teacher generates some questions about the text and presents them in the class before teaching reading. These questions can be taken from post-reading questions. However, the selection of the questions is very important; they should be what the students are able to answer. Then the students are divided into groups to provide answers for the questions based on what they know and write the answers down. In reading phase, the students read the text and see whether they had provided a correct answer or not. Finally, in the post-reading stage, the students should relate their prior knowledge about the text to their acquired knowledge and write it down.
3. Previewing
By previewing, Hui-lung (2001) aims to help the students predict and make some guesses about the text which is a top-down approach to reading comprehension.
There are several stimuli in the text, such as the title, photographs, subtitles, charts, diagrams, etc which are closely related to what the author is going to present (Grabe, 1991; Hui-lung, 2001). Thus, the teacher can help the students make some guesses based on those stimuli. The teacher can motivate them to read the title, first sentence of each paragraph (which gives the main idea of the paragraph), and the first and the last paragraphs (which one introduces and the other reveals the conclusion of the text). Finally, the students read the whole text to get more information. Since they have already overviewed the text, they have a better understanding of it (Hui-lung, 2001).
However, we should know that only one activity may not be successful in a class and the teacher can integrate the above activities based on the class situation and use the combination of two or three activities in the class.
References:
Doff, A. (1990). Teach English: a training course for teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grabe, W. (1991). Current developments in second language reading research. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 375-405.
Hui-lung, C. (2001). Reading activities for effective top-down processing. Forum, 39, 22-27.
Johnson, P. (1982). Effects on reading comprehension
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