Theory of Reading Process

a. Definition of Reading
Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to
construct or derive meaning (reading comprehension). It is a means of language
acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Like all
language, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is
shaped by the readers prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and language
community which is culturally and socially situated. The reading process requires
continuous practice, development, and refinement.
Readers use a variety of reading strategies to assist with decoding (to
translate

symbols

into

sounds

or

visual

representations

of speech)

and

comprehension. Readers may use morpheme, semantics, syntax and context clues to
identify the meaning of unknown words. Readers integrate the words they have read
into their existing framework of knowledge or schema (schemata theory).

b. Reading Models

A bottom-up reading model emphasizes a single-direction, part-towhole processing of text. This model moves from sounds and the
graphaphonic aspects to whole words, sentences, paragraphs, and
etc. This is sometimes referred to as the meaning last model

because comprehension only course f one can crack the code.

The top-down reading model suggests that processing of a text
begins in the mind of a reader with a meaning-driven processes of
prediction or assumption ideas about the meaning of a text based
on ones prior-knowledge. This model is based od cues readers use
to make predictions of meaning. The cues are graphaphonic,

semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic.

The interactive model combines the bottom-up and top-down
models as an interactive process that readers use simultaneously to
gather meaning from text. Sometimes a reader will follow a top
down process versus a bottom-up process and vice versa. Both are
needed to make meaning from text.

The

transactional

model

represents

the

meaning

influences

interaction between the text, the reader, and the author. Like the
top-down model prior-knowledge has an important role in the
meaning gathering process from text.
c. Reading Strategies
Previewing: Learning

about

text

before

really

reading

it.

Previewing enables readers to get a sense of what the text is about

and how it is organized before reading it closely. This simple
strategy includes seeing what you can learn from the headnotes or
other introductory material, skimming to get an overview of the

content and organization, and identifying the rhetorical situation.

Contextualizing: Placing a text in its historical, biographical, and
cultural contexts. When you read a text, you read it through the lens
of your own experience. Your understanding of the words on the
page and their significance is informed by what you have come to
know and value from living in a particular time and place. But the
texts you read were all written in the past, sometimes in a radically
different

time

contextualize,

and
to

place.
recognize

To

read

the

critically,

differences

you

need

between

to

your

contemporary values and attitudes and those represented in the

text.
Questioning to understand and remember: Asking questions about
the content. As students, you are accustomed (I hope) to teachers
asking you questions about your reading. These questions are
designed to help you understand a reading and respond to it more
fully, and often this technique works. When you need to understand
and use new information though it is most beneficial if you write the
questions, as you read the text for the first time. With this strategy,
you can write questions any time, but in difficult academic readings,
you will understand the material better and remember it longer if
you write a question for every paragraph or brief section. Each

question should focus on a main idea, not on illustrations or details,

and each should be expressed in your own words, not just copied

from parts of the paragraph.

Reflecting on challenges to your beliefs and values: Examining your
personal responses. The reading that you do for this class might
challenge your attitudes, your unconsciously held beliefs, or your
positions on current issues. As you read a text for the first time,
mark an X in the margin at each point where you feel a personal
challenge to your attitudes, beliefs, or status. Make a brief note in
the margin about what you feel or about what in the text created
the challenge. Now look again at the places you marked in the text

where you felt personally challenged. What patterns do you see?

Outlining and summarizing: Identifying the main ideas and restating
them in your own words. Outlining and summarizing are especially
helpful strategies for understanding the content and structure of a
reading selection. Whereas outlining reveals the basic structure of
the text, summarizing synopsizes a selection's main argument in
brief. Outlining may be part of the annotating process, or it may be
done separately (as it is in this class). The key to both outlining and
summarizing is being able to distinguish between the main ideas
and the supporting ideas and examples. The main ideas form the
backbone, the strand that holds the various parts and pieces of the
text together. Outlining the main ideas helps you to discover this
structure. When you make an outline, don't use the text's exact
words. Summarizing begins with outlining, but instead of merely
listing the main ideas, a summary recomposes them to form a new
text. Whereas outlining depends on a close analysis of each
paragraph, summarizing also requires creative synthesis. Putting
ideas together again -- in your own words and in a condensed form
-- shows how reading critically can lead to deeper understanding of
any text.

Evaluating an argument: Testing the logic of a text as well as its

credibility and emotional impact. All writers make assertions that
they want you to accept as true. As a critical reader, you should not
accept anything on face value but to recognize every assertion as
an argument that must be carefully evaluated. An argument has
two essential parts: a claim and support. The claim asserts a
conclusion -- an idea, an opinion, a judgment, or a point of view -that the writer wants you to accept. The support includes reasons
(shared beliefs, assumptions, and values) and evidence (facts,
examples, statistics, and authorities) that give readers the basis for
accepting the conclusion. When you assess an argument, you are
concerned with the process of reasoning as well as its truthfulness
(these are not the same thing). At the most basic level, in order for
an argument to be acceptable, the support must be appropriate to

the claim and the statements must be consistent with one another.
Comparing and contrasting related readings: Exploring likenesses
and differences between texts to understand them better. Many of
the authors we read are concerned with the same issues or
questions, but approach how to discuss them in different ways.
Fitting a text into an ongoing dialectic helps increase understanding
of why an author approached a particular issue or question in the
way he or she did.

d. Approaches of Reading
author-centred approaches
text-centred approaches
reader-centred approaches
world-context-centred approaches.
The different approaches each have their own theories, assumptions and
values, and because they tend to emphasise author, text, reader or worldcontext, there is correspondingly less emphasis on the other three. For
example, in the world-context-centred approaches the focus on socio-critical
aspects of meaning-making may lead to less emphasis on particular textual
features or on the variability and individuality of readers responses.

However, even when reading predominantly within one approach, readers

draw on elements of other approaches. For instance, readers may have a
legitimate interest in reading the autobiography or biography of an author
and drawing information about the writers life and times into their reading of
his or her literary works. This need not mean subscribing to the intentional
fallacy of reducing meaning to what the author presumably intended. Nor
need it mean overemphasising the authors originality or personality at the
expense of acknowledging the historical, cultural and social forces which
shaped that writer and conditioned the forms that the work could have taken,
or the ways it could have been interpreted by readers at that time. Similarly,
it is legitimate for readers to concentrate on aspects of form, such as the
structuring of a narrative, though they may do so from within a different
approach perhaps because they are interested in the forms of the stories
by which a culture lives. The characteristic emphases of the various
approaches, therefore, enable exploration in a systematic way of how literary
texts may be read and what meanings can be generated by using the
theoretical concepts and reading strategies associated with the specific
approaches. In exploring the rea ding practices associated with particular
approaches, it is useful to question all aspects of the approaches, especially
those which have been challenged and have lost broad acceptance. To do this
requires a familiarity with the approaches in their historical form and an
awareness of their characteristic emphases and concerns. Understandings of
contemporary practices should enable readers to examine their own
assumptions about texts and reading, evaluate these, widen their repertoire
of reading strategies, and develop a meta-knowledge of textual and reading
practices.
e. Techniques of Reading

Skimming is sometimes referred to as gist reading. Skimming may

help in order to know what the text is about at its most basic level.
You might typically do this with a magazine or newspaper and would
help you mentally and quickly shortlist those articles which you
might consider for a deeper read. You might typically skim to search
for a name in a telephone directory. You can reach a speed count of

even 700 words per minute if you train yourself well in this
particular method. Comprehension is of course very low and

understanding of overall content very superficial.

Scanning. Picture yourself visiting a historical city, guide book in
hand. You would most probably just scan the guide book to see
which site you might want to visit. Scanning involves getting your
eyes to quickly scuttle across sentence and is used to get just a
simple piece of information. Interestingly, research has concluded
that reading off a computer screen actually inhibits the pathways to
effective scanning and thus, reading of paper is far more conducive
to speedy comprehension of texts. Something students sometimes
do not give enough importance to is illustrations. These should be
included in your scanning. Special attention to the introduction and

the conclusion should also be paid.

Intensive. You need to have your aims clear in mind when
undertaking intensive reading. Remember this is going to be far
more time consuming than scanning or skimming. If you need to list
the chronology of events in a long passage, you will need to read it
intensively. This type of reading has indeed beneficial to language
learners as it helps them understand vocabulary by deducing the
meaning of words in context. It moreover, helps with retention of
information for long periods of time and knowledge resulting from
intensive reading persists in your long term memory. This is one
reason why reading huge amounts of information just before an
exam does not work very well. When students do this, they
undertake neither type of reading process effectively, especially
neglecting intensive reading. They may remember the answers in

an exam but will likely forget everything soon afterwards.

Extensive reading involves reading for pleasure. Because there is an
element of enjoyment in extensive reading it is unlikely that
students will undertake extensive reading of a text they do not like.

It also requires a fluid decoding and assimilation of the text and

content in front of you. If the text is difficult and you stop every few
minutes to figure out what is being said or to look up new words in
the dictionary, you are breaking your concentration and diverting
your thoughts.
f. Teaching of Reading
Traditionally, the purpose of learning to read in a language has been to
have access to the literature written in that language. In language
instruction, reading materials have traditionally been chosen from literary
texts that represent "higher" forms of culture.
This approach assumes that students learn to read a language by
studying its vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure, not by actually
reading it. In this approach, lower level learners read only sentences and
paragraphs generated by textbook writers and instructors. The reading of
authentic materials is limited to the works of great authors and reserved
for upper level students who have developed the language skills needed
to read them.
The

communicative

approach

to

language

teaching

has

given

instructors a different understanding of the role of reading in the language

classroom and the types of texts that can be used in instruction. When
the goal of instruction is communicative competence, everyday materials
such as train schedules, newspaper articles, and travel and tourism Web
sites become appropriate classroom materials, because reading them is
one way communicative competence is developed. Instruction in reading
and reading practice thus become essential parts of language teaching at
every level.

Reference(s)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)
http://www.salisbury.edu/counseling/new/7_critical_reading_strategies.html
http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/downloads/senior/snr_eng_extn_11_res_read_pr
ac_.pdf
http://www.howtolearn.com/2012/08/different-reading-techniques-andwhen-to-use-them/
http://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/modules/reading/01/
http://www.learningwithjamesgentry.com/Reading%20Models.html
http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/reindex.html