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SOME SOURCES OF READING PROBLEMS FOR FOREIGN‐LANGUAGE LEARNERS 1
Author(s) -
Yorio Carlos Alfredo
Publication year - 1971
Publication title -
language learning
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.882
H-Index - 103
eISSN - 1467-9922
pISSN - 0023-8333
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1971.tb00494.x
Subject(s) - reading (process) , linguistics , vocabulary , foreign language , process (computing) , psychology , computer science , first language , psycholinguistics , cognition , programming language , philosophy , neuroscience
According to Kenneth Goodman (1967), reading is a psycholinguistic process in which the reader, guided by (he knowledge of the language being read, reconstructs an encoded message by selecting syntactic and semantic cues as he proceeds. To read in a foreign language, we use basically the same method, even though native language interference and unfamiliarity with the code make the process much more complex. Foreign students consider vocabulary their most serious handicap in reading English; because of the nature of the reading process, words are the smallest physical meaningful units of the message and they play a more important role and constitute more of a problem than we are sometimes willing to concede. Current pedagogical approaches to dealing with this problem could be modified with a more accurate understanding of the reading process. Several specific suggestions are made.