Reading in a foreign language at intermediate and advanced levels with particular reference to English

Abstract

Then came in all the king's wise men: but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof. (Daniel v.8) /. 1 Introduction The years since the last reading survey appeared in this journal (Brumfit, 1977) have seen growing interest and stimulating advances in the development of theoretical perspectives on reading in a foreign language. The increased attention is reflected by the appearance of specialist publications, including three noteworthy collections (Mackay, Barkman & Jordan, 1979; Alderson & Urquhart, 1984a; Carrell, Devine & Eskey, 1988), as well as the journal Reading in a Foreign Language (College of St Mark and St John, Plymouth). Although no generally accepted theory of reading in a foreign language has emerged (if by theory we mean the identification of all relevant elements and the specification of relationships between these elements), a broad consensus is appearing. Over the past two decades the development has in the main been evolutionary rather than revolutionary, with innovative elements being introduced-often via LI pedagogy-from psychology, discourse analysis, linguistics and sociology. 1.2 Psycholinguistic models 1.2.1. Research and pedagogy in both LI and L2 in the '70s were influenced particularly by the model elaborated by Goodman (1967) and Smith (1971) (for typical examples of such influence, see Da vies & Whitney, 1981, Teacher's Guide, and Clarke & Silberstein, 1979). Goodman's model is a top-down (or concept-driven) model in which the text is ' sampled' and predictions are made on the basis of the reader's prior syntactic and semantic knowledge. Reading in this model is a ' psycholinguistic guessing game' (Goodman, 1967). By contrast, bottom-up Eddie Williams works at the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Reading. He has published in the areas of reading, achievement testing and bilingual education.

Reading Passages and Skills in Jordanian High School and University EFL Textbooks: A Comparative Analytical Study

“…There are many taxonomies that have been drawn varying in length from three to four skills to long lists comprising thirty or forty reading subskills. However, there is little consensus in the content of these taxonomies as pointed out by Williams and Moran (1989). An example of such taxonomies is that of Spearitt (1972) who claimed there were four separate subskills in reading: recalling word meaning, drawing inferences from the content, recognizing a writer's purpose, and following the structure of the passage.…”

Lower-order and Higher-order Reading Questions in Secondary and University Level EFL Textbooks in Jordan

“…Davies and Widdowson (cited in Williams and Moran, 1989) classified questions into direct reference questions, inferences, and supposition and evaluation questions. Furthermore, Barrette (cited in Williams and Moran, 1989) distinguished five types of questions: internal comprehension, recognition of the ideas in the text, inferential ability, evaluation, and appreciation.…”

“…Furthermore, Barrette (cited in Williams and Moran, 1989) distinguished five types of questions: internal comprehension, recognition of the ideas in the text, inferential ability, evaluation, and appreciation.…”

Teaching Reading

“…Widespread though these practices continue to be, translation and comprehension questions are little analyzed in recent general reports of reading theory and pedagogy (e.g., Silberstein 1987, Williams andMoran 1989). The lack of attention is both because the approaches confound the teaching of the foreign language with the teaching of reading and because they are based upon tradition rather than theories of reading or the teaching of reading.…”