Katie Johnson
RE 5120 Final Reflection
What is reading? The readings and research studies in the course have challenged my interpretation of my previous definition of reading. The psychological basis of reading goes beyond a child picking up a book and reading the words on the page. Reading is interactive. Reading is composed of the interactions among decoding skills, comprehension or understanding the text, vocabulary and language comprehension. It is these processes that work together to produce reading. Gough and Hoover, researchers, explained reading in a simple formula: Reading= Decoding x Language Comprehension. Over the history of reading research, there have been different models that have been constructed to define the reading process. The reading process followed the interactive model developed by Rumelhart (Tracey, D.H., & Lesley, 2006). Rumelhart used previous linear letter processes from Gough (1972) and Laberge and Suamels’s (1974), known as bottom-up processes to create a process that is initiated by a visual text input, but is simultaneous or an interactive process. The model includes the process of syntactic information, semantic information, orthographic information and lexical information. These processes allow for higher level and lower level processes to collide and interact. I would compare this model to a robot that has to use all parts of the machine in order to work.When working with my second grade students, I find myself seeing all of the different pieces of reading working and fitting together. Keith Stanovich’s reading research supported the interactive reading process, concluding that the interactive models of reading appear to provide a more accurate conceptualization of reading performance than do strictly top-down or bottom-up models( Stanovich. 1980). Stanovich was known for the interactive-compensatory hypothesis and his belief that a pattern is synthesized based on information provided at the same time for several knowledgeable sources. With the interactive-compensatory hypothesis, one must note the core idea is that a process at any level can be compensated for deficiencies at any other level. For example, a reader at any level, may depend more on a higher-level knowledge source (focusing on context clues) when reading to compensate their struggle in word recognition. The interactivity-compensatory hypothesis differs from the bottom-up and top-down model because the model does not depend on the completion of lower-level process to move to the higher level process, it is not a linear process. Understanding the process of reading helped me to better understand the interconnectivity that happens when reading, the connections and dependence upon the semantic meaning (context), orthographic knowledge (look at text), and phonetic knowledge.
After considering the process of reading, one must also study what makes a skillful reader? What happens when a reader learns to read? According to Marilyn Adams (2004), learning to read consists of the interconnectivity of the processes. She focuses on the idea that development in one process cannot proceed without the development in the other. Skillful readers are able to read with speed, using very little effort to decode and comprehend text as they read. As a reader reads, they visually process virtually each letter of every word read, including recognizing familiar words as wholes; they do not think much about the individual letters. Another trait of a skillful reader is that they “use contextual guidance to preselect the meanings of the words they will read” (Adam, pg. 1223). Skillful readers are able to gain meanings of words read. Last but not least, skillful readers are able to translate spellings to sounds as they read without thinking about it. Unfortunately, not all readers are skillful readers. Therefore, researchers must review how a reader recognizes words or letters on the page by using the orthographic processor. The orthographic processor is the part of the model that receives the information directly from the text printed on the page. The reader looks at the text left-to-right, line-by-line, word-by word.It helps the reader divide particularly long words into syllables, for example, the non-word “asdor” would be divided between “s” and “d” because the letters would not be together in the syllables. Readers visually process almost every letter and word of text, whether it is by ordering letters or reading longer words by being able to break the words into syllables. Larson (Larson. 2004) supports and further studies the research behind the orthographic processor, by stating that the letter instead of words should be the processing unit. The best explanation to the processing of letters is the parallel processing. During parallel processing, readers recognize letters within a word simultaneously therefore, the letter information is used to identify the word. Eye movement research has been done to support PLR. Three zones (a, b, and c) are completed as the eye moves or fixates, further gathering information. Larson reviewed evidence that supported the word-shape model of reading instruction. He found that the evidence was weak, and could be contradicting. Some of the strongest evidence was the word superiority effect. However, it was found that the effect was occurring not because of word shape but because of the combination of letters. Additional evidence supported word shape because of the ability of being able to read lowercase text faster than uppercase text. In actuality, this is due to practice (practice makes perfect). Using the word-shape model, students’ reading ability would be affected by the time in which it took to learn the word-shapes (memorize using visuals). From studying the orthographic process, I have found it important to help students learn to read by doing word sorts, so that attention is directed at the orthographic structure of words and the sounds that letter combinations relate to. We must be careful when teaching sight word (whole word) instruction; decoding drives reading, not sight words (Prefetti). Students do not commit to memorizing only a few words; consequently they will be unable to read the rest of many other words in a passage. It is vital to help students to learn to read not only sight words, but also letters and sounds. Stanovich, K.E., & West, R. (1979) supported the importance of decoding words instead of simply working with sight words in their research study. Stanovich and West wanted to find out if poor and good readers were sensitive to orthographic constraints of English by measuring the subjects’ reading latency in a search task. They discovered that even though poor readers had been taught the orthographic rules, when reading the pseudo words they were slower than good readers. Good readers are faster at processing the rules and information. The study reinforces the importance of teaching and working with students’ orthography (English) skills.
The phonological processor is another part of the interconnectivity of the reading process that students rely upon when learning to read. According to Adams (2004), the phonological processor supports the orthographic processor, as well as supports the comprehension process as the reader memorizes the text. The model shows that the phonological processor interacts with the orthographic processor by “relaying stimulation to corresponding units in the phonological processor” (Adams, 2004). The phonological processor also interacts with the meaning processor because the pronunciation of a word will be affected from sending stimulation to the meaning processor. For the reader, if the word is orally and visually familiar, the meaning processor will receive activation from both the phonological and the orthographic processor. The interconnections among the processors help to make it easy to readily recognize a word, becoming automatic. When learning to read, the phonological processor assists the reader’s comprehension, by when the words have been read, one by one, then the words are put together to read a sentence or phrase. When the reader has completed the reading, the reader stops to interpret the text. For example, readers will drop their pitch to let the audience know that it is time to interpret the meaning or comprehend. The reader can figure out the meaning of the chain of words, following the interpretive process if the entire text existing and is in the listener’s or reader’s memory. Ehri and Wilce (Ehri and Wilce. 1979)) also completed research about the phonological processor, in trying to show that “spellings have mnemonic power” by helping readers remember phonological forms of nonsense words when they symbolize the words phonemically. Working with first and second graders, Ehri found that when students were shown the correct spelling of the pseudo word, they remembered them better than when no spellings were shown. A reader being able to see the spelling creates a bond between spellings and pronunciations in the reader’s memory and they are able to recall the pseudo words. There was also a high correlation with the reader being able to read high-frequency words; the mnemonic system may help explain beginning readers’ ability to remember how to read words by sight. When children learn to read, they obtain an orthographic mnemonic system.
The context and meaning processor is the last process that concludes the interconnectivity of reading. It is this processor that is geared to help children learn to comprehend what they have read. From Adams (2004), the context processor may be known for being responsible for “putting it all together”, as it constructs logical continuous understandings of the text. Using the context, it sends its own stimulation to the meaning; the meaning that it expects it to be. The connection to the meaning processor is those of inter-associated sets of more primitive meaning elements. The (inter)connections between the meaning and context processors affect word recognition and learning new word meanings from context by when the orthographic pattern meets the activated meaning units. The connection further is made by when the word that was encountered and used in the meaning processor previously; the next time the word is encountered, it will connect to the prior context, as well as the meaning is set off by the new context.
When reading, without realizing it, readers conclude meanings from propositions. It was from reading the research about propositions that I realized that importance of what happens when a reader reads a sentence and gathers meanings. According to Kintsch (2004), propositions are described as “idea units”, in which more than one word is combined in a schematic form. Theorists are able to represent the meaning of sentences, independent of the syntactic structure, because they use propositions.Kintsch further addresses comprehension from the result of the “bottom-up” model because he notes that the “schema-as-filter” theories of comprehension do not completely account and fulfill the comprehension process, and the Construction-Integration (CI) allows for a more decisive role. Using the CI model, the reader is able to come up with many different meanings in parallel (from the bottom up), and decipher or sort out which construction is the right one, working to find the correct meaning from the context. Then, the reader will use the context as well as background knowledge to deactivate meanings, in which meanings will be eliminated that do not make sense.
A second grade teacher, I am always curious and baffled by the amount of research and studies that are available to incorporate into teaching reading. After reading the research by PerfettiHogaboam, I concluded the importance of teaching decoding and phonics instruction. Their study focused on finding out the differentiation between decoding and vocabulary among good and poor readers. From their study, they found that skilled readers were able to read quickly all types of words, including low, high and pseudo words, with each group of students, high frequency words were read faster than low-frequencywords and low frequency words were read faster than pseudo words. They found that the greatest difference between groups of low and high skilled readers was the way in which they named low-frequency words and pseudo words. There was little difference between low and high skilled readers when reading high frequency words. From the study, I recognizedthe importance to implement decoding and phonics instruction to build automaticity of decoding skills in less skilled readers.
Another study that has impacted my teaching students was Daneman and Carpenter whom focused on comprehension and working memory. In their study, they concluded that readers with a large reading span (working memory) performed better on the task than readers with smaller reading span. It is important to work to help improve information processing and comprehension with struggling readers by using repeated readings and reading materials at their independent levels. Because the reading is an interrelated process, teaching reading involves more than one process. Repeated readings, phonics instruction, tape recordings, guided readings, and word sorts are several tools used throughout reading studies to teach readers (Morris, D. & Gaffney, M. in press.)
As a teacher of reading, it is vital to have knowledge in how the process of reading is interactive, understand the processes in which learning to read occurs, and the research to support teaching reading. I feel that this course has helped me to become knowledgeable in reading research and I have gained the tools in order to become a model reading teacher in my classroom.
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