Abstract:

John and Davis (1983) claim texts may be used in two different ways, either as TALO (Text as a Linguistic Object) or TAVI (Text as Vehicle of Information). My experience has shown many teachers tend to favor working with texts as TALO even when they were meant to be treated as TAVI. Considering that one of the main reasons to read a text is to get meaning out of it (Nuttall, 1996), and that research (Brown, 1994; Nuttall, 1996) on both first and second language has shown that efficient readers apply two different processes to decode a text and have access to its meaning: data-driven (bottom-up) and conceptually-driven (top-down) processes.

In the conceptually-driven or top-down processing, readers use their schemata, that is their previous information, knowledge, emotion, experience, and culture, to make predictions, interpret assumptions and draw inferences to get its overall purpose (Nuttall, 1996). On the other hand, when readers use bottom-up processing, they try to understand parts of the text by examining vocabulary and syntax so that an understanding of the whole text can be achieved.

Therefore, it is essential that teachers are aware of the importance of the application of activities that promote the development of these processes with students.

This talk will be divided into two parts. First, the data-driven and conceptually-driven will be defined, compared and contrasted. Example of sub-skills of each approach will be shown. Then, some techniques, aiming at developing the sub-skills, will be suggested to jazz up the reading comprehension lesson.

Keywords:

Reading, reading comprehension, strategies, learner autonomy.