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从阅读过程的本质看英语阅读教学(1)

2013-10-31 01:52

【Abstract】 Reading is the major activity in English curriculum. Modern research on reading has found the reading process active, individualized and complicated. Efficient and effective readers use both top-down and bottom-up strategies operating interactively to aid comprehension. Interactive model and Schema theory emphasize building background knowledge in the pre-reading phase, teaching cognitive skills while reading, de-emphasizing oral reading and using cloze to teach reading. Therefore, the article recommends holistic reading instruction, reader-generated questions, encouragement of the automaticity of word recognition and careful selection of reading materials.
【Key word】 English reading; Schema; interactive; process; model

【摘 要】 阅读能力的培养是英语教学中重要的一环。现代英语教学法认为英语阅读不是被动地接受信息，而是主动化、个人化、而且复杂化的过程。阅读能力强的人，不仅用“自下而上”的技巧去了解文章里的单词与句子，也善于用自身所具备的知识与经验，“自上而下”地推理、预测、并分析文章。相互作用模式和图式理论强调：阅读要建立背景知识，阅读中要训练推测、分析等认知技巧。因此，本文建议：注重整体性的阅读教学，鼓励学生主动认识单词，让学生读完文章后自己提出问题以及谨慎挑选阅读材料。
【关键词】 英语阅读；图式；相互作用；过程；模式

1. Introduction
Reading skill is clearly one of the most important skills, in fact, in many instances around the world we may argue that reading is the most important foreign language skill, particularly in cases where learners have to read English material for their own specialist subject. In the case of education in China, the teaching of English is a major classroom activity not only because it is easier for non-English-speaking teachers to supply an English written text to be read than a spoken one to be understood, but because only reading skill plus a small amount of writing skill is required in the entrance exam which most learners wish to pass. That’s why this paper reviews articles on the research of theoretical and pedagogical issues in reading, hoping to get some inspiration and integrate it effectively into the English reading teaching. 本文来自中国科教评价网
The reading process has famously been described as a "psycholinguistic guessing game"[1] P142 in which efficient readers minimize dependence on visual detail by utilizing background knowledge to make predictions and check these against the text. In this paper, based on the analysis of Schema Theory, the paper will explore its origin, theory and guidance of schema, in the hope of providing some hints to the improvement of teaching and learning.
The paper begins this essay by showing the teaching problems in reading. In the second part of the essay the paper reviews some significant pedagogical and theoretical issues in reading, including Bottom-up Model, Top-down Model and Interactive Model. Then, the Schema Theory is introduced to suggest or accept that something is true so that it can be used as the basis for an argument or discussion and the methods of reading teaching are reviewed. In the third part of this essay the paper presents several recent approaches to teach reading, especially in English context. Finally, several recommendations are made for instructional practices based on what the writer has learned from the literature review.

2. Teaching problems in reading
Reading is an important curriculum. But the traditional teaching method used now does not keep up with the essence of the reading process. The teaching activity is mechanical and cannot meet different needs from learners with several levels and different personality types [2] P68.The main teaching problems in reading are listed as follows:
2.1 Many different contexts for reading instruction
Specialists often seek insight and possible approaches from well-established language theories and researches. However, our language theory may not be completely applied to foreign language reading process because of different situations, motivations and perspectives of foreign language readers.
The basic differences are: first, learners do not have a fully developed phonological system when they begin to read. Therefore, the Bottom-up Models that depend on the learner’s encoding of the text into phonological symbols or internal speech can not be applied directly to the process; second, learners are adolescent or adult learners already literate in native language. They have relatively highly developed native language vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, topical and rhetorical schemata, and varying native language reading strategies. Still for learners, the cultural differences can make the activation of appropriate schemata difficult. The complexity in contexts must lead researchers and teachers to be cautious with their results and with possible suggestions from native language reading contexts.

2.2 Few reading instruction curricula for text structure awareness 您可以访问中国科教评价网（www.NsEac.com）查看更多相关的文章。
A number of studies have persuasively argued that learners’ awareness of formal aspects of language and genre structure enhances their comprehension and inferring ability; [3] P67 however, there are few reading instruction curricula focusing on text structure awareness as a consistent component. Nor is the ability to discuss and teach awareness of text structure well developed in a variety of teaching contexts.

2.3 The difficulty of developing as large a vocabulary in learners as in average       native language academic students
Although reading instructors recognize the importance of a large vocabulary, language skills, academic ability and background knowledge, they admit it is actually impossible for learners to compete with average native language academic students in the development of vocabulary by the end of the secondary school. And the instructors do not improve the method of teaching.

2.4 Reading a lot not being emphasized in most reading teaching
Although extensive reading is useful in learning to read and beneficial to many additional language learning, it is not the central component of reading instruction which stresses the grammar teaching. Teachers still translate all sentences one by one.
In traditional reading teaching, the reading process is described as the “Bottom-up” Model. And the reading activity is also regarded as the process of decoding written symbols, which reforms the author’s thought. So, the traditional reading teaching always emphasizes the grammar. Teachers usually ask learners prepare lessons before class through looking up new words, pronunciation, translation, synonym and so
on.[4] P67 

2.5 Reading strategies not easy to be taught
The ability to use appropriate reading strategies and knowing when to use them according to different reading purposes and tasks are very crucial in reading comprehension. However, teaching learners to use strategies that are relevant to varying needs and contexts has been proven to be extremely difficult. Teachers have to make learners into strategic readers rather than teach them reading strategies, which is a major educational dilemma for contexts. [5] P99 （科教作文网http://zw.NSEaC.com编辑发布）
Why do these teaching dilemmas exist? In the author’s opinion, both learners and teachers do not realize the essences of reading clearly. So we should review the theoretical and pedagogical issues in reading.   

3. Theoretical and pedagogical issues in reading
Researches on reading in a second language, mainly in English as a foreign language, and efforts to improve reading instruction have remarkably grown in the last four decades, especially in the recent 20 years. The following section focuses on different visions of reading process, Schema Theory, and reading strategies.
3.1 Reading process
After collecting and observing the problems arising in the process of reading and understanding, experts and scholars both at home and abroad made plenty of study and demonstration. The following three are the most frequently referred to in reading processing, that is, Bottom-up Model, Top-down Model and Interactive Model.

3.1.1 Bottom- up model
Reading was traditionally viewed as a passive or receptive process in which the reader attempted to decode the intended meaning of the author via recognizing the letters and words as meaningful units. In bottom-up process, or text-based model reading is a process that the reader constructs the text from the smallest units: recogni-zing letters and words, working out sentence structures.[6]P51-52  Carroll defines the bottom-up approach as “ proceeds from the lowest level (the phonological level) to the highest level (the lexical level) of processing in such a way that all of the lower levels of processing operate without influence from the higher levels.” That is to say, the identification of phonemes is not affected by the lexical, syntactic or discourse levels; the retrieval of word is not affected by syntactic or discourse levels and so on. We have some to doubt that a strict Bottom-up Model will provide a comprehensive amount of how we understand language. [7] P53The reader was merely a recipient of information from the printed page and brought nothing to the text. No real interaction took place between the writer and the reader. In brief, it focuses on detailed linguistic forms instead of the meaning of the whole text.

3.1.2 Top-down Model

However, modern research on reading has found the reading process active rather than passive as well as individualized and complicated. Reading theorists have proposed many different visions of reading act. In top-down process, or reader-based model the reader makes guesses about the content of a text. Readers draw on their own intelligence and experience-the predictions they can make, based on the schemata they have acquired-to understand the text. [8]P54 In this process, comprehension must take place first and the identification of words comes second. In top-down process, readers use their background knowledge to work on meaning.
In the Top-down Model of reading, Smith and Goodman [9] P252-253 maintain that readers sample the textual cues, make use of redundancies, make hypotheses about what is coming next, activate background knowledge to make predictions about the ongoing discourse, and confirm (or reject) the predictions. However, poor readers are word-bound and unable to use context when they are reading. This reading process is called a “psycholinguistic model” of reading.
The influence of Goodman and Smith’s work led to a new era in reading theory. Research in reading has been done within the psycholinguistic framework. For example, the earliest psycholinguistic model of reading suggests that comprehension results from the interaction of conceptual abilities, background knowledge and process strategies. In addition, many pedagogical models, which advocate pre-reading activities to activate learners’ predicting skills, are also based on this “top-down” view of reading as a psycholinguistic process.
Recently, however, there is a reaction to the overemphasis on top-down view of reading and a reconsideration of low-level processing in context. Severe observations about the top-down view of reading have come from work by reading researchers. Smith, [10] P156 for instance, stresses that readers garner the information from the page rather than through the top-down process. Some studies in reading have found that less proficient readers are word-bound precisely because they are not yet efficient in bottom-up process. No amount of guessing will overcome this deficiency and lead to automatic word recognition. Experts also claim that readers, having weaker linguistic competence, need to attend more to “bottom-up” features than to read.

3.1.3 Interactive Model （科教作文网http://zw.nseAc.com）
Both the models mentioned above have their limitations. In the bottom-up process, if the learner focuses on words and sentences in the text and just prefers to
receive the message, he may misunderstand the writer. There are always dangers of  mismatch.  The top-down process neglects the importance of lower-level knowledge  that the text requires of the reader. So, strict “top-down” theories of reading have recently been replaced in popularity by more “interactive” models of reading. Several reading researchers have found that efficient and effective readers use both top-down and bottom-up strategies operating interactively to aid comprehension. [11] P157-158      The interactive process, which emphasizes reading comprehension, is a disposing    process of language.  Meanwhile, never should one overlook the importance of the use of background knowledge and reasoning. The whole process of reading should be a
process during which the bottom-to-top model and top-to-bottom model work alternatively and interact with each other. In this whole process successful readers continue to make use of cues at all levels, from graphphonic to schematic [12]. This Interactive Model reveals the importance of the schemata in the reading process.[13] Many experts and scholars both at home and abroad consider that this point of view balances the relationship between the former two models. Good reading is not a print-free guessing
Game.
3.2 Schema Theory
Schema Theory is a major issue in reading. Schema Theory is based on the notion that past experiences lead to the creation of mental frameworks that help us make sense of new experiences [14] P201, which has been found playing a very important role in reading comprehension.
Schema Theory, positing an Interactive Model of reading in which bottom-up process and top-down process of reading occur at the same time, describes how a learner’s knowledge is integrated in memory and used in higher-level comprehension process. [15] P201 The four-fold dividing method roughly divides schemata into the following four categories: Linguistic Schema-the ability to use language, especially a foreign one; Content Schema-background knowledge and so on (culture, world knowledge, concepts);Organizational Schema-the structure of reading material and Strategy schema: monitoring behavior on reading process which relates to reading skills, speed, text predictions. What can we obtain from those analyses to the actual reading teaching activities? At word level, we know that the key factor in the process of reading is some key words that can make our learners understand the general idea of the text by using their already existing schemata. For those that learner-readers do not have, the pre-reading activity is absolutely needed. Teachers can ask some questions in relation to the background of the on-going listening text.

However, the pre-reading activity is only part of the solution to the problem of lacking relevant schema. The main problem lies in a good understanding on the target language culture and society. This may be seen as having a same tone in talking about translation theory, while this is the same function that plays in the fact that a good understanding of the cultures of the target-language is the base of fully understanding their languages. Before the differences between nations and countries becoming vague or disappearing, this factor works. One’s experience, after all, is limited. So there is a need for us to encourage our learners to read more about foreign culture (for example, extensive reading) and pay more attention to the differences between the foreign and the things and customs at home.
What is more important is how to stimulate learners’ schemata properly? This relates to the choice of reading text for our learners. Deep cultural related articles should be avoided to the preliminary learners and the process of reading is on the basis of step by step. On the other hand, reading skill at the hand of learners also plays an important role in the process of schema-stimulation. A good reader should be a good clue-seeker, who can get the writing purpose from small hints among sentences sensibly, who is easy to resonate with the text writer, and who is also a predictor in guessing the contents the text will show next. This stresses the reading process is an active activity, instead of a passive one. An active reader uses his or her own knowledge to perceive the intention of the reading text actively against his or her schemata and then finds out the proper connection between the two.
Of course, there are some disadvantages in recent researches of Schema Theory’s application. Now, what we talked most about the Schema Theory is the Content Schema, and of course, this is the common factor that affects the result of reading. However, the other three also have significant effects on our reading teaching, which we would not ignore. Linguistic Schema refers to the ability to use language. Organizational Schema stresses the logic form of a reading article and the Strategy Schema refers to the skills that a learner mastered. The four kinds of schemata are related with one another and the absent of one would cause the understanding inefficiently. With suitable instructions, the learners can develop the four kinds of schemata in a balanced way and only in this way could they reach the maximum result in the process of reading comprehension.

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After learning the Schema Theory, we should get more realization about the objectives of reading instruction.
The reading instruction is designed to enable learners to develop basic comprehension skills so that they can read and understand texts of a general nature, to use reading to increase their general knowledge, to decide about their reading purpose and adapt their methods of reading according to this, and to develop the ability to read critically.
The reading instruction should teach basic reading comprehension skills, especially real-life reading skills such as reading for gist and reading for information, develop flexible reading skills(varied according to purpose)and critical reading skills, develop the learners’ knowledge of vocabulary or idiom, reinforce (or even) present certain grammatical features and act as a stimulus for oral or written work later on.

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