Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition
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- What reading is
Suggestions for further reading
M.Argyle, The Psychology of Interpersonal Behaviour, Penguin, 4th edn, 1983. G.Brown, Listening to Spoken English, Longman, 1977. G.Brown and G.Yule, Teaching the Spoken Language, Cambridge University Press, 1983. D.Byrne, Teaching Oral English, Longman, 2nd edn, 1981. W.Rivers, Teaching Foreign Language Skills, University of Chicago Press, 2nd edn, 1981. W.M.Rivers and M.S.Temperley, A Practical Guide to the Teaching of English, Oxford University Press, 1978. 89 Chapter 7 Reading What reading is It is a commonplace of teacher education that teachers tend to teach by the methods which were used by the teachers who taught them. In no area of language teaching is this more true than in that of reading. It is probably for this reason that the procedure of reading round the class has been perpetuated, though anyone who considers it seriously, even briefly, in terms of what it contributes to new learning, or of pupil participation, or of communicative function, realises very quickly that it is a singularly profitless exercise. It may be well, therefore, to begin by looking carefully at just what ‘reading’ entails in the context of teaching English as a foreign language—see Appendix 1 for a summary. First it must be recognised that reading is a complex skill, that is to say that it involves a whole series of lesser skills. First of these is the ability to recognise stylised shapes which are figures on a ground, curves and lines and dots in patterned relationships. Moreover it is not only a matter of recognising the shapes as such but recognising them as same or different, and recognising that shapes which are quite different may for the purposes of reading be regarded as the same, as is the case with upper and lower case letters like ‘A’ and ‘a’. Good modern infant teaching recognises the need for training in this kind of recognition and a good deal of time is devoted to the matching of shapes and patterns and in general cultivating the perceptual apparatus necessary for it. Reading 90 This is, however, in the nature of a low level skill, which becomes increasingly mechanical; where learners are already literate in a language which uses the Roman alphabet, acquiring this skill presents few problems. It is only where learners are illiterate or literate in a language which uses a non-Roman script that difficulties may be encountered. The second of the skills involved in the complex is the ability to correlate the black marks on the paper—the patterned shapes—with language. It is impossible to learn to read without at least the capacity to acquire language. The correlation appears to be made between elements of the patterns on the paper and formal elements of language. According to the nature of these formal linguistic elements the nature of the skill involved alters. The elements may be complex groups of sounds which might be called ‘words’ or ‘phrases’ or ‘sentences’ or even ‘paragraphs’, ‘chapters’, or ‘books’; or they might be the most basic elements, the single ‘sounds’ called phonemes. Readers who learn to correlate larger groups of sounds with the patterns on the paper might perhaps be learning by ‘look and say’, those learning to correlate the patterns on the paper with phonemes by a ‘phonic’ method; both kinds of skill are needed to develop efficient reading. Reading speed, for example, probably depends to a considerable extent on the development of the first; reading aloud would seem to depend at least to some extent on the second. A third skill which is involved in the total skill of reading is essentially an intellectual skill; this is the ability to correlate the black marks on the paper by way of the formal elements of language, let us say the words as sound, with the meanings which those words symbolise. We have therefore three components in the reading skill; A, the recognition of the black marks; B, the correlation of these with formal linguistic elements; and C, the further correlation of the result with meaning. The essence of reading then, is just this—the understanding of the black marks on paper A-C. A great many complexities have been grossly simplified in this account, in particular it is important to understand that the process is not a straight linear sequence as might be inferred by the symbolisation that has been used. The scope of the recognitions may be large scale or small, and the correlations Reading 91 involve a to-and-fro scanning between the text both as a physical object and as a linguistic object and the meanings which it conveys. The reader clearly brings his knowledge of the language and his knowledge of the world to bear, he builds up expectations, he makes predictions about what is to come and the extent to which his predictions are accurate is one of the factors in fluent reading. Thus most English native speakers faced with a sentence that began, ‘The mathematician soon solved the…’ would, using their knowledge of the world, of how mathematicians behave and what their work is, and their knowledge of the language, be likely to predict that the sentence might continue with a word like ‘problem’ or ‘equation’ and accurate reading would be a matter of confirming the prediction. The word reading of course has a number of common interpretations. It may mean reading aloud, a very complex skill, which involves understanding the black marks first and then the production of the right noises. Most people, if they are asked to read something aloud, like to have an opportunity to ‘glance over’ what it is they are being asked to read. In the actual process of reading aloud too they usually find that their eyes are several words if not lines ahead of their tongues. The process is something like A-C-B. If reading involves only the first two of the components discussed above, A-B, the result is ‘barking at print’. It is perfectly easy to learn to read an exotic language in this sense. One can learn to make the right noises to correspond with the squiggles on the page without having the slightest understanding of what the sense of it is. It must be recognised that reading aloud is primarily an oral matter. For those who teach foreign languages it is closer to ‘pronunciation’ than it is to ‘comprehension’. While it is perfectly proper to try to develop the skill of reading aloud it clearly cannot be done using an unfamiliar text the content and language of which stretches the linguistic capabilities of the learners to the utmost. It requires a familiar text whose content and language are clearly understood, detailed explication and practice of the special pronunciation problems in it, and small group techniques. It must also be admitted that the usefulness of the skill of reading aloud is limited. Few people are required to read aloud as a matter of daily routine, Reading 92 radio newscasters, clergymen, perhaps actors and that is all. To the huge majority its importance is minimal. Reading may also mean ‘silent reading’ and this is the interpretation which is most likely for the term. This is perhaps the nearest approach to the essence of reading, the A-C of it. It is obvious that by far the greatest amount of reading that is done in the world is silent. A reading room is a silent room. But the nature of the silent reading skill is far from uniform. It varies according to the use to which it is being put. Some of the uses are (i) to survey material which is to be studied, to look through indexes, chapter headings and outlines, (ii) to skim—particularly when one item of information is being sought in a mass of other printed information, (iii) to gain superficial comprehension, as when reading for pleasure or preparing to read aloud, (iv) to study the content of what is read in some detail, (v) to study the language in which the material is written—this may involve textual study in the literary sense or it may involve the kind of language study that a foreigner may need to do. The depth and detail of understanding, of comprehension, increases as we go through these ways of using reading, in sequence. The skilled reader has developed all of these ways of using reading. It is common for the third, fourth and sometimes the fifth of these to be encouraged in schools, though the first and second are almost completely neglected. Of these five kinds of reading activity the first three, survey reading, skimming, and superficial reading are sometimes grouped together and called extensive reading. The object of such reading is to cover the greatest possible amount of text in the shortest possible time. A relatively low degree of understanding is perfectly adequate for this, either because that is all that is being sought in any case, or because the material itself is highly redundant—as is the case for example with newspaper reports. The label indicates that those who use it are not concerned with the actual skills involved but with the effects which the employment of those skills produce, that is to say a familiarity, albeit not a very thorough familiarity, with a large body of reading material. It is by pursuing the activity of extensive reading that the volume of practice necessary to achieve rapid and efficient reading can be achieved. It is also one of the means by which Reading 93 a foreigner may be exposed to a substantial sample of the language he may wish to learn without actually going to live in the country to which that language is native. The remaining two kinds of reading activity, content study reading and linguistic study reading are also often grouped together and called intensive reading. Once again the term indicates that it is not the nature of the skills involved that is of most interest but the results, in this case a deep and thorough understanding of the black marks on the paper. The concern is for detailed comprehension of very short texts. Intensive reading is typically concerned with texts of not more than 500 words in length. The objective is to achieve full understanding of the logical argument, the rhetorical arrangement or pattern of the text, of its symbolic, emotional and social overtones, of the attitudes and purposes of the author, and of the linguistic means that he employs to achieve his ends. Closely related to degree of understanding is reading speed. Obviously the rate at which material may be covered becomes slower as depth and detail of understanding increase, but there are a number of other factors which enter in here. One of these may be the clarity of the text itself. Another factor is the extent to which the content of a text is already familiar to the reader. Nevertheless it is possible to develop reading speed, and efficient reading involves high reading speeds with high levels of comprehension. Many people seem to believe that study and slow reading are the same, or at least that in order to study well one must read slowly. It is very important that this belief be undermined. Study involves several other sorts of skill besides reading, and may well involve several different sorts of reading skill. The good student will probably want to make a preliminary survey of what he is going to study, this will lead him to formulate a series of questions about the subject he is studying, he will then read, perhaps partly skimming, partly reading intensively to find the answer to those questions, and when he has recorded the answers he will at some future time revise the material. This sequence of operations describes the well-known SQ3R study technique, and it is clear that there is much more to it than just slow reading. (A fuller description of this technique and much |
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