Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Expert Decision Maker

Birch, B. (2011). (2nd Ed.) English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. New York, NY: Routledge, ch. 1

Salient Points:

There are two types of reading strategies: top down and bottom up. The top-down approach involves processing strategies and knowledge bases--developing cultural and world knowledge and using cognitive processing strategies. The bottom-up strategies involve learning precise bits of knowledge about language and writing--processing strategies that decipher the symbols and the parts of the language. In other words, top-down straggles involve the whole language and bottom-up strategies involve the parts of language.

There has been a debate about which strategy to use and the answer is a balanced approach of both. However, the use of either depends of the reading level of the language learner. There are five stages of reading.

Stage 0--Pre-readers can recognize letters and write their own names. They're just learning how to hold a book and guess what a story is. They use mainly top-down strategies to focus on the comprehension of the story.
Stage 1--Emergent readers can decode and recode, but they're preoccupied with low-level skills.
Stage 2--Stage 2 readers have automatic bottom-up processing strategies and start using top-down processes to infer meaning.
Stage 3, 4, 5--These readers have automatic bottom-up and top-down processing strategies. Stage 3 readers use reading to acquire knowledge and want to learn new vocabulary. Stage 4 readers are usually high-school level. Stage 5 readers are college-level and reading is their primary method of learning. They can analyze and critique subjects with reading.

It's hard for ELLs to guess and subconsciously learn how to read a second language. Reading is an expert decision making system. It is like a computer program that uses symbolic processing strategies and rules stored in a knowledge base to make decisions about something.
  • ELLs have a hard time being expert decision makers because they have an incomplete knowledge base of English grammar, vocabulary, and background knowledge.
  • There can be interference between the primary language (L1) and the second language (L2). The L1 may have different writing systems, which could cause even more problems.
  • ELLs are missing the low-level English reading strategies and need direct instruction to help them catch up to their native-English speaking peers.
Implications:
  1. We as teachers have to teach both bottom-up and top-down processing strategies to our students. We need to teach the parts of the language (phonics, grammar, spelling, vocabulary, etc.) and the whole language (reading comprehension). Only then will our students become expert decision makers.
  2. Since we now know the various reading levels that belong to native English speakers, we can use those five levels in evaluating our ELLs.
  3. If we know the problems ELLs face coming into our classrooms, we can use this knowledge to help us teach them in a more efficient manner. For example, there may be interference of the L1 in learning the L2.
  4. We as teachers must also teach background knowledge--especially cultural knowledge--and try to use multicultural texts in our classrooms. We can also teach them how the English language works, especially if their native language is very opaque. We also cannot assume anything about our students.



No comments:

Post a Comment