Theory of reading as a process

Marín Marta (2009) Linguistics and teaching

of the tongue. Bs. Ace: Aique.
What is reading?
• We could say that looking over what is written,
although it is an inadequate definition. Let's test it
with the following text...
Could we say that it is decoding?
• If reading were simply identifying signs and attributing
meaning to them, we would not encounter phrases like:
“Students do not understand what they read.
• This incomplete notion of what it is to read, like, decoding,
deciphering
Misconception
• What it means to understand a text
Questionnaires
that only ask about explicit information and not what the
reader can infer or deduce.
Let's read the following text.
• Sartro and Nipo phytolear junipear through the arusa.
Nipo was happy, but Sartro didn't know what to do. A
psora stabbed the joro, and Nipo ruined Sartro's
mosero...
ANSWER:
What did Sartro and Nipo do?
How was Nipo? Sartro cilaraba?
Who was attacking the joro?
What did Nipo do?
If “reading” is changed to
“interpretation”?
• Itemphasizing
seems that reading is equivalent to interpreting,
the cognitive aspect instead of the materiality
of the act.

• Recent theoretical models regarding communication say

that the receiver interprets a message, not decodes it.

• Reading is a job of interpreting a text that is part of a

mediated communication and is a cognitive fact, a process
of knowledge.
• The sender guides the interpretation of the text.

Sender-receiver interaction
• It also happens during reading:
• The sender gives clues through the text and the reader
contributes mental processes to that interaction.

Conceiving
reading as an interpretation and communicative act
gave rise to the development of numerous theories to
explain the reader's mental processes.

Kenneth Goodman theory

•Itautonomous
is a generator of reader strategies whose learning forms
readers.
•Goodman titles his model: “A sociopsycholinguistic transactional
perspective.
Transactional refers to the fact that the
subject who knows and what he knows is modified during the
reading act.
Sociopsycholinguistic: refers to the
sociocultural conception of language, to the theory of schemas; to
the theory of language that includes pragmatics, text linguistics,
lexico-grammatical and semantics.

Model elements
• According
his:
to this model, the reader constructs meanings with

• Conceptual background knowledge

• Previous knowledge of letters
• Linguistic and textual clues that the text gives you
This
It involves reader-text interaction: the reader is not passive: he
formulates hypotheses, processes the information he receives,
makes deductions, interprets the global meaning and at the
same time the text offers: coherence, cohesion, structure,
lexicon and different resources.
The reader in Goodman's model
• Has prior conceptual knowledge.
•For
Has certain literate knowledge to identify and interpret certain keys.
example in the text of “Sartro and Nipo”:

DEDUCTIONS KEYS

It is a narrative Words that indicate preaching (verbal

endings) Names of characters and
places (arusa)

• There are opposing actions The connector appears

but
READ IS…
• Construct meanings, through the interaction between:
Reader (prior knowledge or mental schemes) Text (key
guidelines)
Reading intentions : according to Goodman, reading
has different functions (environmental, recreational,
professional, ritual)
Reader's cognitive strategies:
They are the mental processes that the reader puts into
action to interact with the text.
Most important cognitive strategies
• Prediction (What will the text be about? Paratext)
• Inference (deductions from certain data that allow
others to be assumed)
• Hypothesis verification (the reader verifies or does not
verify the assumption, self-monitoring of
understanding)
• Correction (readers evaluate the processed information
or go back in the text)
Strategies are not a way to follow, but rather people use
them to evaluate their reading , therefore, strategies
must be taught.

What strategies?
According to the interaction between the reader's mental
processes and the text, emerging readers must be
taught to develop reading strategies that:
.Raise awareness of the purposes
.Break mental schemes
.Activate prior knowledge
. Allow us to hypothesize
. They serve to control and guide understanding
READ LITERATURE
• Literary texts are characterized by an aesthetic
intention that differentiates them from other texts,
because it is focused on symbolization and the creation
of artistic effects, transforming the data of the
empirical world in such a way that a constructed world
appears before the reader.
• There are 2 kinds of reading:
• Efferent: Attends to the cognitive, analytical and
quantitative aspects of the text.
• Aesthetics: not only refers to the artistic but also to the
affective, emotions and intuitions. Reading literature is
not extracting data but enjoying the artistic creation of
the symbolic world
Strategies to promote aesthetic
reading
• Provoke an affective response to reading.
• Promote an inferential reading.
• Consider literature as a substitute experience for
psychosocial bonds.
4
• THEN we should encourage the aesthetic perception of
language, the emotional response to the plot,
identification with the characters and respect for the
different interpretations of the readers.