Interactive Strategies on Reading Comprehension

The interactive strategies of reading assume that the process of translating print to meaning involved making use of both print and prior knowledge. The process is initiated by making prediction about meaning an/or decoding graphic symbols. The reader formulates hypotheses based upon the interaction of information from semantic, syntactic, and graphophonemic sources of information (Vacca, Vacca, and Gove, 1991). Comprehension according to these models is dependent on both the graphic information and the information in the reader’s mind. Therefore, comprehension may be obstructed when a critical skill or a piece of knowledge is missing. Then, when comprehension is hampered, the skilled reader compensates by decoding a word, relying on context, or both (Harris and Sipay, 1984).

           Interactive strategies in reading require both bottom-up and top-down strategies in combination. Readers in understanding a text use these two strategies interactively and simultaneously. The interactive strategies suggest that the process of reading is initiated by decoding letters and words and by formulating hypotheses about meaning (Vacca, Vacca, and Gove, 1991). Readers in understanding a text start at first by processing the visual information that exists in the text. This visual information in used to activate the higher level of schemata. After the schemata have been active, readers use them as the basis of making predictions. These predictions are then confirmed to the new information found in the text.

          In getting understanding interactively, readers use various sources of knowledge simultaneously to interpret the graphemic information that exists in the text (Rumelhart, 1985). These knowledge sources involve syntactic, semantic, lexical, and orthographic knowledge. The process of understanding a text by these knowledge sources runs on inconsistently. In the sense, an analysis made by a reader is not consistent from visual information to text interpretation entirely (Anderson, 1985).

          In understanding a text, readers apply more interactive strategies than two other strategies. In the attempt of getting meaning of a text, readers cannot just rely on visual information or non-visual information. The knowledge is applied interactively.

APPROACHES IN READING

         

          The range of approach to teaching reading in the classroom may include several aspects within the skills to whole language instructional continuum. A major approach should meet two basic criteria: observable in actual classroom and derived from a theoretical base that is top-down, bottom-up, or interactive. Adhering to these criteria, there are four major approaches to the teaching of reading: prescriptive, basal reading, language experience, and literature-based (Vacca, Vacca and Gove, 1991).

1. Prescriptive Approach

          This approach is a kind of individualized instruction which is often favored by teachers who devote large chunks of the reading period to work on phonics. They focus on sound-letter relationship instruction. This approach of teaching reading has come to mean two very different approaches to teachers. One type is associated with bottom-up theory. The heavy emphasis is placed on prescribing linguistic and other sequential skills. Another type is associated with top-down theory. The heavy emphasis is placed on personalizing instruction through literature (Vacca, Vacca, and Gove, 1991).

2. Basal Reading Approach

          Basal reading is a kind of approach occupying the central and broadest position on the reading instructional continuum. This approach uses basal readers to teaching reading. The basal reader series are most widely used materials for teaching reading. They help students become ready for reading and provide them for development and practice in reading (Burns, Roe, and Ross, 1984). Basal reading program comes to the closest to an eclectic approach. That is, within the basal reading program itself some elements of the other approaches are incorporated. Yet basal reading programs, built on scope and sequence foundations (skills, levels, and vocabulary), traditionally have been associated with bottom-up theory. This association has been modified over the years with the addition of language experience and literature activities (Vacca, Vacca, and Gove, 1991).

3. Language Experience Approach

           This approach needs students to experience reading as a rewarding and successful process. However, it is difficult to assemble an adequate supply of literature for the wide range of abilities found in every classroom, especially if some of the students are not proficient in English (Cantony-Harvey, 1987). This approach is tied closely to an interactive or top-down theory of reading. It is considered a kind of beginning reading approach although strategies of teaching are often connected to writing process (Vacca, Vacca, and Gove, 1991).

4. Literature-Based Approach

           This approach is also named a whole language approach in which students engage in reading for enjoyment and for the purpose of locating information, rather than in order to earn a good grade (Cantony-Harvey, 1987). Vacca, Vacca, and Gove (1991) admit that literature-based approach is an approach the teacher use to provide individual students difference in reading ability and at the same time focus on meaning interest and enjoyment. In this approach, teachers encourage their students to personally select books that they want to read and then share and compare insight gained. Reading instruction emanates from assumption about the reading process that are interactive and top-down.