1. Audio Script for Session 5
    2. What is reading?
    3. Reading is Composing Meaning from Written Text
    4. Stop the tape.
    5. Stop the tape.
    6. How does reading work?
    7. Stop the tape.
    8. Stop the tape.
    9. Stop the tape.
    10. Stop the tape.
    11. What are the basics of reading?
    12. Stop the tape.


Audio Script for Session 5



Audio Script for Session 5

Notes for reader: This script is to be used by a trained Facilitator to drive the session on Reading and the Reading Process. There are various points where the Facilitator knows to put up certain overheads to match what is being said in the script. This is indicated in the script by (pause) . This pause should be about 2 -3 seconds long. At certain points the tape will be stopped for group work. This is indicated in the script by the words to be read - Stop the tape. Please leave a 2-3 second pause after you read Stop the Tape.
 
 
"Reading is fundamental to all learning. All teachers need to have sufficient knowledge of the processes involved in reading, and the underlying principles of reading so that they are able to take some responsibility for helping students handle the reading demands of the various grade levels and content areas. In order to help you develop some sensitivity to and knowledge of these processes and principles we are going to focus on the three broad aspects of reading shown on this overhead. (pause)
 
1. What is reading?  
When people talk about reading they often mean different things. We need to have a common working definition so that we are all talking about the same thing.
 
2. How does reading work?  
We need to address this question so that we are in a position to be able to devise ways of helping our students deal with the reading demands of the various grade levels and genres found in the content areas of school. We are going to explore this question by examining and reflecting upon our own reading processes. We can assume that all of you are fluent and effective readers in those fields which interest you or in which you have specialized.
 
3. What are the basics of reading? After exploring and examining some of the things that we've learned to do as fluent, effective readers we should be in a position to make some informed decisions about how we can best teach the basics of reading as they apply to the grade level and content area which we teach.
 
Let us address each of these questions in turn.
 


What is reading?



What is reading?
It is necessary for us to have a simple, unambiguous, answer to this question. For purposes of this session it will be necessary to accept a fairly broad, functional definition. Here's the working definition we can begin with.
 


Reading is Composing Meaning from Written Text



Reading is Composing Meaning from Written Text

 
Now some of you may be thinking that such a working definition is too simplistic to be of much use. Those of you who have done a Masters in Reading are probably thinking, What do you mean by composing meaning? Do you mean any kind of meaning? Meaning at the literal level? The inferential level? Or meaning at much deeper levels? Or should readers compose meanings that enable them to understand the author's intent well enough to pass a standardized test?
 
Those of you who teach very young children are probably asking, 'What do you mean by text? Textbooks? Print? Print and Illustrations?'
 
These are legitimate questions to ask and we need to deal with them now. What we want at this point in the Course are shared meanings of the terms 'Reading as composing meaning' and 'text.' We prefer to stay with common sense definitions rather than technical definitions. By 'common sense' definitions we mean ones that reflect what happens in the real world of reading and learning to read. Let us deal with the concept of 'Reading is composing meaning' first. We'll come back to the notion of 'text' later.
 
When reading is looked at this way, the effectiveness of any act of reading depends on the degree to which the meanings the author intended when writing the text can be constructed by the reader. The higher the degree of similarity between the meanings intended by the writer and those composed by the reader, the better the understanding.
 
In a classroom context an example of a common sense definition of understanding written text would be this: If readers can retell a text in ways that capture the relevant gist, and appropriate details, then we would concede that they have read it in terms of our common sense definition.
 
Now let us deal with the notion of 'text.' Many of you think of 'text' as an abbreviation for 'textbook.' We tend to associate it only with printed words on a page. For purposes of this Course we are going to use the linguistic definition of ‘text’ that you were introduced to you in Session 2, that is ‘text is any set of signs that come together to make a coherent unit of meaning’. Thus the pictures and illustrations in a book are a form of text. An emergent reader who uses picture clues to get at the meanings in a book is reading by our definition because he/she is 'composing meaning from text.' By the same token a timeline flow chart of the events in the civil war is also a text. Thus a high school student who uses a timeline flow chart in a social studies text book to understand the sequence of events in the Civil War can also be said to be reading because he/she is composing meaning from text.
 
Another common sense example of understanding written text could be the ability to paraphrase text, that is, put it into one's own words without seriously distorting the intended meaning. This is not to deny that some readers will be able to retell and/or paraphrase texts with which they've interacted, with more detail, or with more style and/or panache than others, for reasons which will become obvious when we deal with the second question which we saw on the last overhead.
 
To sum up. By defining reading and text in this way, we simply mean that effective reading should be understanding of the main messages which the author of the text intended. For such understanding to occur readers must first compose a meaningful message inside their heads. Without such understanding it is difficult to argue that reading has actually occurred.
 
Let's do an activity which illustrates what we mean by our working definition.
 
The overall purpose of this workshop is to put you in a situation where you can examine your own reading behavior in ways that will help clarify some of the issues involved in the common sense definition of reading we've just been hearing about, that is, 'reading is composing meaning from written text'. As well as this global purpose there are several specific purposes.
 
These are:
When the facilitator switches this tape off you should all read this piece of text through aloud, as if you were in a 'choral reading' lesson.
 


Stop the tape.



Stop the tape.
 
We're sure all of you read that beautifully. We're willing to bet that anyone who happened to be passing the room as you pronounced the words of the song in unison would have assumed that you were all very fluent and effective readers. But how many of you could have convinced that person that you had read Po Kare Kare in the sense implied by our definition? Unless you happen to speak the Maori language, you wouldn't have been able to compose sufficient meaning to understand this text, even if you're a fluent reader of English. So, according to our working definition of reading, you really didn't read that song.
 
People who can say and/or sing the words without understanding them cannot be said to have read them. They have not committed the act of reading. While it can be said that they've mouthed the words, or perhaps performed an act of pronunciation, or even that they've decoded the words into sound, it can not be said that they have read. Why not? Simply because commonsense everyday understanding of what the author of the words of the song intended has not occurred.
 
There are many students sitting in school classrooms today who read the texts that they have to read in much the same way that you read this one; that is, they use their knowledge of word shapes and the sound-symbol system of English (i.e. their graphophonic knowledge) to pronounce silently, or orally, the words of a piece of written text and still don't understand it. According to our working definition they have not therefore read it.
 
Spend the next five minutes discussing our definition of reading with the person sitting nearest to you. In your Notebook list the main points of your discussion.
 


Stop the tape.



Stop the tape.
 
We will now consider the second question.
 


How does reading work?



How does reading work?
 
If we can agree that the end result of a reader interacting with written text should be understanding of that text, then teachers of all students need to know something about how such understanding occurs, that is, how meaning is composed from written text by effective readers. This is particularly true for teachers who have a responsibility for teaching the language of specific content areas. Because they have usually majored in their content field they have had a deeper and longer immersion in the language of that content area. They have had the opportunity to build up their linguistic data pools with the genres which are important for controlling and understanding the knowledge of that content area. The next activity is designed to sensitize you to some of these issues. Take a look at the text on the overhead entitled Dire Straits. This text is also found in your notebook. (pause)
 
As with Po Kare Kare there is a global purpose and several specific purposes. The global purpose is by examining your own reading behavior, you gain some insights into some of the factors which affect your ability to understand a written text.
The specific purposes are:
Let's examine this written text. It has been taken, with some modifications, from an evening newspaper of some years ago. The readability difficulty of such a newspaper is somewhere between Grades 5 to 8. It is written in the genre of a newspaper report. Read this piece of written text through silently as if you really need to read it and understand it.
 


Stop the tape.



Stop the tape.
 
As you considered these questions most of you would have agreed that:
Consider a fourth question. How many of you can honestly claim to be able to understand and explain the meanings in this piece of written text in ways that show that you have actually read it according to our definition? We don't mean to retell it from memory, but to be able to visualize what was going on and then explain what it means while you still have access to the text and can re-read as often as you like.
 
It is highly likely that there are many of you who would be hard pressed to show that you've read this piece of text. That is, read it in terms of how we defined reading. Does this mean that you have a reading problem? If you were to be given some intensive flash card drill on each of the words in the text until you could recognize every word in isolation instantly, would that help you understand it? Of course it wouldn't, because all of you can already recognize the majority of words in the text. What if you were given some intensive phonic drill? Would that help? Most of you previously admitted that you were able to pronounce all the words, so why would you need to be given any phonic drill? Nor would dictionaries be much help. How can we help people who can say the words, but still not understand the text? If we could imagine that this text about cricket really had to be known and understood for an important test or assignment, what kind of assistance would be needed for those of you who can't compose much meaning from it? How could an effective teacher help students deal with this piece of text?
 
During the next five minutes make a list of things which you think you would need to help you understand this text. When your list is completed share it with the person sitting next to you.
 


Stop the tape.



Stop the tape.
 
By now you will have realized that if readers are to understand texts like this they must be able to go beyond the words on the page; that there is much more to reading as we have defined it than merely being able to recognize the words and say them. A reader must also have a great deal of background knowledge about the content of the text being read and must also have control of the jargon, or the specialist language used in the text.
 
With respect to the text we've just been working with, you needed to know at least that Richmond and St Kilda are cricket teams, that cricket is played in a certain way with particular objectives, rituals, rules, conventions, and that certain words and phrases have quite unique meanings in the context of cricket. If you have such knowledge you know what an opening pair is, what a new ball pair is, you know what bowling a maiden over means, and you would also realize that what Thompson was doing in the covers was quite legitimate. Now stop the tape and consider the three cueing systems overhead again.
 


Stop the tape.



Stop the tape.
 
Just in case any of you think that Dire Straits is a text that Aussies like the authors have specially chosen to trick American teachers it is important that you look at the next text. It's one that one of their colleagues brought back to Australia from America some years ago. It has been given to Australian teachers under the same conditions that you were asked to read Dire Straits. They had exactly the same experiences as you.
 
Stop the tape.
 
For someone who is unfamiliar with American football this piece of text is almost nonsensical. For example, the sentence, 'Now it was third and eight from their own forty seven', is syntactic nonsense to the average Aussie. Most would argue that it's not even a legitimate sentence of English. It seriously violates some rules of English grammar. It's also semantic nonsense. Despite this it makes perfect sense to most ten year old American girls and boys who are football fans.
 
But what about those students who do know about cricket or football but who still wouldn't be able to read the text? We've all met the older student who is the cricket and/or football expert in the sense that he or she plays the game, uses the language of cricket/football in the same way that an expert does, yet who, when confronted with a text like either of these would find it impossible to compose any meaning. Similarly, very young children who may understand and even enjoy football and cricket in the sense that they watch it on TV do not have the control over some of the strategies and knowledge involved in processing print. All potential readers, whether older or emergent readers, must be able to draw on semantic cues (that is, background knowledge), syntactic cues, (that is the 'flow of language,' 'the patterns of discourse’, or genre of the text), and graphophonic cues, (that is, the letter sound correspondences, the orthographic cues, punctuation and other conventions) if they are ultimately going to be able to compose meaning from text. If it's not lack of background knowledge, specialist language or control of the graphophonic system which is preventing the understanding of the text, then what can it be? We favor this explanation: As well as needing prior knowledge, specialist language, and graphophonic control, potential readers must also be in control of the strategies which make it possible for readers to compose meaningful text in their heads. We teachers should be aware of, and be sensitive to, these strategies and knowledge so that we can help our students apply them to the reading which we expect them to do. This is what the next activity is all about.
 
You have probably realized by now that we believe very strongly that the purposes for asking learners to engage in activities should be made explicit before they do them. This is why we want your Facilitator to display the next overhead transparency which summarizes these purposes for you. If you prefer you can read them in your Notebook.
 
The overall purpose of this workshop is to force you to reflect upon the processes that you use when trying to read a difficult text. In particular we want you to discover what processing strategies you use when you are blocked and don't know the next word or phrase. We also want you to focus on the kinds of skills, knowledge, attitudes towards reading and yourself as a reader you had to have in order to bring these processing strategies into play.
 


Stop the tape.



Stop the tape.
 
When readers complete activities like this they usually discover similar kinds of things about reading. Things that they've never consciously thought about before. What they discover can be expressed in the form of four principles shown in the following overhead.
 
Effective readers carry around in their heads, a vast store of knowledge about language and how it works. We have referred earlier to this as the language user's linguistic data pool. From this store, comes background knowledge of a particular content area (semantic system), the different letters, letter combinations and pronunciations (graphophonic system) as well as the kinds of words, phrases and their order in sentences that are likely to occur in the text (syntactic system). All three systems of knowledge interact to provide effective readers with a range of strategies to use as they seek meaning from text.
 
When effective readers experience a reader's block or loss of meaning, they may employ any or all of the following strategies.
 
  1. Leave the problem and read on, hoping to find more information and clues to meaning in the rest of the text.
  2. Re-read the sentence in the hope that this will provide understanding once the words are more familiar.
  3. Leave a problematic word out or substitute a word that will fit the patterns of the text, to see if meaning can be gained despite the word block.

Effective readers don't just read each word in the order it occurs in the text. Their eyes seek information ahead in the text; they look back over text. Readers are constantly anticipating or predicting what will be coming next. Predicting is just one of the strategies effective readers use all the time. Once a prediction has been made the reader reads on, reads back over the text to test out the prediction. If sense is maintained and confirmed the reader continues. This process of predicting, testing, confirming continues throughout the process of composing meaning from text and allows the reader to understand what has been written.
 
Such strategies only become possible because the effective reader is confident enough and willing to take risks, to have a go at reading something that is unfamiliar or apparently too difficult.
 
On the other hand, ineffective and emergent readers are unaware of, or unable for particular reasons, to use these strategies. They may experience difficulties in using these strategies because English is their second language and they therefore have a limited linguistic data pool of English on which they can draw. Ineffective readers remain reluctant to have a go, often because they lack relevant background knowledge about the content or relevant knowledge about the patterns of the language used in the text, or both. Some over-rely on the graphophonic system at the expense of using the other two systems (semantic and syntactic systems) to predict the unknown word. Because of these reasons, ineffective readers are not confident that they can make sense of written text.
 
Emergent readers may not yet understand how these processes all fit together so that they can be used to compose meaning from text. We need to consider therefore what kinds of skills, knowledge and understandings do emergent readers need to learn about and control if we want to start them successfully on the road to reading? What sorts of things can we do in class to give them the graphophonic know-how and skills they need? How can we develop the syntactic and semantic parts of their linguistic data pools so that they have the means of constructing the meanings that the author of a text intends them to construct? This is what the next workshop is designed to get us thinking about.
 
You will recall that there was a third question raised earlier in this session.
 


What are the basics of reading?



What are the basics of reading?
 
There are many different versions of the ‘basics’ of reading . Here is a summary of what has emerged from the research and experience of the last 50 yeaThere are many different versions of the ‘basics’ of reading . Here is a summary of what has emerged from the research and experience of the last 50 years.
 
  1. Sensible coherent meaning should be the end result of reading.
  2. Effective reading necessitates being able to use semantic, syntactic and graphophonic knowledge in mutually supportive ways.
  3. Effective reading necessitates readers understanding how to decode letters to sound.
  4. Effective reading necessitates being able to predict on the basis of semantic and syntactic knowledge.
  5. Effective reading necessitates the use of a wide range of processing strategies when dealing with reader's block.
  6. Effective readers are confident, positive readers.

Now turn off the tape. Help your Facilitator generate a list of responses to the question,
 
If these are the basics which effective readers have learned to control, what does it mean for classrooms?
 
The Between Session Reading will help to consolidate some of the key points raised in this Input and Workshops.
 


Stop the tape.



Stop the tape.
 

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