Best Practices in Teaching Comprehension - Assignment Example

Best practices in teaching comprehension Successful literacy is schemata building blocks of cognition which are the fundamental elements upon which all information processing depends. This schema is basically a theory about knowledge,a theory about how knowledge is represented and how that representation facilitates the use of knowledge in particular ways. Accordingly,all knowledge is packaged into units which are called schemata. A schema then is a data structuyre for representing concepts stored inside the book. In the construction of an interpretation of an event,object or situation in the process of comprehension,the total set of schemata instantiated at a particular moment in time constitutes our internal model of the passage we face at that moment of time,or,in the case of memorizing a text,a model of the situation depicted by the text. The underlying mechanisms by which comprehension and knowledge acquisition occur are 'top-bottom' and 'bottom-up' technologies. Bottom-up or data driven activation of schema occurs when information on the page activates a certain low level schemata or feature detectors which in turn activate or instantiate a higher up sub schema or other higher up structure. In that processing manner,information enters into the perceptual system from the most specific feature at the bottom and travels upward to the most general structure in the system. On the other hand,conceptual driven activation occurs when the highest and most abstract structure at the top of the system sends down information through the hierarchy of structures till it reaches the lowest structure or the feature detector. This processing flow of information in a top-down manner is brought to account for incoming data and to comprehend it as a correct interpretation of the input. Both types of mechanisms work in both directions. The process of understanding discourse is the process of finding a configuration that offers an adequate account of the passage in question. Clues from the passage suggest possible interpretations (instantiation of schemata) that are then evaluated against the successive sentences of the passage until finally a consistent interpretation is discovered. The scenario of the passage is an information network called from the long-term memory by a particular linguistic input which is a basic principle of enabling the knowledge of the reader to be used in such a way as to allow for direct interpretation of entities or events predicted by his knowledge. To the extent that any text conforms to the predictions it is readily interpreted,if not,it will be more difficult to understand. Reading is a far more creative activity than most think with information in the text better regarded as evidence or even building blocks from which readers construct their own meanings and often their entire experiences. There are four theories for the failure of a reader to understand correctly a written passage: 1-The reader may not have the appropriate schemata,i.e,cannot understand the concept being communicated. 2-The reader may have the appropriate schemata but the clues provided by the author may be insufficient to suggest them. 3-The reader may find a consistent interpretation of the text but may not find the one intended by the author. In such case,the reader will 'understand' the text but will misunderstand the author. 4-The reader may have the appropriate schemata and that the writer may have provided sufficient clues in the text but the reader has not learned how to decode clues in a text. The ways to decode such difficulties is by understanding the following: a-Rationale of the mode: In seeking to study the role of background knowledge or schema, Carrel and Eisterhold draw the useful distinction between two types of schemata:content schemata represent background knowledge about the content area or the topic of a text whereas formal schemata represent background expectations about the rhetorical structure of a text. Carrell(1983) found out that the role of either content or formal schemata or the joint effect of rhetorical organization on second language readers by presenting 4 different expository organizations of the same version. Results indicated that the recall was more facilitated by certain rhetorical patterns than by others. In a subsequent experiment,carrel designed a training study to test whether or not reading in a second language can be facilitated by explicit teaching of text organization. After only 3 training sessions,in top-level rhetorical organization of expository texts,he found that students significantly increased in the amount of information they could recall. Floyd and Carell found out that second language speakers were given background knowledge in a topic prior to reading and that they indicated a recall of the topic significantly improved as a function of training content schemata. b-Rationale of the text: moving from shorter passages to longer ones as well as from shorter sentences with fewer structures to long sentences with vertical and horizontal complexity (subordinate and coordinate),it was found that in a purely experimental design where one would hold either content schemata or formal schemata and change the other variables,one would teach the free variable on understanding written texts through the following point. c-Rationale of strategies: This includes: pre-reading,rephrasing,meaning in context,cohesive ties,discourse markers,comprehension checks,grammar,word building,outline/writing,further reading). Children when reading a text use their fantasy and ability to form phrases to report what they are in contact with. They are better in a medium of words which best suits their understand so as not to write or explain or understand what could be misunderstood with their amount of vocabulary and grammatical structure of sentences which they use while speaking or writing. Thoughts are that they engage with the heart in the mental process of the understanding of the text. However,the understanding is based mostly on the effect of the thinking of what they knew and deduced out of the text or sentence when they focus on what is interesting and what is not interesting they leave aside. To get their attention it is best and necessarily advised to use their abilities s in understanding such as change of tone in words spoken on the phrase while reading or giving the text an acoustic and visual sense of hearing while reading by getting the children to experience reading a text as a dialog speech with the self to improve and enhance their ability to understand what it is that communicating through words could be and be begotten out of to be able to deduce a sense of reality or imagination which fits what they form in their hearts and minds as fantastical. Story or text reading of anything does not necessarily depend on pictures to illustrate the text but on how to use the imagination and drawing on the blackboard what the imaginations of the text could be when reading and how to increase and expand the abilities to understand through indulging in the universal world of the text through the understanding of the universe f the text. This occurs through binding their selves with what goes on in reality and how proper it is associated with the imagination or informations in the text. Biblioraphy: Best Practices in Literacy Instruction, Gambrell, Morrow, and Pressley, 3rd edition. Understanding and summarizing brief stories, Basic processing in reading: Perception and comprehension, Ed La Berge and S.F Samuels, Hillsdale, N.J Lawrence Erlbaum associates,1977. Read More