usually referred to as the top-down and the bottom-up approaches which the reader
uses in order to create meaning.
The top-down approach
Anderson and Pearson (1988) define comprehension as the interaction of old
knowledge with new information. This background knowledge a reader brings with
her when encountering a text is according to Williams and Moran (1989:219)
organized in“…abstract structures representing concepts stored in memory” known as
schemata. The activation of relevant schemata helps the reader form hypotheses about
the content of the text which is very important in the reading process as, according to
Anderson (1994:178) it facilitates comprehension.
The bottom up approach
This approach refers to the information the reader takes out of the printed
material such as vocabulary and linguistic structures.(Eskey,1988:93) Students need
to practice skills such as cultivation of vocabulary and syntactic structures so that they
can confirm, adjust or reject hypotheses which they had made earlier using the topdown approach.
1.2.3. Reading for a purpose
In real life reading is always a purposeful activity and the foreign language
classroom should not be an exception. A purpose for reading makes reading
interesting and efficient. According to Nuttall (1982:172) learners should be made
aware that: “…the focus of a reading lesson is neither language nor content. It is how
language is used for conveying content for a purpose”.
1.2.4. Reading flexibly
As our purpose for reading is not always the same but varies according to the
situation, students should learn to read flexibly and to apply different strategies each
time. As it is referred in Beaumont (1996, unit 1, pp 30-31), they have to be able to
read rapidly in order to get the gist of a text (skimming ) to read for detail (scanning)
or to read for a deeper understanding (intensive reading).
1.3. Implications for the teacher
The teacher’s role as a coordinator and facilitator for learning is to organize
the lesson in such a way that students can benefit as much as possible and be
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