The Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing is used in Reading activities

The Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processing is used in Reading activities.

Shanghai No.4 Middle School Shen Ping

上海市第四中学  沈 萍

   Pugh (1978) shows how efficient readers ‘switch’ styles according to the type of text they are reading. One major contribution to our knowledge of reading, with many implications for the classroom, is provided by the Schema Theory or the Interactive Model. Bartlett (1932) first used this particular term to explain how the knowledge that we have about the world is organized to interrelated patterns based on our previous knowledge and experience. These ‘schemata’ also allow us to predict what may happen. This theory takes our idea of the interactive reading process a stage further by proposing that efficient readers are related ‘texts’ to their background knowledge of the world. Brown and Yule (1983b), McCarthy and Carter (1994), Cook (1997) and Nunan (1999) all provide accounts of how this background knowledge can influence the comprehension process. Clearly it can sometimes be based on previous knowledge of similar texts. As Nunan (1999:256) writes, ‘We interpret what we read in terms of what we already know, and we integrate what we already know with the content of what we are reading.’ It is why reading something written by someone in a language with different cultural assumptions from ours can be difficult. Overseas teachers and students sometimes complain that reading literature in an L2 is problematic not just because of the language, but also because shared assumptions of different schemata do not always match up.

In many cases an efficient reader appears to use what are called ‘Top-Down’ and ‘Bottom-Up’ strategies. This means that the reader will not just try to decipher the meaning of individual lexical items but will also have clear ideas about the overall rhetorical organization of the text. The essential features of the bottom-up approach are that the reader tries to decode each individual letter encountered by matching it to the minimal units of meaning in the sound system (the phoneme) to arrive at a meaning of the text, whereas with the top-down approach, the interaction process between the reader and the text involves the reader in activating knowledge of the world, plus past experiences, expectations and intuitions, to arrive at a meaning of the text. In other words, the top-down process interacts with the bottom-up process in order to aid comprehension.

We might further illustrate this by looking at a speaking/listening analogy first of all. If someone asks us, ‘Have you got a watch?’ and we get stuck at the level of the bottom-up process by working out each individual word, then clearly we are missing the top-down process request, that the speaker is in fact asking for a match.

Here is a unit of reading materials named “Rock Music” from a published textbook New Century Junior English for Junior Eight (the II Semester). Let’s try to see how some of these principles may operate in reality.

Read the following passages and complete the two tasks below.

Rock Music

(From the title, can the learner predict what the passages will be about?)

Rock music is now the most popular type of music around the world. It began in the U.S.A. in the early 1950s. At that time, R&B (rhythm and blues) music was very popular with black Americans. “R&B” started as a kind of Black music. Then white musicians copied the style. In the mid-1950s, a new kind of White R&B music, called “rock’n’roll”, became very popular. Its singers attracted millions of teenage fans. The music was fast and loud.

In the early 1960s, rock’n’roll became old-fashioned. At that time, the Beatles, a new group from England, became popular.

The Beatles started by singing American style songs, but they soon developed their own style. They also introduced different instruments. Groups like the Beatles had a very important influence on the style of popular music.

Rock music has continued to change and develop. It has combined with music from different parts of the world. Today, there are hundreds of different types of rock music, and almost every country has its own form of rock.

(Where did the learner look on the line? Did the learner skim/scan? Did the learner go backwards/forwards? Did the learner stop to look at every word? Did the learner stop to think at all?)

Task 1

Complete the table below.

A brief History of Rock Music

Time

Event

Feature

early 1950s

birth of ___________

Black music

___________

Developed into ___________

White music

 _________and___________

early 1960s

R&B became___________; __________became popular.

till the present

Has continued to change and ___________

Has combined with music from ___________

   Task 2

Complete the following passage with the italicized words and expressions in the reading.

The Beatles have been the most successful pop group in the world. Millions of people, especially ____________, are crazy about them and their music. A lot of the Beatles’ songs became ____________. Those songs always had strong ____________ so that people could dance to them. Though their songs became popular during ____________, they still have a great ____________ on the music of today. The Beatles’ success story suggests that good music is never ____________.

   The reader is suggested to finish task 1 after reading the material within the limited minutes. He should guess the meaning of the new words. Task 2 is completed by the reader himself first. Then he can have a check with his partner.

 Obviously, the writer provides readers with a purpose for reading by supplying materials that stimulate interest and do not have an over familiar content. He may want to offer the learners effective reading strategies, which might be to approach this material by noting the title first of all. When the reader is really fired up by the topic or the task, he gets much more from what is in front of him. The moment he gets the hint-the book cover, the headline, the topic-his brain starts predicting what he is going to meet-to read. This clearly points ahead to what the writer is saying and how such kind of music changes or develops since the early 1950s. The reader may also put ‘schematic’ knowledge into operation: in other words an understanding of the background to Rock Music and the Beatles. Expectations are set up and the active process of reading is ready to begin. Teachers should give students ‘hints’ so that they can predict what’s coming too. It will make them better and more engaged readers. This ‘top-down’ processing would interact with the text as would the ‘bottom-up’ processing at the lexical level.

Task 1 focus on the comprehension from the smallest unit-letters, words, phrases. The reader may pay more attention to the clauses, the sentences and the passages while doing Task 2. The writer has chosen suitable reading tasks here- the right kind of table and blanks for the junior students. It is said that the most interesting text can be undermined by asking boring and inappropriate questions; the most commonplace passage can be made really exciting with imaginative and challenging tasks. Any reading text is full of sentences, words, ideas, descriptions etc. It doesn’t make sense just to get students to read it and then drop it to move on to something else. Good teachers integrate the reading text into interesting class sequences, using the topic for discussion and further tasks, using the language for Study and later Activation.

  Of all the language skills, reading is the most private, and there is a problem in getting feedback on a private process. The notion of privacy in reading can sometimes be related to learner needs: a learner may need material of a different level and topic to other learners in the group, which may involve the teacher in the provision of some individualized reading in the programme. Teachers have to be able to assess the difficulty of the materials for the learners and to grade them according to familiarity of topic, length and complexity of structure and possible number of unfamiliar words/expressions, as overloading learners with too much may involve them in decoding vocabulary at the expense of reading for meaning. Teachers can also develop and foster appropriate skills according to reading purpose, for example by encouraging students to read quickly when it is appropriate to do so. Timed activities or ‘speed reading’ cab be related to the private nature of the reading process. Every theory has its day. Consequently, the transferability of principled flexible skills to different types of reading materials is one of the most effective things to develop in the reading skills class.

Bibliography

Cook, G. 1997, Key concepts in ELT: schemata. ELT Journal 51/1, 86.

Harmer, J. 2000, How to Teach English. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

McDonough, J.; Christopher Shaw 2004, Materials and Methods in ELT. China: Peking University Press.

Nunan, D. 1999, Second Langue Teaching and Learning. Boston, Mass.: Heinle and Heinle.

Stern, HH. 1983, Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching. Oxford University Press.