Autonomous Readers Research Articles

Embracing technology in EFL pre-university classrooms: A qualitative study on EFL learners' perceptions of intensive and extensive reading approaches

This study attempts to explore the perceptions of Pakistani pre-university EFL learners about the intensive reading (IR) and extensive reading (ER) approaches and the use of technology in these two approaches. This is a qualitative study using a purposive sampling technique. The participants were 10 pre-university undergraduate students enrolled in the foundation program of a public sector university in Pakistan. Researchers used semi-structured interviews and reflective diaries as data collection tools. Thematic analysis and personal interpretation techniques were used to analyze the results. The results showed that after participating in the reading classes, the students had positive perceptions of the IR and ER approaches and found them useful and interesting. The results also showed that the learners felt that their language skills improved significantly after participating in the IR and ER-related activities. Students also found these reading approaches to be complementary to each other. The results also indicated that teachers' use of intensive reading and extensive reading approaches could make learners skilled and autonomous readers. Ultimately, their reading problems could be solved with these approaches. Moreover, the learners also perceived the use of technology in these two reading approaches as of great benefit to them. The researchers recommend incorporating IR and ER activities into the EFL classroom using digital resources to maximize EFL learners' reading abilities and other language skills.

New Challenges in Children’s Illustration in Portugal

The aim of this paper is to reflect on some of the current trends in Portuguese illustration for children, focusing on an intertextual reading of the picturebooks written and illustrated by Manuela Bacelar, as a precursor in the creation of this kind of book in Portugal. Based on the discursive interdependence of text and illustrations, stylistic and technical-narrative procedures are observed, in necessary articulation with the visual/graphic and material/peritextual aspects. The potential of these aspects is highlighted in the composition of the work and in the construction of its multiple semiosis. The interdependence of text and illustrations poses specific requirements in the process of reading and has an impact on the formation of competent and autonomous readers. Relying on modern literary currents to be found in a postmodernist aesthetic, this paper examines the corpus, from both a technical and compositional point of view, seeking to investigate some of the traits and formal rhetorical, stylistic and thematic resources that distinguish the work of this awarded artist.

"READING IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCES AT THE LEVEL OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PUPILS "

We all agree that reading has a decisive role in enriching and developing students' knowledge for the activation of vocabulary, for the growing taste for reading, for beauty, developing imagination, the power of comparison. Through reading the children get to know more characters, go through many stories, identify themselves with the characters and learn to support their point of view. The issue of educating the taste for reading is extremely delicate, the demarcation between tools offered by the school and the pleasure of reading, which is much more difficult to obtain through standard methods in the classroom. Teachers in general and teachers of a foreign language in particular can only contribute to the formation of this passion, they can help children become autonomous readers. Didactic games remain active methods that contribute to the full development of the child's personality.

Mediación de lectura em el proceso de asignación de sentido y significado para el (re)conocimiento identitario y protagonismo de los sujetos sociales

Ao compreender o ato de ler como subjetivo, cultural e político, é necessário refletir sobre como a mediação da leitura pode contribuir para que os sujeitos compreendam seu sentido e o significado e para construir e fortalecer seu processo identitário e o protagonismo social. Para tanto, é fundamental aprofundar as pesquisas que demonstram a importância da mediação da leitura nesse processo. Nessa perspectiva, este artigo tem o objetivo de evidenciar, a partir da literatura da Ciência da Informação e áreas correlatas, que trata da mediação da leitura, aspectos que abordam o processo de atribuição de sentido e significado para o (re)conhecimento e o fortalecimento identitário como basilar para o alcance do protagonismo social. Esta pesquisa se caracteriza como qualitativa e tem como método o bibliográfico, relacionando aspectos conceituais e analíticos que subsidiaram o estudo. Os resultados indicaram que as atividades de mediação da leitura podem despertar o gosto e o prazer pela leitura (literária, artística, musical etc.) - o que requer do agente mediador que considere os contextos socioculturais em que os sujeitos estão inseridos - e que a mediação consciente da leitura colabora para a formação dos sujeitos, tanto no âmbito individual quanto no coletivo, e apresenta um caráter (trans)formador no desenvolvimento de leitores críticos, conscientes e autônomos, impulsionando-os a alcançar o protagonismo social.

INVESTIGATING ENGLISH EDUCATION MASTER STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS ON THEIR SELF-EFFICACY IN ACADEMIC READING

There is always a glimmer of hope for graduate university EFL students to transfigure into more proficient, confident, critical, and autonomous readers when they fully entrench robust self-efficacy construction at the onset of pain-staking L2 academic reading enterprises. self-efficacy can transform EFL students to be more persistent, resilient, and innovative L2 readers adaptable to fluctuating reading learning situations. This qualitative study was plied to investigate English Education Master Students’ perceptions of their self-efficacy in academic reading. Qualitative content analysis was harnessed to obtain more overarching depictions out of the specific phenomenon undergone by the participants. 31 English Education Master Students derived from batch 2019 and 2020, Sanata Dharma University also took part in this qualitative study to fill out the online Likert-scale questionnaire, and 3 out of these research participants were also invited to further participate in the open-ended interview activities. Two major findings were generated by this study namely: (1) Self-efficacy enables graduate university EFL students to be more proficient L2 readers, and (2) The lower inducement of self-efficacy may create pessimistic and struggling L2 readers.

Introducing a new, machine learning process, and online tools for conducting sales literature reviews: An application to the forty years of JPSSM

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are having an immense influence on sales professionals. Unfortunately, prior studies have paid less attention to how these technologies are affecting sales scholars’ work, such as conducting literature reviews. Our study expands the repertoire of inquiry for sales academics in the domain of AI/ML in three novel ways. First, we offer an efficient process to analyzing the sales literature, through an unsupervised ML-based process, which allows the identification of articles/topics based on semantic similarity rather than based on keywords. Second, we validate our process by applying it to scholarly work published in JPSSM as well as to the practitioner’s literature in the past 40 years. We find that the topics and trends uncovered by our autonomous reader are coherent with previous academic reviews, with some topics being entirely new. We also find that academic research published in JPSSM accurately reflects corporate realities, thereby alleviating concerns about the ‘sales academics-practitioners’ gap. Finally, we provide authors and reviewers with an online application, which allows for rapid identification of related JPSSM articles, and a set of ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) tools, which can help researchers in quickly producing their own literature reviews of articles published in any journal.

Estratégias de leitura e suas contribuições para a formação do leitor nos anos iniciais

Esta pesquisa teve como objetivo investigar as contribuições das estratégias de leitura para a formação do leitor nos anos iniciais. Justifica-se pela necessidade de repensar as concepções e práticas de leitura vivenciadas ao longo da formação leitora, apresentando possibilidades e estratégias para a formação de um leitor autônomo. Neste sentido, delineou-se a problemática da pesquisa: Quais as contribuições das estratégias de leitura para a formação do leitor nos anos iniciais? O estudo foi realizado mediante pesquisa bibliográfica, de abordagem qualitativa, em diálogo com Leffa (1999) e Silva (1984,1999) que buscaram compreender as diferentes concepções de leitura, e, Luria (2010); Souza et al. (2010); Souza, Girotto e Silva (2012); Girotto e Souza (2011); Souza e Girotto (2013); Solé (1998), entre outros, que destacaram em seus estudos a importância das estratégias de leitura e da leitura literária como caminho para a compreensão leitora nos anos iniciais.

LIVRO LITERÁRIO NA FORMAÇÃODE LEITORES DOS ANOS FINAIS DO ENSINO FUNDAMENTAL

Este artigo tem como questão principal a reflexão sobre práticas de educação literária ocorridas no âmbito de uma escola pública mediadas pelo livro. Buscamos compreender as estratégias de mediação de uma professora e evidenciar os critérios de seleção dos livros a serem lidos e suas formas de acesso. A perspectiva teórico-metodológica, de inspiração etnográfica, baseia-se nos conceitos de letramento ideológico, letramento literário, literatura e mediação. Os dados foram produzidos por meio de observações registradas em diário de campo, entrevistas com a professora e questionário aplicado aos alunos. Os resultados indicam que as formas de mediação da professora foram decisivas e adequadas na formação de um leitor autônomo e envolvido com o texto literário, rompendo com práticas de escolarização inadequada da literatura.

Concepções de leitura e formação do leitor nos anos iniciais do ensino fundamental nos documentos oficiais de ensino

The process of training a reader is built through stimulation and mediation, this process has often been addressed, for its difficulties in training a reader with autonomy, since the number of students who reach the end of elementary school with difficulties in reading a simple text, that is, with a deficit in reading comprehension. Through bibliographical studies on authors who have been discussing this problem, I will try to elucidate the process of training the reader, on the conceptions and methodologies that collaborate in the training of a proficient reader, based on the official teaching documents in the areas of reading, and through these I will try to highlight how reading lies within these documents and what contributions they bring to the training of the autonomous reader in the initial years of elementary school.

Perspectivas y expectativas docentes sobre las prácticas lectoras de estudiantes del primer año de Psicología

La lectura en la universidad en el área de las ciencias sociales implica trabajar con múltiples fuentes textuales y discursivas. Muchas veces los docentes pueden esperar que los estudiantes se comporten como lectores autónomos y que sepan de antemano cómo leer en un área específica. En este sentido, en este trabajo se abordan las perspectivas y expectativas de los docentes acerca de las prácticas lectoras de los alumnos de Psicología de una universidad de gestión estatal. Para ello, se realiza un estudio cualitativo en el cual se entrevista a 30 docentes del primer año de la carrera de Psicología. Las entrevistas se analizan a la luz de categorías que se desprenden del marco teórico y se consideran las emergentes también. Los resultados dan a conocer que las perspectivas de la gran mayoría de los docentes sobre la lectura de los aprendientes se centran en las dificultades y que, pocas perspectivas docentes, acentúan las fortalezas y la autocrítica con las prácticas de enseñanza. Además, estas perspectivas se relacionan con las prácticas lectoras esperadas por los docentes. Aquellos docentes que subrayan dificultades, declaran propiciar prácticas lectoras monológicas y esperan que los estudiantes lean de este modo. Los que reconocen potencialidades y dificultades en sus alumnos al leer, declaran posibilitar prácticas dialógicas y esperan que los alumnos puedan leer de forma conjunta con ellos. Las perspectivas lectoras llevan a los docentes a desplegar prácticas lectoras que pueden tender a remediar las dificultades o a constituirse en espacios de construcción de significados compartidos sobre lo que se lee.

Estratégias de leitura e a compreensão leitora: uma pesquisa-ação realizada no Ensino Médio

Este trabalho é recorte de uma pesquisa mais abrangente, a qual foi realizada a partir do tema estratégias leitoras e o objetivo foi desenvolvê-las. Já neste recorte, o objetivo principal é discutir sobre o desenvolvimento de uma atividade de leitura realizada em uma sala de 1º ano de ensino médio de uma escola pública de São Mateus/MA, com a participação de doze alunos matriculados regularmente. Como metodologia proposta, adotou-se a pesquisa-ação na perspectiva de Thiollent (1986), referindo-se a uma abordagem qualitativa, descritiva e interpretativa. O estudo mais abrangente foi composto de seis instrumentos de pesquisa: três questionários, uma prova diagnóstica, atividades de leitura realizadas em sala e anotações feitas pela pesquisadora durante o estudo. Neste artigo, o foco central foi apenas o uso de estratégias de leitura e a compreensão textual do aluno a partir da leitura do texto “queridos pais”. Teoricamente, tivemos como suporte Boruchovitch (2001, 2005, 1999), Kintsch e Rawson (2013), Freire (2011), Portilho (2011), Smith (1989), Solé (1998), Kleiman (2008, 2009), Martins (2012), e outros. Os resultados encontrados tendem a responder de forma satisfatória que os alunos de 1º ano do ensino médio fazem uso de estratégias tanto cognitivas como metacognitivas a partir do momento que se deparam com a leitura de textos. E, através dessas estratégias foi possível perceber que elas interferem nas suas competências leitoras de maneira ativa, levando-os a lerem e compreenderem determinado texto, tornando-os leitores participativos e autônomos com relação à leitura em sala de aula.

PENGARUH KUALITAS STRATEGI MEMBACA TERHADAP PRESTASI AKADEMIK

The dual-role of the students of English Education Department Teacher Training and Education Faculty Muria Kudus University as both English language learners and language users gets them to be autonomous, effective, efficient, and strategic readers. The objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between quality of the reading strategy and academic achievement of the students. The subjects of this research were 104 students of EED UMK comprising of all semesters taken randomly. The instrument used was closed-ended questionnaire. The result of this research reveals that there is no relationship between quality of the reading strategy and academic achievement, meaning that the quality of reading strategy does not influence the academic achievement of the students. Implikasions and recommendations for the institution and for further research were proposed.

Autonomous readers: the impact of news customisation on audiences’ psychological and behavioural outcomes

ABSTRACTCustomisation features on news websites and apps provide news readers with increased control over their reading experience by allowing them to choose what they can read next. This study investigated how two types of news customisation features could influence news readers’ need satisfaction for autonomy, news enjoyment, news engagement and intrinsic motivation to continue reading with two experiments. The findings of experiment 1 (n = 47) showed that news readers experienced greater need satisfaction for autonomy and spent more time reading news stories when the stories were provided through customisation features compared to the control condition (non-customisation). Experiment 2 (n = 92) found that participants’ intrinsic motivation to read increased when the stories were presented through the simple customisation feature compared to the no customisation feature. Further, news readers’ locus of control types (internal or external) was found to moderate the effect of the customisation feature on perceived engagement.

A leitura integrativa e o ensino de leitura em livros didáticos de espanhol para os anos finais do ensino fundamental

Traditionally, reading studies have shown, often in a timeline, three views on how the information processing by the reader is given: bottom-up, top-down and interactive (top-down/bottom-up). Believing that the proposal of an interactive model today covers a variety of theoretical lines and different views on reading, here we seek to build a specific vision, which we are calling integrative. This view is based on classical studies in cognition articulated to studies derived from the Contemporary Cognitive Linguistics. We understand that reading is the result of successive conceptual integrations that occur online and in real time between the reader’s prior knowledge and the information brought by the text. Based on this, we understand that the process of generating inferences is an evidence of this integration and that it can be an important construct to apply our understanding of reading to the teaching. Thus, we use a cognitive view of this process to analyze activities presented in Spanish textbooks produced between 2004 and 2015. We also seek to evaluate how the participation of this discipline in PNLD contributed to changes in relation to reading instruction. Our results show a significant change in reading proposals presented by books over time, but also point to the necessity of considering the studies in cognition for the development of reading activities in school that could validate and develop the cognitive processes of the students and, therefore, his or her construction as an autonomous and critical reader. Keywords: reading, cognition, textbook.

ANÁLISIS DE LOS SENTIDOS DE REPRESENTACIÓN FORMAL DE LIBROS ILUSTRADOS DE LA SALA INFANTIL Y JUVENIL DE UNA BIBLIOTECA PÚBLICA

Enmarcado en el proyecto de investigación y creación Ocho puntos suspensivos, colección de narraciones visuales para el aprendizaje sensorial, perceptivo y simbólico en niños de 2 a 14 años, se presentará el análisis de un poco más de ochenta libros entre infantiles y juveniles tomados de la sala infantil del Centro Cultural Comfandi, Cali (Colombia). Se revisó la colección abierta de literatura infantil y juvenil, libros informativos y revistas para niños3 , organizado en cuatro secciones diferenciadas, según el nivel de los lectores, y clasificadas por rangos de edades y competencias lectoras: arrullos, primeros lectores, lectores en marcha y lectores autónomos. Con base en estas secciones, se consideraron cuatro dimensiones analíticas: contenido narrativo, contenido icónico, elementos materiales del formato y contenido educativo. Las dimensiones mencionadas se establecieron mediante una caracterización de los sujetos (niños y jóvenes) y los objetos (libros), y bajo criterios conceptuales respecto al conocer, el aprender a ser y el aprender a saber, en niños y jóvenes de 2 a 14 años (con base en sus niveles de competencias representativas, comunicativas e interpretativas). Aunque se revisaron más de 80 obras entre libros ilustrados, libros álbum y cómics, desde sus aspectos formales, temáticos, de producción y carácter pedagógico, el resultado no puede considerarse rigurosamente representativo, sino una valoración parcial pero argumentada, según criterios propios del diseño gráfico.

An Examination of ESL Taiwanese University Students' Multimodal Reading Responses

This article reports an empirical study conducted in a Taiwanese English as a second language university class. Reader response theory is the theoretical framework guiding the study. Fifty-nine university students were encouraged to collaboratively create multimodal responses to a classic English reading. Taking an aesthetic reading stance, the students used drama, visuals, and music to interpret the text and to construct meanings. Students' “lived through” reading experiences and their perceptions of this approach were examined. The results suggest that employing multimodal reading responses empowered the students, lifting the language limits that might confine them. Multimodal reading responses also sustained students' reading experiences and helped them better comprehend the text. Most importantly, the aesthetic reading experience motivated the students, promising a possibility for them to evolve into autonomous and proficient English readers.

THE KWLM TECHNIQUE: SUSTAINING INTERESTS AND ENHANCING MOTIVATION IN READING

The common phenomenon among students, which becomes the persistent problem faced by many English teachers, is the attempt to sustain genuine interest in continuing to learn and use English, especially reading once the examinations are over. Teachers have to create a healthy balance between preparing students for the standardized examination and for life-long language skills. Utilizing an effective teaching technique like the KWLM can encourage students to read actively through the learning events and promote students motivation to read. This technique assists teachers to make students comprehend reading texts through charts that include column for each activity on activating students’ prior knowledge, expressing their curiosity, explaining information gotten, and extending information on the topic. As it provides an opportunity for students to expand their ideas by reading more texts, they are indirectly trained to do self-directed reading. This is justified by the students responses towards the questionnaires distributed. By utilizing the KWLM technique, the ultimate goal of language teachers to help learners become autonomous readers can be achieved. Keywords: The KWLM Technique, autonomous learner.

Análisis sobre los procesos cognitivos implícitos en la comprensión de textos.

<p align="left">Esta investigación encuentra punto de partida en dos situaciones problemáticas fundamentales. En primera instancia, atiende a la creencia de que el estudiante al ingresar en la universidad, al haber superado niveles previos de escolaridad, se puede calificar de lector autónomo y, por tanto, se encuentra en capacidad de asumir de manera autónoma procesos de comprensión y de aprendizaje a partir de textos. En segundo lugar, reconoce la disyunción entre los diversos desarrollos teóricos alcanzados en relación con los procesos de comprensión de lectura y las prácticas adelantadas alrededor de estos procesos.</p>Ahora bien, cuando el ámbito universitario hace referencia a procesos de formación de las nuevas generaciones de maestros, indagar acerca de las estrategias cognitivas y metacognitivas en la comprensión de textos va más allá del reconocimiento de los propios procesos lectores y de las repercusiones en el actuar como estudiantes universitarios: da lugar a que, a partir de conocerse y reconocerse como lector, se abran caminos que recaerán en las futuras formas de encaminar actos de enseñanza. <br /><p align="left">Desde el punto de vista metodológico, el proyecto se centra en la construcción del estado del arte sobre los abordajes teóricos que se han hecho sobre la comprensión de textos académicos y los procesos cognitivos implícitos.</p>

Researching one's way into Vygotsky

Abstract In this paper, we make a case for teaching theory at the earliest stages of university education. Drawing upon Henning's (2008) study of theoretical learning in a research project, we theorise a third-year one-semester undergraduate module on Vygotsky's theory to show how students can acquire scientific concepts by doing research into these concepts. We describe three epistemic stages that students go through in their journey to become autonomous thinkers, readers and researchers. Data supporting our claims are drawn from the writings of 33 students, teacher-designed materials, and teacher diary entries from 2005 to 2010. Students focus on one stage of development that children go through, namely the use of private speech between four and seven years according to Piaget and Vygotsky. Students replicate these scholars’ empirical studies of private speech by using as their data base, introspective accounts, field observations in their communities and finally, by conducting research to obtain privat...

A divulgação do acervo PNBE 2008 em escolas municipais de Caxias do Sul

This article aims promoting the reflection about the reception and the strategies of the disclosure of PNBE 2008’s digest (Programa Nacional Biblioteca na Escola – National Program Library at School) in municipal schools of Caxias do Sul. The data was discussed from the data base of CEALE/FaE/UFMG and official documents available at the Program’s website and theoretical support of Regina Zilberman, Edgar Morin, Reuven Feuerstein and Carol Kuhlthau, who discuss the importance of literature and reading mediation for the human development. For the analysis, written questionnaires were observed, which were answered by 70 schools, regarding questions about the incorporation and the disclosure of the received materials, and also about the implementation of specific activities with these books. The results show that the majority of schools has disclosed the collection during the “reading time” (31,82%) and through the exposition at the library and/or at the teacher’s room (25,75%). However, it was realized that there was such a lack of association between the school activities and the digest’s arrival, which stresses the importance of this disclosure for all school community and the integration among different reading mediators to the formation of autonomous readers.