Module 2: Reading Reflection

Before beginning this course and reading these chapters I think I would have considered myself one of the teachers that Harper and Kilarr are describing in their quote. I thought of course students need to correctly phonetically read to understand what they’re reading. It made sense to me that if you pronounce a word incorrectly you would more than likely not get the meaning of the word or the meaning of the sentences, thus, resulting in not gaining meaning from the text and ultimately NOT reading. Of course now my thinking has been majorly altered. I agree with Harper and Kilarr about this “folklore of reading being an exact process”. The truth is, that this chapter also points out, when reading we DO NOT have to pronounce every word and/or sound correctly to gain meaning from the text. In fact Weaver makes some great points in Chapter 3. Weaver states “even if you get the pronunciation correct, can we necessarily assume that you have identified the word in any meaningful sense, without prior knowledge or at least adequate contextual information” (Weaver, 2002, p. 47). This point that Weaver makes leads us to the understanding that even though pronunciation is correct there may or may not be meaning there. The chapter explains further that we don’t get meaning from grapho/phonemic cues alone, rather, we use a combination of grapho/phonemic cues, context clues, and prior knowledge to gain meaning. Ultimately as readers we use more context, whether within the sentences or around the sentence, to gain meaning. Weaver points out that “we use context to complement and reduce our reliance on grapho/phonemic cues” (Weaver, 2002, p.50). I found the study that Weaver did to prove this point. The study found that “beginning readers and nonproficient readers can often read words better in context than in isolation” (Weaver, 2002, p.50). This shows that readers use the clues or context around the words to help with the pronunciation of words because the word(s) are fitting within the text either syntacticly and/or semanticly. This brings us to another point from Weaver that “processing is easier when we have either normal word order [syntactics] or some semblance of meaning [semantics]” (Weaver, 2002, p.42). It was also interesting to me that Weaver discovered that “reading for meaning may have resulted in more miscues” (Weaver, 2002, p. 52). However, the readers were still gaining meaning from the text and proving this through their reading strategies. The readers were able to gain meaning through the context within the text. This was true for proficient AND nonproficient readers. “Contextual information speeds and facilitates reading for proficient as well as nonproficient readers; it also facilitates the understanding of many words that the reader may not be able to pronounce or identify. In conclusion, the idea that when reading you must read what is exactly printed on the page is kind of absurd. We don’t need to correctly phonetically make out ever sound on the page for us to gain meaning from the text. Really, our brains already comprehend the text before we read it because of the surrounding context clues. Thus, a combination of grapho/phonemic cues, context cues, and prior knowledge lead us to gaining meaning from the text.