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THE TEACHING OF READING IN THE U.S. AND THE READING PROCESS FOR SECOND-LANGUAGE LEARNERS
When Russia sent “Sputnik" into the atmosphere in 1957 educators
across the United States felt the "shock waves". The Department of
Health, Education and Welfare quickly mandated the addition of advanced math
and science courses in all public schools, supposedly to catch up with the
Russian in scientific and technological achievement. Ten years later the book,
"Why Can' t Johnny Read?" became a best seller among parents and
educators, and a comprehensive long-range plan to overhaul the U.S. education
system, and a "back to the basics of reading and writing program" was
divised by the Department. At two to five-year intervals other plans, compiled
by State and National Departments of Education, are distributed among the
educational establishment across the nation. The current (1995) plan, proposed
by the Clinton Administration is named simply, "Education America",
and an Act of Congress. "Goals 2000" calls for effective and rigorous
accountability at all levels of education in all public schools.
Students' reading ability, an important focus in education in the U.S.
for at least three decades, second-language reading, and what teachers can do
to help their students achieve and enjoy reading, are the topics of this paper.
In the U.S. reading is taught as a subject. All children in grades one
through six have regular classes in reading and are grouped according to
abilities within their age and grade groups. Publishers of reading texts
compete for adoptions by local school boards and continually produce
beautifully-illustrated texts and supplemental story books. It is a large and
profitable business. Beyond sixth-grade level children who have difficulties
reading usually go to a special reading class during school hours for special
lessons. There a reading specialist diagnoses disabilities and devises
individualized programs to remediate students' disabilities. In spite of the sophistication
of attempts to help all students learn and enjoy reading some students fail to
do so. The reasons are diverse and esoteric, even for the specialists.
I suggest one of the reasons why this phenomenon exists is that teachers
assume reading skills have been taught and learned during the pupils' previous
years in school. A percentage of students in every class has not learned
however, does not read, and falls further and further behind in school-based
achievement. Many teachers are overly anxious to "get on with it" and teach more advanced and
interesting subject matter and are reluctant to continue to teach the basic skills
which enable STUDENTS to "get on" with the more interesting subject
matter.
Teachers at each level must not assume each child has mastered the
previous year' s curriculum. Diagnosis of reading disabilities and abilities is
an important task for teachers at every level. It may be surprising to readers
that one of the most popular courses,chosen by pre-medical and pre-law students,
as well as the general university population, including the football and
basketball team members at the University of Arkansas, was "Reading Efficiency" which I
taught as an associate professor in the College of Education from 1980 to 1985.
Our department offered 14 sections of this course ( of 20 students in each
class ) four hours a week, four times a year. We did not teach "speed
reading", but rather strategies and processing skills. We asked the
students to "rewrite" their text books, using the margins, focusing
on key phrases and essential information. We did not encourage "
hi-liting" or underlining, but actual rewriting what was essential to
understanding. Their text books could not be resold or reused, of course. This
technique may appear to be simplistic for a high level of learning. The
rational supporting it is that unless a student can write, paraphrase and
explain essential information, one cannot claim it is learned. The old proverb,
"I hear, I know, I see, I remember; I do, I understand" rings true.
Understanding is the imperative educational issue, of course, not memorization.
Success in school depends upon the students' abilities in reading and
writing. Probably success in life can depend upon how well a person speak.
Regardless of the latter, children' s self esteem is threatened if they cannot
keep up with their peers in school.
So it is the teacher, in partnership with the student, who must be aware
of the latter' s ability at every level in the process of education. If that
ability is lacking it is the teacher, committed to the student' s learning
appropriate skills, who will help him succeed. Teaching is the one profession
that dramatically influences a student' s future.
Now turning to the teaching of reading to second-language learners I
offer the following, adapted from papers compiled by U.S. Peace Corps, Poland,
1995.
The suggestions are applicable for all reading classes and can be used
by teachers at all levels, including college level.
The reading process transfers from language to language. Teaching
reading to someone who already reads in another language is teaching that
person critical thinking skills, which may not transfer from one language to
another. With this in mind, we must recognize two truisms about teaching reading:
a person becomes a "new reader" with every language, and a person who
is a "good reader" in the first language may not be a good reader in
the second language. This apparent contradiction can be understood by looking
at how and why we read in a first language and in a second language. Students
may need to read in order to extract specific information from a text, to get a
general understanding of the text, or to be entertained.
We need, therefore, to vary the kinds of reading material the students
see and the reading asks the students perform. Also, both the teacher and the
student should realize the following:
1. A person learns to read by
reading.
2. Reading skill development treats
the cognitive process as if it were a group of muscles,each one of which can be
strengthened, exercised, and practiced to make it stronger. In other words, if
a person does not learn and employ the reading strategies necessary, reading in
a second language can be difficult.
3. The second language learner has
probably never realized all the strategies he or she uses in reading the first
language. These strategies need to be taught to a second language learner even
though that learner may understand them in the first language. (See below for
some of these.)
4.Teaching reading skills can mean
teaching deliberate attack strategies: Why am I reading this? What is the best
way, the most efficient way to achieve what I need from this reading act? In
other words, teaching students to discover the purpose of the reading task and employ
only the strategies necessary to achieve those ends.
5.Reading is interacting with a text,
synthesizing ideas, drawing conclusions, forming new ideas, and much more. To
accomplish these seemingly difficult tasks, the teacher and student must know
that reading need not be a word by word activity: not knowing the meaning of a
single word or even the majority of the words does not mean the reader cannot
understand the text and interact with it.
In teaching reading to second language learner, we need to do more than
put a text in front of them and ask questions which discover how much or how
little students understand. We need to teach strategies for (1) approaching a text, that is,
getting students to discover what they are expected to know and how they will
be expected to demonstrate that knowledge, and (2) reading that text. Some of these strategies, processing skills,
and components of understanding reading include the following:
SCOPE: Assessing what is involved in the reading:
recognizing the limits or lack of limits of the text, the expected outcomes,
and themselves.
DETAILS: Finding particular pieces of information that
are important.
MAIN IDEA: Defining the central thought(s) in a text to
which all others relate.
MEANINGS OF NEW WORDS: Using context clues to formulate
and accept a partial meaning of a new word.
SEQUENCE OF EVENTS: Determining the order and/or organization pattern(s) employed in the
second language in various texts. This will help both in terms of
(1) PREDICTING, which includes anticipating, choosing, supplying,
broadening, focusing, judging, assessing, and surveying the text prior to
reading, and
(2) CLASSIFYING, which involves
listing, sorting, distinguising, naming, labeling, arranging, and organizing
the material.
INFERRING: Using the author' s thought to build a new
idea: applying, associating, connecting, linking, matching, weighing,
discarding, and rearranging the information.
From the author' s idea
the student extends the information. Most college students who are learning a
foreign language do quite well in locating details, main idea, and sequence of
events, but inferring information from the text usually is quite troublesome.
The following processing skills are also more difficult for them:
ANALYSIS AND CRITICALITY: Weighing relative values,
determining structure and effect, questioning, considering, inquiring,
pondering, parsing, reassembling, and criticizing the text
INTERPRETATION: decoding, relating, drawing conclusions,
generalizing, specifying, organizing, and cataloging both the information in
the text and their responses to it
SUMMARY: Being able to synthesize the main ideas and
creating a general paraphrase of total thought
PURPOSE: Understanding the intent(s) of the writer
EFFICIENCY: Choosing the best reading strategy and most
important reading style for each text
presented
What we then must understand is the fact that there are ways to select
prose and adapt prose to specific teaching events, for specific teaching
purposes. The trick is trying to do this. The following are some things to keep
in mind when teaching reading in the second language classroom.
1. Make the reading a pleasure for the students,
not a chore. This can be done by varying the reading tasks(in terms of
presentation, purpose and types) and making sure you use texts that interest the students
2. Use readings to teach the various skills and
strategies that go into reading and remember that the readings all have content
which should not be neglected.
3.Vary the kind of reading they are expected to
do. Don' t just ask them to read silently and answer questions. You can/should:
a. give them pre-reading questions
and/or activities
b. ask them to make up their own
questions
c. ask them to search
for a particular piece of information rather than read the entire text
d. give them the answers and ask
them to write the questions
e. provide
opportunities/activities for them to use the information from the text for
real, communicative purposes
4. Don't get the students to read aloud too often
(I would suggest never, unless working on pronunciation, intonation, rhythm,
dialogues, or story telling). Reading aloud is a special skill and should be
used for passages which are suitable. Reading aloud may get in the way of
comprehension, teach the wrong skills, and/or slow down the process of the
activity.
5. Give the students authentic materials from
newspapers, travel brochures, magazines, public notices, advertizements,
tickets, memos, and other realia. Also, in situations where they will encounter
it, give them authentic handwriting to read: telephone messages, memos, etc.
6. Focus the students on what they are about to
read and why. You can do this by:
a. pre-teaching some of the
vocabulary or key words
b. giving necessary background
information
c.setting the reading within a
larger context
7. Give the students a task to perform while
reading. This can be as simple as answering questions or making notes, or it
could involve deciding on the tone of the piece.
8. Vary the question types when checking
comprehension. Use Yes/No questions, whquestions, and "or" questions
as appropriate; use open questions which check global understanding as well as
those closed, specific questions.
9. Vary the way you check comprehension. Get the
students to complete charts or tables or sentences, or check true sentences,
rather than just getting them to answer questions.
10. Train the students to read in chunks rather
than one word at a time. Reading word by word makes reading a very slow and
often painful process. It also makes comprehension of a passage much more
difficult.
11. Follow up students' reading. The follow up
should lead to free production. As with anything in your lessons, students
should not be made to read for the sake of reading.
It
is not systems, governmental mandates, or well-devised plans by reformers, but
the dedicated individual teacher, trained well in educational practices, who
makes the difference in success or failure of a student.