Thories of Reading

Theories of
reading
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
metacognitive 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.
Theories of reading
 The Traditional view
 The Cognitive view
 The Metacognitive view

The Traditional view
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 (2003), 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 (2004) 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.
The Cognitive view
The 'top-down' model is in direct opposition to the ‘
bottom-up' model. According to Nunan (2005) and Dubin
and Bycina (2005), the psycholinguistic model of reading
and the top-down model are in exact concordance.
Goodman (1990; cited in Paran, 2002) 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 (2005)
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 (2005) 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. (2004)
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.
The Metacognitive view
Metacognition involves thinking about what one is doing
while reading. Klein et al. (2004) stated that strategic
readers attempt the following while reading:
Identifying the purpose of the reading before reading
Identifying the form or type of the text before reading
Thinking about the general character and features of

the form or type of the text. For instance, they try to
locate a topic sentence and follow supporting details
toward a conclusion
Projecting the author's purpose for writing the text
(while reading it),
Choosing, scanning, or reading in detail
Making continuous predictions about what will occur

next, based on information obtained earlier, prior
knowledge, and conclusions obtained within the
previous stages.
Moreover, they attempt to form a summary of what was
read. Carrying out the previous steps requires the reader
to be able to classify, sequence, establish whole-part
relationships, compare and contrast, determine
cause-effect, summarise, hypothesise and predict,
infer, and conclude.
Reference:
http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/theories-reading
http://www.academon.com/lib/paper/114843.html

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Theories of

 The Traditional view

 The Cognitive view

 The Metacognitive view

According to Nunan (2003), Reading in this view is

This model of reading has almost always been under attack

Goodman (1990; cited in Paran, 2002) presented

Rumelhart (2005) has also stated that if our schemata

Identifying the form or type of the text before reading

Thinking about the general character and features of

Choosing, scanning, or reading in detail

Making continuous predictions about what will occur

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