JAASEP WINTER 2013 Part 14 of 14
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Chia (1991, 1994) describes literacy as a synergy of reading and writing connected by a third cognitive process called fantasizing, which Donelson and Nilson (1980) describe as the active role played by a reader/writer in creating the literary work and also involving the evocation of the ‘lived through’ experience of the reader/writer during the transaction with the text. According to Rosenblatt (1986), the ‘lived through’ experience evolves through attention on the part of the reader/writer to the personal meaning of the text. Fantasizing often plays an important role in allowing the reader/writer to enter the meta-world of the text, thereby making the stories “come to life” for the reader/writer (Long, Winograd, & Bridge, 1989; Sadoski, Goetz, & Kangiser, 1988).
There has been a lot of research studies (e.g., Broek et al., 2004; Chia, 2007, 2010; Preen & Barker, 1986) done on understanding reading as a process, the elements that are involved in the reading process, the factors that interfere with reading and result in reading failure, and how to promote reading habit among school-age children. However, “little is done to distinguish among groups of readers, who are the key players in the process of reading” (Chia, 1999, p.64).
Abstract
The ability to read and write constitutes the fundamental concept of literacy and is essential to successful academic performance in school. Children who are struggling in schools are often identified as weak readers. They can be classified as either reluctant readers or disabled readers (excluding the illiterates). The former lacks the motivation to want to read while the latter is often identified as having specific reading difficulties (e.g., dyslexia and hyperlexia). Hence, such readers continue to perform poorly in class tests and school examinations. This study focused on a group of 23 Primary 4 children, who had continuously failed in their English language examinations from Primary 1 to 3 levels. A pre-/post-treatment design was used to determine whether the 23 subjects who underwent a 6-month semantic cloze procedure as a remedial teaching strategy showed significant improvement in their reading comprehension (cloze). The findings of the study suggested that whilst the subjects showed an improvement in their performance in cloze comprehension in their Semestral Examination 2 with a significant effect size as a result of the treatment, no significant inter-correlation among/between the key elements, i.e., vocabulary, word reading, reading comprehension and reading experience, was found.