CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND
2.8 ACADEMIC READING
2.8.2 Awareness of text structure and discourse organization
Grabe and Stoller (2001, p.8) note the awareness of the text structure as being very critical in academic reading. Similarly, Hogan et al., (2011, p.9) view knowledge of text structure as knowledge of how a written text is organized to guide comprehension. This means that students have to recognize relationships across both sentences and large units of text and this knowledge of text structure should facilitate their ability to attend to text details and then enhance comprehension. In this light, Elosua, Garcia-Madruga, Vila, and Gomez-Velga (2013, p.3) argue that reading comprehension requires the knowledge of text structures. Students should be aware of texts skills, which are problem-solving, comparing and contrasting, narrating, sequencing or classification.
This can also be related to the knowledge of genre. The above view is shared by Carrel et al., (1998, p .98) when they show the impact of the knowledge of text structure in academic reading. Schoenbach (1999, p.1) also add to the importance of students’
awareness of text structure by stressing that it either enhances comprehension or if not properly used, it may confuse the students’ reading process.
Texts in science reading are often expository and require students to have the ability to compare and contrast, to determine the cause and effect, and for problem-solving (Elosua et al., 2013, p.4). Knowledge of text structure is said to be important in the acquisition of summary skills. These writing skills are described as the ability to construct a concise account of the main ideas. Children are taught summary skills to make them aware of the highest level of information or main ideas in a text as well as details that support the main idea (Elosua et al., 2013, p.4).
(a) Use of graphic organizers to support comprehension and discourse organization awareness
Grabe and Stoller (2001, p.8) argue that it is crucial for students to be aware of how graphic organizers are used in texts as they help students in identifying the key information from a text. Thus, identifying the organization of text information, the ways that information is structured and relationships among ideas presented in a text or a portion of a text assist with academic reading.
These textual dimensions may be classified in terms of low-quality base and the high- quality base of the text. This may be represented in the following figure:
Fig2.8 Multidimensional space formed by considering knowledge used and quality of the text base in classifying mental representations of text.
(b) Strategic reading
The argument put forth for strategic reading by Grabe and Stoller (2001, p.9) is that it aims at equipping students with skills where they should be able to:
Understand the goals of a reading activity.
Have a range of well-practiced reading strategies at their disposal.
Apply these strategies in efficient combinations, monitor comprehension appropriately and repair comprehension problems, effectively.
The above strategies can be seen as the corner stone of academic reading (Grabe &
Stoller, 2001). Touma (2012, p.82) acknowledges the importance of strategic reading as crucial to academic contexts as skill usually inseparable from the act of comprehending and learning difficult and unfamiliar concepts. Some of the reading strategies relevant to academic reading, according to Touma (2012) are: supervising, supporting, paraphrasing, establishing text coherence and test taking.
Handy and Stein (2010, p.19) state that “students who use reading strategies are able to synthesize prior knowledge and information from academic texts to create new knowledge”. The teaching of reading strategies is therefore important for students’
engagement in academic reading. Based on the above, academic reading is the centre of each and every academic course at tertiary institutions. Some of the greatest challenges facing students at tertiary institutions are related to academic reading and writing.
For students to successfully go through their studies, they should have acquired academic reading skills (Alderson, 2000, p.23). Students need academic reading skills to be able to interact with materials which may be challenging to them. This means that students should have what is called Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) Cummins, in Spurlin (1995). CALP is described as context-reduced, cognitively demanding found in written texts in content areas such as Mathematics, Physical Science and Social Sciences. CALP is socially grounded, and it could only develop within a matrix of human interaction (Ralenala, 2003, p.109). CALP is important for science students because they engage with texts which are more demanding and if they have not developed the strategies and the vocabulary needed for reading science texts they would have difficulties in reading those texts. This demands that students should have academic reading abilities, for them to be successful in accessing the knowledge in textbooks.
The figure below helps to illustrate the factors which influence the reading of academic texts. The development of these factors is known to enhance students’ chances of succeeding in reading science texts.
Fig 2.9. Influential factors in academic reading
The academic demands as outlined above also relates to Vygotsky (1978)’s theory of language development. The Vygotsky theory of language development and how it relates to academic reading would be looked at in the section that follows.