Wallace (1992:4) Reading as interpreting means reacting to a written text as a piece of communication; in other words, we assume some communicative

intent on the writers part which the reader has some purpose in attempting to understand. Williams (1984:2) A simple (and provisional) definition of reading is that it is a process whereby one looks at and understands what has been written. The key word here is, understand, merely reading aloud without understanding does not count as reading. Reading is purposeful, active, and concerned with meaning. CHARACTERISTICS OF READING 1 Readers purpose for reading will determine the type of information that readers will attend to when reading. Reading also is a selective process where readers will attend to information that is relevant to them. 2 Readers need to work on constructing the meaning of a text. The active nature of reading involves producing and evaluating a continuous cycle of hypotheses until the most satisfactory interpretation of the message is achieved. 3 Reading without comprehension is not reading. Reading is done silently with meaning making as its central focus. Reading is also flexible and interactive. Depending on the text and purpose of reading, readers may read using different types of strategies, different rates and different levels of understanding. 4 Reading is an Interactive Process It involves the interaction of many skills. For example, linguistic skill in processing orthographic and lexical information, cognitive skill in utilizing conceptual knowledge to predict and relate the text to existing schemata and metacognitive skill to evaluate and regulate the ongoing process of comprehension. THE PURPOSE OF READING Wallace (1992) and Beard (1990) proposes four - they are, reading for survival, reading for learning, reading for occupation and reading for pleasure. Reading for survival or functional reading is reading for functioning in the environment we live in such as reading the street signs, labels, and commercials. Reading for learning is when the act is done to enrich knowledge. Reading for learning is not confined to school related reading, but also relates to day-to-day reading such as reading the newspapers. Occupational reading takes place when people are in the world of work. referred to as efferent reading by Rosenblatt (1978) where the focus is on gaining information. reading for pleasure, referred to as aesthetic reading. Readers prior knowledge can be divided into two: (a) knowledge of the language; and (b) knowledge of the world. Knowledge of the language refers to readers knowledge of the phonology, morphology, syntax and pragmatics of a language. This is what Chomsky refers to as language competence. On the other hand, knowledge of the world refers to the knowledge of the subject matter, culture, attitude, etc. Tremor helps to keep the eyeballs in place. The movements are extremely fast and so slight that they are unnoticeable. The eyes are also constantly moving to pick up information we need to process. When we read in English, our eyes may move from left to right, and once it reaches the end of the line, it will skip to the right and move slightly over to the next line. This movement is called a saccade. At the end of a saccade, the eyes will pause. This is called a fixation. It is during fixation that reading takes place. At the end of the fixation, the eyes will erase its content and replace it with a new one. This process is called masking. There is another kind of movement called regression. This is when the eye movement goes in the opposite direction of a saccade. Tunnel vision is where the brain is unable to use much prior knowledge and thus, over loaded with information received through the eyes. Due to this over load, the brain needs more time to make decisions on what is seen. Beginner readers often find themselves in this situation. They keep staring at the text without knowing what the text means. Implications of Tunnel Vision on Teaching of Reading- reading must be fast - Encourage students to read in meaningful chunks rather than individual words. Specific exercises, which train students to chunk information meaningfully, should be given. Over attention to details should also be avoided. Readers should also learn not to read everything without irreverence. More time and concentration should be given to important sections in contrast to the rest.

reading must be selective - Depending on the task and the purpose of reading, readers should attend only to what is necessary. They need to sample the text and attend to information relevant to their purpose of reading. If not, they may experience tunnel vision. For instance, going back to the example of finding a car in the public parking area, if one knows the make, the colour of the car and the section it was parked at, one can avoid reading every car plate number in the parking area. concepts must be familiar - Make use of concepts that readers are already familiar with. so that the texts will appear more accessible. If the concepts employed in the texts are familiar to the students, their concentration can be solely focussed on processing the target language. Short-term Memory Information will go to the short-term memory (STM). STM comprises information on what readers are attending to at a specific moment in time. This is also the time when the previous information that was stored is being processed. hold the same information for some time over a number of fixations. This is called rehearsal. Recalling information from STM is immediate. Long-term Memory Long-term memory (LTM) represents all our previous experiences. The capacity is infinite. What is placed in the LTM is not a series of items or letters. Information is kept in the form of meanings.

(a) What reading is and what it is not? (a) People read for different purposes. What are they? (b) Provide examples for each. (c)Based on your teaching experience, is memorisation an efficient reading strategy? Information retained through memorisation is not linked with any of the network already existing in the mind, and therefore, may not make sense. Always place emphasis on comprehension where the readers link what is read to what is already known. Comprehension helps to establish meaning, and when readers comprehend, the information will be stored properly within the cognitive structure. If this is accomplished, memorisation will take care of itself. In other words, if readers comprehend, they remember better; however, if they memorise, they not only fail to comprehend, they may not be able to remember at all. (a) Is meaning neutral in reading according to Nuttal (1982:4)? Nuttal (1982:4) ... we exclude any
interpretation of the word reading in which meaning is not central.

(b) Why is reading an active process? (c) What is a saccade? (d) Why is reading concerned with meaning? (e) What influences a brains perceptual decision? 1. Name and describe the two kinds of language. (a) How do they relate to knowledge? (b) What significance do these two kinds of knowledge have in teaching children to read? it is pertinent to remember that when preparing materials for readers, it is important to provide familiar concepts so that they can rely on their knowledge of the world. This will enable them to utilise what they already know to learn about the new language. If both the language and the concepts are new, comprehension might be impossible. Inadequate non visual information may make reading difficult and, thus, discourage readers from continuing reading. 2. What is tunnel vision? Tunnel vision is where the brain is unable to use much prior knowledge and thus, over loaded with information received through the eyes. Due to this over load, the brain needs more time to make decisions on what is seen. (a) How does tunnel vision relate to reading? Reading- reading must be fast, reading must be selective,
concepts must be familiar

There are three main models of reading 1. Bottom-up - Gough (1972) is a significant proponent of the bottom-up model. Reading begins with the eyes identifying visual information from the reading text. The visual information is picked up during the process of a fixation. Reading is perceived as a serial process, beginning from left to right. Readers first need to identify each letter, a letter at a time. The identification of letters is followed by the identification of sounds. Lexical items are then identified through grapheme phoneme correspondence and placed in short-term memory (STM). Here, phrases and clauses and sentences are built based on the syntactic information available. A device called Merlin will process the deep structure of the sentence until the whole sentence is comprehended. outside in model where readers begin from the print and work on the precise identification of the letters, words, phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs and their pronunciation THE LIMITATIONS OF BOTTOM-UP MODEL One of the major weaknesses is regarding the sequential reading process because it does not allow for the processes that occur later to influence the processes that occurred earlier.

Such lack of interaction does not explain how factors such as prior knowledge of the subject matter culture might influence comprehension.

or

This model also does not give much credit to the active role of readers as information processors who are able to reconstruct meaning according to their purpose of reading and prior knowledge. Finally, phonology does not play a significant role in reading. One need not know the correct pronunciation of a word in order to understand what the word means. Comprehension is a receptive process while pronunciation is a productive process. 2. Top-down - Goodman (1967, 1988) and Smith (1982) argued that reading is a top down process where conceptual knowledge is mainly responsible for forming hypotheses and constructing meaning. forming a hypothesis, sampling the input, testing it, either re-hypothesising or confirming the hypothesis, and sampling again Hypothesis testing procedure comprises five different processes.
1.Recognition Initiation

The brain must recognize a graphic display in the visual field as written language and initiate reading. Normally this would occur once in each reading activity, though its possible for reading to be interrupted by other activities, examining pictures, for example, and then to be reinitiated.
2. Prediction

The brain is always anticipating and predicting as it seeks order and significance in sensory inputs.
3.Confirmation

If the brain predicts, it must also verify its predictions. So, it monitors to confirm or disconfirm with subsequent input what it expected.
4.Correction

The brain processes when it finds inconsistencies or its predictions are disconfirmed.
5.Termination

The reader terminates the reading when the reading task is completed, but termination may occur for other reasons: the task is non-productive; little meaning is being constructed, or the meaning is already known, or the

story is uninteresting or the reader finds it inappropriate for the particular purpose. At any rate, termination in reading is usually an open option at any point. Smith (1982) also perceives reading as a psycholinguistic process which involves the use of both visual and nonvisual information. The relationship between the visual and non-visual information is reciprocal. They trade off each other. The more non-visual information a reader has the less visual information a reader needs. THE STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF TOP-DOWN MODELS Skilled readers have automatic identification or perceptual skills and therefore are more able to concentrate on testing hypotheses or making predictions. -derived by readers' making guesses based on their prior knowledge, there is always a chance that the guesses may be wrong. This may not only happen with reading texts which they are not familiar with, but also with the texts that they are very familiar with. They may construct a message which they think should be there rather than which is actually there. This condition is called over-reading. research has indicated that better readers are not only better at interpreting texts; they are also better decoders. They do not just rely on their predictive skills to interpret the texts; they do in fact identify the printed information in a precise

and rapid manner.

poor readers, L1 or L2, may not be able to generate accurate predictions or accurate hypotheses. The top-down models over-emphasise higher level skills so that little attention is given to the development of lower level skills. (a)In your opinion, how is reading taught according to the bottom up model?
(a) Briefly describe the bottom up model of reading? (b) Discuss the weakness of bottom up model of reading. (c) If bottom up model proposes that comprehension begins from the interpretation of the print to the text, what do you think the top down model suggests? (a) Discuss the strengths and limitations of top-down model of reading. (b) Compare and contrast the bottom-up and the top-down model. Provide examples in your answer.