Surkhet

Learning to Read and Reading to Learn in English

– Parbati Kumari Pokharel

Abstract
Reading is one of key language skills which enables the readers to learn many
things i.e. reading is the gateway of knowledge. Enabling the readers to read in
English is one of the major issue in ELT. This article defines reading as the key
skill with various reading strategies and comprehension as the goal of reading.
It is based on the secondary sources of data basically based on the review of
related literature and attempts to review on learning to read and reading to learn
in English in particular.

Key words: Reading, Comprehension, Learning, Strategies, and Ability

Introduction
As Anderson (2003, p. 1) claims “reading is an active, fluent process which involves the reader
and the reading material in building meaning” and Crystal (2007, p. 209) points out that reading
“crucially involves appreciating the sense of what is written: we read for meaning”. From
the foregoing, one can conclude that, during the reading process, information from visual,
semantic, conceptual and linguistic sources combines to make sense of sentence and phrases.
Comprehension, which is the essence of reading, is found to be neglected in the teaching
learning context of EFL.

Learning to read is not an easy task, even for some children of average intelligence(Westwood,
1997, p. 83). Acquiring literacy becomes more difficult as students grow older; children who do
not learn to read in the first few grades are more likely to repeat grades and to eventually drop
out of school. The ability to read and comprehend a simple text is one of the most fundamental
skills a child can learn. Evidence indicates that learning to read both early and at a sufficient
rate (with comprehension) is essential for learning to read well. Children first need to learn
to read so that they can read to learn. That is, as children pass through the grade levels, more
and more academic content is transmitted to them through text, and their ability to acquire
new knowledge and skills depends largely on their ability to read and extract meaning from
text. The first and foremost step of education is, no doubt, reading, should be developed from

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Learning to Read and Reading to Learn in English

the earlier stages of education which is very difficult to develop for the students even in their
native language text.

In today’ societies, reading is considered as indispensable for a life of high quality (Bahadır
2012, p. 2) as cited in( Akın, Koray, & Tavukçu, 2015, p. 2445). It is quite important for
the individuals’ social and academic achievements to gain reading habit after learning how
to read and write, and then to begin reading with a critical point of view (Gokturk, 1997).
The abilitytoreadandcomprehend text is anecessaryprerequisitefor full participationin modern
society. Reading, as a receptive skill, has long been regarded as a prerequisite for foreign language
acquisition since it functions as an essential source of input for other skills to develop. Reading
also plays a vital role in academic development, particularly when learners have to work over
a huge amount of foreign language materials for their own specialist subjects (McDonough
and Shaw, 2013). Learning to read is a basic need and right of every young learner throughout
the world. McNamara (2007) argues that reading can be challenging, particularly when the
material is unfamiliar, technical, or complex. Moreover, for some readers, comprehension is
always challenging. They may understand each word separately, but linking them together
into meaningful ideas often doesn’t happen as it should. These readers can decode the words,
but have not developed sufficient skills to comprehend the underlying, deeper meaning of the
sentences, the paragraphs, and the entire text (p. xi).

Being a good teacher of reading starts with an understanding of what reading is. What exactly
happens between text, brain, and eye when we engage in this delightful, magical practice
called reading? Reading is the practice of using text to create meaning. The two key words
here are creating and meaning. If there is no meaning being created, there is no reading taking
place (Johnson, 2008, p. 4). “It is common place in theories of reading to seek to identify
skills which underly or contribute to the reading process”(Alderson, 1990, p. 425). According
to Grabe (2009), “reading is a strategic process in that a number of the skills and processes
are needed on the part of the reader to anticipate text information, select key information,
organize and mentally summarize information, monitor comprehension, repair comprehension
breakdowns, and match comprehension output to reader goals” (p. 15). Alderson (2000) points
out that “the notion of skills and sub-skills in reading is enormously pervasive and influential,
despite the lack of clear empirical justification” (p. 10). Nuttall (1996, pp. 41-78) states that
effective reading involves ‘word attack’ skill; ‘sentence attack’ skill and ‘text attack’ skill.
To her, reading involves not only looking at sentences and word sand going through them at
random but also recognizing and understanding them intellectually. It helps students pick up
new words, syntax and style of writing.

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– Parbati Kumari Pokharel

Reading Strategies as the Roadmap for Reading

Regarding the reading strategies, Garner (1987) says that “reading strategies are an action or
a series of actions employed in order to construct meaning.” Similarly, Readingstrategies ha
vebeendefinedas“thecomprehension processes thatreadersusein ordertomakesenseofwhatthey
read”(Brantmeier, 2002, p. 1).The distinction between reading ‘skills’ and reading ‘strategies’
are not always clear, and they are sometimes used interchangeably. “It is not always easy to
distinguish skills from strategies” (Hudson, 2007, p. 77). According to Rupp, Ferne and Choi
(2006), ‘skills’ are unconscious automatic abilities that facilitate comprehension such as text
decoding and the use of background knowledge, while ‘strategies’ are conscious techniques
which are used intentionally for successful reading such as skimming and scanning.

Barnett (1988) defined reading strategies as the mental operations conducted by readers when
they purposely read a text for comprehension. According to Paris et al. (1983, p. 293), reading
strategies are skills under consideration which closely depend on specific reading contexts
as well as readers awareness, control and intention.They range from bottom-up vocabulary
strategies, such as looking up an unknown word in the dictionary, to more comprehension
actions, such as connecting what is being read to the reader’s background knowledge. Block
(1986, p. 465) established that reading strategies indicate “how readers conceive a task, what
textual cues they attend to, how they make sense of what they read, and what they do when
they do not understand”. Erler and Finkbeiner (2007) conceptualized comprehension strategies
as “intentional actions chosen to facilitate reading at any level of processing” (p. 189).

Block (1986) classified reading strategies as general strategies (comprehension-gathering

and comprehension-monitoring) and local strategies (understanding specific language units).
Anderson (1991, p. 463) proposed a detailed classification of reading strategies including
five major groups: supervising strategies, support strategies, paraphrase strategies, coherence
strategies and test-taking strategies. According to Barnett (1988), reading strategies are the
comprehension processes which readers use to comprehend what they are reading. These
processes may include skimming, scanning, guessing word meanings from context, etc. She
argues that using efficient reading strategies will help L2 students to understand more than
those who do not.

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Learning to Read and Reading to Learn in English

Table No. 1: List of Reading Strategies

Reading Strategies Description
Predicting • Helps activate prior knowledge
• Based on clues in text (pictures, subtitles, etc.)
Connecting • Connecting prior knowledge to new information
Comparing • Thinking more specifically about connections they are making, e.g.
How is this different to….?
Inferring • Taking information from a text and creating their own interpretation
beyond the literal level.
Synthesising • Piecing information together as students read a text, to keep track of
what is happening
Creating Images • Creating sensory images to assist with overall comprehension of a text
Self-questioning • Providing a framework for active learning as students engage with the
text to find answers
Skimming • Glancing quickly through material to gain an overall view of text
Scanning • Glancing through a text to locate specific details, e.g. names, dates etc.
Determining Importance • Prioritizing most important information from phrase, sentence,
paragraph, chapter or whole text
Summarising and • Reducing larger texts to focus on important elements
Paraphrasing • Re-stating/re-writing text in own words using key words to capture
main focus
Re-Reading • Creating opportunities for deeper understanding, word identification
and developing fluency
Reading On • Skipping unfamiliar word(s) and reading on to provide sufficient
context to determine unknown word/phrase
Adjusting Reading Rate • Adjusting rate where appropriate, e.g. slowing down to comprehend
new information, or speeding upto scan for key words
Sounding Out • Using knowledge of letter-sound relationship to decode unknown words
Chunking • Breaking multi-syllabic words into units larger that individual
phonemes
Using Analogy • Transferring what they know about familiar words to help them
identify unfamiliar words
Consultinga Reference • Using a dictionary, thesaurus, reference chart or glossary to help find
word meanings/pronunciations

Comprehension as the Destination of Reading

Comprehension is the essence of reading and the active process of constructing meaning
from text (Durkin, 1993). Reading comprehension involves the interaction of linguistic
processing and conceptual processing and results in the construction of meaning or conceptual
representation of a text in the memory. As basic requirements for comprehension, words
must be recognized, semantic propositions must be extracted from sentences, and ideas from

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– Parbati Kumari Pokharel

different sentences must be connected to one another (Horiba & Fukaya, 2015, p. 23). In the
words of Davies (1995, p. 185) "reading comprehension is a process of analysis of receiving
message from a written text." Reading comprehension is considered to occur at four levels of
complexity. These levels are often referred to as literal level, inferential level, critical level and
creative level (Smith 1969as cited inWestwood, 2001, p. 21).

Research has shown that general knowledge and familiarity can enhance comprehension of
an L2 text (Horiba & Fukaya, 2015, p. 25). Reading a text requires several cognitive abilities
such as memory, problem solving, and making inferences (Nahatame, 2014, p. 54).In “the
Comprehension Strategies of Second Language Readers,” (Block 1986, pp. 472-473).)
categorizes strategies into two levels: general comprehension and local linguistic strategies.
The former, general comprehension strategies comprise comprehension gathering and
comprehension monitoring strategies, whereas the latter, local linguistic strategies, work on
attempts to understand specific linguistic units. Ten kinds of general strategies are:

l Anticipate content: The reader predicts what content will occur in succeeding portions
of text.
l Recognize text structure: The reader distinguishes between main points and supporting
details or discusses the purpose of information.
l Integrate information: The reader connects new information with previously stated
content,
l Question information in the text: The reader questions the significance or veracity of
content.
l Interpret the text: The reader makes an inference, draws a conclusion, or forms a
hypothesis about the content,
l Use general knowledge and associations: The readers use their knowledge and
experience (a) to explain, extend, and clarify content; (b) to evaluate the veracity of
content; and (c) to react to content.
l Comment on behavior or process: The reader describes strategy use, indicates awareness
of the components of the process, or expresses a sense of accomplishment or frustration.
l Monitor comprehension: The reader assesses his or her degree of understanding of the
text.
l Correct behavior: The reader notices that an assumption, interpretation, or paraphrase is
incorrect and changes that statement.
l React to the text: The reader reacts emotionally to information in the text.

Below are the Local Strategies:

l Paraphrase: The reader rephrases content using different words, but with the same
sense.

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Learning to Read and Reading to Learn in English

l Reread: The reader rereads a portion of the text either aloud or silently.
l Question meaning of a clause or sentence: The reader does not understand the meaning
of a portion of the text.
l Question meaning of a word: The reader does not understand a particular word.
l Solve vocabulary problem: The reader uses context, a synonym, or some other word-
solving behavior to understand a particular word

Brown (2001), for example, points out that "reading comprehension is a matter of developing
appropriate, efficient comprehension strategies" (ibid p. 306). He goes on to enumerate ten
such strategies:

l Identify the purpose in reading.

l Use graphemic rules and patterns to aid in bottom-up reading.
l Use different silent reading techniques for relatively rapid reading.
l Skim the text for main ideas.
l Scan the text for specific information.
l Use semantic mapping or clustering.
l Guess when you aren't certain.
l Analyze vocabulary.
l Distinguish between literal and implied meanings.
l Capitalize on discourse markers to process relationships.

Conclusion
Reading, without question, is a highly complex cognitive process. Learning to read,thus, is the
most important educational outcome. Teaching children to read at a young age, therefore, is the
cornerstone of improving educational outcomes. Children who do not learn to read in the early
grades struggle to develop more advanced skills, which are often absorbed through reading.
Unable to understand printed information, follow written instructions and communicate well
in writing, these children risk falling further and further behind those who can read effectively
in later grades. Children who do not develop the ability to read proficiently in early grades are
less likely to complete compulsory education than those who do.

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