Estudio comparado de los resultados obtenidos de gatos control

From the discussion thus far, it is evident that instruction in comprehension should involve the use of strategies to solve and get a message from texts in the act of reading (Clay, 2002:34; Block & Duffy, 2008:20). Unfortunately, this does not happen in the majority of South Africa’s Grade one and learning support classes. Rather, the standard approach to comprehension is an isolated action where a learner answers questions after he has read a decontextualised passage generally taken from a whole text (Bloch, 2006; Flanagan,

1995:19; Nathanson, 2008:105). This signals a gap in pre-service teacher education

concerning instruction in comprehension and strategy-use. My study of strategies that good readers use has enabled me to help struggling learners to achieve these strategies. It is also important for class teachers and learning support teachers to become aware of these

strategies in order to encourage their learners to read with comprehension (Hornsby, 2000:6). Dorn et al. (1998) define “strategies” as the cognitive actions observed while a learner is engaged in meaning-making and problem-solving as he reads (Dorn et al., 1998:26; Yang, 2006:336). In her framework of Systems of Strategies for Comprehending

Texts, Pinnell (2001:5) identifies two groups of strategies: strategies for sustaining reading

and strategies for expanding meaning. I will draw from her framework to discuss the various strategies.

2.5.2.1 Strategies for sustaining reading

To sustain the process of reading, several different kinds of information are orchestrated while a reader’s eyes move across print (Pinnell, 2001:6). The systems of strategies that sustain the reading comprise “various sources of information, including meaning, language knowledge, and the visual information in print”(Pinnell, 2001:5). These sources of

information are applied through six main strategies, namely solving words, monitoring and correcting, gathering, predicting, maintaining fluency and adjusting.

”Solving words” depends on the malleability of a reader’s brain structures in order to be a flexible reader. A learner who reads and writes in a flexible manner can solve a text in multiple ways. Accordingly, a flexible reader will, for example use the plurality of a text as assistance to cross-check for consistency or inconsistency. For example three dogs can be checked if the reader takes into account that there is more than one dog, thus the plural, ”dogs”, will follow (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996:153). In this example the three cues that the reader would have had at his disposal were the word three, an illustration of three dogs, and the plural marker –s. Other ways to solve words include: re-read up to the problem word and pronounce the first letter, link it to known words, observe a part of the word that ”looks like” a part in another word, and do cumulative letter-by-letter analysis of the word (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996:156). An important point is that phonics plays only a small part of word-solving within continuous texts (Fountas & Pinnell, 2007:232). Instruction in phonics skills can be isolated, but within the context of a continuous text where the learner provides feedback for checking and confirming what he reads, not for merely reading ”correctly” (Dorn et al., 1998:88, 89, Ellery, 2010:434). Therefore I do not refute the use of phonics in literacy lessons, though I do not agree with the use of phonics-teaching and phonics-focused lessons as isolated from a context.

”Monitoring and correcting” occur when a reader’s prediction of meaning, syntax and use of visual information clusters do not meet up, and the reader realises he has to cross-check with other meaning-making systems to correct his error (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996:151). These self-correcting and -monitoring learners are independent readers who exhibit signs of inner control and development through their habituated monitoring, searching, discovering, checking, repeating and correcting behaviours (Clay, 2002:22; 1991:252). In order to apply self-correction, a learner applies multipurpose behaviours or strategies and makes use of mental operations to solve text slightly more difficult than that of his or her current literacy competence (Cazden & Clay, 1992:116).Through this process of self-monitoring and

problem-solving, a learner will realise that something from the text might be missing from his understanding of it, which motivates re-reading of the passage (Yang, 2006:313). While re- reading the passage, a more deliberate and reflective manner of reading assists the learner to obtain the meaning of the passage (Dermatzaki et al., 2008:476).

”Gathering” refers to the reader’s grasp of “the basic information provided by the text” (Pinnell, 2001:8). This may seem an easy task, but given all the various sources of information, the task can become quite sophisticated. What is gathered from the text enables the reader to apply the “prediction” strategy. Learners can predict or anticipate on different levels, for instance predicting a series of events in a story, anticipating upcoming words and anticipating visual letter-to-sound or sound-to-letter associations to cross-check with the meaning (Fountas & Pinnell, 2006:2; Clay, 1991:32). The rate of gathering and interpretation of visual information impacts the ”maintained fluency” of reading which implies that problems have to be solved as a reader reads. (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996:151). In

addition, good readers ”adjust” their approach to the reading task according to their

knowledge of various texts, for example, different genres such as narrative or informational texts (Pinnell, 2001:9). However, there is more information in a text than what is written in the book, that is the meaning that stretches beyond a text. A learner discovers these meanings with the help of strategies that assist the expansion of meaning, as discussed in the next section.

2.5.2.2 Strategies for expanding meaning

Strategies are applied by a reader to help him or her go beyond the literal meaning of a text to construct “unique interpretations” by bringing his or her own experience to the text

(Pinnell, 2001:5, 10). Learners are able to do this by means of six strategies, namely connecting, inferring, summarising, synthesising, analysing and critiquing.

Before, during and after the action of reading and writing, readers and writers make connections to their funds of knowledge, derived from personal experiences, world

knowledge and text knowledge (Pinnell, 2001:10). They also think beyond a text by “reading between the lines” (Pinnell, 2001:11; Fountas & Pinnell, 2007:226). Through the use of this background knowledge, readers can reflect on the text, draw conclusions from it, and think about what the writer really implies. As readers move through a text they encapsulate important information. They do not merely put together main ideas after reading the text; they rather make meaning of text in progress (Adams, 1990; Pinnell, 2001:11). This

coincides with Block and Duffy’s (2008) research about comprehension instruction and how their research evidence can be applied in classroom practice. They found that struggling readers benefit from the explicit explanation of cognitive processing or strategies used as they read, in order to apply them to future literacy activities. Block and Duffy (2008) stress the vital importance of strategies for intervention with struggling learners.

Accordingly, insights into comprehension strategies were also an important consideration in my research, since the majority of traditional South African Grade one teachers plan on ”teaching” comprehension only by the third school term (See Addendum A4). This implies that learners do not read with comprehension from the beginning of the year, and are also made to believe that comprehension is defined by tasks that require answers to fragmented questions after reading an abstract or paragraph from a whole text. Therefore, these

learners are not familiar with meaning-making strategies and how to apply such strategies as they are reading a text. In fact, the meaning-making process is central to comprehension and ultimately knowledge gain, since new concepts or ideas can be connected to other stories and the to reader’s context or existing knowledge, which results in the expansion or adjustment of the reader’s current knowledge (Fountas & Pinnell, 2006:2, Pinnell, 2001:12). Another aspect that contributes to the essential ”meaning making” process is the analysis of a text (Clay, 2002:17; Martin & Hydén, 2006). A good reader will notice how a text was put together by the author, for example how a series of events could affect the outcome of a story (Pinnell, 2001:13). Finally, the learners’ opinions on texts should be asked more frequently, to help them think about the text more critically and, in the case of beginner readers, to decide whether they like or dislike the text and why (Fountas & Pinnell, 2007:226;Pinnell, 2001:13). This type of reflection on texts teaches learners to analyse critically what they have read and to become more aware of how they were able to extract meaning from the texts.