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Comparative essay on reading José Miguel Casanueva Camila Cuevas Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC)

Comparative essay on reading

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Page 1: Comparative essay on reading

Comparative essay on reading

José Miguel Casanueva

Camila Cuevas

Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC)

Page 2: Comparative essay on reading

Nowadays, there is much research about second language reading

comprehension. However, some years ago these matters were not of much relevance.

On this essay, we will show a comparison stressing differences and similarities between

two outstanding EFL authors and researchers from our era, Brown “Teaching by

Principles” (2000) and Harmer “The practice of English language teaching” (2001).

On the one hand we will start by presenting the most important similarities we

found between the works of both authors.

Firstly, if we focus our attention on Brown’s theory, we can state that they are

two different approaches to develop second language reading. These two theories

emphasize a different focus depending on what we want to teach. Goodman’s (1970)

work on the distinction between bottom-up and top-down strategies has become a

cornerstone of the reading comprehension ESL methodology. The bottom-up theory

emphasizes the student’s ability to recognize a multiplicity of lingusitic signals and it

uses a linguistic data process in order to organize the information. On the other hand,

the top-down theory is more focused on the intelligence and the experiences of the

reader to understand a text. (Brown, 2000).

Secondly, we will examine Harmer’s theory. It is also divided into two different

methods. The intensive reading is more focused on word-recognition and is more

directed towards specific activities, such as paying attention to the different phrasal

verbs on a text. On the other hand the extensive reading is considerable less controlled

by the teacher. The students are responsible for their reading in order to have an

overview of the text. According to Harmer (2001), one of the fundamentals of a

successful extensive reading programme is that students should be reading material that

they can understand and that they find interesting.

For this reason, we have found that there is a clear relationship between bottom-

up strategies and the intensive reading method due to the fact that both are related to

looking for specific information on a text. They are also more focused on word-

formation and grammar and the use of different mechanisims to organise the

information. On the other side, the top-down strategies are more connected with the

extensive reading method considering that in both the attention is paid to the meaning of

Page 3: Comparative essay on reading

the text itself and not to the language. Futhermore, both authors agree that the purpose

of extensive reading is to get the readers’ attention and motivate them so that they can

start reading for pleasure.

Recent research on teaching reading has shown that a combination of top-down

and bottom-up processing would be much better than selecting one or another.

According to Nuttall (1996) in practice a reader continually shifts from one focus to

another, using a top-down approach to predict meaning, then moving to the bottom-up

to check whether that is really what the writer says. Futhermore, Harmer (2001) states

that there is a common paradox in reading lessons in which teachers encourage students

to read for general understanding, without worrying about the meaning of every single

word, whereas students are desperate to know what each individual word means. For

this reason, it has been stated that we need to find some accomodation between our

desire to have students develop specific reading skills and their natural urge to

understand the meaning of every word. This is very connected to what Brown (2000)

called interactive reading. According to this, we have found that there is a notorious

affiliation between the two author’s ideas.

On the other hand, in terms of dissimilarities, we have found there are some of

them between both authors which will be explained below.

Firstly, whereas Brown (2000) states the importance of creating an

interrelationship of skills (speaking, writing, listening and reading) putting special

emphasis on the reading-writing connection, Harmer (2001) does not mention this as a

determining characteristic when teaching reading in a class. There is a great difference

when developing whether if there are two or the four skills at the moment of teaching,

since the objective of teaching a language is to promote a complete understanding of it

through the usage of various learning skills, this is why it is important to create a

learning environment where many skills can work together, which will certainly

facilitate the role of both the teacher and student.

Page 4: Comparative essay on reading

Secondly, while Brown (2000) mentions extensive reading as a part of the

process, Harmer (2001) states extensive reading should work along with intensive

reading. The difference relies on the characteristics both types of reading have. On the

one hand, we understand by extensive reading as the opportunity students have to

choose by themselves what they want to read whether if it is for pleasure or in order to

get general language improvement, where teachers play roles of organizers and tutors

for their students. This is what Brown (2000) considers to be enough for creating a good

environment of learning reading, but on the other hand, we have Harmer (2001) stating

extensive and intensive reading should work along. Intensive reading basically consists

on reading a text, book, magazine, paying special attention to every word in the text in

order to get the exact meaning of what is written.

In short, we can see clearly the main difference between both authors in this matter;

whereas Brown (2000) considers reading should be focused on getting the main idea

and used only for pleasure, putting attention to the four learners skills, Harmer (2001),

on the contrary declares both the intensive and extensive reading are needed in order to

achieve a great level of proficiency, but without concentrating in many skills at the

same time.

Finally, it can be stated that even though these authors are contemporary, they do not

share the same ideas. As we said before, Brown (2000) stated that there is a notorious

connection between writing and reading and the usage extensive reading and no other,

whereas Harmer (2001) asserted that we need to find some accommodation between

extensive and intensive reading. In contrast, we have found that they are some

similarities between the two authors. For instance both Brown and Harmer divide the

reading learning process into two categories each, the former uses bottom-up and top-

down and the latter extensive and intensive reading.

Page 5: Comparative essay on reading

References

Brown, H. D. (2000). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language

pedagogy. 2nd ed. White Plains, NY: Longman.

Goodman, K. (1970). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. International

Reading Association.

Harmer, J. (2001). The practice of English language teaching. 3rd ed. White Plains, NY:

Longman.

Nuttall, C. (1996). Teaching reading skills in a foreign language.2nd ed. Portsmouth,

NH: Heinemann.