Reading: MAKING SENSE OF A TEXT

What is reading. What does it involve. Is it an active process What is reading? What does it involve? Is it an active process? Does meaning reside in the text?

The little girl ate candies. Her mother slapped her. The little girl cried.

Reading is a Constructive Process Reading may be described as “getting meaning” from written text, and a reader’s skill in comprehension depends on three things:

1. ) the background knowledge of the reader; 2 1.) the background knowledge of the reader; 2.) the accuracy with which the reader responds to printed or written material; and 3.) the reader’s understanding of the message of the text.

Reading involves a transaction between the mind of the reader and the language of the text.

Read the story below in parts Read the story below in parts. Stop after each sentence and ask yourself: Who is Tony? What makes me think so?

Tony was on his way to school last Tuesday. ( Is he a student Tony was on his way to school last Tuesday. ( Is he a student? a teacher? What makes you think so? )

He was really worried about the Science lesson. ( a teacher. a student He was really worried about the Science lesson. ( a teacher? a student? What makes you think so? )

Last week, he had a problem in controlling the class. ( a teacher Last week, he had a problem in controlling the class. ( a teacher? a student? What makes you think so? )

It was unfair for the Dean to leave him in charge. ( a teacher It was unfair for the Dean to leave him in charge. ( a teacher? a student? What makes you think so? )

After all, it is quite unusual to ask the janitor to take charge of the class.

Were your answers correct. Why. Why not Were your answers correct? Why? Why not? What processes did you use to arrive at your answers?

The activity clearly shows that your background knowledge determines what you expect from a text.  

Cognitive Processes: predicting, hypothesizing, deducing, inferring and drawing implications.

Reading is a constructive, interactive process which takes place behind the eyes.

Schema- the term used to describe how people, in general, organize and store information. Schema activation- is the mechanism which people access what they know and match it to the information in a text. Schemata- have been called ‘the building blocks of cognition

Reading is a language process that involves a dialogue between the reader and the author. (Widdowson, 1979 as cited by Hedge, 2000)

Learning with texts is a strategic act.

Top-down processing- reading proceeds from whole to part; from inside-out. The uptake of information is guided by an individual’s prior knowledge and expectations.

Bottom-up processing- reading proceeds from part to whole; from text to reader; or, from outside-inside. The readers take in stimuli from the outside world -- letters and words, for reading -- and deal with those information with little recourse to higher-level knowledge.

In most situations, bottom-up and top-down processes work together to ensure the accurate and rapid processing of information.

Six Types of Knowledge to Make Sense of a Text Syntactic knowledge- rules that govern the ways words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. It helps a reader decode meaning through his knowledge of language features. Morphological knowledge- identification, analysis, and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, and parts of speech.

General world knowledge- this relates to the reader’s prior knowledge and experiential background. Sociocultural knowledge- this is also called schematic knowledge and is related to the reader’s background information of things, people, events that make up his sociocultural world.

Topic knowledge- this has to do with knowledge of a topic, an event, a situation that enables the reader to make sense of a text. Genre knowledge- this type of knowledge enables a reader to work with the language of the text in order to interpret its meaning.