WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE READ?

Reading does not evolve naturally as speech does.  It has to be learnt and taught.  In order to understand how we read, we must also know why we read. 

Reading is not just a mechanical or cognitive process, it is also socio-cultural as Clemente and Dominguez argue in their book on the teaching of reading (1999).  Even today, there are many oral cultures that survive very well without the need for a writing system.  In three quarters of the world’s populations however, reading is not just widespread, it is essential (Roberts, 1994).  Yet, at least 25% of students have difficulty accessing the written code (Nicolson, 2008).  The consequence is general underachievement across all subject areas.  It is no wonder then that reading has received so much attention in the pedagogical field, especially in the last few decades.

What are the Cognitive Processes Implicated in Reading?

Different theories have evolved out of the hundreds of empirical studies conducted on reading to explain what happens when we read.  These have given rise to a variety of approaches to the teaching of reading.  The model that is currently most widely accepted by reading experts however is the Psycholinguistic Approach.  This approach stems from the idea that there are two main routes to meaning: one is the Phonological Route and the other is the Direct Route.

In order to extract meaning from a text, we follow a very complex cognitive process which can be divided into two main blocks.  The first involves recognition or identification of the written word and the second is concerned with reading comprehension.  In order to put into operation our higher-order comprehension skills where we read to learn, we must have automatised the lower-order decoding skills which give us our first level of access to the written word thus allowing us to break the code. The process, from word recognition to text comprehension, starts with the identification of written words. Once we have been able to recognize or identify a word, we assign a meaning to each word read in a sentence.  We then construct an idea of what is being communicated.  Each sentence must be understood within the context of a text.  This requires comprehension of what has been read and a construction of the structure of the text based on an understanding of the relationships between its parts.  Finally, we assimilate the text into our existing or prior knowledge of the subject so constructing new knowledge and understanding (Clemente Linuesa, M. and Dominguez Gutierrez, A.B. 1999).

Effective and mature readers use both routes to access, process and extract meaning from written text to integrate into and transform their own schema.

Our concern here however is with gaining access to the written code at a very basic level. Following is a description of the two routes upon which we depend to make sense of written text.  

The Phonological Route

Dependence upon the Phonological Route or Indirect Route in reading requires an understanding of the relationship between the sounds of the language that we speak and the written codes that represent them.  Words are recognised via their sounds through a conversion or translation process from one code – written or oral - to the other. It involves a number of mental operations starting with a visual analysis of language in its written form.

According to Clemente and Dominguez, when we see a word on a page, we translate each of its graphemes or groups of graphemes in the case of some languages like English, into phonemes through a process of grapheme-phoneme conversion.  Once the pronunciation of the word has been recovered from the part of our brains where the pronunciation of words is stored the information is carried to our auditory lexicon.   Here the auditory representation is matched to the corresponding sounds.  Recovery of the auditory representation activates the semantic system where our personal lexicon is stored.  Here a meaning is assigned to the word. For all of this to happen efficiently, we need to have adequate verbal skills in the language in which we are reading (1999).

Via this route, we are able to decode words that follow orthographic conventions which we have previously learnt.  We can also decode words that are unfamiliar to us even though we do not know what they mean.  Decoding skills are often tested through the use of nonsense words following regular orthographic rules (1999).

Thus, an understanding of the mental processes involved in reading has a direct impact on early reading methodologies not just for L1 but for language L2 as well.    ESL students can learn to read many new words through decoding that can be incorporated into their growing English lexicon once automaticity has been achieved through frequent exposure.  Later on, once they start reading with a certain measure of fluency, new vocabulary can be learnt through printed text.

The Direct Route

The Direct or Visual Route depends upon our automatisation of words allowing for rapid recognition upon visual contact with its written form.

Through frequent exposure, words are automatised leading to more dependence on the Direct Route.  Via this route, we are able to read words that are familiar to us but not unfamiliar ones.  We can however process irregular words that have become familiar to us.

The process followed to extract meaning from a text through dependence on this route involves visual analysis of the individual graphemes of a word after which the information is transmitted to our visual memory where orthographical representations of words are stored.  Once identified, the semantic system is activated and meaning is given to the word (Clemente and Dominguez, 1999). 

It certainly is faster reading via the Direct Route, as the name suggests, but requires familiarity with the words being read. 

NEXT: How understanding the cognitive processes involved in reading helps us in the classroom

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Clemente Linuesa, M. and Dominguez Gutierrez, A.B. (1999). La Enseñanza de La Lectura: Enfoque Psicolingüístico y Sociocultural. Madrid. Píramide

Nicholson, T. (2008). Phonics Handbook. Chichester. John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

Roberts, Cheryl A. (1994). Transferring Literacy Skills from L1 to L2: From Theory to Practice. The Journal of Educational Issues of Language Minority Students, 13, 209-221. Downloaded on 14 April 2016 from http://www.edtechpolicy.org/ArchivedWebsites/transf13.htm