Content

Introduction......................................................................................................................................3

1. Psycholinguistics and Reading.................................................................................................4

1.1. Psycholinguistics..................................................................................................................4

1.2. Reading.................................................................................................................................4

1.2.1. Components of Reading....................................................................................................5

2. The Role of Psycholinguistics Processes in Reading...............................................................5

2.1. Theories of Teaching Reading..............................................................................................6

2.1.1. Psycholinguistic Model.....................................................................................................6

2.1.2. Bottom – up Model...........................................................................................................7

2.1.3. Socio-Cultural Model........................................................................................................7

2.2. The Most Effective Model to Use in the Classroom............................................................8

Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9

Bibliography..................................................................................................................................10
 3

Introduction
This essay aims at discussing the aspects related to Psycholinguistics and Reading. Though
Reading is defined as the process of decoding a set of written symbols that have been assigned
linguistic meaning, for the purpose of communicating ideas, this eaasy will look at reading from
a psychological perspective, since it is entitled “psycholinguistic and reading – the role of
psychological processes in reading”.

In addition, the essay will detail the components of written language that allow common
understanding and communication, how people initially learn to read, the roles of phonological
skill and other predictors of reading success. As well, it will explore major cognitive theories of
reading and the physical correlates of online reading processes. It will also discuss the most
effective model to use in the classroom.

The purpose of the researcher is to discuss the role of psychological processes in reading and for
him to concretise it; many articles were read as well as some books listed in bibliography
attached in last page.

.
 4

1. Psycholinguistics and Reading

1.1. Psycholinguistics
Psycholinguistics is branch of study which combines the discipline of psychology and
linguistics. It is concerned with the relationship between the human mind and the language since
it examines the processes that occur in brain while producing and perceiving the both written and
spoken discourse.

In the line alike, FERNÁNDEZ & CAIRNS (2010:1) say that Psycholinguistics is an
interdisciplinary field of study in which the goals are to understand how people acquire
language, how people use language to speak and understand one another, and how language is
represented and processed in the brain.
Due to the fact that psycholinguistics is an interdisciplinary field, nowadays it is the focus of
researchers who study the interrelation between mind and language.
The scope of psycholinguistics includes language performance under normal circumstances and
when it breaks down.

1.2. Reading
Reading is often seen as a fairly simple process where a person reads text from left to right and
from the top to the bottom while making meaning one word at a time.
In the article “Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game”, GOODMAN says that reading
involves exact, detailed, sequential perception and identification of letters, words, spelling
patterns and large language units.”
In general view, reading can be seen as is process of decoding a set of written symbols that have
been assigned linguistic meaning, for the purpose of communicating ideas.

CARROLL (2008:91) affirms that Reading, clearly, is a multifaceted and complex process.
Sharing the same line of David Carroll, The process of reading is much more complex than a
quite simple process where a person reads text from left to right and from the top to the bottom
while making sense one word at a time, and many theorists have presented models explaining
what skills and knowledge they believe people need to possess in order to read effectively.
 5

FERNÁNDEZ & CAIRNS (2010:187) underline that the basis of reading is the ability to decode
individual words; this involves matching each orthographic symbol, that is, each grapheme with
a phoneme.

Consequently, the view above sustains that reading and writing are certainly species specific – as
it is driving a car or playing chess, but they are distant from being universal in humans.

1.2.1. Components of Reading

There are three components of reading.
a) Decoding,
Decoding refers to the process of translating a printed word into a sound.
b) Comprehension
It is defined as the level of understanding of a text/message. This understanding comes from the
interaction between the words that are written and how they trigger knowledge outside the
text/message. Comprehension relies on a mastery of decoding. Children who struggle to decode
find it difficult to understand and remember what has been read. Because their efforts to grasp
individual words are so exhausting, they have very little mental energy left for understanding.
c) Retention
It has to do with the condition of keeping information. It could be in the Short term memory or
Long term Memory. The ability to retain relying heavily on a child’s decoding proficiency and
ability to comprehend what is read.

The main reading difficulty is called Dyslexia. Though dyslexia typically affects spelling and
writing, including transposing letters and words, it can also contribute to reading comprehension
problems. When a student has this type of learning disorder, he or she usually has problems with
letter and word recognition, as well as difficulties pronouncing words.

2. The Role of Psycholinguistics Processes in Reading

Among the reader factors, psychological aspects play a fundamental part in the process of
reading.
It is said that if our representation are incomplete and do not provide an understanding of the
incoming data from the text we will have problems processing and understanding the text.
 6

The psychological processes make a great part in evaluating a text with appreciation and trying
to understand the words, and making inferences to comprehend the text. Therefore,
understanding of text may vary among readers, because they may have different motivation, and
also their psychological perspective and purpose of reading may be different.

YAZDANPANAH (2007), cited in Journal of Education and Practice, specified that if the
psychological recourse is used correctly, an individual can comprehend a text successfully.

2.1. Theories of Teaching Reading

The theories of teaching Reading include the Psycholinguistic model, the Bottom-up model and
the Socio-cultural model.

2.1.1. Psycholinguistic Model

The psycholinguistic model of teaching reading is also called the ‘Top-down’ model and the
‘Inside-out’ model.
Goodman (1967), a theorist supporting this reading model, in his article proposes that the reader
is the major component of reading, as opposed to the Bottom-up model which focuses on the
text.
The Psycholinguistic model places importance on the reader making meaning from a text by
relating it to their background and prior understandings. The more prior knowledge and
experiences a reader has, the less dependence they will need to place on word order, language
structures, and phonological concepts.
Unlike the Bottom-up reading model, this theory focuses on the non-visual information that the
reader has and suggests that, in order to read, one must have semantic, syntactic and grapho-
phonic knowledge.
According to CARROLL (2008:51), a Psycholinguistic model states that information at the
higher levels may influence processing at the lower levels. For instance, a sentence context may
affect the identification of words within that sentence.
In another words, the top-down processes are represented by possible contextual effects on the
perception of individual lexical items.
 7

It means that bottom-up processes refer to multiple activation of even inappropriate word
meanings.

2.1.2. Bottom – up Model

It is a reading model that highlights the written or printed text. It emphasizes the ability to
decode or put into sound what is seen in the text.

CARROLL (2008:51) concludes that Bottom-up processing as that which proceeds from the
lowest level to the highest level of processing in such a way that all of the lower levels of
processing operate without influence from the higher levels. That is, the identification of
phonemes is not affected by the lexical, syntactic, or discourse levels; the retrieval of words is
not affected by syntactic or discourse levels; and so on.

McCarthy (1999), cited by GOODMAN in his article, has called this view “outside-in”
processing; referring to the idea that meaning exists in the printed page and is interpreted by the
reader then taken in.
The reader needs to:
 Identify letter features;
 Associate these features to recognize letters;
 Join letter to recognize spelling patterns;
 Connect spelling patterns to recognize words;
 Then carry on to sentence, clause or paragraph and text- level processing.

2.1.3. Socio-Cultural Model

The Socio-Cultural model of teaching Reading recognises the importance of both the reader and
the text in the reading process.
In this model, importance is placed equally on both the text and the reader. Unlike the
psycholinguistic and bottom-up models, the Socio-cultural theory relies on both the visual and
non-visual aspects of reading and not just on one of these factors.

The Socio-cultural reading model focuses on the importance of prior knowledge while
recognising the fact that certain skills are also necessary.
 8

This Reading theory consists of four Roles of the Reader which include:
 The Code Breaker – involving decoding visual information such as letter-sound
understanding;
 The Text Participant which involves creating meaning from the text by using prior
knowledge;

 The Text User – involving knowing the purpose of a text and how to use it, for example,
a recipe, comprehension or birthday card, and

 The Text Analysis has to do with working out what the author is trying to do to you, for
example, underlying intentions and biases.

According to this socio-cultural model, a reader is required to successfully perform each of these
four roles in order to become effective readers.

2.2. The Most Effective Model to Use in the Classroom

The Socio-Cultural model is said to be the most promising teaching Reading theory because it
tries to integrate the positive components and reduce the negative components of both the
psycholinguistic and the Bottom-up Reading theories.
This model, therefore, is maybe the most helpful theory to be used in the classroom since it
recognises the importance of both the Reader and the text.

ESKEY (1988) cited by GOODMAN in his article “Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing

Game”, says that a good reader is someone who is able to decode and interpret readings in an
increasingly regular manner.

Paraphrasing ESKEY (1988), Good reader tries to identify the purpose and the form of a text
before reading it, continually making predictions about what will happen next based on personal
experiences and information learned earlier. He also attempts to form a summary of what they
have read by using skills such as classifying, sequencing, hypothesising, predicting, inferring,
comparing and contrasting.
 9

Conclusion
People read certain types of materials for different purposes.
Different reading strategies such as skimming and scanning are, in fact, psycholinguistic ally
oriented activities.

Psycholinguistic approach resorts to text-based approach as a case of bottom-up processing so as

to emphasize the comprehension activity.
So it can be said that reading skill is mainly meaning based activity as proven by the
psycholinguistic approach.
Psycholinguistic approach points to the fact that a psycholinguistic control on reading reduces
the intrinsic difficulty of reading text by arousing the interest of the students onto the reading
passage. It provides authentic materials so as to increase the reading level.

It must be noticed that if the students are not properly exposed to authentic materials they may
fail in seeing their relevance to the real world which is mainly seen trough reading.

So, considering psychological factors in teaching curriculum could be profitable to the students
in acquiring reading skill.
 10

Bibliography
CARROLL, D. W. (2008). Psychology of Language. 5th edition. Thomson Wadsworth, USA.

FERNÁNDEZ, E.M. & CAIRNS, H. S. (2010). Fundamentals of Psycholinguistics. Blackwell

Publishing. UK.

Journal of Education and Practice. (2015) The Role of Psychological Factors in the Process of
Reading. Vol.6, No.29.

GOODMAN, K. S. An Article about Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game