Reading Comprehension in the English Class

Class 1: The role of the reader

Dear teachers, welcome to the course on Reading Comprehension.

The aim of this course is to explore the nature of the reading process so as to encourage teachers
to make informed choices when they plan a reading lesson to help students both in the primary
and secondary classrooms become better readers. To be able to do this, we will first reflect on the
traits of a good reader, analyze the types of knowledge the reader brings to text and how this can
impact on the choices we make in the classroom. At the same time, we will consider different
reading purposes and looking at different activities to be done before, while and after reading to
encourage students to develop effective reading skills. Another issue we would like to explore is
the challenges posed by reading in this age when digital resources are everywhere at hand. Finally,
all this will be put into practice when designing a reading lesson.

The following video will present a summary of the aims and contents of this course, as a sort of
prelude to what we will cover in subsequent lessons. We hope this meets your expectations.

https://youtu.be/EyxOyaasSZ8?list=PLiq4xowTJZSoiS6pXxXwgU4eR0F28RXLt

In this lesson, we will be clearing up some terms, agree on what reading is and characterize a good
reader.

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What kind of readers are your students?
When we think of students reading in the classroom, we can picture several kinds of readers,
among others:

those that cant wait and plunge into the text right away and those who hesitate uneasily,
those who approach the text as a whole and are able to identify its structure and those who
struggle along the text painfully decoding words and phrases,
those who can respond to the text and those who only parrot what it contains,
those who can retrieve part of the information (not necessarily primary ideas) and those
who do not seem to pinpoint what the text is about.

What makes some people better readers? What do they do? What do the
others fail to do? Why is this important? Identifying the reading habits that
your students bring to a reading activity without being aware of them may
help you to:
- see what may be going wrong with the way they deal with the texts, and

- determine which good reading habits can be capitalized and

strengthened.

What do your students do when they have to carry out a reading task? One can say that not many
students think of reading as an active process, even more, they do not consider it as a process that
involves engagement before they read, while you read and after you read. If we look at the table
below, we will be able to identify what actions mature or good readers might unconsciously be
involved in when dealing with a reading activity. Likewise, we can compare those actions to the
behaviour of poor or immature readers.

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 Reading Behavior of Good and Poor Readers
GOOD OR MATURE READERS
Activate prior knowledge on the
subject.
Understand task and know their
purpose for reading.
BEFORE Choose appropriate strategies.
READING Look for the structure of the piece
of reading.
Question and wonder.
Believe they are in control of the
reading process. Therefore, they
are not afraid of the text.
GOOD OR MATURE READERS
Focus attention.
Anticipate and predict
Use contextual analysis to
understand new terms.
Use text structure to help
comprehension.
Look for important ideas and see
how details relate to the
whole.
DURING Visualize content in their head.
READING Make inferences and connections.
Organize and integrate new
information.
Keep check on their
comprehension by:
knowing comprehension is
occurring
knowing what is being
understood
Use repair strategies when they
dont understand
GOOD OR MATURE READERS
Reflect on what was read
Think through the information and
decide whether it was useful or
not.
AFTER Decide if they achieved their goal
READING for making meaning from reading.
Feel success is a result of effort.
Summarize main ideas.
Evaluate their comprehension.
Seek additional information if
curious to know more.
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POOR OR IMMATURE READERS
Start reading without preparation (ie
they do not think about the subject
first)
Read without knowing why, except
that the teacher has told them to.
Read without considering how to
approach the material.
POOR OR IMMATURE READERS
Are easily distracted and can be
bored by the process of reading
Do not know whether they
understand or not.
Do not know what to do when they
fail to understand.
Do not recognize important
vocabulary.
Do not see any organization. View
reading as looking at words and
turning pages --the quicker the
better.
Add on, rather than integrate, new
information.
POOR OR IMMATURE READERS
Feel success is a result of luck
Do not know what they have read.
Do not follow reading with
comprehension self-check.
See no connections between what
they read and anything else.
Reading as an act of communication
Lets consider the following questions:

Can we say that reading is an act of communication?

What role does the reader take when reading a text?

For many years, reading was considered a passive activity, in the sense that the reader was
expected to absorb the text he or she was reading; the reader was considered as a sort of vessel
which was filled in with the information in the text. In other words, the message in the text was
transmitted or transferred from the page to the readers head. Where did this belief come from?
Well, reading, as well as listening, is classified as a receptive skill by traditional methods well into
half of the XXth. century, thus it was assumed that the reader had a passive, receptive role. As you
may already know and we read in the text above, reading is much more than that.

When readers attempt to understand what they read, they become involved in trying to make
sense of a text. It is an interactive process which starts, as we mentioned above, as soon as
readers come into contact with the text (even before they actually start reading it), continues while
they decode the text as they create meaning from it, and concludes when they measure the result
of the reading activity, i.e. when they are able to say whether they have understood it or not.

In fact, Reading is interactive process

Traditionally, the reader was which starts even before we read
considered as a sort of vessel which and concludes when we are able to
was filled in with the information in say whether we have understood it
the text. or not.

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 Lets see how this works with you! Lets have a personal experience on
reading, so that later we can reflect on it. As you carry out the activities,
keep a mental record of what goes on in your head as you make sense of
the text.

Task 1
You are going to read an online article whose title is On Reading, Learning to Read, and Effective
Reading Instruction: An Overview of What We Know and How We Know It. Please do the
activities in the order presented. Try not to skip any.
a. Who may have written this article? An expert? A teacher? What makes you think so?
b. Who do you think we refers to?
c. What kind of information do you expect to find?
d. Is there anything in the title that makes you want to read on? If so, what is it?

This is what the webpage looks like. Can you find the answer to the questions above?

Highlighted text from the website: There is an ongoing debate about reading. What is it? How
is it learned? How is it most effectively taught? The Commission on Reading of the National
Council of Teachers of English has compiled the following overview of what the profession knows
about reading, learning to read, and effective reading instruction and referenced some of the
large body of research that has given rise to this view. It then outlines policies that promote
learning to read.

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Now read the article at http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/onreading. Which of the
following statements reflects the views presented in the article?

YES NO

a. There will be as many interpretations of a text as readers there are.

b. Readers are usually aware of the way they interpret clues provided by a text.
c. Although readers have different purposes when reading, the process of
reading is essentially the same.
d. The more they know the writer of a text, the easier it is for readers to
understand it.
e. Context is not very relevant for novice readers.

f. Reading in a foreign language is very much like learning to read all over again.

g. Success in reading can be promoted from outside the school.

h. If you read materials on a variety of topics, you are more likely to improve
your reading.

Finally, what do you think is the purpose of this text?

To present teachers with the strengths and shortcomings of teaching reading.
To share updated research in the nature and teaching of reading.
To prescribe good practices and prevent possible failure in reading.

You can read the key to this activity at the bottom of the class.

Now go back to the mental actions you performed as you carried out the
activities. Were the before reading activities useful to deal with the text
afterwards? Were there any sections that presented problems and you had
to re-read?

We will come back to these issues in the lessons that follow.

In this lesson we have explored different kinds of readers, reading as an active process, and we
have gone through a reading experience on reading, in order to reflect on the experience. We are
ready now for our next lesson.

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Activities
Activity 1. Presentation Forum: Introducing ourselves!
In this forum we expect you to tell the reading community of this course about you. Include your
name, some information about your teaching context, and why you have decided to take this
course.

Activity 2 Class 1 Round-up

Now that we have discussed general aspects related to reading, you are invited to write in this
forum two or three ideas that you consider are essential to deal with reading in the classroom.

Extension Activity
Reread the article for Task 1. and answer the following on a separate word document.
1. Analyze this quote:
Learning to read in one language accelerates learning to read in other languages. When
readers learn to read text written in a language they understand, they transfer an intuitive
understanding of what reading is and how to read when reading in other languages.
Do you agree that readers find it easier to read in a foreign language? Can you
think of any cases in which they do not?
What implications does this view have in the decisions of
a) education policy makers?
b) teachers?
c) materials developers?
2. Now focus on the section called Effective Reading Instruction To what extent is it
possible to organize instruction as suggested here in your own teaching environment?
3. Finally, read the section called Policies that Promote Learning to Read Which of
these situations do you feel are a part of your teaching reality?
Now send your answers to the tutor through. Remember to include your name in the
file.

Material de lectura
N.D. Reading Behavior of Good and Poor Readers . Retrieved from;
http://www.nwlincs.org/mtlincs/opi/reading/worksheets/Reading%20Behavior%20of%20G
ood%20and%20Poor%20Readers.pdf (Accessed December 2016)

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 Commission on Reading of the National Council of Teachers of English (2008). On
Reading, Learning to Read, and Effective Reading Instruction: An Overview of What
We Know and How We Know It. Retrieved from:
http://www.ncte.org/positions/statements/onreading (Accessed December 2016)
McCaw, Donna (2003). Traits of Good and Struggling Readers. Retrieved from
http://www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu/erodacker/traits-of-good-and-struggling-readers---
page-2.html
Nuttall, Christine (2005) Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language. Macmillan.
Romero, A. and R. Romero (1985) Developmental Reading. A Text for College Students. Rex
Book Stores. Philippines. Retrieved from https://books.google.com.ar/books?id=iGQ-
vfSubvwC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=what+is+reading?&source=bl&ots=WpMCF3-
X60&sig=5LN5_LcyxvY_3KtIm8Z_J0SwFjw&hl=es-
419&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihmKPX7dHQAhXEDJAKHaW-
Bvk4HhDoAQg9MAU#v=onepage&q&f=false (Accessed December 2016)

Crditos
Autoras: <Silvia Luppi y Elizabeth White>

Cmo citar este texto:

Luppi, Silvia y White, Elizabeth (2017). Clase Nro 1: The role of the Leader. Reading Comprehension in the
English Class. Buenos Aires: Ministerio de Educacin y Deportes de la Nacin.

Esta obra est bajo una licencia Creative Commons

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