reading comprehension through visualization and...
TRANSCRIPT
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Running head: Reading comprehension trough reading strategies and visualization on short
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READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH VISUALIZATION AND READING
STRATEGIES ON SHORT STORIES
Henry Alexander Arias Rodríguez
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas
School of Sciences and Education
Licenciatura en Educación Básica con Énfasis en Inglés
Bogotá
2018
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Running head: Reading comprehension trough reading strategies and visualization on short
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READING COMPREHENSION TROUGH READING STRATEGIES AND
VISUALIZATION ON SHORT STORIES
Henry Alexander Arias
A research proposal presented to fulfill the requirements to obtain the degree
LICENCIADO EN EDUCACIÓN BÁSICA CON ÉNFASIS EN INGLÉS
Universidad Distrital Francisco José de Caldas
School of Sciences and Education
Licenciatura en Educación Básica con Énfasis en Inglés
Bogotá
2018
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DEDICATION
First of all, thanks to God, Ines, Sindy, Kaniel, Patricia, Nataly, Eliana and my family for all
the support and love. Thanks for being, for giving me the force of perseverance, responsibility
and determination; for all your efforts. From now I perform what I learnt in the classrooms of the
new generations.
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ABSTRACT
Reading in English without comprehension is an issue that has been studied during many
years. This fact makes difficult the learning process of EFL taking into account that reading is
one of the four skills necessaries for language learning. Teachers usually tend to develop reading
comprehension through decoding words from one language into another and comprehension of
the text is just achieved by the translation, losing too many ideas that are no explicit word by
word. Following this further, this action research aim to improve reading comprehension for
levels: literal, inferential and critical through visualization and reading strategies implemented in
the English classroom. The results were collected and analyzed through teachers` journals,
questionnaires and students` artifacts. The data revealed that literal, inferential and critical levels
of reading comprehension are improved with the implementation of these strategies.
Key words: Reading comprehension, Levels, EFL, reading strategies, visualization, improve,
literal, inferential and critical.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION .......................................................................................................................... iv
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................... v
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER 1 ............................................................................................................................... 1
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 1
PROBLEM STATEMENT .................................................................................................... 3
JUSTIFICATION ................................................................................................................... 5
Research Question. ............................................................................................................. 6
General Objective. .............................................................................................................. 6
Specific Objectives. ............................................................................................................ 6
CHAPTER 2 ............................................................................................................................... 7
LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................................................................... 7
STATE-OF-ART .................................................................................................................... 7
READING .............................................................................................................................. 8
Reading Comprehension: Literal, inferential and critical levels: ..................................... 11
Reading Short Stories ....................................................................................................... 15
VISUALIZATION STRATEGIES ...................................................................................... 16
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TOP DOWN AND BOTTOM UP READING STRATEGIES ........................................... 17
CHAPTER 3 ............................................................................................................................. 18
RESEARCH DESIGN ......................................................................................................... 18
Type of Study ................................................................................................................... 19
Type of Design ................................................................................................................. 19
Context and participants ................................................................................................... 19
Sampling. ......................................................................................................................... 21
DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS ............................................................................ 22
Teachers‟ Journals. ........................................................................................................... 22
Questionnaires. ................................................................................................................. 23
Students‟ Artifacts. ........................................................................................................... 24
VALIDITY, RELIABILITY AND ETHICS ....................................................................... 25
CHAPTER 4 ............................................................................................................................. 26
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN .............................................................................................. 26
Arising of the problem. .................................................................................................... 26
Understanding the language theory and visions. .............................................................. 27
Learning Theory and Vision. ........................................................................................... 29
Teaching Theory and vision. ............................................................................................ 31
An articulation between three theories and visions. ......................................................... 34
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METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................... 35
Schedule. .......................................................................................................................... 36
Reading Approach ............................................................................................................ 40
Teaching question. ........................................................................................................... 41
General Objective. ............................................................................................................ 41
Stages of the Lessons and Evaluation Criteria. ................................................................ 41
CHAPTER 5 ............................................................................................................................. 43
DATA ANALYSIS .............................................................................................................. 43
CATEGORIES ..................................................................................................................... 44
Category 1: Acquiring literal comprehension of the text. ................................................ 44
Category 2: Attempting inferential comprehension of the story. ..................................... 44
Category 3: Assuming a critical position according with the main idea of the text. ....... 44
CHAPTER 6 ............................................................................................................................. 59
CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................................. 59
Pedagogical Implications and Further Research .............................................................. 60
Pedagogical Implications ................................................................................................. 61
LIMITATIONS .................................................................................................................... 62
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 62
APENDIXCES ......................................................................................................................... 66
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Appendix A ......................................................................................................................... 66
Consent Form ....................................................................................................................... 66
Appendix B .......................................................................................................................... 69
Teacher journal format ......................................................................................................... 69
Appendix C.1 ....................................................................................................................... 70
Questionaries .................................................................................................................... 70
Appendix C.2 ....................................................................................................................... 71
Appendix D.1 Artifacts ....................................................................................................... 72
Artifacts D.2 ......................................................................................................................... 73
Artifacts D.3 ......................................................................................................................... 74
Appendix E lesson plan ........................................................................................................ 75
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1 …………………………………………………………………………………….45
Table 2 …………………………………………………………………………………….47
Table 3 …………………………………………………………………………………….58
Table 4 …………………………………………………………………………………….58
Table 5 …………………………………………………………………………………….59
Table 6 …………………………………………………………………………………….59
Table 7 …………………………………………………………………………………….60
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The following paper is directed to an academic community and it describes an action research
carried out to find out the impact of reading strategies involving visual strategies to approach
students‟ reading comprehension skills. Thus, it looks into students‟ reading comprehension
levels reflected on their responses while being exposed to different reading comprehension
activities.
This study is realized in a public school in Bogotá Colombia in the downtown of the city. It is
focused on fifth graders and the lack of reading comprehension that was evidenced in the
practicums in this school. The practicums in the school were of one scholar year. In this time
were collected the necessary data to identify the problem, and to create this project.
The study of English in public schools in Bogota often seemed to be lacking in terms of
reading comprehension skill levels, as it has been evidenced in our personal experiences with
primary students during our practicums. We observed and were aware of this particular situation
because the majority of texts students worked with were students‟ text- books, solely focused on
grammatical explanations and vocabulary. It was necessary to come up with strategies in which
students developed not only their grammatical and vocabulary skills but also reading habits in
other kind of texts and printed materials1.
Acknowledging this problematic situation, we decided to propose a project for primary
graders, based on reading comprehension deeply delighted by the interaction and implementation
1Fundalectura, Ministerio de Cultura, Ministerio de Educación, DANE, CERLALC, Cámara Colombiana del
Libro, Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Turismo (2006) Hábitos de lectura asistencia a bibliotecas y consumo de libros
en Bogotá.
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of reading with visualization strategies. In other words, it is to approach students to interpretation
and comprehension of readings through different visual strategies as means of imagery
motivational, so students could reflect their understanding in terms of their responses throughout
the activities presented, such as drawings or short sentences/paragraphs evidencing what they
comprehend from the proposed readings.
In our personal experience, we have discovered that relating reading into meaningful activities
has helped us to achieve the language easier as well as the meaning of the texts we worked in
than just developing standard exercises or activities. Thereupon we thought in a series of
exercises and activities based on reading linked with visualization strategies which can be
evaluated by using students‟ artifacts.
The project‟s body provides us with the necessary tools to construct our wonderings and to
answer a research question with the appropriate material to consider the viability of the
articulation and implementation of reading strategies with interpretative competence in reading
comprehension. To use short stories,reading and visualization strategies as the main core of
reading texts; starting with the problem statement we seek to clarify the validity of our main
inquiry. Continuing by the proposal of the research guideline built up upon our wanderings
alongside with its respective objectives. Following this, there is a chapter which includes all the
literature support that strengthens our project, and in the same line a research and instructional
design were planned and applied including their respective pedagogical implementation,
furthermore we collected information based on the three main aspects (which form the core of
our project): Reading comprehension, reading strategies and visualization. This was done
with the purpose of gathering data in order for us to analyze it and be able to provide an answer
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to our main research question. Lastly findings are described including the implications of the
project carried out and its limitations for further and possible investigation.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Our main question aroused from our inquires on the work observed during the practicum, as
mentioned earlier, but more specifically performed in fifth grades on English classes in which
students were asked several times to follow a reading with not sight of comprehension of it.
Accordingly to this phenomenon, we realized that literacy sometimes was developed on
decoding words from one language into another, and, on the other hand, comprehension of the
text was just achieved by the translation of it to students‟ first language, forgetting the
importance of understanding the text from its context, framing the knowledge into a series of
process that students could not get through, because of their lack of grammatical structures and
vocabulary (semantics).
These observations made us reflect in the inconsistence of the curriculum in the classroom, so
we started to think about possible solutions to help students to enhance their reading
comprehension skills in English as a foreign language. The challenge lied on the questions: “how
to make students get interested in reading?” and specially, “what kind of activities and texts
could lead them to achieve better comprehension skills?”
We had to think carefully on the possible solutions to answer these questions, that is why we
thought in reading strategies which include visualization strategies alongside as the main bridge
to approach students to interpretative competences in reading comprehension. Visualization
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strategies, comprised as student‟s artifacts, could be applied in the classroom as a useful and
meaningful tool to evaluate students‟ interpretation of a text with many different activities;
according to Whitener-Lepardo and Harroff (2002). Thus, we realized that the core of our project
had to lie upon this premise and start to work with students from this point. The next step we had
to take was to identify the characteristics perceived by the students on reading and literacy to
understand their attitude towards it.
Firstly we take into account the observations done during the practicum performed in primary
and secondary in which students did not comprehend the complete texts and it was necessary to
switch codes to help them understand the proposed readings. Then during the last experience in
the teaching field we decided to apply the project proposed in this paper; and to begin with, the
lack of reading skills in students was perceived and demonstrated by the implementation of a
reading test, in which an extract from the text, “The cat in the hat” by Dr, Seuss (1957) (See
Appendix 1), brings up the misunderstanding from students when it comes to comprehend texts
and to follow paths and characteristics that permits to achieve the goal of interpretative reading
and comprehension skills.
Starting from the last point, we, as researcher teachers, must deal with the problem of how to
approach students to the exiting experience of reading leading our interest in enhancing students
to this practice. Moreover, we had to deal as well with the problem of knowing if students felt
any interest on the reading process, so we are going to apply a reading test at the end of our
practice (See appendix 2) in which students interest in the topic is going to be analysed and
related to the reading a visualization strategies implemented to approach and achieve a better
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interpretation or comprehension of the text. From this point the research question raised, being
the following:
JUSTIFICATION
A project based on visualization and reading comprehension strategies involving students
imagery represented on artifacts as a way to demonstrate understandings is for us a growth
experience in our professional field as language teachers. It provides us with the opportunity to
enhance the importance of reading in the classroom with the other disciplines or skills,
articulating the implementation of visualization strategies when reading to motivate students
imagery in English language learning process and reading comprehension; furthermore, in a
wide context our project might be a useful tool for those teachers who want to break with the
traditional ways to impart the subject.
Moreover, we intend to contribute with several strategies in which the classes are centered in
students and their autonomous development of the language through visualization strategies.
This is not focused just on visual aspects as its name suggests but in all kind of visual and
imagery products, such as drawings, writing, and inventing.
The research purpose of our project includes three different aspects as it is difficult to choose
just a single one being all of them relevant and important for us. The first aspect is related to
personal motivation (personal purpose) since, as stated earlier, this is a complete growth
experience for us. The fact of being able to participate and contribute in students learning process
and more importantly to generate in them a desire to read not out of obligation but for their own
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will and motivation, and evidencing that they are able to comprehend what they are reading
properly it is a really inspiring and fulfilling motive.
The second aspect deals with a practical purpose, as either way, both of us, as students and us
as teachers are trying to achieve a goal in a wide context, which would be to improve students
reading comprehension skills, contributing both with their development as students and ours as
better teachers; and lastly, the third aspect, which is more like a researchable purpose, focused
and bound to the fact of discovering, understanding and learning from every single aspect
occurring when performing our project. Yet if it is needed, considering our topic of interest, it is
possible to outline it within the particular research purpose of developing casual explanations,
keeping in mind our research question which seeks to know visualisation strategies evidenced
trough EFL students´ imagery reflect their comprehension and understandings in reading skills
Research Question.
How is fifth graders‟ reading comprehension enhanced when using visualization, top down,
and bottom up reading strategies in EFL?
General Objective.
To explain the effects generated when involving students in visualization and reading
strategies to contribute to reading comprehension skills.
Specific Objectives.
1. To explore the articulation between visualization and reading strategies to enhance
reading comprehension habits.
2. To describe EFL students‟ reading comprehension levels in activities focused on reading.
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3. To characterize students‟ reading comprehension levels.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Since the main purpose of this research project is to increase students interpretative
competence in reading comprehension trough three different reading strategies (visualization
strategy, top down and bottom up strategies) focused on short stories, mainly fantasy stories and
fairy tales, we collected a series of data to present the main concepts to be exposed in this work.
We explain here the process of reading, reading comprehension as an interpretative competence,
imagery, visualization strategies and fairy tales in order to give the reader the concepts that were
used in this project.
STATE-OF-ART
One of the first steps to frame this theoretical support is to present former projects submitted
in the Bachelor in English at Universidad Distrital to contribute with the present work. Lina
Maria Molina and Johana Trujillo proposed in 2008 a project work entitled: Visualization Inside
the Reading Process in an EFL Classroom. This project aroused from the observation and
interview done in a state school in which a lack of reading skills was appreciated. The
researchers saw that students, in this case primary level, were taught only vocabulary in
isolation, so they decided to work and focus on visualization, strategies and reading to help
students improve their reading comprehension process. These researchers could prove that
visualization strategy was a useful tool for students who started to apply it not only in the
English subject but in the other ones. At the same time they could identify through the data
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analysis that the use of visualization allowed students to be more opened in terms of reading and
built an articulation between image and meaning.
Other project presented was the one by Maira Patricia Rodriguez and Daniel Alejandro
Valderrama in 2008, entitled: From the Written Word to the Mental Image: A Study About
Students’ Reading Comprehension Through the Visualization Strategy. This project aroused
from researchers desire to share the reading process with their students comprehending this
process as a useful source of knowledge, information and entertainment in the language learning
process. They focused their project on the implementation of visualization strategy aiming
folktales. In their findings they identify that implementing visualization strategies to reading
comprehension allowed students to be imaginative, letting them enhance their reading skills. On
the other hand, they realize and identify that visualization allowed students to have a better
memorization of the language when relating what they read to their own process, at the same
time, students were aware of their own reading process improvement. They conclude that
visualization increased students‟ imagination to enhance reading skills, motivating them in the
process of language learning process.
READING
Since reading is an important gateway to personal development, and to social, economic and
civic life (Holden, 2004). It allows us to learn “about other people, about history and social
studies, the language arts, science, mathematics, and the other content subjects that must be
mastered in school” (Lyon, 1997). Hence, reading becomes into a tool to acquire and understand
all the things that surround them, creating a most, kind of comfortable and complete path of
knowledge.
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Literature supported a variety of elements that had affected reading achievement. Many of
these elements could be controlled or manipulated by the classroom teacher to help a student
achieve literacy success, these elements include: connections, assessments, motivation, teacher
relationships, and highly qualified educators; or even the students by their own could make a
strong pattern bound to their future achievements, in this case the literacy ones, which will turn
into their basis of understanding and interpretation.
Regarding recent research studies we went through considerable studies which had been
conducted during the last years in Colombia and mainly abroad. Major research themes
contained such concerns as reading strategies, strategy instruction and visualization strategy.
There are significant findings in this field by researchers such as Alfassi (2004), Dart (2001).
Now we are going to try to summarize all this aspects to create an atmosphere in which the
themes are going to be developed in an organized way following a line.
Firstly, it is pretty important to understand and to be conscious of what reading is, and which
are the elements involved within reading, according to Sloat, Beswick, and Willms (2007),
reading is a complex process with a wide range of philosophies and curricula on how to teach it.
Reading is also one of the receptive skills of language, in another words as Goodman (1982)
defined: reading is a receptive psycholinguistic process in which language in its graphic form is
the starting point; because then, it is the reader who brings to the text his/her knowledge of the
language, but as soon as he/she reads, there is something in the middle, there is an interaction
between written language and thought process such that reader moves from a language encoding
of meaning to meaning itself, and that is how reading is not merely the process of decoding
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words as everybody may notice; it goes deeper to an interaction between the reader and the text
itself, reading cannot be limited to the fact of “decoding over lines”.
From this perspective, we can infer that reading implies more than passing the eyes over the
lines. The reader has a more active and complex role. He/she is expected to have a reaction
towards a written text, to understand it as a piece of communication, so that‟s why reader cannot
stay or keep a passive role in front of a text. So, it is in here where Communicative skills takes
place, because teacher in first place takes the book and receive the message from it, and then
became the speaker passing the message to the receptor, in this case the student. When reading
the reader has a purpose, which is the constant attempt to understand the writer‟s communicative
intention (Wallace, 1992). In this way, we can notice a meaningful interaction between the writer
and the reader.
Williams (1994) defines reading as a process to obtain meaning from written text. That
construction of meaning is not only related to the text itself, but also to the individual perspective
and condition of the reader. Freire and Macedo (1987) explain better this idea when they affirm
that reading does not consist merely of decoding the written word of language; rather, it is
preceded by and intertwined with knowledge of the world. Thus, language and reality are
dynamically interconnected. The understanding attained by critical reading of a text implies
perceiving the relationship between text and context, being the text a bridge to get the message
across, making this a perfect example of what we were referring to before. The role of the
teacher in the classroom when teaching reading is to give the students the tools and strategies to
understand and analyze the text, to elaborate a comprehensive reading but taking into account the
importance of enjoy as well the reading itself.
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Reading Comprehension: Literal, inferential and critical levels:
Till the 60's majority of the research projects about reading comprehension were based on the
premise in which comprehension of the written language was the direct result of decoding, of the
visual recognition of words and of the comprehension of spoken languages; this perspectives
assumed that if students were capable to "read" the words, the comprehension will come after, in
an automatic way. This focus such as reductionist of the reading comprehension process led us
into two difficult situations: the first one in which: reading was seen merely as decoding in front
of reading as comprehension, and two, it also planted an order of teaching: first you learn to
decode and then you learn to understand, so that student could learn through reading: Hopefully
the decade of the 70's set its eyes on this problem, and its then when the meaning of the text
takes a real importance, pointing out that what the reader remember is not always determined for
the own lecture materials but for the context too, the cognitive structure of the reader and his/her
previous experiences, establishing the idea of an interaction between the text and the reader.
Many of the researchers supported the explicit teaching of reading skills. One research
group reported that teaching specific skills, in this case word recognition skills, quickly
improved students‟ reading comprehension (Torppa et al., 2007). One strategy to help emergent
readers with story recall is to connect dramatic play to stories and have students act out their
favourite books (Berk &Winsler, 1995; Rowe, 1998; as cited in Novick, 1999-2000).
Bearing in mind the previous ideas, it is possible to recognize reading as a complex process
where meaning from a text emerges because of the interaction of the reader and the writer. The
reader based on his knowledge interprets the message that the author is giving. Reader's reaction
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towards the text is an expected result in which comprehension is involved for the successful
fulfilment of the reading purpose, this reminds us a concept which is implicitly involved in any
reading activity: reading comprehension. In that sense, reading comprehensively needs the
development of linguistics, sociology and many other science in which the reader must apply the
theory of pragmatics, wherein the context of the text must be done to understand the message,
know the intention of the writer, how, when and where that message takes place, and its
importance in the reader. In other word read comprehensively is to perform a pragmatic
competence.
According to Vand Den Broek in Zuñiga (2001), comprehension is to predict what comes
next, to ask questions about what has been read, to remember experiences related to the text, to
make mental representations of the text. Similarly reading comprehension is the ability to
understand and retain the details, sequence and meaning from the written material; this implies
that for comprehension to take place any strategy is used by the reader. Learning to decode the
language as well as learning to use a strategy is part of learning to read in the specific case of
education the student is the subject of the process of learning to read as an act of knowing and
creating.
The student could be evaluated taking into account the next levels of reading comprehension,
according to T/TAC W&M (2014) defines “Comprehension is a key component of this literacy
initiative; facility in literal, inferential, critical, and creative comprehension skills is critical to
reading success and academic achievement in all content areas”, where literal, inferential and
critical are the main levels of comprehension in reading.
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Pearson and Duke (2002) argue “Comprehension improves when teachers provide explicit
instruction in the use of comprehension strategies. Comprehension improves when teachers
implement activities that support the understanding of the text that students will read in their
classes” (p. 247). Explicit instructions and implement activities are important to achieve a
comprehension of a text. The kinds of levels of reading comprehension to analyze in this
research are literal, inferential and critical.
Literal level:
This level involves what the author is actually saying in the text. The reader demonstrates the
comprehension of the ideas and specific information written in the text or story. This ideas could
be organized in categories where is reflected some facts, details, summaries or explicit moments
and actions in the text. The reader also locates information; identify the conclusion of the text
and the different patterns inside it. Some questions could be as follows:
What words state the main idea?
How does the author summarize?
Outlining the first idea of the story.
What happened at the beginning and last?
How are they different in the text?
Inferential level:
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It means what the author means by what is said. It is when the reader read between the lines
of the text and start to do some theories or inferences about actions in the text that are no directly
written on it. These kinds of inferences could be made following the main idea of the text by
drawing some conclusions, predicting some actions, etc. Some of the next questions can be used
for this purpose:
What does the author value on the story?
What is the theme of the text?
What effect does this character/event have?
How do you think this story will end (predicting)?
Critical level:
It is related to why the author says what she or he says. This is a level of comprehension more
complex than the others because the reader uses his or her experience to create a personal
criterion of the text with the purpose of evaluate the importance of the quality, text values and
generalizations. In this level the reader interact intellectually with the text. The next questions
could help to achieve this level:
Could this action possibly happen?
Is this argument in the text logical?
What alternatives are there in the story?
Do you agree with the author?
Does this problem have a solution?
In a conclusion, literal, inferential and critical levels are three different stages inside
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reading comprehension. These could evidence if the reader is a strong reader or a weak reader.
But all of the levels have an important point of comprehension that if they are good developed in
classroom, the comprehension of a text will be successfully. EFL may be evaluated according
with these levels. To identify the students reading comprehension levels.
Reading Short Stories
There has been a recent surge in the popularity of youth fantasy books (Center, 2001). Based
on this affirmation, this study is focused on reading comprehension with teenagers. Nowadays
fantasy literature has emerged and they are the most attracting books to engage students to read,
because, they, teenagers, adults, young-adults, escape from their reality into a world, in which
they can identify themselves with any character and also find out the plot and learn indirectly
many aspects, of folklore, fairy tales, mythology, legends, etc.
This linked to reading comprehension make students improve and develop their interpretative
competence, understanding the writer intention and giving themselves their own conclusion, and
understanding as readers, they go beyond the text, to understand the reality of the book that is
unreal in our world, defining fantastic places, relating them to creatures and characters to follow
the line of the story.
Thomas (2003) gives us two main reasons because fantasy literature is acknowledged in the
classroom, the first one because students like it and the second because it is a metaphor of the
human condition. That is the purpose of relating reading comprehension with fantasy literature,
more specifically with fairy tales, and overlook of the story and analysed with the reality and the
most important, that students feel comfortable with the text they are fighting with, learning form,
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and enjoying. It is a matter of motivating students to go through a book in which they are going
to feel confident than going through books which they really do not want and are interested.
VISUALIZATION STRATEGIES
Teaching has to deal with the question: How should I teach this or that? As we know there are
many teaching and learning styles which should be linked to create a harmonious environment of
learning-teaching classroom. The complex of this topic is the variation of learning styles in the
classroom and how it must be arranged to keep every student motivated and interested on the
class and try to guide their processes based on their styles.
Visual and verbal literacy or learning styles are the most common inside the classroom,
how the students need to express themselves with writing and art (Whitener-Lepardo and
Harroff, 2002), being writing the verbal and art the visual. Nowadays societies are becoming
more visual, in all different contexts, that means that as teachers, visual strategies might be
developed and improved to apply in our classrooms, and that they will provide us rich materials
and strategies to implement with our students linking the two learning styles. Sometimes students
perceive reading as a passive action, which is highly reinforced by the new technologies in which
students and people in general receive all the images, actions and sounds in a vivid form, in any
case, visualization strategies engage students to become active readers, to immerse themselves in
the reading process creating and expressing the way they interpret the printed words in such
diverse ways.
As teachers is our duty to give students all they need to develop critical thinking,
comprehension, analysis of the world they are in, and developing their different learning styles is
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one way to motivate them, a role play, a drawing or a sentence for example in which they
represent a current event in our society with the text topic is a way to evaluate their
comprehension, their analysis and creativity.
TOP DOWN AND BOTTOM UP READING STRATEGIES
Led by Goodman‟s (1979) work, the distinction between bottom-up and top-down processing
became a cornerstone of reading methodology, while in bottom-up processing readers recognise
multiple linguistic signs, and use their processing mechanisms to give an order to this signals, as
it will be described furthermore; on top-down processing or conceptually driven we draw on our
own intelligence and experience to understand a text.
Initially it was easier to imply that through bottom up methodology teaching reading could be
performed wonderfully by teaching symbols: grapheme-phoneme, correspondence syllables, and
lexical recognition first, and then comprehension would raise from the sum of the parts, yet it
was discovered later on that by joining top-down and bottom-up processing creating an
interactive reading was a primary element to teach reading successfully, “in practice, a reader
continually shifts from one focus to another, now adopting a top-down approach to predict
probable meaning, then moving to the bottom-up approach to check whether that is really what
the writer says”Goodman, K. (1982)
The purpose of applying such strategies was to lead students‟ achievement of the following
reading skills:
Recognizing the script of a language.
Deducing the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items.
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Understanding conceptual meaning.
Understanding the communicative values of sentences and utterances.
Understanding relations within the sentence.
Interpreting text by going outside it.
Extracting salient points to summarize.
Skimming.
Scanning.
CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH DESIGN
The following chapter comprises the guidelines on the research proposal, recalling the
research question and objectives to be able to convey the viability of our purpose, alongside with
its type of study. Likewise, it also provides a view of the context and setting in which the project
was carried out, and lastly but not less important a brief description of the sampling process and
the data collection methods used and processes followed.
The core of our project is students‟ achievement of reading comprehension skills through
visual strategies and bottom up and top down reading strategies, using as basis short stories from
literature. Thus it became necessary to apply a needs analysis to know the interest and
perceptions students have towards reading, as the kind of literature and tentative activities we
wanted to focus on.
When reading comprehension is brought in consideration, what we intent to highlight is the
importance of understanding the text and the meaning that each student can give to it. Therefore,
the articulation between reading comprehension and visual strategies is brought up, because each
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student will be able to demonstrate their understandings of the proposed reading autonomously
and creatively meanwhile the language is learnt intrinsically.
Type of Study
Our project is a qualitative study. According to Larseu-Freeman (1993), “the prototypical
qualitative methodology is an ethnographic study in which the researchers do not set out to test
hypotheses, but rather to observe what is present with their focus, and consequently the data, free
to vary during the course of the observation”. What we intend is based on the exercises, to
analyze the development of the learning process of our students and see how this learning could
vary depending on the different activities based on the visual inputs immerse within reading
comprehension strategies.
Type of Design
This study will be an action research. According to Gregory (1998) and Kemmis and
McTaggart (1988), this kind of study is based on the teachers‟ desire of increasing his/her
understandings of the classroom teaching and learning to bring about change in the classroom
practices. This approach is really useful for our project because it allow us to solve the problem
that puzzles us through different data collecting resources to gather the information that would
lead to the solution of the question.
Context and participants
The present work was carried out at a public School in Bogota located in the downtown,
surrounded by multiple type of buildings, comprising a museum, some universities close by and
plenty business and commercial establishments. Therefore its location makes the school
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accessible to many places of the city, though as usual, most of their students come from the most
nearby neighborhoods in which their socio economic status includes levels 1, 2 and 3.
Likewise, classroom and population in which this project was developed was a complete class
of fifth graders, from the morning schedule, a group conformed by students in a range of age
between 10 and 12 years old. The group is formed by 32 students from which most of the half
are women. The majority of the students are teenagers who grew up in a working class family
and few of them were led by a single mother, while most of them grew up with both parents in
an environment that lacked of English skills as their main focus subjects could vary being none
of those English. One of the most important characteristics of this group was its high desire to
work with images, short stories, thus with reading.
Even when school was relatively small to comprise full high school students population,
alongside with fifth graders due to the fact that the school was implementing educational stages
in which fifth graders needed to be alongside with secondary sixth graders to continue their
educational process, students classroom was large enough for students to be engaged on a class
and participate comfortably. The classroom itself was divided in 5 rows with 7 desks each.
Therefore there were always at least 3 spots available or more if students did not attend. (See
appendix A consent form).
Research Question.
How is fifth graders‟ reading comprehension enhanced when using visualization, top down,
and bottom up reading strategies in EFL?
General Objective.
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To explain the effects generated when involving students in visualization and reading
strategies to contribute to reading comprehension skills.
Specific Objectives.
1. To explore the articulation between visualization and reading strategies to enhance
reading comprehension habits.
2. To describe EFL students‟ reading comprehension levels in activities focused on
reading.
3. To characterize students reading comprehension levels.
Sampling.
From the group, eight students were selected as participants to carry out this research project,
using purposive random sampling as it is perhaps one of the most well-known of all sampling
strategies. Aa simple random sample is one in which each unit in the accessible population has
an equal chance of being included in the sample, and the probability of a unit being selected is
not affected by the selection of other units from the accessible population (i.e.,the selections are
made independently), while: “The logic and power of purposeful sampling lie in selecting
information-rich cases for study in depth. Information-rich cases are those from which one can
learn a great deal about issues of central importance to the purpose of the inquiry, thus the term
purposeful sampling. Studying information-rich cases yields insights and in-depth understanding
rather than empirical generalizations”(Patton, 2002, p. 230).
If a researcher is interested in drawing a random sample, then she or he typically wants the
sample to be representative of the population on some characteristic of interest (e.g.,
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achievement scores). Purposive random sampling involves taking a random sample of a small
number of units from a much larger target population (Kemper et al., 2003).
DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS
In this qualitative research, according to the mentioned objectives, we decided to use three
different instruments to collect data that lead us observe the impact of reading strategies and
visualization strategies in the final students´ products or artifacts, and how those strategies can
help to develop student reading comprehension skills. This collected data is meaningful to
identify different categories inside the teachers´ journals, students‟ answers and students´
artifacts, and to see the importance of these kinds of strategies in an EFL classroom.
Teachers’ Journals.
This instrument is a useful tool to gather information. Hubbart and Miller (1993) refer to
them as cooked notes because they include teacher‟s reflections and observation notes. The
application of this instrument let us analyze students‟ process upon the proposed activities,
allowing us to reflect on the results it had and the limitations presented.
At the same time, students kept a journal in which all the activities they performed were
attached as well as a self-reflection of their own process and the activity. For this purpose, we
implement a format of teacher journals, where we included relevant information of each class:
date, context, teacher reflection, action and a research interest. The mentioned format is attached
in the appendices part (appendix B). Teacher journals had a purpose in our collecting students‟
data; we collected data about the development of reading comprehension trough reading and
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visualization strategies in EFL class on the fifth graders. The steps to collect the data for the
teacher journals were to apply the teacher journal in each English class during the practicums in
order to get data about students‟ attitudes, behaviors and the development of reading
comprehension according with the strategies used in classroom. These last facts were the main
units of data analysis in our action research.
Questionnaires.
This instrument is one of the most useful because it allows gathering information relatively
quickly focusing on different aspects. Basically this instrument allowed us to determine
effectiveness of our reading and visualization strategies in students‟ process in terms of reading
comprehension. According to Oppenheim, a questionnaire is an important research instrument
for data collection. Also it has its main function as measurement (Oppenheim, 1992). This
instrument may be used to generate qualitative and exploratory data (Dornyei, 2007). For this
instrument, we create a questionnaire for each short story seen in the classroom, where we
included relevant questions about a short story according to the reading comprehension levels
(literal, inferential and critical). The formats of the questionnaires are attached in the appendices
(appendix C). Questionnaires were applied once a month, after to implement the reading and
visualization strategies in classroom about a short story. The stories were changed for others
monthly. We collected data of eight students chosen randomly, analyzing the students answers
according with the three levels of reading comprehension and their progress. These data was the
main unit to analyze in our research.
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Students’ Artifacts.
This instrument allowed us to analyze students‟ performance in the class, taking copies of
their work as a support of the activities done in the classroom, as well as, to note categories in
students‟ work (Hubbart and Miller, 1993). Artifacts are samples of real life that students create
during a lesson (Falk and Blumenreich, 2005). For this reason, students produced some artifacts
according to the short stories presented in class by using a reading and visualization strategy,
after; those artifacts were collected by the teacher in order to analyze students´ reading
comprehension. For this fact, we designed two similar formats about a story “the cat in the hat”.
The first format was implemented at the beginning of our practicums. This format contained
questions about the reading, but in difference with the questionnaires, this format has the three
levels of reading comprehension in the questions (literal, inferential and critical), another
difference with the questionnaires was an extra point where students drew drawings about the
text to evidence their understanding. The second format was implemented at the end of the
practicums. This format also contained questions and extra point about the reading. These
artifacts or formats were created with the purpose of obtain data of reading comprehension levels
at the beginning and at the end of the process of the implementation of reading and visualization
strategies. These mentioned formats are attached in the appendices. (Appendix D). These data
also is one of the main units to analyze in our action research.
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VALIDITY, RELIABILITY AND ETHICS
As part of our research project there were several aspects that needed to be considered prior to
submit the whole document. Such aspects rely on the premise of questioning the core of the
entire project, considering its validity, reliability and most importantly, bearing in mind the
study, as it is developed with specific participants from a public school. Therefore, the ethical
implications of carrying it out needed to be considered. In order to these ethical implications we
implemented a consent form, securing the information of the data was collected from fifth
graders for this action research. This consent form is attached in the appendices (appendix D).
According to grant such trustworthiness and credibility, we also present the Triangulation
process we did, as defined by Freeman (1998), “including multiple sources of information or
points of view on the phenomenon or question” (p. 98).
Likewise, since triangulation has different layers, by bringing up our study and objectives, we
decided to use triangulation at the level of data sources, kept in mind by having different sources
and ways to gather data. This triangulation contributed to create stability as we could compare all
gathered data and analyze whether they can corroborate each other (Burns, 2001, p. 163).
By means of the ethical implications, to be able to complete the project successfully, we
understood from the beginning the importance of guaranteeing all the participants their rights,
thus we referred to the school as Marauders‟ State School in order to protect school privacy, also
we changed the original names of the participants for pseudonyms. As we mentioned before we
chose 8 participants randomly, so the pseudonyms we used were participant 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and 8
to refer to the students of fifth grade.
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CHAPTER 4
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN
The present chapter aims to describe the instructional design proposed and applied in a
State School in Bogota known as Marauders‟ State School. The chapter arises from the statement
of the problem, in which the main concerns of this monograph paper takes place, informing how
the problem emerged and how it was identified, then a path is delighted starting from the theories
and visions of language, learning and teaching followed and applied in the present paper and
how they articulate between each other to fulfil the methodology proposed to be followed,
leading to the pedagogical intervention including the implementation stages, teachable questions
and objectives, the instructional unit that highlights the methodology and assessment To achieve
a better understanding of the process to be followed, a description of the course, content and
criteria to evaluate and implement in the intervention will be presented, closing with a
chronogram of activities.
Arising of the problem.
As it is presented in the first chapter of this monograph work, reading is seen as an
important aspect in anyone‟s development, it is the bridge that leads to the achievement of new
knowledge and shapes and improves old one. The lack of reading skills in students is perceived
and demonstrated by the implementation of a reading test, in which an extract of a text, The cat
in the hat, by Dr, Seuss (1957) (See Appendix 1), brings up the misunderstanding of the students
to interpret texts and to follow paths and characteristics that permits to achieve the goal of
interpretative reading. Starting from this point we, as researcher teachers, must deal with the
problem of how to approach students to the great experience of reading, leading our interest in
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enhance students to this practice. Furthermore, we had to deal as well with the problem of
knowing if students felt any interest on the reading process, so we applied a reading survey (See
appendix 2) in which students‟ interest in the topic where analysed and related to a possible
strategy, we consider could work: reading strategies and visualization strategies to achieve a
better interpretation of the text.
Understanding the language theory and visions.
The role of a language teacher involves different aspects that determine the quality of
processes that he or she carries out inside the classroom, such as the way he or she interacts with
the students to simply present a topic or to respond in front of the classroom seeing language as a
social action, but moreover considering we are language teachers, it is necessary to understand
the role of the language itself in and out the classroom and the implications it has in the learners
and the teacher.
Language is an important aspect on human beings, because it is through it that we express
inner emotions and thoughts, and communicate with others expressing needs, allowing us to
make several connections that lead to the social construction of culture. Anyway language must
be seen not only as verbal production, but as well as nonverbal, such as body movements, arts
and reading, in that sense language is orally, visual and written, being its main purpose to
communicate complex thoughts.
Sociolinguistics approaches on the field of language learning deals with the assumption
of interaction; these approaches as Swain and Lapkin (as cited in Cardenas, 2008) describes that
language learning is a collaborative dialogue. In other words, that language learning does not
occur out the performance, but in it. The achievement of the input is accomplished by the use of
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the language with others, helping the learner to put in practice in social and meaningful context
the language, building an awareness of the different uses of the same that leads learning to occur.
Sociolinguistic theorists understand interaction as a co-construction of knowledge in the second
language between the interlocutors to organize their cognitive process as Lantolf (as cited in
Cardenas, 2008) describes.
One important aspect that is considered in the language theory exposed in the present
monograph paper is the importance on first language. As it is stated by Lantolf and Thorne,
(2006), “In SLA the use of the L1 as a mediating tool has been examined to explicate how L1
use allows learners to work at higher levels of understanding without the restrictions that the use
of only the L2 encompasses” (p 67 – 109)
Following the assumptions sociolinguistics approaches have in the language development
of learners, we consider the scaffolding, a term that refers to a higher level learner that enhances
another into communicative situations in which the last one would not be able to so without the
assistance of the first one (Lantolf and Thorne, 2006). Relating this last two aspects, the use of
the first language and scaffolding, permits an interaction between learners that makes the
learning process richer, giving them opportunities to cooperate with each other.
Bearing in mind previous approach guidelines, the vision of language suitable for it and
for our research project is the perspective of language as self-expression (Tudor, 2001). For
sociolinguistic approach, language is an important aspect on human beings, because it is through
it, that we express inner emotions and thoughts, and it is under those terms that language can be
seen as human self-expression (Tudor, I. 2001) as means of achieving pragmatic goals. For
example, reading specialized material and performing professional or academic tasks, but it
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cannot be limited to those aspects, because it is through language that we build up personal
relationships, expressing our emotions and aspirations.
Learning Theory and Vision.
The main role in and out the classroom is to give learners the appropriate instruments to
help them in the learning process, but what is learning? Klein (1991) defines learning as “an
experimental process resulting in a relatively permanent change of behavior that cannot be
explained by temporary states, maturation, or innate response tendencies” (p. 2). Upon this
definition, the author makes the distinction of three main components, being the following:
First, learning may produce a change in behavior; however, to achieve this change is
necessary that the learning process presents a motivational aspect, because these changes are not
immediately attained. The process of transforming learning into behavior is deeply mediated by
the motivation to make this learning go further. Second, a behavior adopted by learning is not
always maintained; these behaviors could be forgotten, stopped or being exhibited. Third, not all
the behaviors could be crossed by motivational aspects.
Usually these behaviors are temporally and disappear when the motivational aspect does as
well, Klein gives an example in which the motivational aspect is hungry and the behavior is
eating, but once the person is not hungry, the behavior is stopped. This last one distinction on
behavior change could be defined as a temporary state.
Now, before continuing going further with our teaching and learning theories, we would
like to highlight the importance of humanistic approaches that could be both applied as support
to our teaching focus and learning focus as well. In this sense, as we mentioned once, while
applying some initial behaviorism aspects, we can pull out from it that a child learns because he
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or she is inwardly driven, and derives his or her reward from the sense of achievement that
having learned something affords. This would differ from the behaviorist view that would expect
extrinsic rewards to be more effective. Extrinsic rewards are rewards from the outside world;
intrinsic rewards are rewards from within oneself, rather like a satisfaction of a need. This is
directly related with the humanistic approach, where education is really about creating a need
within the child or instilling within the child self-motivation. Behaviorism is about rewards from
others. Humanism is about rewarding yourself. On the other hand, humanist teacher´s role should
be considered as a facilitator, not a disseminator, of knowledge. Participatory and discovery
methods would be favored instead of traditional didacticism.
Now, to understand the humanistic approach better, we are going to begin saying that it is
based on the work of humanistic psychologists, most notably Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers
and, in a more general sense, the term includes the work of other humanistic pedagogues, such
as Rudolf Steiner, and Maria Montessori. All of these approaches seek to engage the whole
person: The intellects, feeling life, social capacities, artistic and practical skills are all important
focuses for growth and development. Important objectives include developing children's self-
esteem, ability to set and achieve appropriate goals, and development toward full autonomy.
Humanistic approach involves some basic principles such as:
Value humanity as a self-actualizing process; value creativity.
Use science to discover the conditions that best lead to the above.
Individuals or groups should be self-motivated. Set their own goals.
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Students become self-responsible, make progress in self- actualization, flexible,
creative. Because they have autonomy.
All this creates a social system - (Values, knowledge, adaptive skills, concept of science) - all
these would continually change and grow.
The vision for learning consisted of enhancing humanistic approach with learning as
Habit formation (Tudor, 2001). Learning vision seen as a constructive role for habit formation
indicates habit-formation based learning can help learners develop more fluency and
communicative confidence by helping them to be able to use more predictable or high yield
language elements without conscious reflection or planning, contributing not only to humanistic
approach in which learners feel self-motivated to produce and construct knowledge, but also to
self-expression views of language.
Teaching Theory and vision.
The role of teachers in the classroom was essential because he or she was the mentor
helping students to get knowledge. An effective teaching lays decisions about teaching functions,
reflective practice, aspect of instructional decision making, reflection. From a constructivism
approach, individuals construct knowledge from an already known knowledge or prior
knowledge and applying it, he or she could be enhance to new situations (Burden and Byrd,
2010). In a constructivism classroom teachers looks for ways to approach students to the
understanding, in that sense, teachers must look for alternatives that permit students to refine or
revise these understandings proposing spaces in which students are asked to ask questions,
research, get new information and encouraging students to face new knowledge.
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The main principles highlighted by Burden and Byrd (2010) are:
Teachers seek and value their students‟ points of view
Classroom activities challenge students‟ suppositions
Teachers pose problems of emerging relevance
Teachers build lessons around primary concepts and “big” ideas
Teachers asses students‟ learning in the context of daily learning.
As we can observe in these principles, the role of the teacher is to keep students motivated
in the classroom providing them with meaningful context that permits them to achieve the new
knowledge, always keeping in mind students‟ needs. This teaching theory supports the ability of
students to accept challenges that leads to understanding knowledge giving them opportunities
to investigate, and at the same time, teacher must perform a reflective position to be aware of
what is useful and what is not in the classroom to find solutions and new alternatives to enhance
students in the process of learning, being these, students, the centre of the learning process.
Teachers must be aware of the following aspects in the classroom to construct their
teaching role (Burden and Byrd, 2010):
Planning and preparing
Demonstrate knowledge of content and pedagogy
Selecting instructional goals
Demonstrating knowledge of resources
Designing coherent instructions
Assessing students‟ learning.
The classroom environment
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Creating an environment of respect and rapport
Establishing a culture for learning
Managing students‟ behaviour
Instruction
Communicating clearly and accurately
Using questions and discussion techniques
Engaging students in learning
Providing feedback to students
Professional Responsibilities
Reflection on teaching
Contributing to the school and district
Showing professionalism
The teaching process in the classroom is a process that demands responsibility and
innovation, students‟ needs must be fulfilled and knowledge is presented in a challenging way to
let students reflect and develop learning strategies.
To introduce teaching vision let us bring up what constructivist approach suggests: From
a constructivist approach, individuals construct knowledge from a prior knowledge and apply it
in new learning situations. In a constructivism classroom the teacher look for ways to approach
students to the understanding; in that sense, teachers must look for alternatives that permit
students to refine or revise these understandings proposing spaces in which students are asked to
pose questions, research, get new information and face new knowledge.
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On the other hand reading approach was implemented hand by hand with this
constructivist approach as it is part of our methodology to include topics that had been worked
every lesson so they were not just familiar to students, but that students could use that prior
knowledge to understand the new one.
An articulation between three theories and visions.
After we have given a look to the language theory, learning theory and teaching theory, it
is necessary to find and understand how the three of them articulates and relates to overcome to
that process called education. An articulation between the three theories gave us sight of the
principles to be followed during our intervention. Taking into account the social and interactional
aspects of the learning and teaching process we were able to provide activities that allowed
students to use the language in a complete communicative way.
Language as it was mentioned at the beginning of this chapter is the main bridge that
allows teaching and learning articulate their principles and goals into the educational field. In the
concrete case of language teaching it becomes an important aspect of it the role of learners, who
are the ones who are expected to manipulate the language, they were challenged to express their
emotions and thoughts on different readings, non-just verbally but artistically, becoming the
learning process in an experiential process in which they were faced to relate their reality to the
“reality” of imaginary worlds.
Throughout the we prepared, it was really comforting to notice students positive
reactions towards the methodologies we used implementing certain approaches. Initially as for
the language approach (sociolinguistic) considering what it suggests: seeing language as a very
important aspect on human beings but not only as verbal production but as well as nonverbal,
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such as body movements, arts and reading. In that sense language is oral, visual and written, and
it contributed to the development of our classes. When we used readings to teach English,
students expressed their needs interacting with the texts presented; in this term, sociolinguistic
approach described that language learning is a collaborative dialogue or that language learning
does not occur out of the performance, but inside. The achievement of the input is accomplished
by the use of the language with others, helping the learner to put language into practice in social
and meaningful context permitting an awareness of the different uses of the same that leads
learning to occur, and that is what some reading activities offered to our students, as they needed
to be involved on the reading to be able to understand it and learn the language.
On the other hand, as for the learning and teaching approach (humanistic and constructivism,
respectively), as it can be evidenced in the lesson plan schedule (See Appendix E), we used as a
tool the new material presented, so students could use it, in the development of the class to
construct the meaning from the text (using also their prior knowledge) while through some
questionnaires a need to learn was created on the students, so they can do their best using all
necessary tools to be able to answer accordingly to what they were asked.
To conclude, it is important to highlight that these three theories were seen and articulated,
and that they were the main concern of our education process, anyway, furthermore these three
theories were applied into a deeper context, relating them with the visions named before.
METHODOLOGY
The main approach worked in this instructional design was the reading approach, which
lied upon two main aspects, being the most important reading strategies and the second one
visualisation strategy, to be able to support our research interest.
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Schedule.
Week /
Date
Reading Activity Evaluation
1st Week /
August 30th
The cat in the
hat
Diagnostic activity
Stories everywhere! Review
of topics seen the previous
semester (Present Simple,
Present Continuous)
First test
Questionary
Literal inferntial
and critical levels
Doubts
solving and
joining gaps in
the previous
topics
Students were encouraged to ask questions to reinforce their knowledge and to recall
prior given information, using what they knew
2nd
3rd
and 4th
Week /
September
6th
13th
and
20th
The tale of
the three
brothers J.K
Rowling
Share previous
knowledge/ideas of the
characters
Comparison between the
story and their background
Drawing and
descriptive
sentence about
the story
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knowledge
As part of a constructivist classroom teacher was a mediator, providing initially some
bases to students so they could understand the topic and story, and then bring up the tale
and the rules
5th
Week
/ September
27th
The Weeping
woman
Building the story, story will
be created in English as students
know it already in Spanish.
Alternative
fragments from
the tale will be
suggested by
students
Though story was familiar to students vocabulary on it was adequate with similar
vocabulary seen before using it as a tool, for students to understand the whole story in
terms of grammatical aspects
6th
and 8th
Week /
October 4th
and 18th
(vacations
week in the
middle)
Athena and
Medusa (Due to
missed class
same reading
took 3 lessons)
Storytelling (teacher)
Role play(students´ guessing
from the tale read)
Sharing
opinions about
the story, once it
is completely
explained
Both humanistic and constructivist approaches were highly influencing this lesson, as
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students were asked to share their opinions and communicate their new ideas, they were
requested to construct a new ending using existing information already given
9th Week
/ October
25th
Hallowe
en
(Celt
story)
Guessing about the origins of
Halloween
Fill in the gaps regular
activity
Making
Maracuya
“Pumpkins” of
Halloween, share
ideas from
Halloween
Humanistic approach and self-expression vision can be reflected when designing this
lesson, as students are interacting constantly with each other and they‟re expressing what
they learn physically (making the pumpkin)
10th
Week /
November
1st
Dracula
(folklore short
story)
Sharing opinions of creatures
from Dracula context and which
of them they would be
Matching icons with the
creature ex: silver and
werewolves, tombs and
vampires
Invent a
character from
your favorite
creature and
create a story for
it. (Vampire,
werewolf, hunter
etc
Prior knowledge will be used to engage meaningful descriptions to construct a new story
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11th
and
12th
Week /
November
8th
and 15th
The
Legend of
Thor
Nordic
Legend
Comic stream incomplete
students will give an end to the
comic. Comparing the comic
with the legend
Looking for
Norse gods and
goodness and
making up a tale
Input is given with the comic stream uncompleted so students can be self-motivated to
continue and learn presented theme
13th
Week /
November
22nd
Anastasia
Romanov
Russian
Tale
Talking about canonic
princesses and princes,
comparing them with
Anastasia‟s role
Spotting the mistake
Drawings
with their
descriptions of
Anastasia´s
role as princess
and canonic
princess
By this point habit formation should have influenced them so students understand easy
the class methodology and feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts
14th
Week /
November
29th
The cat in
the hat
Final test
Sharing their wishes
Organizing the pictures
depending on the correct order
Questionnaire
final test with
literal inferential
and critical
questions.
-
Running head: Reading comprehension trough reading strategies and visualization on short
stories
40
of the tale
Students will
write the moral
of the tale and
will share their
opinion
As language is seen as a social action opinions will be shared, reinforcing prior topics
and doubts solving
Reading Approach
Considering reading as a main bridge to enhance meaning of different issues such as
social, political, economic, and cultural. We, as researcher teachers, decided to apply in the
classroom an approach that articulates the meaning construction of the written text but also,
looking to engage students into the reading process in a meaningful way.
Therefore, we searched for an approach that fulfil our research interest, which was the
reading approach, and it contained some characteristics that were applied in the reading process;
as part of our methodologies, using this approach, it was mandatory to consider the following
aspects:
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