TESL 130 unit 1

In the, McCullough, G. What 80% Comprehension Feels Like (2016). It made me realize that only partial comprehension is very hard to deal with. It was frustrating not fully understanding what was being said. I found myself trying to use the whole sentence to figure out the word.
I realized that reading becomes a task taken for granted. When learning a new language there is so much more to reading than just recognizing words and what they mean. To be able to fully understand what is being said there is so much more required. The research on reading was especially useful.  The bottom-up and top-down processing was interesting. Realizing how we process a reading is infinitely useful. We don't realize what we are thinking when we are reading, just that it happens. Using schema theory and background knowledge helps us to decide what to hold on to and what to let go in our head. For extensive reading I found it surprising they suggest using longer texts. The fact that research suggests that giving a longer text will lead to the learner becoming more proficient with reading ability, linguistic competence, vocabulary, spelling and writing was interesting. The focus on vocabulary seems quite obvious and justified, how can you know what you are reading if you can't understand any of the words. I could not imagine the difficulty involved with teaching an L2 to an L1 who is not literate in their own L1.
The characteristics of written language was very interesting, reminding me that there is so much more to reading than looking at the page and understanding. Understanding the permanence of the written word and the ability to look back at the text reminds me of how I will reread a sentence when I am not sure of a word or what the text is trying to tell me. the processing time required reminds me of school when I would be ahead of the class in reading and the struggles some students faced when it took them longer to read a text. Giving enough time for all the students to read and process feels important to me. If you are rushed you tend to not fully grasp what it is you are reading and miss important information. Another good point for me was the interpretation a reader makes on a text. When not speaking to the author you can not ask them what they meant when they wrote it. The only clues we have to what was meant are graphemes. We only have so much to go on. The increase in variety in lexical items is also a big dilemma that L2 readers will find. I can think of many texts I've written where the words chosen seem to be more complex than necessary and would not be used in everyday speaking.

reference:
Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language

pedagogy. Upper Saddle River: Pearson.(Brown, D. & Lee, H. (2015)