Education English | Two Views of Reading Comprehension: Specific skill and a Holistic process | The Specific Skills View of Reading Comprehension
Traditionally, reading comprehension has been linked with a set of identifiable and teachable skills, such as nothing important facts and details, finding the main idea, and following direction. A major advantage of identifying discrete comprehension skills is that the teacher can easily divide the very general concept of reading comprehension into smaller units that are manageable for
instruction. Consequently, the student’s attention can be directly focused on reaching specific and definable goals. The diagnosis involves determining which specific reading skills the student has already acquired and which must still be taught. Remedial instruction involves the direct teaching of those discrete comprehension skills yet to be learned.
Although reading authorities do not all agree on which comprehension skills are important and how they should be sequenced, the comprehension skills that are commonly identified are described as follows, in a sequence from the easier to the more difficult (Brown, 2001)
1. Noting clearly stated facts and important details of a selection.
This skill is considered one of the easiest comprehension skills. Most of the questions asked on reading tests and by teachers are questions of detail. For example: “what color was Jane’s new dress?”, “What is the largest city in Montana?”, “In what year was the treaty signed?” This skill requires memory; if the detail can be related to a main idea, it is easier to remember.
2. Grasping the main idea.
This skill entails the reader’s ability to get the nucleus of the idea presented or to capture the core of the information. It is much harder that findings details and many readers are unable to see through the details to get the central through of a selection. Teachers can help students develop this skill by asking them to select the best title for the selection from several alternatives, by having them make up a title for a selection, or by asking them to state in one sentence what a short selection is about.
3. Following a sequence of events or steps.
This skill is one of organizing being able to see the steps of a process or the evens in a story. Seeing such order is important to thinking, understanding language, and reading. To provide practice in this skill, the teacher can give the events in scrambled order and ask the student to sort them into the correct order. The ability to follow printed direction is closely allied to this skill, and the reader proceeds step by step to carry out a project. The Boy Scout Handbook, model plane directions, a cookbook, or direction for playing a game provide practical material for teaching this skill.
4. Drawing inferences and reaching conclusions.
This skill requires great emphasis on thoughtful reading and interpretation. Here the reader must go beyond the lines and the facts given in order to reach a conclusion. Questions such as “What does the author means? “ or “Can you predict or anticipate what will happen next?” are geared to encourage such thinking. The reader who can do this is thinking along with the author.
5. Organizing ideas.
This skill refers to the ability to see interrelationships among the ideas of a reading selection. It involves sensing cause and effect, comparing and contrasting relationships, and seeing the author’s general plan for structuring the material. Studying the table of contents, looking at topic headings and outlining are techniques to help the student see how the ideas are organized.
6. Applying what is read to solve the problems and verify statements.
If reading is to be a functional skill, the material must be adapted to new situations and integrated with previous experiences. The ability to transfer and integrate the knowledge and skill gained in reading is difficult skill for many students to acquire. Information gained through reading a story about a boy in Mexico might be applied to a lesson in social studies. Or a problem can be formulated and the answer found through reading a selection.
7. Evaluating materials for bias, relevance, and consistency
This skill is sometimes referred to as critical reading. Making judgments about the author’s bias, comparing several sources of information, detecting propaganda techniques, and determining the logic of an argument or approach are all included in this skill. Evens students who are capable readers are likely to need help with this comprehension skill. Students enjoy the critical examination of advertisements for the detection of propaganda techniques. The comparing of editorials on the same subject or of two new reports of a single event provides good material for developing this skill.
instruction. Consequently, the student’s attention can be directly focused on reaching specific and definable goals. The diagnosis involves determining which specific reading skills the student has already acquired and which must still be taught. Remedial instruction involves the direct teaching of those discrete comprehension skills yet to be learned.
Although reading authorities do not all agree on which comprehension skills are important and how they should be sequenced, the comprehension skills that are commonly identified are described as follows, in a sequence from the easier to the more difficult (Brown, 2001)
1. Noting clearly stated facts and important details of a selection.
This skill is considered one of the easiest comprehension skills. Most of the questions asked on reading tests and by teachers are questions of detail. For example: “what color was Jane’s new dress?”, “What is the largest city in Montana?”, “In what year was the treaty signed?” This skill requires memory; if the detail can be related to a main idea, it is easier to remember.
2. Grasping the main idea.
This skill entails the reader’s ability to get the nucleus of the idea presented or to capture the core of the information. It is much harder that findings details and many readers are unable to see through the details to get the central through of a selection. Teachers can help students develop this skill by asking them to select the best title for the selection from several alternatives, by having them make up a title for a selection, or by asking them to state in one sentence what a short selection is about.
3. Following a sequence of events or steps.
This skill is one of organizing being able to see the steps of a process or the evens in a story. Seeing such order is important to thinking, understanding language, and reading. To provide practice in this skill, the teacher can give the events in scrambled order and ask the student to sort them into the correct order. The ability to follow printed direction is closely allied to this skill, and the reader proceeds step by step to carry out a project. The Boy Scout Handbook, model plane directions, a cookbook, or direction for playing a game provide practical material for teaching this skill.
4. Drawing inferences and reaching conclusions.
This skill requires great emphasis on thoughtful reading and interpretation. Here the reader must go beyond the lines and the facts given in order to reach a conclusion. Questions such as “What does the author means? “ or “Can you predict or anticipate what will happen next?” are geared to encourage such thinking. The reader who can do this is thinking along with the author.
5. Organizing ideas.
This skill refers to the ability to see interrelationships among the ideas of a reading selection. It involves sensing cause and effect, comparing and contrasting relationships, and seeing the author’s general plan for structuring the material. Studying the table of contents, looking at topic headings and outlining are techniques to help the student see how the ideas are organized.
6. Applying what is read to solve the problems and verify statements.
If reading is to be a functional skill, the material must be adapted to new situations and integrated with previous experiences. The ability to transfer and integrate the knowledge and skill gained in reading is difficult skill for many students to acquire. Information gained through reading a story about a boy in Mexico might be applied to a lesson in social studies. Or a problem can be formulated and the answer found through reading a selection.
7. Evaluating materials for bias, relevance, and consistency
This skill is sometimes referred to as critical reading. Making judgments about the author’s bias, comparing several sources of information, detecting propaganda techniques, and determining the logic of an argument or approach are all included in this skill. Evens students who are capable readers are likely to need help with this comprehension skill. Students enjoy the critical examination of advertisements for the detection of propaganda techniques. The comparing of editorials on the same subject or of two new reports of a single event provides good material for developing this skill.
The Holistic View of Reading Comprehension
A growing number of influential reading scholars conceptualize reading as a unitary, whole process, entailing cognitive and psycholinguistic behavior. Rejecting the notion of reading as discrete specific skills, the holistic approach offers a fresh a fresh insight into how readers go about understanding printed text material. This view emphasizes that all readers must be able to bridge the gap between the information presented in the written text and the knowledge in their heads in order to understand and remember what is read (Brown, 2001). There are some of the major ideas supporting the holistic view of reading comprehension as follows:
1. Specific skills do not exist in reality.
The obvious underlying assumption of the specific skill approach to reading is that specific sub skills of reading do exist and that they can be identified, classified, tested and taught. Do these specific skills of reading actually exist, or are they merely a pedagogical convenience created by reading scholars? The proponents of the holistic view of reading argue that the whole notion of a sequence or hierarchy of skills is only an artifact that appeals to our sense of logic but does not exist in reality. Research on specific skill is inconclusive. Davis (cited in Brown, 2001) stated that comprehension material could be factored into independent sub skills. Guthrie’s (cited in Brown, 2001) research revealed differences between good and poor readers in terms of processing specific skills. For goods readers, comprehension appears to be a single or unitary process, because they have learned to integrate subskills into a whole reading act. For poor readers, however, specific subskills of reading appear to exist because the poor readers have not as yet integrated subskills into a whole reading act. Samuels (cited in Brown, 2001) found that most of the successful reading programs designed for low-achieving students use the skills approach, incorporating a skills centered curriculum and specific reading objectives. Thus, answers the basic questions about the existence of specific skills are still inconclusive, although a skills approach does appear to be more effective with poor readers (Chall & Stahl cited by Brown, 2001).
2. Reading comprehension depends on what the reader brings to the written material
Reading comprehension depends on the reader’s experience, knowledge of language, recognition of syntactic structure, and the redundancy of a printed passage and the reader’s knowledge is more important for reading comprehension than the text itself (Goodman & Smith cited by Brown, 2001).
3. Reading is a language process.
Any system of teaching reading must recognize that reading is a process for obtaining meaning through language, that is, a psycholinguistic process. Consequently, Goodman (cited in Brown, 2001) recommends that reading be taught as an extension on natural language learning. This can happen if teachers
understand the language process underlying reading. During the reading process, the readers cannot complete the through until the final word or phrase. The readers cannot know the meaning of the word, or sometimes even the pronunciation, until the end of the phrase or sentence. In English, the meaning of the beginning is dependent on the end. The flow of through in English is not left to right, but in many cases circular. Although the eye goes from left to right, the mind does not. Certain ideas and words must be held until some part of the sentence permits the completion of the though. For example, “When Lee looked at the note again, she release that she should have play a sharp”. The meaning of note and Lee’s gender must be kept in abeyance until the
end of the sentence provides the clarification. In the following example, a decision about pronunciation of “tears” cannot be made until the end of the sentence: “John had tears in his shirt”.
Other clues for understanding both oral and written language are the redundancies in language. Redundancy means sending the same message in other forms. That is, information from one source supports information from another source, reinforcing and enhancing the intended message. Such cues therefore help readers construct the meaning in a written word.
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