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4. Recent approaches to teach reading
The following is recent approaches to teach reading:
4.1 Building background knowledge in the pre-reading phase
Schema Theory has shown that successful readers use prior knowledge of the content of the text to aid comprehension. Therefore, a recent approach to teach reading emphasizes pre-reading preparation of learners in a reading lesson plan. Working with learners before they begin reading a text helps them get more involved.[16] P78 First, learners learn background information to activate useful schemata. Understanding the text’s beginning, learners can then recognize textual landmarks as they meet them. Then, confident learners are more likely to take risks in guessing words’ meanings and anticipate text content. They will be better strategy users while they read. Just as Tierney and Pearson put on the top of the eight suggestions for improving classroom practices, “Be sure to find out your students’ prior knowledge of the topic and text genre before beginning to read,” intelligent selection and preparation before reading can make our students’ reading more efficient and enjoyable.
4.2 Teaching met cognitive skills while reading
The diversity of the cognitive process in action as learners read, as well as learners’ awareness of them can be used during the reading act to develop comprehension. The identification of mentalistic functions through the use of self-reflection procedures can facilitate the reading process. In the study of Rod Ellis [17] P86-87, learners, after being trained to “self-observe” and to “think-aloud”, became aware of inefficient processing habits and were able to replace them with strategies that had been taught to them in class.
Teaching the skill of contextual guessing may improve reading comprehension and speed.
4.3 Using cloze to teach reading
The great value of the cloze procedure in language testing has long been recognized. Since using cloze for the teaching of reading gives learners practice in the essential skill of guessing from context, the development of the ability to guess meaning from context is seen as the key to successful reading. This context includes not only the words on the page, but also the reader’s language knowledge about the subject matter of the text being read. By deleting words from a passage on a regular basis, cloze trains learners’ guessing strategies, thus allowing learners, then teachers, and their peers a chance to help learners increase their guessing ability. This increased ability may lead to greater comprehension and also to faster reading speed. Reading speed accelerates because better guessing skill means readers need to spend less time decoding words. （科教论文网 lw.NsEac.com编辑整理）
Although the reading teaching has been improved recently, many learners still have difficulty in applying the reading skills while they are reading. We can find it from some examples of English text in postgraduate entrance examination.
2004 Text 2[18] P116
Over the past century, all kinds of unfairness and discrimination have been condemned or made illegal. But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet.
It has long been known that a taxi firm called AAAA cars has a big advantage over Zodiac cars when customers thumb through their phone directories. Less well known is the advantage that Adam Abbott has in life over Zoë Zysman. English names are fairly evenly spread between the halves of the alphabet. Yet a suspiciously large number of top people have surnames beginning with letters between A and K.
Thus the American president and vice-president have surnames starting with B and C respectively; and 26 of George Bush’s predecessors (including his father) had surnames in the first half of the alphabet against just 16 in the second half. Even more striking, six of the seven heads of government of the G7 rich countries are alphabetically advantaged (Berlusconi, Blair, Bush, Chirac, Chrétien and Koizumi). The world’s three top central bankers (Greenspan, Duisenberg and Hayami) are all close to the top of the alphabet, even if one of them really uses Japanese characters. As are the world’s five richest men (Gates, Buffett, Allen, Ellison and Albrecht).
Can this merely be coincidence? One theory, dreamt up in all the spare time enjoyed by the alphabetically disadvantaged, is that the rot sets in early. At the start of the first year in infant school, teachers seat pupils alphabetically from the front, to make it easier to remember their names. So short-sighted Zysman junior gets stuck in the back row, and is rarely asked the improving questions posed by those insensitive teachers. At the time the alphabetically disadvantaged may think they have had a lucky escape. Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly. （转载自http://zw.ＮＳＥaＣ.com科教作文网）
The humiliation continues. At university graduation ceremonies, the ABCs proudly get their awards first; by the time they reach the Zysmans most people are literally having a ZZZ. Shortlists for job interviews, election ballot papers, lists of conference speakers and attendees: all tend to be drawn up alphabetically, and their recipients lose interest as they plough through them.
The examinee can grasp the main idea of the article through the extensive reading easily.
In the first paragraph, the sentence--But one insidious form continues to thrive: alphabetism. This, for those as yet unaware of such a disadvantage, refers to discrimination against those whose surnames begin with a letter in the lower half of the alphabet- mentions the phenomenon which the author emphasizes. If readers can realize the word “But” which is stressed obviously, then it is possible to infer that the second and third paragraphs of the article surely prove the first section through massive examples. Then the second and third paragraphs can be skip-read and does not need to be examined carefully.
Comprehending the topic sentence is a good method to hold a paragraph. When readers read the following article, if readers can hold a paragraph’s general idea through utilizing the strategy-seeking the topic sentence, then it is extremely easy to see the first sentence in the fourth paragraph--Can this merely be coincidence？, as well as the last sentence--Yet the result may be worse qualifications, because they get less individual attention, as well as less confidence in speaking publicly-- a transitional sentence. Readers can know the fourth paragraph is for explaining the kinds of phenomenon, its origin and the consequences it creates.
In the fifth paragraph, readers also act according to the first sentence--The humiliation continues--and extrapolate that the full text will give further example to disclose the phenomenon of alphabetism lying in human society generally.
Through the above elaboration, readers may realize we cannot read effectively just by grasping sufficient glossary and grammar knowledge, because our memory is limited. We can not take note of the macro structure of the text if we pay more attention to some partial information. [19] P102-103 But we can hold the whole text by reasonably grasping the paragraph’s structure, the skip-reading, as well as advanced reading extrapolation. Then we comprehend the whole text after reading these five topic sentences.
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5. Recommendations for teaching reading
5.1 Holistic reading instruction
The research by Devine, [20] P99 clearly shows that gains on discrete point grammar and vocabulary tests correlate negatively with increasing reading proficiency. That is, if language instruction is to have a positive impact on reading performance, that instruction should be holistic or integrative rather than discrete-point skills oriented. Constant close attention to details like pronunciation, vocabulary items, and grammatical points in each sentence does not reinforce skills, which are crucial to efficient reading and comprehension. In the reading classroom, the teacher should not rely on repetition and drill of pronunciation, word identification, vocabulary and grammar structures because these activities may only prepare learners for discrete point tests instead of real reading, and will not aid learners in developing reading competence.
Holistic reading instruction should be emphasized in the teaching of English reading. The teacher should design the corresponding reading curriculum in order to train the ability of holistic reading. The essential target of the trainings that enable learners to manoeuvre the scheme knowledge they have and strengthens the ability of forecast and proving. The ability of forecast is most important. Teachers should teach learner how to find out the topic word/key word in a certain sentence and the topic sentence and topic paragraph in a certain passage.
5.2 Reader-generated questions
Questioning has long been used in reading as a tool to facilitate comprehension or after reading in an effort to test comprehension. However, “other-imposed” type of questioning used by the writer or editor of a text, or by the teacher, interferes with the reader’s own agenda as well as with his reading pleasure. David Nunan[22]P99also remarks that teacher-generated questions tend to weaken the learners’ comprehension since the learners’ course evaluation often depends more on their answers than on their comprehension. These findings suggest that the traditional question approach limits learners’ comprehension by having them comprehend only what the questions ask for, the implication being that readers comprehend in a different manner and more naturally when questions are not imposed by others.
5.3 Encouragement of the automaticity of word recognition
Automaticity of word recognition is what foreign language readers are lack of. Therefore, teachers should have learners read as much as possible to develop automaticity. The role of extensive reading is crucial in this respect.
Learners need to read extensively. Longer concentrated periods of silent reading build vocabulary and structural awareness, develop automaticity, enhance background knowledge, improve comprehension skills and promote confidence and motivation. In short, learners learn to read by reading a lot.
5.4 Careful selection of reading materials （科教论文网 lw.NsEac.com编辑整理）
Teachers must treat beginning and advanced learners differently as they approach reading materials. Widdowson [23] P135 advocates that preparation to read authentic materials must begin at the intermediate level. Besides, experts [24] P135 find that the more hierarchical the organization of a text, the better the comprehension, recall, and retention of readers. Therefore, teachers should select texts with a very obvious rhetorical organization to cater to learners’ need for clarity. Examples of such discourse patterns in English might be problem-soluting, comparison, and cause-effect expository formats.
Widdowson[25] P135advocates “narrow reading” as another means of selecting text. He argues that the more familiar the reader is with the text, the more comprehension is facilitated. Teachers can develop both reading comprehension and learner self-confidence by giving learners the opportunity to narrow their reading choices to several texts by the same author or dealing with the same context matter.
6. Conclusion
The instruction of reading has often been the main activity in many English contexts. Reviewing so much theoretical issues and instructional literature in reading, understanding the strength and weakness of various approaches to teach reading, and realizing some teaching problems in reading context, the author recommends the reading curriculum should become a learner-centred curriculum. The holistic reading instruction and cognitive skills should be emphasized while reading. The recommendations made here may not be sufficient to meet all the instructional needs of reading. But, it can tell us to realize that the English teacher’s responsibility is to get learners to read as much as possible effectively and enjoyably.
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