Reading Theory: An Analysis Of The Theories Of Reading

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Before going through the theories of reading, it seems essential to know what reading is according to the definitions of some scholars in the field of reading. As Smith (1978, p. 53) explains, reading “involves looking for meaning.” During such a unique, complex, creative, and constructive process as Broek and Kremer (2000) describe, the mind selects and organizes every things with the influence of the right mental purpose. Therefore, it looks logical to have an overview on the theories of reading at this very step as Nuttall (1996) believes that understanding reading theories is essential both for the teachers as well as the students. Some of the reading theories are developmental or the psychometric model, communication model, reading as a psycholinguistic guessing game or the top-down model, bottom-up model, automaticity of component processes model, and interactive model. Other researchers offered their theories to address the nature of the reading process.

The most accepted models by the researchers are the bottom-up, top-down, interactive, and transactional theories. The first model is the bottom-up model according to which the decoding process begins with the visual recognition of the written marks on the page. The reader proceeds in letter or word identification and then goes on to larger linguistic units to get the meaning. Block (1992) clarifies that in the bottom-up model, reading is language based and the information is text-driven. Because of this shortcoming, later the top-down model was introduced which views reading as a “psycholinguistic guessing game,” which involves partial use of minimal but most productive language cues to generate guesses. Goodman (1976) claims that in this psycholinguistic guessing game, t...

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...al or electronic analogy or metaphor, the same as the top-down and bottom-up modals.

According to Rosenblatt, reading is a transaction and a composing activity. It is a two-way process that involves the reader, the text, and the meaning, each of which is an aspect of a relationship occurring at a particular time in a particular circumstance (Rosenblatt, 1991, 1993). Rosenblatt (1994, 1995) believes that meaning is not in the text, but is made by the reader who “transacts” with the text. Rosenblatt (1985) does not agree that her transactional theory shares a common ground with the interactive theory. However, she (1985) clarifies that the transaction is similar to something that happens between a buyer and a seller, and it is meaning that happens between the reader and text. To her (1995), the reader, the reading process, and the “read” are aspects of one structure.

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