1. Oral and silent reading
2. Intensive and extensive reading
1. Oral and silent reading:
oral reading can serve as an evaluative check on bottom-up processing skills, double as a pronunciation check, and serve to add some extra student participation if you want to highlight a certain short segment of a reading passage.
1. Bottom-up and top-down processing
In Bottom-up processing, readers must first recognize a multiplicity of linguistic signals and use their linguistic data-processing mechanism to impose some sort of order on these signals. These data-driven operations obviously require a sophisticated knowledge of the language itself. From among all the perceived data, the reader selects the signals that make some sense, that cohere, that "mean".
Top-down or conceptually driven is a processing in which we draw on our own intelligence and experience to understand text. As Nuttall compares bottom-up processes with the image of a scientist with a magnifying glass or microscope examining all the minute details of phenomenon, while top-down processing is like taking an eagle's eye view of a landscape below. Such a picture reminds us that field-independent and field-dependent cognitive styles are analogues to bottom-up and top-down processing, respectively.
By the 1970s, first language reading research was dominant, trying to solve the problems of children who could not read. However, with Goodman’s (1970) article, second language reading research became considerably important.
Rivers (1981)also believes Reading can be most easily maintained at a high level by students themselves without further help from the teacher
There are 10 major findings of Research in L1 settings for reading instruction. These highlight the:
1. importance of developing letter-sound correspondences for beginning reading
2. importance of word recognition and the relatively complete processing of words in a text.
3. necessity for a large recognition vocabulary for fluent reading
4. need for reasonable reading rates for processing
5. usefulness of graphic representations for comprehension instruction
6. value of extensive reading
7. importance of dialogue and teacher modeling in comprehension instruction
8. facilitate the role of Content-Based instruction
9. need for students to become strategic readers
10. influence of varying social contexts on the development of reading abilities
The many different L2 contexts do not lead to exactly the same set of findings as for L1 contexts. Research in L2 reading development have informed at least the following 8 issues:
1. the importance of discourse structure and graphic representations
2. the importance of vocabulary in language learning
3. the need for language awareness and attending to language and genre form
4. the existence of L2 proficiency threshold in reading
5. the importance of metacognitive awareness and strategy learning
6. the need for extensive reading
7. the benefits of integrating reading and writing
8. the importance of Content-Based Instruction
Major differences between L1 and L2 reading can be categorized according to three groupings:
1. Linguistic & Processing differences
2. Individual & Experiential differences
3. Socio-cultural & Institutional factors
Q: 1. should we teach orally for a while, then reading? Or start reading and writing from the beginning?
Answer 1: It is generally preferable to begin reading only after the learners have some basic knowledge of the spoken language.
Q.2: Should we teach them single letters, and gradually build these up into words? Or teach the written form of meaningful words first, letting them to come to the different component letters by analysis later?
Answer. 2: It is most practical and productive to begin with single letters, starting with the most common and useful.
· Learning to read is not natural or easy for most children.
· Reading is an acquired skill, unlike spoken language, which is learned with almost any kind of contextual exposure.
· The prolonged, gradual, and predictable progression of skill in print translation attests to the difference between processing spoken and written language.
· Teachers must be reflective and knowledgeable about the content they are teaching.
Screen reading is the act of reading a text on a computer screen. It is often contrasted with the act of reading a text on a printed page.
In a study conducted by Jakob Nielsen, a leading web usability expert who co-founded usability consulting company Nielsen Norman Group with Donald Norman, it was discovered that generally people read 25% slower on a computer screen in comparison with a printed page. In eye tracking tests, Nielsen also discovered that people read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern that consists of two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe.