ALL COLLEGE PROFESSORS MUST BE READING TEACHERS

BY ESTHER L. BARACEROS

One subject all college freshmen need to finish before they reach sophomore is
English 2: Reading and Thinking Skills for Academic Study. This subject is described by
the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) as “a course that primarily aims at
developing the reading and thinking abilities of students for academic study. It enables
the learners to enhance their HOTS higher-order thinking skill such as inferential,
critical, creative and appreciative thinking for comprehending or understanding
academic texts.” (CHED memo, 2008)

What is academic study? Academic study is a phrase that pertains to student

thorough examinations or inquiry of certain subject matter or topic to deepen or increase
their understanding of their chosen topic. It involves a scientific or systematic search of
knowledge, mostly grounded on learning abilities in higher-education institutions like
universities or colleges. Academic Study is analogous to the word scholarly. Thus, the
term scholar does simply refer to a student who enjoys a tuition fee discount, but t
primarily refer to a student who spends much time in studying a particular subject matter
not only for his own intellectual growth but for world progress as well.

Academic study requires a lot of reading activities the enables students to

unearth, from various learning materials, concepts or ideas about the object of their
inquiry or investigation. Central to this academic endeavor is competent or skillful
reading to drive students to depend on their wide vocabulary and HOTS or Higher-order
thinking skills for getting a quick and accurate understanding of the text. Banking greatly
on reading, which is absolutely a thinking act, academic study makes reading the
number one tool of college students in enhancing their thinking skills.

To enhance students’ reading skills for academic study in the tertiary level is to
let them engage in frequent reading activities. They have to be driven or be pushed to
read and read. As what Oscar Wilde, a 20 th-century Irish writer and dramatis once said,
“The door to success is labeled PUSH”. Interpreting this line, one may say that to
succeed in life, he has to depend much on his attitudes, initiative, effort, and optimism.
Applying this line to reading for academic study, one has to drive or push student to
read by doing extra effort to motivate or create in them an intrinsic interest to read
completely and thoroughly any reading material assigned to them.

Motivating tertiary level students to read is not merely giving them the title of the
book or the number of chapters or pages to read. Rather, it is an act of activating
whatever background knowledge the students have about their reading assignment.
This is so, because to understand the text or to get meaning from printed matter one
should bring or combine with the text whatever background knowledge the readers have
about the reading material. This readers’ background is also called schemata, prior
knowledge, stock knowledge, old knowledge, past knowledge, or experience. According
to reading experts, students’ zero stock knowledge about the reading material results in
their poor or no understanding of the text.

Based on the Schema Theory of Reading that considers the reader’s schemata
as the key to comprehending or understanding any reading material, every person on
earth has schemata in his memory for general concepts about groups of people, places,
things, and events. For instance, the word Japan appearing in a text stimulates the
readers’ recall of their schemata, experience, or prior knowledge in relation to this
country. Such as, tsunami, earthquakes, radiation, floods, volcano, Mt. Fuji, and other
existing knowledge about this place. Or, reading the word cow, the readers come to
remember grass, dung, horn, field, farmer, cattle, milk, anthrax, moo, and many more
ideas related to this kind of animal.

What is the reader’s mind is the focus of this current view of reading
comprehension introduced by Schema Theory. Such emphasis on the reader’s
schemata made these two reading experts, David Pearson and Dale Johnson say that
reading comprehension is “building bridges between the new and the known,” that is,
building connection between the writer’s ideas and the reader’s schemata or past
knowledge about the reading material.

What is implication of this Schema Theory of Reading among all university or

college professors who put premium on reading as their means to make students
realize the objectives of their subjects? Knowing how students comprehend or
understand a reading material could help a professor a lot. Architects, engineers,
nurses and other professionals serving as teachers in higher-education institutions
should avoid ending their class sessions with mere mention of the list of articles,
chapters, or pages of books they require their students to read outside the classroom.
They ought to know that a successful reading activity involves these three reading
stages: (1) pre-reading or before-reading stage, (2) during reading or while-reading
stage, and (3) post-reading or after-reading stage.

Linda K. Crafton argued that the first reading stage, the pre-reading or before-
reading stage means “comprehension without print”. Further, she said that “What
teachers begin with-The Reader-is perhaps the most important part of the transaction.
The information and perceptions readers bring with them to the reading process can
literally make or break the experience. Those components of the readers’ mental setting
are all organized and available to assist comprehension.”

College students usually take home long reading assignments in Science,

Architecture, Engineering, Chemistry, Biology, Sociology, Nursing, and other
content-area subjects that are pregnant with complex or technical terms, let alone the
novelty of the subject matter of the assignment to some students, especially to college
freshmen. Unfamiliar with these difficult terms and having no schemata or background
of the text, the not-so-knowledgeable or not well-read students who comprise the
majority in most universities or colleges in the country, do not find their reading
assignments interesting and easy to read.

To enkindle in the students a spark of interest or curiosity in reading their long

assignments and to inspire them to finish reading the text up to its last sentence, college
professors should conduct classroom pre-reading or before-reading activities, in other
words, they have to spend a few minutes, say 15 to 20 minutes in activating the
students’ schemata or background knowledge about their reading assignment. Such
schema activation can be done in this class by helping the students familiarize
themselves with some high-falutin or technical terms in the text through the use of
contextual clues or graphic organizers. Anticipating, predicting, and speculating about
the reading assignment are other pre-reading activities they can do in class before the
students engage themselves in long-reading activities beyond class hours. These pre-
reading or before-reading activities are aimed at creating a link between what the
readers already know about the reading material and what the reader wrote in the text.
These activities will surely result in students’ easy and interesting reading of any
reading text in any skill or content subject in college.

Generally, in this country, a class in a university or college consists of more poor

readers than excellent ones. Moreover, based on some studies and write-ups in some
periodical reading materials, the reading comprehension of college learners continue to
deteriorate. Putting arrest to the alarming condition of these students’ reading abilities,
CHED came out with GE (General Education) course called English 2: Reading and
Thinking Skills for Academic Study. Different from other subjects in terms of philosophy,
content, and methodology, this fundamental college-freshman subject has to be taught
by a Reading Education major, idealistically speaking. But, ironically, in any university or
college, only one or two per English Department have expertise or some M.A or Ph.D.
units in Reading Education.

Remedying such dearth of reading teachers in higher-education institution, some

schools produce their own reading textbooks that must reflect the current theories or
principles on improving students’ reading abilities. In addition, to prepare all teachers
assigned to teach English 2, they hold seminars, workshops, and demonstration
teachings on this subject. However, these faculty-development activities about
improving the vocabulary reading and thinking skills of college students are confined
mainly to the members of the English department. Never are the architects, engineers,
nurses, philosophers, sociologists, and other content-area teachers required to attend
these types of activities. Should these college professors be exempted from these
activities when they rank as number one in giving long reading assignments and
research work in college students?

The deteriorating reading comprehension of college students, by and large, is

caused by many factors such as biological, psychological, and environmental elements.
Could the poor reading abilities of college students be attributed also to some college
professors’ lack of knowledge of the psychology of reading methods and techniques to
enhance students’ thinking skills or reading comprehension?

What if every university or college in the country compel all its teachers to
undergo one- or two-day seminar-workshop on reading at the onset of the semester,
could the move of the school alleviate the deteriorating reading abilities of students, and
instead, increase the number of college graduates equipped with HOTS or higher-order
thinking skills that are necessary for global competitiveness or a niche in this Era of
Globalization or Knowledge Explosion?

(This article was first published in Philippine Panorama dated May 29, 2011, pp.
16-17)

Submitted by: Manansala, Sal Kenneth

Villalon, Mery Jehn

Teves, Ricky