Reading Instruction at Upper Primary Level

This section aims to highlight research findings of reading comprehension instruction, particularly at the upper primary level, from countries like the USA, England and Singapore. There is evidence from research that explicit teaching of specific reading strategies improves children’s reading comprehension (e.g. Rosenshine, Meister & Chapman, 1996; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Garcia & Pearson, 1990). Palincsar and

Brown (1984) identify four important self-regulating strategies for comprehension, which are: generating questions about the text, predicting, clarifying, and summarising. In their 1984 study in the USA, Palincsar and Brown provided specific instruction and practice in the use of these strategies to a group of seventh grade poor comprehenders (described as reciprocal teaching, to reflect the active role of the student in the teaching and learning process). This intervention led to significant gains on criterion tests of comprehension, reliable maintenance over time, generalisation to classroom comprehension tests, and improvement in standardized comprehension scores.

Subsequent evaluations of other interventions in the USA and UK, which explicitly teach children how to generate questions and carry out higher-level cognitive functions, support the Palincsar and Brown study (e.g. Rosenshine, Meister & Chapman, 1996). In Rosenshine et al’s review of intervention studies, students have been taught to generate questions as a means of improving their comprehension. It found that teaching students the cognitive strategy of generating questions about the material they had read resulted in gains in comprehension, as measured by tests given at the end of the intervention. While the UK national initiatives in education such as the National literacy strategy place considerable significance on whole class interactive teaching and the importance of classroom discourse (Hargreaves et al., 2003). Linda Hargreaves’ team evaluated interactive teaching in the National Literacy Strategy (NLS) in England. Interestingly, the evidence, which consisted of interviews and video recorded lessons of thirty teachers conducting lessons during the daily literacy hour as part of the NLS, showed that primary school teachers in England have in fact made their teaching of literacy more interactive, in the simplest sense (Hargreaves et al., 2003). In literacy sessions in both Key stages 1 and 2, they recorded an increase in the ratio of questions to statements since the first research project in 1976 (Galton et al, 1999) thus giving children more opportunity to answer questions. However, they also found that these responses were rarely extended and children were not engaging in genuine dialogue. They describe this type of interaction as ‘surface interaction’ characterised by a rapid exchange of question and answers. However, while the study’s system-based observation revealed some evidence of the teachers’ increased levels of interactivity, it is more helpful in developing competencies and raising awareness in teachers, than in classroom research. It might

not be adequate to deal with the complexities and nuances present in classroom interaction, particularly in reading instruction – the focus on this study.

Therefore, according to Parker and Hurry (2007), the discourse of the teaching and learning of comprehension skills would need to include a high level of reciprocity to enable students to engage in personal responses to text. However as Debra Myhill (2006) points out in her study of classroom discourse, teacher discourse will not support student learning if it is “concerned first and foremost with curriculum delivery and with leading students to a predetermined destination” (p. 39). Her research which analyses classroom discourse in six middle/ primary schools in the UK found that “despite explicit educational initiatives which seek to improve the quality of teacher talk, the discourse patterns in whole class teaching remain very similar to previous studies” (p. 36). She concludes that “ whole class interactions appear to be characterised by teacher control and by curriculum content” and that “the potential of teacher talk for developing student understanding or for exploring students’ misconceptions has not yet been fully recognised.” (p. 39)

In Parker and Hurry’s (2007) study sampling London schools, direct oral questioning was shown to be the dominant strategy for teaching reading comprehension. The prevalent form of questioning in the classroom was shown to be a ‘recitation script’. This type of directive questioning tends to produce predictable correct answers, and only occasionally are teachers’ questions used to assist students to develop more elaborated ideas. According to Parker and Hurry (2007), the range of the teachers’ questions was wide and appropriate however this places the student in too passive a role (p. 18). It could be that the format of the literacy hour itself constrains the teachers. It has been suggested that teachers are acutely aware of time pressures to meet the objectives within the literacy hour and when under such pressure tend to use a more directive form of teaching with less emphasis on active learning (Moyles et al., 2003).

In a two-year intervention research aimed at promoting Singaporean students’ self-regulated English literacy learning ability, Gong et al (2011) conducted a preparatory study which intended to collect students’ basic English learning information and identify the gap in their knowledge of literacy learning strategies.

They found that students did attempt to use different literacy learning strategies, though the average frequency of strategy use was not very high. Their findings also showed that students’ home languages are not related to their use of learning strategies, unlike their gender, motivation, self-efficacy, and out-of-school effort Gong et al (2011). In the language learning strategies literature, Cohen (2011) summarizes the significance of strategy instruction in second language learning. Carrell et al. (1989) conclude that the combined effect of cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction in second language reading is effective in enhancing reading comprehension. Zhang (2008), among many others, have extensively argued in favour of strategy training and offered evidence of its success. In a similar fashion, Zhang (2008) studied, through the examination of classroom processes, what EFL learners were doing in strategy-based reading instruction lessons and found that students were implicitly making the links between what they did as new reading tasks and what they had completed earlier on.