A Review on Reading Theories and its Implication to the Teaching

of Reading
Parlindungan Pardede
parlpard2010@gmail.com
Universitas Kristen Indonesia
Abstract
Opinions and suggestions for the improvement of teaching reading to learners of English as
a foreign language, whether based on the results of research and experience, are available in
language teaching literature. This paper is a summary of various theories, findings and
opinions concerning the teaching of reading. An understanding of these topics, especially
the theory of top-down, bottom-up, and meta-cognitive, could be used as the basis for
improving the techniques of teaching reading. By doing so, the reading proficiency of
learners of English as a foreign language could be significantly enhanced
Keywords: top-down, bottom-up, schemata, meta-cognitive, pre-reading, during-reading,
after-reading
Introduction
Among the four language skills, reading is possibly the most extensively and intensively
studied by experts in the field of language teaching. The results of the researches conducted
for many decades on nature of readinghow people learn to process textual information
have contributed contrasting theories about what works best in the teaching of reading. As a
result, language educators can choose among a wide variety of teaching methods and
techniques for students learning to read in their second language (SL) or foreign language
(FL).
For students who are learning a SL/FL reading is the most crucial skill to master due to
several reasons. First, students can usually perform at a higher level in reading than in any
other skills. They can quite accurately understand written materials that they could not
discuss orally or in writing with equivalent accuracy or thoroughness. Such condition will
undoubtedly enhance their motivation to learn. Second, reading necessitates very minimum
requirements. Different from speaking which requires opportunities to interact with
sparring partner, or from writing which needs a lot of guidance and time to practice,
reading necessitates only a text and motivation. Third, reading is a service skill. After
learning how to read effectively, students will be able to learn effectively by reading.
Realizing how crucial reading is for our students, we can see the great importance of
developing their reading ability. To achieve it, we should improve our reading lessons by
implementing the best method and techniques provided by theories. This article aims to
describe principal theories of reading and examine some tips and guidelines for
implementing a theory of reading which will help us develop our learners abilities.
Theories of Reading
So far, there are three main theories which explain the nature of learning to read. First, the
traditional theory, or bottom up processing, which focused on the printed form of a text. (2)

the cognitive view, or top-down processing enhanced the role of background knowledge in
addition to what appeared on the printed page. Third, the metacognitive view, which is
based on the control and manipulation that a reader can have on the act of comprehending a
text, and thus, emphasizes the involvement of the readers thinking about what he is doing
while reading.
1. The traditional bottom-up view
The traditional bottom-up approach to reading was influenced by behaviorist psychology of
the 1950s, which claimed learning was based upon habit formation, brought about by the
repeated association of a stimulus with a response and language learning was
characterized as a response system that humans acquire through automatic conditioning
processes, where some patterns of language are reinforced (rewarded) and others are
not, and only those patterns reinforced by the community of language users will persist
(Omaggio 1993, 45-46). Behaviorism became the basis of the audio-lingual method, which
sought to form second language habits through drilling, repetition, and error correction.
Today, the main method associated with the bottom-up approach to reading is known
asphonics, which requires the learner to match letters with sounds in a defined sequence.
According to this view, reading is a linear process by which readers decode a text word by
word, linking the words into phrases and then sentences (Gray and Rogers, cited in Kucer
1987). According to Samuels and Kamil (1988: 25), the emphasis on behaviorism treated
reading as a word-recognition response to the stimuli of the printed words, where little
attempt was made to explain what went on within the recesses of the mind that allowed the
human to make sense of the printed page. In other words, textual comprehension involves
adding the meanings of words to get the meanings of clauses (Anderson 1994). These lower
level skills are connected to the visual stimulus, or print, and are consequently concerned
with recognizing and recalling.
Like the audio-lingual teaching method, phonics emphasizes on repetition and on drills
using the sounds that make up words. Information is received and processed beginning with
the smallest sound units, and proceeded to letter blends, words, phrases, and sentences.
Thus, novice readers acquire a set of hierarchically ordered sub-skills that sequentially
build toward comprehension ability. Having mastered these skills, readers are viewed as
experts who comprehend what they read.
The bottom-up model describes information flow as a series of stages that transforms the
input and passes it to the next stage without any feedback or possibility of later stages of
the process influencing earlier stages (Stanovich, 1980). In other words, language is viewed
as a code and the readers main task is to identify graphemes and convert them into
phonemes. Consequently, readers are regarded as passive recipients of information in the
text. Meaning resides in the text and the reader has to reproduce it.
The ESL and EFL textbooks influenced by this perspective include exercises that focus on
literal comprehension and give little or no importance to the readers knowledge or
experience with the subject matter, and the only interaction is with the basic building
blocks of sounds and words. Most activities are based on recognition and recall of lexical
and grammatical forms with an emphasis on the perceptual and decoding dimension.

This model of reading has almost always been under attack as being insufficient and
defective for the main reason that it relies on the formal features of the language, mainly
words and structure. Although it is possible to accept this rejection for the fact that there is
over-reliance on structure in this view, it must be confessed that knowledge of linguistic
features is also necessary for comprehension to take place. To counteract over-reliance on
form in the traditional view of reading, the cognitive view was introduced.
2. The Cognitive View (top-down processing)
In the 1960s a paradigm shift occurred in the cognitive sciences. Behaviorism became
somewhat discredited as the new cognitive theory represented the minds innate capacity
for learning, which gave new explanatory power to how humans acquired their first
language; this also had a tremendous impact on the field of ESL/EFL as psycholinguists
explained how such internal representations of the foreign language develop within the
learners mind (Omaggio, 1993: 57).
Ausubel (cited in Omaggio, 1993: 58), made an important distinction between meaningful
learning and rote learning. An example of rote learning is simply memorizing lists of
isolated words or rules in a new language, where the information becomes temporary and
subject to loss. Meaningful learning, on the other hand, occurs when new information is
presented in a relevant context and is related to what the learner already knows, so that it
can be easily integrated into ones existing cognitive structure. A learning that is not
meaningful will not become permanent. This emphasis on meaning eventually informed the
top-down approach to L2 learning, and in the 1960s and 1970s there was an explosion of
teaching methods and activities that strongly considered the experience and knowledge of
the learner.
These new cognitive and top-down processing approaches revolutionized the conception of
the way students learn to read (Smith, 1994). In this view, reading is not just extracting
meaning from a text but a process of connecting information in the text with the knowledge
the reader brings to the act of reading. In this sense, reading is a dialogue between the
reader and the text which involves an active cognitive process in which the readers
background knowledge plays a key role in the creation of meaning (Tierney and Pearson,
1994). Reading is not a passive mechanical activity but purposeful and rational, dependent
on the prior knowledge and expectations of the reader. It is not merely a matter of decoding
print to sound but also a matter of making sense of written language (Smith, 1994: 2). In
short, reading is a psycholinguistic guessing game, a process in which readers sample the
text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject them, make new hypotheses, and so forth.
Schema Theory
Another theory closely related to top-down processing called schema theory also had a
major impact on reading instruction. It describes in detail how the background knowledge
of the learner interacts with the reading task and illustrates how a students knowledge and
previous experience with the world is crucial to deciphering a text. The ability to use this
schemata, or background knowledge, plays a fundamental role in ones trial to comprehend
a text.
Schema theory is based on the notion that past experiences lead to the creation of mental
frameworks that help a reader make sense of new experiences. Smith (1994: 14)
callsschemes the extensive representations of more general patterns or regularities that
occur in our experience. For instance ones generic scheme of an airplane will allow him

to make sense of airplane he has not previously flied with. This means that past experiences
will be related to new experiences, which may include the knowledge of objects,
situations, and events as well as knowledge of procedures for retrieving, organizing and
interpreting information (Kucer, 1987: 31). Anderson (1994: 469) presents research
showing that recall of information in a text is affected by the readers schemata and
explains that a reader comprehends a message when he is able to bring to mind a schema
that gives account of the objects and events described in the message. Comprehension is
the process of activating or constructing a schema that provides a coherent explanation of
objects and events mentioned in a discourse (Anderson, 1994: 473). For Anderson and
Pearson (1988: 38), comprehension is the interaction between old and new information.
They emphasize: To say that one has comprehended a text is to say that she has found a
mental home for the information in the text, or else that she has modified an existing
mental home in order to accommodate that new information. Therefore, a learners
schemata will restructure itself to accommodate new information as that information is
added to the system (Omaggio, 1993).
Content and formal schemata
Schema theorists differentiate formal schemata (knowledge about the structure of a text)
from content schemata (knowledge about the subject matter of a text), and a readers prior
knowledge of both schemata enables him to predict events and meaning as well as to infer
meaning from a wider context.
Formal schemata refers to the way that texts differ from one another; for example, a reading
text could be a fictional work, a letter to the editor, or a scientific essay, and each genre will
have a different structural organization. Knowledge of these genre structures can aid
reading comprehension, as it gives readers a basis for predicting what a text will be like
(Smith 1994). For example, if a reader knows that the typical format of a research article
consists of sections subtitled Introduction, Theoretical Basis, Methods, Results,
Discussion, andConclusion, that knowledge will facilitate their interaction with the article
and boost comprehension. On the other hand, if he is not familiar with this formal schema,
teaching it to him could lead to improved reading ability with lasting and beneficial effects.
Content schemata refers to the message of the text. Ones familiarity with the content will
make more productive and efficient. As Anderson (1994: 469) explains, a reader
comprehends a message when he is able to bring to mind a schema that gives account of the
objects and events described in the message.
Activating and building schemata
Since the reader plays a fundamental role in the construction of meaning, his age, gender,
experience, and culture are important considerations for teachers who want to select
readings that will motivate their students. Anderson (1994) notes that when readers cannot
locate a schema that fits a text, they may find it incomprehensible. In some cases readers
may not have a schema that is significant to the text, or they may need help to activate the
pertinent schema to be able to comprehend the text. In such cases it may not be possible for
the reader to understand the text, and the teacher must be ready to engage in building new
background knowledge as well as activating existing background knowledge (Carrell,
1988: 248). In parallel with this, Bransford (1994) points out that difficulties in
comprehension may be caused by the lack of background knowledge presumed by the text,

and he sees the responsibility of instructors as being twofold: to activate preexisting

schemata and to help students to integrate isolated parcels of knowledge into a schema or
to build a new one.
If the texts to be read contain a cultural context that is different from the students, the
issues of formal and content schemata become even more important. McDonough (1995),
explains that, to a higher extent, this is the reason why ESL and EFL students find it
difficult to read in a second language with texts that contain cultural assumptions of the
target culture. They may lack the culture-specific background knowledge necessary to
process the text in a top-down manner. His reports on several studies demonstrate how
people outside a given culture may misunderstand events with unfamiliar cultural
connotations. (Students from different cultural backgrounds taking standardized tests which
assume common schemata for will also face the same problem.)
Applying schema theory to L2 reading
Based on the aforementioned ideas, it is obvious that in order to teach reading effectively,
the teachers role to activate and build schemata is paramount. To achieve it, he should in
advance select texts that are relevant to the students needs, preferences, individual
differences, and cultures in order to provide meaningful texts so the students understand the
message, which entails activating existing schemata and helping build new schemata. Then,
after selecting the text, he needs to do the following three stages of activities to activate and
build the students schemata. (1) Pre-reading activities, in which the teacher have students
think, write, and discuss everything they know about the topic, employing techniques such
asprediction, semantic mapping, and reconciled reading. The objective is to make sure that
students have the relevant schema for understanding the text. (2) During-reading
activities,in which the teacher guide and monitor the interaction between the reader and the
text. One important skill teachers can impart at this stage is note-taking, which allows
students to compile new vocabulary and important information and details, and to
summarize information and record their reactions and opinions. (3)Post-reading
activities which facilitate the chance to evaluate students adequacy of interpretation, while
bearing in mind that accuracy is relative and that readership must be respected as long as
the writers intentions are addressed (Tierney and Pearson, 1994). Post-reading activities
focus on a wide range of questions that allow for different interpretations.
While schema activation and building can occur in all three stages, the pre-reading stage
deserves special attention since it is here, during the students initial contact with the text,
where their schemata will be activated.
Pre-reading activities
Pre-reading activities is aimed to activate existing schemata, build new schemata, and
provide information to the teacher about what the students know. In their report on the
positive effect various pre-reading activities had on reading comprehension, Chen and
Graves (1995, 664), define them as devices for bridging the gap between the texts content
and the readers schemata. Various activities and materials can help the teacher introduce
key vocabulary and reinforce concept association to activate both formal and content
schemata. Formal schemata will be activated by employing devices such as advance
organizers and overviews to draw attention to the structure of a text. The content schemata

will be activated by using various pre-reading activities to help learners brainstorm and
predict how the information fits in with their previous knowledge.
One of the most important pre-reading activities proposed by schematic theorists
isprediction. According to Goodman (1988: 16), prediction is important because the brain
is always anticipating and predicting as it seeks order and significance in sensory inputs.
Smith (1994, 1920) defines prediction as the prior elimination of unlikely alternatives.
According to him, predictions are questions the readers ask the world and comprehension is
receiving the answers. He emphasizes that it is prediction that makes skilled readers
effective when reading texts that contain familiar subject matter. Prediction brings
potential meaning to texts, reducing ambiguity and eliminating in advance irrelevant
alternatives. Thus, we are able to generate comprehensible experience from inert pages of
print (Smith 1994, 18).
Another pre-reading activity is previewing, where students look at titles, headings,
andpictures, and read the first few paragraphs and the last paragraph; these activities can
thenhelp students understand what the text is about by activating their formal and
contentschemata and making them familiar with the topic before they begin reading in
earnest.Semantic mapping is another pre-reading activity that Carrell, Pharis, and
Liberto (1989: 651) describe as a useful way to pre-teach vocabulary and to provide the
teacher with anassessment of the students prior knowledge or schema availability on the
topic. This activity asks students to brainstorm about the reading topic as the information
is displayed on a graphic map. As students make associations, the map becomes a
thorough summary of the concepts and vocabulary that they will encounter in the reading.
It can also help build schemata and vocabulary that students do not yet possess. Again, it is
important to know something about the students so the selected texts contain the type of
material that is likely to be familiar and interesting to them.
Reutzel (1985) proposes another type of pre-reading activity called reconciled
reading lesson,which reverses the sequence presented by many textbooks where the text is
followed by questions. Instead, the teacher develops pre-reading questions from the
questions that appear at the end of the reading. Smith (1994) criticizes comprehension
exercises presented at the end of a reading because they are like memory tests. He argues
that using prior knowledge efficiently contributes to fluent readers, and he believes that
there is a reciprocal relationship between visual and non-visual (prior knowledge)
information; the more the readers have of the latter, the less they need of the former.
Although not all the post-reading questions can be easily turned into pre-reading ones, this
strategy can be invaluable to activate schemata.
3. The metacognitive view
According to Block (1992), there is now no more debate on whether reading is a bottomup, language-based process or a top-down, knowledge-based process. It is also no more
problematic to accept the influence of background knowledge on readers. Research has
gone even further to define the control executed by readers on their trial to understand a
text. This control is what Block has referred to as meta-cognition.
In the context of reading, meta-cognition involves thinking about what one is doing while
reading. Strategic readers do not only sample the text, make hypotheses, confirm or reject
them, and make new hypotheses while reading. They also involve many activities along the
process of reading, whose stages can be divided into three, i.e. before reading, while

reading, and after reading. The activities the readers involve before reading are to identify
the purpose of the reading, identify the form or type of the text. In the second stage (while
reading), they think about the general character and features of the form or type of the
textsuch as trying to locate a topic sentence and follow supporting details toward a
conclusion, project the authors purpose for writing the text, choose, scan, or read in detail,
make continuous predictions about what will occur next based on information obtained
earlier, prior knowledge, and conclusions obtained within the previous stages. Finally, in
the last stage, they attempt to form a summary, conclude, or make inference of what was
read.
Guidelines for Effective Teaching of Reading
After discussing the ideas and concepts presented in the three reading theories, we are now
on the position of arranging tips and guidelines for implementing a theory of reading which
will help to develop our learners abilities. These tips are arranged in three sections which
are parallel with the three consecutive reading stages: before reading, during reading, and
after reading.
Pre-Reading Tips
Before the actual act of reading a text begins, some points should be regarded in order to
make the process of reading more comprehensible. First, teachers need to make sure that
the texts to read contain words and grammatical structures familiar to the learners. If the
texts contain unfamiliar vocabulary, teachers can introduce key vocabulary in pre-reading
activities that focus on language awareness, such as finding synonyms, antonyms,
derivatives, or associated words. Second, teachers should make sure that the topics of texts
chosen are in accordance with the age range, interests, sex, and background culture of the
students for whom they are intended. If they are not, it is necessary to provide the necessary
background information to the reader to facilitate comprehension. This activity could be
carried out by letting the class members brainstorm ideas about the meaning of a title or an
illustration and discuss what they know.
The followings are some activities teacher can use during the pre-reading stage. These
activities will not take a very long time to carry out. However, they are very effective in
overcoming the common urge to start reading a text closely right away from the beginning.
1.

Teacher-directed pre-reading, in which some key vocabulary, ideas in the text, and
the type of the text are explained. In this approach the teacher directly explains the
information the students will need, including key concepts, important vocabulary, and
appropriate conceptual framework. The text types are also necessary to introduce
because texts may take on different forms and hold certain pieces of information in
different places. The students familiarity with the types of the text they are reading will
develop their understanding of the layout of the material. Such familiarity will, in turn,
enable them to focus more deeply on the parts that are more densely compacted with
information. Even paying attention to the year of publication of a text, if applicable,
may aid the reader in presuppositions about the text as can glancing at the name of the
author.
2.
Interactive activities, in which the teacher leads a discussion in which he/she draws
out the information students already have and interjects additional information deemed

necessary to an understanding of the text to be read. Moreover, the teacher can make
explicit links between prior knowledge and important information in the text.
3.
Reflective activities, in which students are guided to make themselves aware of the
purpose and goal for reading a certain piece of written material. At the beginning stages
this can be done by the teacher, but as the reader becomes more mature this strategy can
be left to the readers. For instance, the students may be guided to ask themselves, Why
am I reading this text? What do I want to do or know after finished reading this? Being
aware of their purpose and goal to read, laterin during reading activitiesthey can
determine what skill(s) to employ: skimming, scanning, reading for details, or critical
reading.
During-reading tips
The activities carried out in during-reading stage consist of taking notes, reacting,
predicting, selecting significant information, questioning the writers position, evaluating,
and placing a text within ones own experience. These processes may be the most complex
to develop in a classroom setting, the reason being that in English reading classes most
attention is often paid to dictionaries, the text, and the teacher. The followings are tips that
encourage active reading. Practicing them will help the students be active readers.
1.

Making predictions: The students should be taught to be on the watch to predict

what is going to happen next in the text to be able to integrate and combine what has
come with what is to come.
2.
Making selections: Readers who are more proficient read selectively, continually
making decisions about their reading.
3.
Integrating prior knowledge: The schemata that have been activated in the prereading section should be called upon to facilitate comprehension.
4.
Skipping insignificant parts: A good reader will concentrate on significant pieces
of information while skipping insignificant pieces.
5.
Re-reading: Students should be encouraged to become sensitive to the effect of
reading on their comprehension.
6.
Making use of context or guessing: Students should not be encouraged to define
and understand every single unknown word in a text. Instead they should learn to make
use of context to guess the meaning of unknown words.
7.
Breaking words into their component parts: To keep the process of comprehension
ongoing, efficient readers analyze unfamiliar words by break them into their affixes or
bases. These parts can help them guess the meaning of a word.
8.
Reading in chunks: To ensure reading speed, students should get used to reading
groups of words together. This act will also enhance comprehension by focusing on
groups of meaning-conveying symbols simultaneously.
9.
Pausing: Good readers will pause at certain places while reading a text to absorb
and internalize the material being read and sort out information.
10.
Paraphrasing: While reading texts, it may be necessary to paraphrase and interpret
texts sub-vocally in order to verify what was comprehended.
11.
Monitoring: Good readers monitor their understanding to evaluate whether the text,
or the reading of it, is meeting their goals.

After-reading tips
Post-reading activities basically depend on the purpose of reading and the type of
information extracted from the text. Barnett (1988) states that post-reading exercises first
check students comprehension and then lead students to a deeper analysis of the text. In
the real world the purpose of reading is not to memorize an authors point of view or to
summarize text content, but rather to see into another mind, or to engage new information
with what one already knows. Group discussion will help students focus on information
they did not comprehend, or did comprehend correctly. Accordingly, attention will be
focused on processes that lead to comprehension or miscomprehension.
Generally speaking, post-reading can take the form of these various activities: (1)
discussing the text: written/oral, (2) summarizing: written/oral, (3) making questions:
written/oral, (3) answering questions: written/oral, (4) filling in forms and charts (5) writing
reading logs (6) completing a text, (7) listening to or reading other related materials, and
(7) role-playing.
Conclusion
Researches, opinions, and suggestions regarding the teaching of the reading exist in
extensive amount, and this summary of reading theories is by no means exhaustive.
However, with a basic understanding of the theoretical basis of top-down and bottom-up
processing, teachers can better take advantage of the most useful methodologies associated
with the different approaches. What is important to bear in mind is that relying too much on
either top-down or bottom-up processing may cause problems for beginning ESL/EFL
readers; therefore, to develop reading abilities, both approaches should be considered, as
the meta-cognitive approach suggests. Considering my own experience in teaching reading
to Indonesian students, I have found that the students who managed to read English text
effectively are those who approach texts in a painful, slow, and frustrating word-by-word
manner. By improving their decoding skills, they are freed to concentrate on global
meanings. So, both the psycho and the linguistic aspects must be emphasized in EFL
reading classes.
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