Amos Paran: Reading in EFL: Facts and Fiction

Key Points: This paper describes how the psycholinguistic model L2 reading, examining reading as a series of processes taking place in the brain, that was the basis of early research into L2 reading has maintained a foothold in L2 reading instruction via teacher methodology books despite the fact that modern research no longer upholds these principles.

            Amos dismantles the concept of top-down reading that was previously believed to be the way L1 and L2 readers comprehend texts. Top-down reading means using context, predictions, and assumptions while reading. Bottom-up reading, on the other hand describes the way a reader’s eyes goes from one word to the next in a linear fashion, all the while decoding each word. Amos believes, despite the fact that many researchers believe high-level L2 readers use top-down strategies while reading and that encouraging low-level readers to do the same, the ultimate goal for L2 readers is to become proficient bottom-up readers. Moreover, top-down reading is a way for low-level readers to make-up for their lexical shortcomings.

My interaction with the text:

1.     Grellet is telling me how I am reading but as I pay attention to how I read, it seems that he is incorrect. I am in fact reading word to word in order. I also can hear a voice in my head say the words that I am reading. (Oh no, did that make me sound crazy?) How could the voice be possible if I were skipping around and making hypotheses? p. 26

2.     I can relate to the part about reading in chunks, however those chunks are no more than 2 to three words. p. 26

3.     I was relieved to read this article. It answered many of my questions from the other readings this week as well as reading from previous weeks that talked about local processes and global processes. I hadn’t fully understood what was meant by these concepts and part of my confusion may have been from my yet undiscovered disagreement with them. I side with Paran.

4.     In my classroom, I will encourage my students to read as many level appropriate texts as they can. This is something I believed in before I read this article and I feel that this article supports my belief.