The dialectic of textual enlightenment:

Improving reading ability in advanced English learners

Peter McDowellSchool of Education

Charles Darwin University

peter.mcdowell@cdu.edu.au

Current reading research is ...

• Tending to focus on beginning (functional) reading over capabilities to properly process whole texts

• Generally giving more attention, earlier on, to ‘bottom-up’ skills over ‘top-down’ skills

• Similar situation for both L1 and L2 research (L1emphasis on children, L2 on adults)

• Advanced reading slipping through the cracks

State of the art ...“… little published evidence exists about the learners who do reach fluency in the reading and processing of sophisticated text”

“… we know even less about how to bring readers to sophisticated, advanced uses of literacy in a second language”

—Elizabeth Bernhardt

Bernhardt, E. B. (2011). Understanding advanced second-language reading. New York, NY: Routledge.

Problems with the research

• ‘Reading ability’ is underdeveloped as a concept

• ‘Reading competency’ is often conceived as a synonym (or symptom) of reading ability

• ‘Top-down’ approaches are undermined by restricted notions of text, textual structure, and intertextuality

• Widespread essentialism and psychologism

Our research questions

• How can we improve reading ability in advanced EAL learners?

• How can we develop the concept of reading ability to better account for advanced reading?

• To what extent do answers to these questions depend on learners studying their own literacies?

Teaching context

• Pre-service teachers (graduate entrants)

• Large blended-mode unit (single cohort)

• Curriculum, multiliteracies, digital literacies

• Graduate destinations are varied

• Many will become ‘mother-tongue’ (L1) teachers

• Significant proportion of EAL learners

More on the EAL learners

• At entry: IELTS overall score of 6.5 (in theory)

• Score of at least 6.0 in reading (academic module)

• ‘Competent user’, ‘generally effective command’

• At exit: IELTS overall score of 7.5 needed for teacher registration, 7.0 in reading

• ‘Good user’, ‘operational command’

Bridging the gap ...

• Making the shift from ‘fairly complex language’ to ‘complex language’ and ‘detailed reasoning’

• From ‘familiar situations’ to situations in general

• From general misunderstandings to ‘misunderstandings in some situations’

• Moving beyond IELTS to the workplace (schools)

Teaching strategies (0)

• Students enter with a ‘default’ approach to reading

• Generally, students read and process texts, one at a time, sequentially, usually linearly, often slowly

• How do we know this?

• Through students’ responses to teaching activities designed to stretch and strain this ‘default’ approach (they discuss their experiences online)

Teaching strategies (1)

• Vary the structure of the texts so that the ‘default’ approach no longer works

• By setting single texts with multiple voices

• By setting longer texts with contrasting perspectives

• The ‘default’ approach breaks down when students are required to defend a position (why?)

Teaching strategies (2)

• Multiple voices invite students to read the text in several places at once

• Same with contrasting perspectives

• But the ‘default’ reading strategy hinders this

• Leads to simplification, caricature, reduction

• Students need help to assimilate the complexity of the situation

Teaching strategies (3)

• Set collaborative tasks beyond the capability of a single reader (whether related to approach or not)

• Introduce texts that analyse the multiple voices and the contrasting perspectives

• Urge students to debate the issues

• Contestation lies at the heart of the relevant literature (requires constant cross-referencing)

Teaching strategies (4)

• Once students realise the advantage in reading across and between texts, the next step is ...

• Introduce alternative paradigms (at least one)

• This sets up additional world-views that repeat, in their own way, the multiple voices, contestation, etc., that shaped students’ entry into the field

• Alternative paradigms expand the notion of text

Teaching strategies (5)

• Once several paradigms are in play ...

• Introduce an unanticipated perspective (e.g. historically based) that questions the conceptual framework underpinning the alternative paradigms

• In the area of literacy, this could be a critical discussion of the rise of ‘the self’

• The ‘individual reader’ as a historical episode

Dialectic of textual enlightenmentSingle texts

(default)Multiple voices

Contrasting perspectives

Collaborative views

Contestation

Alternative paradigms

Radical critique

Methodological problems

• Working like this, reflectively, drawing on natural language, on concepts in common circulation, isn’t really adequate

• The ‘logic’ of the situation isn’t emerging properly

• We need a robust model to help make more sense of the broader reading process

Theoretical computer science

• Compilers are special computer programmes designed to read and process complex texts (i.e. other computer programmes)

• Optimising compilers process texts in sophisticated ways to achieve engineering goals (e.g. achieve greater efficiencies when the output is run on particular computer hardware)

• Disclaimer: borrowing suggestive terminology

A basic processing model

Stream

Stream

Stream

Thread

Thread

Thread

Thread

Thread

Peephole reading (the ‘default’)

Stream

Thread

Single stream, single thread(Compare peephole optimisation)

Coalescent reading

Stream

Thread

Single stream, multiple threads(Compare coalescing)

Thread

Thread

Pipeline reading

Multiple streams, single threads(Compare pipelines)

Stream Stream

Thread

ThreadThread

Fission reading

Multiple streams, multiple threads(Compare fission loops)

Stream Stream

Thread

Thread

Thread

Dialectic of textual enlightenmentSingle texts

(default)Multiple voices

Contrasting perspectives

Collaborative views

Contestation

Alternative paradigms

Radical critique

Peephole reading

Coalescent reading

Pipeline reading

Fission reading

1stream : 1 thread

1 stream : N threads

N streams : 1 thread

N streams : N threads

Models of reading

• Most are geared around peephole reading

• ‘Whole language’ emphasises coalescent reading

• Sociocultural models recognise (implicitly) the importance of pipeline reading (manifold contexts)

• The dialectic of textual enlightenment can cope with all of these plus fission reading

• Other formulations are possible

Our research questions

• How can we improve reading ability in advanced EAL learners?

• How can we develop the concept of reading ability to better account for advanced reading?

• To what extent do answers to these questions depend on learners studying their own literacies?One way to do this is through a dialectical

approach to reading, with each stage in the dialectic developing more sophisticated notions of ‘reading’ and ‘text’

Our research questions

• How can we improve reading ability in advanced EAL learners?

• How can we develop the concept of reading ability to better account for advanced reading?

• To what extent do answers to these questions depend on learners studying their own literacies?A productive way to do this is by drawing on

advances in optimising compilers (computer science): ways of processing ‘text’ algorithmically to gain computational efficiencies

Our research questions

• How can we improve reading ability in advanced EAL learners?

• How can we develop the concept of reading ability to better account for advanced reading?

• To what extent do answers to these questions depend on learners studying their own literacies?Learners’ own literacies form a pretext and a

resource for understanding the dialectic and more sophisticated notions of text, textual structure, and intertextuality

Conclusion

• As a concept ‘reading ability’ needs development

• Bottom-up approaches tend to concentrate on the immediate text to hand (peephole reading)

• Top-down approaches tend to concentrate on background texts (coalescent reading)

• Advanced EAL reading embraces other notions of intertextuality (pipeline reading, fission reading)

Please see the full paper for further details.

Coda

In many classes, relatively little actual reading occurs, with most time devoted to tasks and activities that assume the reading of the text.—William Grabe

Grabe, W. (2009). Reading in a second language: Moving from theory to practice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

peter.mcdowell@cdu.edu.au

Questions and comments?Thank you

McDowell, P. (2012, August). The dialectic of textual enlightenment: Improving reading ability in advanced English learners. Paper presented at 3rd International Conference on TESOL, Da Nang City, Vietnam.