Moreover, as discussed in Section 1.1 of Chapter One, students’ poor reading proficiency in English at the University of Sindh was the main motivation to initiate this study. Therefore, a review of the studies on L2 reading proficiency, in particular, is made to gain insight into: a) what skills are required for successful reading and b) how reading performance in English has been investigated in the literature in different L2 contexts, which will help measure the reading performance of the participants in this study. Reading performance in L2 has been measured from the perspective of gaining information. The researchers differ in their views on what reading is, and how it is processed, particularly in a second language context. As a result, various perspectives have been propounded. Therefore, before discussing the literature regarding the relationship between reading habits and performance, the following section discusses the various perspectives of the researchers on reading performance to have insight into the factors to measure English reading of the students in the present study.
2.4.1 Perspectives on Reading Performance
Reading performance, especially in L2 contexts, has been studied from three main perspectives, which help understand what skills are necessary for L2 reading performance. These views have been termed as the bottom up view, the top down view and the interactive view of reading. In order to gain insight into how successful reading might be done in an L2 context, it is essential to understand all the three
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views on reading that will also suggest the ways to measure English reading performance of the students in the present study. Therefore, the following section discusses each perspective on reading to offer insight into L2 reading process.
2.4.1.1 Bottom-up View of Reading Performance
The bottom-up view mainly focuses on readers’ linguistic knowledge of picking up information from morphemes, words, and sentences in a reading passage. Many researchers advocate the importance of a bottom up reading process in L2 reading. Nuttal (1996), supporting the importance of lower level reading, says that successful reading performance involves learners in decoding, deciphering, and identifying words from the text. Pressley (1998) also holds the similar view suggesting that reliable and efficient recognition of individual words in sentences and paragraphs is necessary for reading process. Cohen and Upton (2006) state that the bottom-up process depends on linguistic knowledge of the learner that helps her or him construct smaller units of information into larger ones.
Although the bottom up process is considered important in reading, there are also some disadvantages to this view. According to Goodman (1986) breaking language into pieces might result in poor reading comprehension. Similarly, Nunan (1991) states that the bottom up process owing to its slow processing of every element in a text may make the retention of meaning very difficult. Nassaji (2007:91) argues:
Knowledge is generated through activation patterns initiated by the textual information and the progressive up- grading of previously established associations in the text.
Thus, the bottom-up process of reading alone may not be sufficient to have the desired information and understanding of the actual reading process a reader adapts in accordance with different purposes of reading. Therefore, some alternative views on reading such as the top-down approach have been suggested by the researchers. A detailed description of top-down view is presented in the following section.
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2.4.1.2 Top-down View of Reading Performance
In contrast, the top-down view of reading gives more importance to the context than language. A reader, following this process, samples the text with the help of context and simultaneously compares the information with her/his the background knowledge in order to confirm or reconfirm the meaning. Khalifa and Weir (2009:54) suggest that:
There are two distinct uses for context: one to enrich propositional meaning extracted from a decoded text and the other to support decoding where it is inadequate.
Many researchers have proposed the top-down view for adequate reading. In the words of Grellet (1981:7), ‘Reading is a constant process of guessing. What one brings to the text is often more important than what one finds in it’. This indicates that reading is an active process where the reader has his own part to play using his background knowledge to take full benefit from his reading. Readers’ background knowledge has been named as schema or schemata. Rumelhart (1977:31) defines schema as; ‘a kind of informal, private, unarticulated theory about the nature of events, objects or situations that we face’. Aebersold (1997), in support of the top- down view, argues that background knowledge is important in the comprehension of a reading text.
Urquhart and Weir (1998) consider the top-down approach as recurring in nature where the reader progresses from text to hypotheses and vice versa. On the whole, the top-down view supports the higher level of knowledge reducing the importance of the text. As a result, it has some advantages and some disadvantages as well. One main advantage of the top-down process is that it allows more freedom to the reader that might help her/him feel more confident and break his hesitation.
Conversely, similar to the bottom-up view, this view also carries some disadvantages. For example, the readers, when asked to read and discuss a text, could come up with unexpected meanings and may also struggle for the grammar and vocabulary to understand the text. This approach may also put readers under the
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time pressure; consequently they may fail to notice the language in the text. This might result in reading very important texts in a very perfunctory manner affecting readers’ reading proficiency. Therefore, adopting top-down views of reading alone can be a risky exercise for students’ English reading comprehension. Therefore, the following section suggests an alternative to both the views (bottom-up and top- down), which is described as the interactive view of reading process.
2.4.1.3 Interactive View of Reading Performance
The interactive view of reading performance suggests that reading is an integrated process where the reader and the text are equally involved. Aebersold (1997:15) states:
The text and the reader are the physical entities necessary for the reading process to begin. It is, however, interaction between the text and the reader that constitutes actual reading.
This means, comprehension of a text can take place only if both the lower and the higher level processes interact with each other. Similarly, Mclaughlin (1990) states that reading in a second language is a complex process which requires automated word-level (lower-level) processing skills together with a set of higher processing skills. In addition, Stanovich (1980) suggests an interactive compensatory model in comparison to the top-down and bottom-up models. This model compensates the deficiencies of one area with the strengths of the other in a way that if a reader lacks orthographic knowledge then it is overcome with the help of syntactic knowledge. Grabe and Stoller (2002) emphasise that for fluent reading decoding and interpretation skills both must take place together.
In general, the interactive models support the integration of lower sources of information with the higher ones. These models suggest readers may not rely either on the text or the schema alone, but rather should use both together when appropriate. They also clarify that reading is a complicated process, which takes into account various factors: linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge, and reader’s knowledge. Lower level readers may use more bottom-up processes owing to their
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limited exposure to English reading. Nevertheless, these strategies alone may not be sufficient to gain the required reading skills. Thus, both lower and higher level sources of information should be integrated to acquire different reading skills and a higher level of comprehension.
The review of literature on the perspective of reading performance clearly suggests that reading is a complex phenomenon. It requires different levels of processing, from decoding of word to the comprehension of sentence and ultimately the whole text. A successful reading process also requires the use of background knowledge to comprehend the whole text. A close study of the aforementioned views on reading supports the fact that one of the main purposes of reading is learning/comprehension that can be achieved by mastering all the above mentioned processes. A number of studies in a second/foreign language context have examined the reading performance of students in light of the above mentioned views on L2 reading. As the students at the University of Sindh also read in English as a second language, it may be important to review the studies on English reading achievement/performance in different L2 contexts, which will help measure the reading performance of the students in my study.