The process of Reading in

a foreign language
An active process in search of meaning
 To bear in mind…

• Reading does not consist in repeating concepts but in comprehending them.

• Comprehension is very much based on previous knowledge.
• Comprehension leads to the construction of meaning based on known or
predictable lexis.
• The bases of a successful Reading and comprehension are:
a. self-confidence
b. good reading strategies
c. an active reading methodology
 3 stages of successful reading

1. Anticipation or pre-Reading stage

2. Verification or propositional Reading stage

3. Internalisation or post-Reading stage

 1. Anticipation or pre-reading

• Scanning: central idea of the text; framework and autor’s stance.

• Decision making: what type of text: narrative? expository? descriptive?
argumentative? instructional?
• Paratextual data: titles, subtitles, epigraph, abstract, key words, autor’s resume,
bibliography, notes, date of publication, prologue, index, glossary, apendix, etc.
• General reading strategies:
a. identifying words (lexical), numbers or figures, italics, capital letters, in inverted
commas, in bold
b. identifying topic sentences and cohesive devices
 2. Propositional Reading

• Verification of hypotheses formulated in the anticipation stage.

• Evaluation of the text: coherence.
• Decision making: What to do when you meet an unknown word: guess, skip
it, look it up?
• Activities which organise the information of the text: conceptualisation by
paragraphs, chart completion, paraphrasing, reflective questions, definition
of concepts, hierarchy of concepts, etc.
• Macrostructure: global structure representing the theme or main topic of the text.
• Suprastructure: determine the global order of the parts of the text which organise the process of
reading, comprehension and reproduction of discourse.

Examples of suprastructure:

Narrative text: sequence of events.

Descriptive text: characteristics of described object and functions of each part.
Expository text: formulation of problem and solution; the effect of a cause; prediction,
discussion and conclusion of a hypothesis.
Inductive text: description of one or more cases to later formulate a general rule.
Deductive text: formulation of rule to study each particular case.
Argumentative text: formulated thesis and its justifications.
 3. Internalisation and reformulation stage

• Reconstruction of text in mind: new concepts articulate with previous ones (new
conceptual network).

• Synthesis and hierarchical organisation of main concepts in one sentence (including

autor’s stance, paradigm which presents and support a new proposal).

• Reading closure: self-representation of text.

 Common errors

• Pseudonegatives and negatives

• Reading of nominal phrases/constructions
• Recognition of modal verbs
• Complex structures
• Cultural issues
 Basic principles of reading in a foreign
language
• Acknowledge previous knowledge
• Abstraction of meaning
• Get to know the organisation of academic texts (suprastructure)
• Apply basic reading strategies
• Acknowledge the “anticipation” stage as step one
• Develop self-confidence
• Improve selection skills
• Learn productive vocabulary
• Look up indispensable vocabulary