Approaches to developing reading skills of learners’ of English

1.2Theories of reading comprehension
Over the last decade, a number of studies that have carefully examined young English learners’ early reading in English have found convergence on a number of key points (Manyak & Bauer, 2008). For example, ELs from a variety of first languages can successfully develop beginning literacy skills in English regardless of limitations in English proficiency. Second, the early stages of ELs’ reading development looks a lot like that of native speakers of English, with the same basic underlying factors of phonological awareness, letter identification, and decoding skills. Third, it appears that the same percentages of NS and ELs have difficulties learning to read in
English. Finally, explicit instruction has proven to be beneficial for the early English reading development of ELs. Taken together, we need to hold high expectations for ELs’ learning of reading and writing skills in English.
At this point there seem to be few existing studies on comprehension instruction for ELs that offer examples of sound instructional practices . Nevertheless, it seems clear that comprehension instruction is critical to the long-term achievement of ELs. Manyak and Bauer (2008) offer several principles to guide instruction for ELs summarized from extant research. First, research has demonstrated that ELs may comprehend more than they are able to communicate verbally in English. Thus we must not underestimate ELs’ ability to read diffi cult texts and participate in higher order comprehension activities and discussions. Second, learning new vocabulary through language-rich instruction is key in ELs’ comprehension. Third, it has been established that using ELs’ background knowledge (i.e., culturally familiar content) as a means for scaffolding to new text content learning boosts their comprehension. Teachers should provide children with culturally familiar texts whenever possible. However, ELs will always face many texts with unfamiliar content, so it critical Motivation and Engagement Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension that teachers implement pre-reading activities that build ELs’ relevant background knowledge. An activity called synopsis text (Manyak & Bauer, 2008) is recommended for building background knowledge for ELs. First, identify key ideas from an upcoming text into a brief one- to two-paragraph synopsis. Students are asked to read the synopsis twice and then, working in pairs or small groups, identify three key points, one idea they find difficult to understand, and any unfamiliar words. Next, the groups write a question they have that relates to the upcoming reading. This familiarizes students with the content of the text and prompts them to anticipate new information (a schema-building activity). Although families usually do not have the expertise to provide explicit reading comprehension strategies instruction and guided practice, they can do a great deal to facilitate children’s reading comprehension. For years now, Allington has insisted that children need to read a lot to get good at reading. Families are in an ideal position to facilitate wide reading and discussion of text. As teachers, we can provide families with both access to reading materials and structure for facilitating discussion and interaction around texts. Richgels and Wold (1998) have designed the Three for the Road program to involve parents in choosing one or more books to read and discuss with their children at home from among three leveled books. These leveled books are placed in a backpack that is sent home to parents with their children. The three books selected in each backpack represent a variety of themes, including fantasy, comedy, math mania, adventure, ABCs, and sing-along. The three levels of books included in each backpack are at the easiest, in-between, and most challenging levels for the student’s grade level. The backpack includes a letter to parents as shown in Figure 7.26. This letter may be easily adapted to suit the needs of parents and children in other grades. Just like teaching methodology, reading theories have had their shifts and transitions. Starting from the traditional view which focused on the printed form of a text and moving to the cognitive view that enhanced the role of background knowledge in addition to what appeared on the printed page, they ultimately culminated in the meta cognitive view which is now in vogue. It is based on the control and manipulation that a reader can have on the act of comprehending a text. According to Dole et al. (1991), in the traditional view of reading, novice readers acquire a set of hierarchically ordered sub-skills that sequentially build toward comprehension ability. Having mastered these skills, readers are viewed as experts who comprehend what they read. Readers are passive recipients of information in the text. Meaning resides in the text and the reader has to reproduce meaning. According to Nunan , reading in this view is basically a matter of decoding a series of written symbols into their aural equivalents in the quest for making sense of the text. He referred to this process as the 'bottom-up' view of reading. McCarthy has called this view 'outside-in' processing, referring to the idea that meaning exists in the printed page and is interpreted by the reader then taken in.This model of reading has almost always been under attack as being insufficient and defective for the main reason that it relies on the formal features of the language, mainly words and structure. Although it is possible to accept this rejection for the fact that there is over-reliance on structure in this view, it must be confessed that knowledge of linguistic features is also necessary for comprehension to take place. To counteract over-reliance on form in the traditional view of reading, the cognitive view was introduced. Goodman presented reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game, a process in which readers sample the text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject them, make new hypotheses, and so forth. Here, the reader rather than the text is at the heart of the reading process. The schema theory of reading also fits within the cognitively based view of reading. Rumelhart has described schemata as "building blocks of cognition" which are used in the process of interpreting sensory data, in retrieving information from memory, in organising goals and subgoals, in allocating resources, and in guiding the flow of the processing system. Rumelhart has also stated that if our schemata are incomplete and do not provide an understanding of the incoming data from the text we will have problems processing and understanding the text. Cognitively based views of reading comprehension emphasize the interactive nature of reading and the constructive nature of comprehension. Dole et al. have stated that, besides knowledge brought to bear on the reading process, a set of flexible, adaptable strategies are used to make sense of a text and to monitor ongoing understanding. According to Block (1992), there is now no more debate on "whether reading is a bottom-up, language-based process or a top-down, knowledge-based process." It is also no more problematic to accept the influence of background knowledge on both L1 and L2 readers. Research has gone even further to define the control readers execute on their ability to understand a text. This control, Block has referred to as meta cognition.