2. The reading process –
a transactional view
Reader Transaction Text
Immediate situational contexts
Broader sociolinguistic contexts
Source: Weaver C, 1988
3. Reading Behaviours of a
Proficient Reader
Develops anticipation; activates prior
knowledge
Decodes and samples with sufficient
speed
Predicts as he reads
Reads on, re-reads, confirms or
corrects
4. Reading problems of our
students as novice readers
Little anticipation
Read word by word
Got stuck with a difficult word and give up
reading
Skip difficult words and read on despite
loss of meaning
Seldom re-read and self-correct
5. The Cueing Systems of the
English Language
1. Graphophonic cues
2. Semantic cues
3. Syntactic cues
6. Graphophonic Cues (Visual)
Letter-sound correspondences
Questions to ask:
Do I know the beginning / ending sounds?
Are there pronounceable parts?
Do I know any words of similar spelling?
7. Semantic Cues (Meaning)
context of the sentence / passage
background knowledge / prior experience
Questions to ask:
What word would fit the meaning here?
Does this word make sense?
8. Syntactic Cues (Structural)
grammatical patterns
Questions to ask:
What word would fit into the structural
pattern here?
Does it sound like English?
9. Miscues – What caused them?
I can sleep those hiccups. (stop)
Elephant gives it a toy. (try)
I can‟t do out and I have nothing to do. (go)
Can I read you a story, mum? // No, I‟m tiger. (tired)
Grandma makes a hot in the castle. (hole)
10. Miscues – What caused them?
All animals are sleep. (sleeping)
As the animals go back to sleep. (All)
Do you want to do you homework? (your)
11. Quality miscues – substitutions
that preserve meaning
It‟s a hot sunny afternoon. (summer)
Poor animal has the hiccups. (elephant)
I can stop her hiccups. (those)
“Why not clean your room?” Mum asks. (tidy)
12. Quality miscues – self-corrections
“Boo!” her shouts. (he)
We like sharing or candy. (our)
He was the hiccups. (has)
13. Implications for teachers
Explicit and planned instruction for
reading skills
Emphasis on interactiveness of reading
process – anticipation, prediction,
personal responses, critical and
reflective thinking, etc.
Wide reading of easy and interesting
materials
14. A balanced reading
program –5 essential
components
1. Phonological awareness
2. Phonics
3. Sight words & vocabulary development
4. Reading fluency
5. Comprehension strategies
16. Phonological awareness &
phonics skills
Phonological awareness ---
awareness of constituent sounds of written words in learning
to read and spell
knowledge of phonemes, onsets and rimes and syllables
influences the development of word decoding & reading
Phonics skills instruction ---
a way of teaching reading that stresses learning how letters
correspond to sounds and how to use this knowledge in
reading and spelling through various skills like decoding and
blending
17. Phonics skills
Phonics skills are means to the end of
successful reading ---- „a catalyst which
triggers the process of learning to read‟
---- Maclean (1998)
18. Teaching phonics in our context
Questions to ask:
Why do we teach phonics to our very young
learners?
What should we teach? (knowledge of sounds or
skills)
How can we teach phonics effectively?
Who is the best person to teach phonics in
school? ………..
19. Teaching phonics in our context
Characteristics of our learners
inadequate language environment, limited prior
knowledge and repertoire of words
Q: What can we base on? Where should we start?
Different approaches e.g. part-to-whole, whole-to-part,
phoneme-by-phoneme, onsets & rimes
Q: What are the rationale & purposes? How effective are
they? How should the teachers and learners make their
choice?
20. Teaching phonics in our context
Different phonological characteristics between Chinese
and English
Q: How should we focus on potentially problematic sounds
and letter combinations?
Learner needs and differences e.g. background, learning
styles, attitude, relationship between phonics and other
areas of learning
Q: How should we cater for our learners‟ needs and
differences?
How can we help our learners learn phonics effectively?
proactive teaching active phonics skills
21. Implications for teachers
Phonics should be a meaningful and integrated
part of our curriculum (reading program), with
ample opportunities for learning, application and
solving learning problems.
Teaching must build on what students already
know and give them space to see patterns and
draw inferences.
22. Implications for teachers
Q: Is it advisable for teachers to use a separate
package to help students learn phonics and
tackle their learning problems?
Q: Should phonics be treated in isolation and
handled by one teacher alone e.g. NET?
23. What are the problems?
1. Unfamiliar vocabulary --- difficult to draw analogy
2. Unrelated to their studies --- extra burden & can‟t
help to solve learning problems
3. No application --- no explicit teaching of skills and
how to apply them in new texts
4. No feedback or assessment
25. Curriculum Restructuring & Integration
Activities / tasks
Games ……..
Other resources: Big Books
Supplementary / Textbook Small readers
(framework/ context/
Poems / Plays
Grammar /
Phonics language focus) Reading / Listening
worksheets ….. materials….
output
guided writing / free writing / reading aloud /
reading interest / project…….
authentic and meaningful use of language
26. Connecting with the Natural World
Activities : songs & rhymes,
sharing of students’ work
Big Books:
1.What’s the time ?
Other resources: Textbook 2.Every Monday
• teacher’s diary 3.All through the week
Unit 5: Telling the time, describing with cat and dog
• worksheets habitual actions 4.What’s the weather
like today?
• sounds (ay, og, Unit 6: Days of the week
5. Weather machine
ice) Unit 7,8: Weather and seasons Small readers:
1. The busy giant
2. Winnie and the cat
output
free writing — ‘My diary’: describing particular activities &
expressing feelings in short paragraphs
authentic and meaningful use of language
27. Planning: phonics & our
curriculum
Embed phonics with all other areas of learning &
make full use of all existing resources ---textbooks,
big books, readers, sound books ….
Build on what students already know & encourage
active learning --- analogy
Teach different essential skills explicitly
Give feedback and reflect on student learning ---
observation, formative and summative assessment
29. What are sight words?
Words that are recognized
as wholes, on sight
30. one, two, you,
have, father, the, the, and, I, book,
they…. play, happy, big….
Words that cannot be High-frequency words
phonically produced
witches, spell,
Snow White, magic, frogs,
Billy Goat Gruff, castle
Biff, Chip
Words of special interest
31. The role of sight words in
reading
Quick word recognition reasonable
reading speed less interference with
comprehension better meaning construction
Good sight words more attention on new
words vocabulary expansion
32. To learn a sight word, the
students must:
see the word in context many times
hear the word and say it aloud
identify the word, in context and in
isolation
33. Learning sight words through
games and activities
• Reading sight word cards with partner
• Snap cards and Pelmanism
• Snakes and Ladders
• Dominoes
34. Vocabulary Development
through intensive and extensive reading
Useful ways to „anchor‟ words:
word walls / semantic mapping
class dictionary / personal vocabulary
books
word building /word analysis (tied in with
phonics)
using words in writing
36. Fluent oral
reading (with Access to
expression) models of
expressive
reading
(SILENT)
READING
FLUENCY
Comprehension Word recognition Chunking words
(fast & accurate) (syntactic cues)
(Source: Oakley, G. 2001)
37. Repeated Reading
reading of short, easy & interesting texts over
and over again
well-researched method to improve fluency
(Samuels 1979, 2002)
often results in improved comprehension
(Hasbrouch, Ihnot, & Rogers 1999)
most students enjoy it; a favoured activity
among low-progress readers
(Lipson & Wixson 1997)
39. “…. Reading comprehension
has come to be viewed as the
„essence of reading‟”
---(National Reading Panel, 2000, p.4-1)
40. Different approaches
linear approach (comprehension takes place
through progressive analysis of small units,
beginning with the word and ending in the
sentence) v.s.
psycholinguistic approach (emphasizing the
paragraph as basic text unit and focus on
mental process leading to global
comprehension)
41. Transactional view of reading:
Meaning is constructed through multiple & evolving complex
transactions between the reader, text and context
Reading is a „psycholinguistic guessing game‟
--- from hypotheses to confirmation/rejection
--- a „cyclical process of sampling, predicting, confirming
& correcting‟
--- K.S. Goodman
Comprehension is not just the by-product of accurate word
recognition… comprehension is a complex process which
requires active and intentional cognitive effort on the part of
the reader.
42. Transactional view of reading:
Both the outcomes of comprehension and the
process itself are interactive and dynamic.
Q: How can students work actively to integrate
textual information with preexisting knowledge
structure / schemata?
43. Current practice
„Teachers taught comprehension less than one
percent of the time, and that this instruction was
more than a matter of „mentioning‟ than actual
explanation or demonstration‟ ------ Dolores Durkin
(1978-79)
Comprehension instruction remains inadequate in
our classrooms. ---- Michael Pressley (1998)
44. Current practice
Reading ---- „the most thoroughly studied and least
understood process in education today‟
Reading has been sorely neglected in foreign
language classrooms, and most recent
methodological innovations have little to say about
the development of reading comprehension.
Comprehension of text is not a visible act, nor is it
audible.
45. Current practice
A typical comprehension lesson:
1. Start with word-by-word decoding and translation (using
controlled vocabulary)
2. Followed by comprehension questions (who, what, when,
where etc) most of which involve direct-lifting answers
(literal comprehension)
3. End with checking answers with little/no explanation
Repeated practice = teaching=good performance
in comprehension??
46. Current practice
Problems:
no training of higher-order comprehension skills:
interpretive (read between the lines)
critical (read for evaluation)
creative (read beyond the lines)
no development of students‟ skills in syntactical,
semantic, lexical, stylistic analysis and making
excursion to their knowledge of the world to confirm
meaning
loss of contextual focus, overview, and immediate
frustration as soon as the reader encounters an
unknown word
47. What do our students think?
„I used to believe that I have to know all the words in the
English readings in order to understand the readings.
Therefore, I read in English with the dictionary beside me all
the time. I read English readings only for homework before I
came to this reading class. I never read any English readings
because I wanted to read them….. I like to read in my first
language, but I just could not read in English with the same
feeling as I read in Chinese. The belief that I have to know
all the words in order to understand the reading made
me lose interest…..’ ---- Li, an ESL student
„Younger and poorer readers often rely on a single criterion
for textual understanding: Understanding of individual
words‟ ---- Garner & Alexander (1989)
48. What affect comprehension?
students‟ experiential background
students‟ sensory & perceptual abilities
students‟ thinking abilities
students‟ affective aspects (self-concepts,
attitudes & interest)
word recognition strategies
comprehension strategies
* greatest obstacles to comprehension are students’
dispositions towards reading---- Villaume & Edna
49. Transactional strategies
instruction
Help students to
activate their prior knowledge
make predictions
generate questions, answer questions and draw
inferences
monitor their comprehension & seek clarification
when confused
create pictorial mental imagery & mnemonic imagery
create summaries of what they have read
evaluate what they have read
50. Transactional strategies
instruction
Predict:
think about the title, the illustrations, and what you have read so far;
Tell what you think will happen next or what you will learn
Question:
Ask yourself questions as you read
Monitor/clarify:
Ask yourself if what you are reading make sense
If you don‟t understand something, reread, read aloud, or use the illustrations
Summarize:
Think about the main ideas or the important part of the story
Tell the important things in your own words
Evaluate:
Ask yourself
Do I like what I have read?
Do I agree or disagree with it?
Am I learning what I wanted to know?
How good a job has the author done?
51. Explicit teaching
Direct explanation (describe what the strategy is and
explain why the strategy should be learned and used)
Modeling (model it and provide examples of the
circumstances under which the strategy should be used)
Guided practice & scaffolding
Feedback
Application
* increase students’ metacognitive awareness and use of
reading strategies
52. Implications for teachers
Issues to consider:
comprehension or psycholinguistic guessing
skill can & should be taught
students‟ comprehension is developmental
reading comprehension should be a dynamic
interactive exchange between teacher &
students
students can compensate for a lack of English
proficiency by increasing their awareness of
reading strategies
extensive reading practice is essential in
building both fluency & knowledge (extensive
v.s. intensive reading practice)
53. Implications for teachers
Things to do:
draw in / activate students‟ prior knowledge
develop students‟ awareness of clue-searching
strategies
select text based on students‟ interests and
knowledge and make comprehension an
integrated part of the curriculum
use different reading materials (including
readers) and design a variety of tasks for
different purposes
54. Not so ‘typical’ comprehension
exercises ---
guessing game & confirmation / correction
brainstorming & mind-mapping
semantic webbing & story mapping
cloze --- with specific purposes focusing on particular skills
e.g. reference skills, using semantic or syntactic clues
matching e.g. vocabulary skill
proof-reading questions
personal response
reading-writing connection
55. Conclusion
It is important that a full range of
instructional approaches be considered
within a variety of contexts that address
both developmental and cultural differences
in how children best learn to comprehend.
56. The Reading Process
See and perceive the symbols
Follow the sequence of words
Associate symbols and sounds
Associate symbols and meanings
Follow the grammatical patterns
Relate ideas to past experience
Make inferences/evaluate
Deal with personal interests and attitudes
that affect reading
(Source: Burns, Roe and Ross, 1999)
57. Transaction
Putting everything together to construct a
personal meaning for the text
Communicating thoughts and emotions
between reader and writer
