What are some of the major differences between a skills approach to literacy and a comprehensive or sociopsycholinguistic approach?
From my Personal Model of Reading Theory you can see that I have always thought of “reading as thinking”. After reading these chapters I have not only furthered my argument that reading is thinking but also enhanced my argument. The skills approach to reading, from my understanding, is the phonetic process of reading. The ability to make out sounds of letters to form words and sentences. The skill to read is useful when reading but from these chapters we learn that “reading is a sociopsycholinguistic process” (Weaver, 2002, p. 26). I have learned that the argument that “reading is thinking” is very vague. From my interpretation of these chapters it explains that reading is a transaction that takes place between the text and the readers interpretation. This transaction is where the meaning takes place. The meaning is derived from the connections to schemas the reader has. These transactions are also based on social and situational contexts. Meaning, the connections that a reader may make can change based on the context of the text. Thus this is the meaning of the sociopsycholinguistic approach to reading. There was a great example in the book where a college student thought she was on track in her class but she found out she was failing. When the teacher asked her to read a section of the book she couldn’t recall any information from the text. She was not making any sort of transaction. There were no connections to any schemas for her. She was not getting any meaning from the text. Thus, she was not reading. (Weaver, 2002, p. 21)
Weaver, C. (2002). Reading Process & Practice. New Hampshire: Heinemann.
Lindsey,
ReplyDeleteI feel you made some very good points in your reflection, especially in how your stance on "reading as thinking" has been enhanced. I agree with your idea reading is indeed thinking, especially as it relates to metacognition. If a student is aware of his own thinking processes and is able to monitor skills, then he begins to lay the foundation for his self-efficacy as a reader, no matter the proficiency level. As you discussed passages from the text, I thought of the "blonke" passage of which I was totally confused. I had no schema to match those silly terms, thus I was not able to construct any meaning - but, was I in fact reading?