Reading Comprehension at the National University: Time to Reflect

Shélick G. Galván, Mexico

Ms. Galván is an English teacher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UPN). She holds a B.A. in Interpreting, and has studied the Master's in Applied Linguistics. She participates in several research and teacher training projects. She has given several lectures and published articles on terminology, evaluation, ESP, language anxiety, reading comprehension, and other areas in cognitive psychology. E-mail: korashell@yahoo.com.mx

Menu

Introduction
Background
Examples: Book analysis
Conclusions
References

Introduction

Why worry about Reading Comprehension courses? Reading helps to improve knowledge, to get involved with culture and to participate in it. Reading comprehension (RC) processes are related to meaningful learning. According to Sánchez (1994), reading is related to all different ways of communicating, and so it provides an opportunity to understand the world around us. Today, being able to read critically is a must; however, education systems are only obliging students to decode alphabet letters, they are not teaching how to learn to read or to develop reading habits.

Background

Reading comprehension is not decoding, but rather a personally conceived multidimensional complex process composed of different levels (literal, inferential and critical) requiring very specific and complex human reasoning skills. Mental schemata are directly involved it and at the same time it is used as a basis to widen them as a simultaneous result of RC processing. Linguistic symbols are changed into mental representation elements; in this system, context, cognitive, emotional and attitudinal aspects play a fundamental role.

No doubt our students know how to read in their mother tongue, however, do they really understand what they read? Can they get new knowledge in a fast and efficient way? Is our education system really devoted to reading? What about authorities in University? The answers get much more complex when we talk about reading comprehension in a foreign language, in our case it would be RC in English academic texts. Certification in this area is required to major or be able to continue graduate studies.

Are the materials used at the Aragón campus good enough to develop real RC in English? Are they coherent with the latest discoveries in language learning processes? It is presumed that the answers to these questions is "no". According to this hypothesis, the materials in questions are out of context, away from our students' needs and interests, they must be updated.

The objective of this paper is to present the dramatic results obtained from a didactic analysis made on the content of the three books used at the Aragón campus to teach RC in English. This report is only a part of a research project composed of three phases: a) Descriptive analysis of books 1, 2 and 3; b) didactic analysis to determine the validity of the contents, based on a needs analysis (students and teaching staff of the 12 different majors taught in the institution); and c) curriculum proposal. Due to time constraints only the first part is here presented, however it helps in giving a perspective of the kind of work the Aragón Language Center (CLE) is doing.

Examples: Book analysis

Contents

In Aragón, RC courses focus on familiarizing the student with decoding texts, while identifying elements and applying certain reading strategies: "the same they use when reading documents written in their mother tongue". There are three levels, increasing in complexity.

Book One

Book One is in the 9th reprinting of its second edition. The texts it presents date from 1976 to 1982. It does not define a target reader and is focused only in Social Sciences, without considering any other area, even though this book is used by the students of all of the 12 different majors the institution offers, including Engineering.

Its objectives are based on global and detailed reading only. It is intended to develop grammar knowledge as well.

The topics in it are not deeply presented, they are even mixed and sometimes not even specified in the index.

Book Two

Book Two is the 10th reprinting of its second edition. The target reader is specified as "students of Journalism, Sociology, Pedagogy and Foreign Affairs", although as in the previous situation, the book is used to teach RC in English to all the students in the school. In general, it presents five subjects: "Topics of Paragraphs, Functions, Connectors, Comparisons, Outlining". The concepts of scanning and skimming are presented in this material. The texts date from 1978 to 1983, time where all these materials were created.

It is interesting to note that all the instructions in this book, even the introduction, are presented in English, in contrast with Book One, where the same information in Spanish. It is understood that this situation implies an increase in complexity, to develop competence in students. However, if this is so, why does Book Three present the information in Spanish again? This does not seem to be congruent.

Book Three

Book Three is in its 5th reprinting of its second edition. It does not define a target reader, but it is said to be designed for students in the social sciences area. It states as an objective helping students become independent readers and promote critical thinking. It is peculiar that this book presents at the beginning a user guide composed of a series of methodology notes and different suggested class exercises. Would it not be better to place this in Book One, when the technique is to be first presented to the student? Well, it was originally there, but for some reason it was removed to Book Three without giving even crediting real authors, among whom Dr. Marilyn Buck (CELE-UNAM) figures.

In contrast to books One and Two, in Book Three there is no division into units, even though this division into 17 units is registered in the index. Generally speaking, Book Three is not a course, but an exercise book. The texts comprising it were published from 1991 to 1994.

Regarding grammar knowledge, in this book only four new topics are presented.

Comparative table of Contents of reading Comprehension Books 1, 2, 3
Aragon-Unam 2006

It is important to state that in the time of one year and a half, only 18 topics are presented; there is no instruction about what a text is or even what the RC process consists of. The digit in parenthesis in the following list indicates the number of times the topic is repeated.

1. Global reading (2)
1. Scanning/skimming
2. Vocabulary Strategies
1. Cognates
2. Meaning through context (6)
3. Meaning through grammar
4. Synonyms (3)
5. Antonyms
6. Affixes
7. Hyponymy (2)
8. Dictionary Use
3. Detailed reading
1. Verb agreement (2)
2. Noun and adjective
4. Contextual reference
1. Pronouns
5. Present (2)
6. Past (4)
7. Future (3)
8. Present perfect
9. Passive voice (2)
10. Topics of paragraphs
11. Functions
12. Connectors (5)
13. Comparisons (3)
14. Outlining
15. Compound verbs
16. Use of -ing in verbs and prepositions
17. Would
18. Could

Conclusions

Based on this analysis, the following reflections are presented.

• There are no teacher manuals or guides, even though created in the 80s by the original authors of the books.
• There are no activities that evidence what the mental schemas of the students are.
• Previous knowledge on topics is not considered in the course as a way of promoting learning.
• There is a deep tendency toward Structuralism in all the activities, even though the learning of forms seems to be extremely limited, since it does not consider pragmatics or semantics, even the linguistic level is very limited.
• Learning seems to be based on models of agglutination.
• The objectives that each book presents are not coherent with the contents in the material.
• RC is not taught under a Cognitive or Psycholinguistic perspective. The materials are very far from being Communicative, the school of thought the CLE Language Center affirms to follow.
• In several cases, the text sample does not have iconic elements that support prediction or inference.
• There are mistakes in the materials and the instructions to the exercises. Some pages are missing.
• There are no activities that develop the student's proximal development zone, such as reflection, meaningful learning or inner processes of knowledge and meaning construction. Real challenges for students are not presented.
• All exercises are mechanical and consist of content-filling. The course is only focused on the literal level of RC, without considering inference or critical reading.
• Creativity or imagination in the student is not promoted.
• The weak points of students are not attacked by any of the activities. Learning regressions do not seem to be considered.
• It seems that curriculum lacks coherence. The books do not seem to have been built in any needs analysis.

Regarding the objectives established in the books.

• Familiarizing the student with RC in its different states.
  The perspective the materials reflect on the RC process is limited: global and detail reading are limited to the use of skimming or scanning, strategies that are only a part of a complex and multidimensional process. And these are used mainly to decode contents at a literal level. But decoding is not understanding.
• Present RC process to students in a natural way by using authentic materials.
  The term "natural" is ambiguous: if what is wanted is to reflect the real cognitive human processing of written information through the activities in the book, it is obvious that the materials are very far from achieving it. The context of the 2000s has surely brought new ideas about what the RC process is.

Having established a very particular and personal perspective on the materials in question, it can be said that even though there are several limitations in it, the problem is not precisely that. These books were created in a context that turns out to be very different from the one we are living, working in. The books were functional, nonetheless. In those moments the technological development experienced today was maybe not even foreseen; discoveries in neurology and learning language were limited.

Personally speaking, the problem is that a campus belonging to UNAM, being recently recognized as a full Faculty and having students from very different and contrasting areas, will be in 2007 using books created for students of the Social Sciences area in the 80s. The problem is that there is no research in language learning in CLE, that no one is willing to do it; the problem is that the ones that can and do want to do research are being hunted as witches.

References

Ausubel, Novak, Hanesian (1983) Psicología Educativa: Un punto de vista cognoscitivo, Mexico City: Trillas.

Bauer, U. (2007). Notas del curso de Didáctica. MLA. Mexico City: UNAM.

Cassany, D., M. Luna, and G. Sanz (1994): Enseñar lengua, Barcelona: Graó.

Devine, T. (1986). Teaching Reading Comprehension: From Theory to Practice. University of Lowell.

Gilbón, D. (2007) Notas del curso Diseño de cursos y materiales. MLA. Mexico City: UNAM.

Rosenblatt, L. M. (1978) The Reader, the Text and the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University.

Sánchez, C. (2004) El desafío de enseñar la comprensión lectora. Novedades Educativas. No. 161.

Tribble, C. and Jones, G. 1990. Concordances in the Classroom: A Resource Book for Teachers. Harlow: Longman.

Please check the Teaching Advanced Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the CLIL - Teaching Other Subject Through English course at Pilgrims website.