ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΟ ΑΝΟΙΚΤΟ ΠΑΝΕΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ

ΣΧΟΛΗ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΙΣΤΙΚΩΝ ΣΠΟΥΔΩΝ

ΜΕΤΑΠΤΥΧΙΑΚΗ ΕΙΔΙΚΕΥΣΗ ΚΑΘΗΓΗΤΩΝ

ΑΓΓΛΙΚΗΣ ΓΛΩΣΣΑΣ

ΔΙΠΛΩΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΕΡΓΑΣΙΑ

‘THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PRE-READING STAGE

FOR THE ENHANCEMENT OF READING SKILLS IN
TEE STUDENTS’

ΔΗΜΗΤΡΑ ΤΣΟΛΑΚΙΔΟΥ

Επιβλέπουσα Καθηγήτρια:
ΑΝΑΣΤΑΣΙΑ ΓΕΩΡΓΟΥΝΤΖΟΥ

ΠΑΤΡΑ 2008
 Introduction

Mark A. Clarke (1980) calls  reading ‘the most thoroughly studied and

least understood process in education today'. In recent years though, the field of

second and foreign language reading  has been revitalised  by changes  in our

understanding of the nature of the reading process. The focus in the teaching of

reading has now shifted from the end product to the process the reader goes

through  when  getting  involved   in  a text   and, nowadays,  EFL  teachers  work

towards that direction  by  putting emphasis on the reading process in order to

create autonomous and confident readers. 

Goodman (1967) describes reading as a ‘psycholinguistic process’ in that

it starts with a linguistic surface presentation encoded by a writer and ends with

meaning   which   the   reader   constructs.   There   is   thus   an   essential   interaction

between   language   and   thought   in   reading,   which   means   that   reader   –  based

processes   mingle   with   text   –   driven   processes   to   form   the   path   to   reading

comprehension.   This   theoretic   approach   questions   the   notion   of   ‘perfect

comprehension’   and   recognizes   the   possibility   of   multiple   interpretations,

treating   reading   as   an   open­ended   process   which   brings   in   the   reader’s

subjectivity. The reader comes to the text with a set of expectations, drawn from

his/her background knowledge and engages  in inferences  to be subsequently

confirmed or disconfirmed during the actual reading.

In practice, a good method of implementing these theoretic guidelines in

the classroom is to look at the reading lesson in terms of three phases: pre-

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reading, while reading, and post-reading. The three phases offer the teacher a

framework which can help him/her cut the whole reading procedure into

manageable chunks and thus overcome many problems in the process of

reading, as there is gradual and hierarchical treatment of the text.

More specifically, the aim of the pre-reading stage is to arouse interest in

the topic by drawing on the learners’ knowledge of the world, share their

opinion and generate relevant vocabulary. This preparation stage is carried out

before learners have seen the actual text as is considered very crucial for the

lesson’s outcome. In the while-reading phase the actual reading takes place for

learners to understand the structure and content of the text and the writer's

purpose and intended meaning. Finally, the post-reading stage is intended to

help learners consolidate and reflect upon what has been read.

Although all the above mentioned phases should be evaluated and

treated with the analogous respect and preparation in the reading lesson, there is

a tendency among teachers’ practice to neglect or even omit the pre - reading

stage. For some teachers this stage is seen as unimportant or of little value to the

whole reading lesson and is neglected, unattended or restricted, to the advantage

of the other two stages which have ‘more to do with the actual text’.

The aim of this dissertation is to prove the crucial role of the first stage

of the reading lesson, the pre – reading stage, and show the great influence it can

have in the reading comprehension process. Through this dissertation, it will

become obvious that by simply providing learners with a text and asking them to

read it, it is unlikely that the desired outcome will be achieved. Students will not

engage in the reading process due to lack of motivation and a feeling of

insecurity for the unknown text. On the contrary, if they are well prepared

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during the pre – reading stage, by the use of different activities and various

tasks, this will enhance their interest for the actual reading phase, prepare them

for what is to come and, consequently, it will contribute greatly to a better

reading comprehension.

In order to reach this conclusion certain theoretic guidelines will be

followed and, then, based on practical research, I will try to implement them in

practice in order to prove my point. The structure of the dissertation will be as

follows:

In Chapter 1 the general theory about reading will be presented, focusing

on the main reading models (bottom-up, top-down and interactive), dealing with

key issues such as reading skills and strategies, formal and content schemata,

text as vehicle of information (TAVI) as opposed to text as linguistic object

(TALO) and product versus process in reading. Furthermore, there will be

reference to the problems that may arise in a reading lesson due to a more

traditional approach, which may result in the lack of stages and more

particularly of the pre-reading stage.

Chapter 2 will also be theoretical but more specific, in the sense that the

focus will be solely on theory about the pre-reading stage, its benefit for the

learners and its importance in reading comprehension. I will present theory

about what readers bring to the text, in relation to their background knowledge

and refer to the relevant formal and content schemata theory. Furthermore, there

will be an analysis of practical ways to implement the pre-reading stage and the

tasks or activities that can be done during this specific stage along with the

means, duration and anticipated outcomes.

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 Chapter 3 will include a quantitative research based on questionnaires

given to students of my class and teachers of English in order for them to state

their opinion about the reading lesson in general, the difficulties that can arise,

the lacks, the needs and preferences. Most importantly, through the questions I

will emphasize on the pre-reading stage, ask students and teachers how much

they value its contribution, what they expect to get from this stage and how they

think it can be improved in order to become more effective. Through gathering

opinions, there will be some insight in the reading lessons, and the need for

implementation of new practices will arise. Thus, my aim will be to prove the

vital role of the pre-reading stage in reading comprehension and as a proposal

suggest practical ways to make it more effective and successful as a stage.

Through a well prepared pre-reading stage students will be benefited greatly and

this will consequently lead to an overall successful reading lesson, better reading

comprehension and finally more efficient readers.

Chapter 4 will discuss the experimental design analytically based on the

theoretical stance. The results of the questionnaires along with the theory about

the pre-reading stage will be taken into account and put into practice in the

classroom through five reading lessons based on the TEE coursebook. The

lessons will be conducted differently than the coursebook’s guidelines, laying

emphasis on the pre-reading stage, which will become longer as a stage in order

to better prepare students for what is to follow. All five lesson plans will be

included and appended and all stages (while and post -, too) will be presented.

The tasks of the pre-reading stage will be presented more analytically according

to their underlying essence and purpose.

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 Chapter 5 will present students’ reaction and response to such alteration

of the reading lesson, will measure up their performance and whether it has

improved according to the teacher’s and students’ impression. This will form the

basis upon which certain conclusions will be drawn in relation to the pre-reading

stage and its importance in reading comprehension. The outcome of the five

novel lessons will be analyzed in order to reach a conclusion on the effect of the

pre-reading stage. Last but not least, the strengths and weaknesses of this study

will be mentioned along with suggestions for further research and teaching

implementation.

Chapter 1

Research on reading in a second/foreign language and efforts to improve

ESL/EFL reading instruction have grown remarkably over the last decades. Α

contributing factor to that has certainly been the recognition that reading is

probably the most important skill for second language learners in academic (and

not only) contexts and is a necessary prerequisite for most types of

communication in the foreign language (Carrell, 1989a; Lynch & Hudson 1991).

Goodman (1967) has described reading as a ‘psycholinguistic guessing

game’ in which the ‘reader reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which has

been encoded by a writer as a graphic display’ (1971:135). Goodman views this

act of meaning construction as being an ongoing, cyclical process of sampling

from the input text, predicting, testing and confirming or revising these

predictions. Thus, from a psycholinguistic viewpoint reading is a problem

solving behavior that actively involves the reader in the process of deriving and

assigning meaning. While doing so the reader is drawing on contextual

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information that contains semantic and discourse constraints which affect

interpretation (Cziko 1978:472-89; F. Smith 1971).

Coady (1979) has elaborated on this basic psycholinguistic model and

has suggested a model in which the EFL reader’s background knowledge

interacts with conceptual abilities (intellectual capacity) and process strategies,

more or less successfully, to produce comprehension. Nuttall (1982:10) adds

that ‘reading… is not just an active process, but an interactive one’. That means

that reading is not simply looking at what has been written, translating

graphemes to phonemes and reading aloud but rather understanding what has

been written, interpreting visual information and extracting meaning from

writing in relation to one’s existing knowledge.

Furthermore, Penny Ur (1996) defines reading as ‘reading and

understanding’. A foreign language learner who says ‘I can read the words but I

don’t know what they mean is no, therefore, reading in this sense. He or she is

merely decoding – translating written symbols into corresponding sounds’

(1996:138). As Williams (1984:2) put it ‘the key word is ‘understand’ – merely

reading aloud without understanding does not count as reading’. In the reading

process, the reader interacts dynamically with the text as he/she tries to

understand and elicit the meaning by using two kinds of knowledge, linguistic

knowledge (through bottom-up processing) as well as schematic knowledge

(through top-down processing). All these show that the nature of reading is

complex. It’s not just pronouncing words correctly but reading in a meaningful

way, getting something from the text, understanding its aim, working on it

interactively and developing integrated skills. It is not simply a matter of taking

out (information, opinion, enjoyment) it also involves contributing (attitudes,

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experience and prior knowledge). A text may therefore be seen as a focus for an

interactive relationship between the writer’s ‘reality’ and the reader’s ‘reality’.

The most recent model of reading, the interactive one, combines top-

down and bottom-up processes. In the bottom – up view, the reader works from

information provided initially by letter and word recognition, later using higher

level cues to build up an understanding of the writer’s message. This is also

known as data – driven model, because the process is based principally on

perceptual information. On the other hand, there are the top down models,

regarded as concept – driven, where the process is based principally on

conceptual information. According to David E. Eskey (1988), the interactive

model does not presuppose the primacy of bottom – up or top – down

processing skills but rather posits a constant interaction between bottom – up

and top-down processing in reading, each source of information contributing to

a comprehensive reconstruction of the meaning of the text. Good reading – that

is, fluent and accurate reading – can result only from a constant interaction

between these processes. Eskey defines ‘interactive’ referring to the interaction

between information obtained by means of bottom – up decoding and

information provided by means of top-down analysis, both of which depend on

certain kinds of prior knowledge and certain kinds of information processing

skills. William Grabe (1991) mentions that, in general the term ‘interactive

approach’ can refer to two different conceptions. First, it can refer to general

interaction which takes place between the reader and the text. Second, the term

can refer to the interaction of many component skills potentially in simultaneous

operation. The interaction of these cognitive skills leads to fluent reading

comprehension. Thus, reading involves both lower-level rapid automatic

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identification skills and higher-level comprehension/interpretation skills (Carrell

1988b; 1989a; Esken, 1986; Esken & Grabe, 1988).

This learner-centered approach gives focus to the process of reading

rather than to the product of reading, and seeks to foster self-reliance and

independence of the reader rather than teacher-dependence, as in the case of

previous, older approaches. Through this modern approach learners can become

more strategic readers and can cultivate life-long reading habits instead of

employing solely short-term reading strategies. This is done because the

emphasis throughout this approach is on the conceptual frame of content and

students’ personal response to it, by means of using the text as vehicle of

information (TAVI), rather that as a linguistic object (TALO). Johns and Davies

(1983) make an important distinction between what they call TALO (text as

linguistic object) and TAVI (text as vehicle for information). In TALO the text is

a carrier for the teaching of language, grammar, vocabulary, but contributes very

little to the development of learner’s reading skills. TAVI approach adopts the

notion of “topic-type” (Davies 1982 & 1983), as a basis for analyzing the

semantic content of texts and this provides a framework for classroom

interaction, group work or pair work before, during and after the reading of the

actual text. TAVI aims at the development of generalizable and transferable

strategies of meaning reconstruction and helps readers become autonomous,

competent and efficient while working towards successful reading

comprehension. The mix of skills and knowledge (bottom – up and top – down)

will naturally vary from reader to reader, but the model can account for and

accommodate this.

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 So, an interactive model of reading assumes that skills at all levels are

interactively available to process and interpret the text. This model incorporates

the implications of reading as an interactive process, that is, the use of

background knowledge, expectations and context and simultaneous recognition

of letters and words. According to Rumelhart (1977) and Hill and Larson

(1983), the reader starts with the perception of graphic cues, but as soon as these

are recognized as familiar, schemata derived from both linguistic knowledge of

the world in general are brought into play.

As previously mentioned, efficient and effective foreign language

reading requires both top-down and bottom-up strategies operating interactively

(Rumelhart, 1977, 1980; Sanford and Garrod 1981; Eskey and Grabe 1986;

Carrell 1988). In practice, vocabulary development and word recognition have

been recognized as crucial to successful bottom – up decoding skills. Unlike

traditional views of vocabulary, current theories converge on the notion that a

given word does not have a fixed meaning, but rather has a variety of meanings

around a ‘prototypical’ core and that these meanings interact with context and

background knowledge. Thus, knowledge of vocabulary entails knowledge of

the schemata in which a concept participates. As a result, an important part of

teaching background knowledge is teaching the vocabulary related to it and

conversely, teaching vocabulary also means teaching new concepts, new

knowledge, new schemata. Through this process, the reader’s old knowledge of

the world and long-term memory is triggered and stimulated to bring forth the

appropriate “schema” for the relevant situation. A schema, as defined by

Williams and Moran (1989:217) is ‘an abstract structure representing concepts

stored in memory’ or according to Anderson and Pearson (1988:39) ‘an active

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organization of past reactions or past experience’. The activation of the proper

schema prior and during the reading process is a crucial step towards

comprehension.

Hudson (1982) found that schema production, that is, top-down

processing, is very much implicated in foreign language reading and that

schemata can override language proficiency as a factor in comprehension. That

means a slight emphasis should be given on teaching techniques and strategies

which can help students make more effective use of the top – down processing

mode, by activating background knowledge based on the ‘schema theory’. The

greater the background knowledge a reader has of a text’s content area, the

better the reader will comprehend the text (Pearson, Hansen and Gordon 1979;

Taylor 1979; Stevens 1980).

The notion of prior knowledge influencing reading comprehension

suggests that meaning does not rest solely in the printed word but that the reader

brings certain knowledge to the reading that influences comprehension. In other

words, meaning is not inherent in the text; readers bring their own meaning to

what they read based on what they expect from the text and their previous

knowledge. It is the interaction of these existing concepts with the new

information provided by a reading text that is said to constitute what we refer to

as comprehension and it is that active participation of the learner’s mind in the

form of schema activation which is essential for comprehension to be achieved.

As Anderson et al (1977:369) put it ‘every act of comprehension involves one’s

knowledge of the world as well’.

Schema theory research (P. Carrell and Eisterhold) has shown the

importance of background knowledge within a psycholinguistic model of

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reading, placing the readers in the centre of the process. The readers have to use

their culture-specific background knowledge, and not only their linguistic

competence, in order to get the meaning from a text. This background

knowledge will enable the student to comprehend a text at a reasonable rate and

keep him involved in the written material in spite of its syntactic difficulty

(Coady 1979: 12). This knowledge coupled with the ability to make linguistic

predictions, determines the expectations the readers will develop prior to reading

and as they read.

Indeed comprehending words, sentences and entire texts involves more

than just relying on one’s linguistic knowledge. Zhang (1993) compares

comprehension process to hypothesis testing, where the reader arrives at the

main idea after revising the initial hypothesis, provided the reader has adequate

background knowledge. This means that foreign language readers may stumble

on cultural references, which first language readers take for granted, and this can

create impediments in their process of comprehension. Foreign language readers

may sometimes fail to understand a text, even though they have adequate

vocabulary knowledge, just because they cannot link what they are reading to

something they already know. As Anderson notes ‘without some schema into

which it can be assimilated, an experience is incomprehensible, and therefore,

little can be learnt from it’ (1977: 429).

At this point it is useful to draw a distinction between ‘formal schemata’

which have to do with background knowledge of the format, rhetorical

organizational structures of different types of texts, and “content schemata”,

relating to the background knowledge of the content area of a text (Carrell

1983b, Carrell and Eisterhord 1988:79). According to Williams and Moran

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(1989:217) a similar concept to that of a content schema is “script”, as the term

has been used (by Schank and Anderson to 1977) to describe the patterns though

which the various routines of everyday life come to be associated with. Orasanu

(1986) explicates the notion of “schema” which can be thought of as a

framework containing slots to be filled by incoming text information. For

example, if a reader is presented with a text about going on vacation, he or she

would likely have a slot in the vacation schema for packing a suitcase. Text

statements about folding clothes or carrying bags could then fill the slot. If a

reader did not have a vacation schema with a “suitcase-packing slot” the

information about clothes and bags might not be readily understood (p. 118).

Carrell (1984b, 1987) and Carrell & Eisherhold (1983) have investigated

thoroughly the usefulness of the notion of schema theory for second language

reading and have found that activating content information plays a major role in

students’ comprehension and recall of information from text, especially for less

proficient students, who need support both at a word and content level. As

Patricia L. Carrell (1983b) puts it, ‘we must strive for an optimum balance

between the background knowledge presupposed by the texts our students read

and the background knowledge our students actually possess’. Carrell (1986b)

has also argued that a lack of schema activation is one major source of

processing difficulty with second foreign language readers.

All the above mentioned theory has some implications in the teaching

practice. It becomes obvious that teachers must use a balanced approach to

teaching reading by incorporating both top - down and bottom - up processes

and prepare the students for what they will encounter in terms of content and

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language. The immediate goal of EFL reading teachers should be to minimize

reading difficulties and to maximize comprehension by providing all the

necessary, linguistically and culturally relevant information, in order to avoid

having students read material “cold”. The reading teacher can play a crucial role

in the students’ developing (or failing to develop) foreign language reading

skills and can have a major effect on whether students will perform successfully

in the reading lesson. It is the teacher who must create the world of reading in a

class, stimulate interest in reading, project his or her enthusiasm, make the

subject matter appealing and help students realize the real value of reading. It is

also the teacher who must choose, modify or create appropriate materials for

students with varied needs and purposes to ensure their improvement in reading.

The teacher must also introduce and provide practice in useful reading strategies

for coping with texts in a foreign, unfamiliar language. Furthermore, it is the

teacher who must provide students with feedback and serve as an all-purpose

reference tool to resolve uncertainties and help readers work towards the

ultimate goal of acquiring proper reading habits. From all the above, it becomes

obvious that, nowadays foreign language reading teachers face many challenges

in the classroom. Teaching students how to utilize the skills and knowledge that

they bring from their first language, developing vocabulary skills, teaching

reading strategies and improving reading comprehension are some of the

elements that teachers must consider in preparing for an EFL reading class.

According to William Grabe (1991), reading instruction should be taught

in the context of a content-centered, integrated skills manner. This should be

done because content provides learner with motivation and purposeful activities.

Further more, specific skills and strategies should be given high priority

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depending on the educational context, students’ needs and teaching objectives.

These elements should not be disregarded by the teacher during a reading

lesson.

One way of facilitating a reader’s interaction with the text and providing

orientation to context and content is through various kinds of text-related tasks.

The idea that there are three main types of reading activity, those which precede

presentation of the text, those which accompany it, and those which follow it, is

now a common feature of discourse about reading (Wallace 1992; Wallace 1988;

Williams 1984). For this reason, to establish a purpose and achieve its aims, a

reading lesson should be planned in a pre-, while and post reading framework, in

order to build background knowledge, practice reading skills within the reading

texts themselves and engage in comprehensive instruction.

In a pre-, while and post reading framework embodying the TAVI

method, where the text concentrates on information rather than language, on

overall meaning rather than points of detail, the activities undertaken before the

text is handled are of crucial importance. These activities work towards the text

and act as direction-finders, awakening interest, establishing the purpose for

which the text is to be read, the sort of information that may be found in it and

the value that information that may have for students. In other words, the pre-

reading stage supplies something like the “situational context” and helps

students get into the mood for dealing with the text successfully. For the foreign

language reader who is often insecure, pre-reading strategies are even more

important than they are for the native reader and the teacher must therefore

coach the students in their use. Thus, the pre-reading stage, if conducted in a

serious manner, provides a crucial information basis for the next stages of the

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reading lesson (that is the while and the post) and creates the conditions for a

successful reading lesson.

Unfortunately, while most teachers implement the pre- while and post-

reading phase in their lessons, many of them do not acknowledge the vital role

of the pre-reading stage and –in practice- they tend to devote less time than

necessary or even omit it completely, urging students to deal directly with the

text without any previous preparation. In the absence of any preparatory

activities, students are left on their own devices in the most important activity of

all: the puzzling out of what the text means. This inevitably makes them feel

unprepared and, thus, insecure. For this reason emphasis should be put in the

pre-reading stage as it is an integral part of the reading lesson which prepares

learners for what is to come, gives them the basis to build upon and vastly

influences the final outcome of the reading lesson. In the Chapter that follows

the value and virtues of the pre-reading stage are presented and analyzed.

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