Theories of Reading
Theories of Reading http://parlindunganpardede.wordpress.com/articles/language-teaching/a-review-on-reading-theories-and-its-implication-to-the-teaching-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 reader’s 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
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