A STUDY ON THE USE OF TOP-DOWN APPROACH TO IMPROVE READING SKILL FOR LEARNERS AT EQUEST ENGLISH CENTRE

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES




NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY



A STUDY ON THE USE OF TOP-DOWN APPROACH TO IMPROVE
READING SKILL FOR LEARNERS AT EQUEST ENGLISH CENTRE

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP TOP-DOWN ĐỂ
NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC CHO HỌC VIÊN TRUNG TÂM ANH
NGỮ EQUEST)


M.A. Minor ProgrammeThesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111





Hanoi, 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES




NGUYỄN THỊ THÚY


A STUDY ON THE USE OF TOP-DOWN APPROACH TO IMPROVE
READING SKILL FOR LEARNERS AT EQUEST ENGLISH CENTRE

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP TOP-DOWN ĐỂ
NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG ĐỌC CHO HỌC VIÊN TRUNG TÂM ANH
NGỮ EQUEST)


M.A. Minor ProgrammeThesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111
Supervisor: Dr. PHẠM ĐĂNG BÌNH



Hanoi, 2014
i
DECLARATION

To the best of my knowledge and belief, this minor thesis contains no material
which has previously been submitted and accepted for any other degree in any
university. The thesis is my own work and based on my own research. It involves
no material previously published or written by any other person, except where due
reference is made in the paper.
Hanoi, 2014

Nguyê
̃
n Thi
̣
Thuy
́














ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, Mr. Pham Dang Binh, from Vietnam National University, University of
Languages and International Studies for his invaluable guidance, criticism and his
continual encouragement to the process of completing this minor thesis.
My gratefulness is to all the teachers from Department of Post-graduate
Studies, University of Languages and International Studies for their teaching and
useful knowledge.
My sincere thanks also go to all my colleagues who are the teachers at
Equest Centre for their help and suggestions for the topic of my study.
I truly wish to thank all my students at Equest Centre, especially those of
class FAE C1 and FAE C2 who have actively participated in the study.
Last but not least, my sincere thanks are extended to my family and my best
friends who have constantly supported and encouraged me to carry out the thesis.








iii
ABSTRACT

Learning English at a lot of English Centers is becoming more and more
popular. Therefore, understanding the importance of English, all teachers at Equest
English Centre have an attempt to satisfy the learners‟ need. However, to master
English learners need to grasp a lot of different skills such as listening, speaking,
reading and writing. Among these skills, reading is an important one because it does
not only help student develop other language skills, but also provides them

knowledge on the target language.
The above has inspired the writing of this study as an attempt to apply top-
down approach in teaching reading to improve reading skills for learners at Equest
Centre.
This study consists of three parts. Part one presents the rationale, aims,
research questions, scope and methods of the study. Part two includes three
chapters. Chapter one sets up theoretical background that is relevant to the purpose
of the study. The following chapter shows the setting, the subjects, the methods, the
way to collect data and the effects of using top-down approach in teaching and
learning reading skill at Equest English Centre. The last chapter in this part focuses
on the findings, discussion and suggestions for improving reading skill to learners at
Equest English. Part three summarizes the key issues in the study, points out the
limitations and provides some suggestions for further study.





iv
LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS
1. Tables
Table 1.1. Descriptive statistics for the pre-test of the experimental and control
groups
Table 1.2. Comparison of mode, mean, median and SD for pre-test of the
experimental and control groups
Table1.3. Descriptive statistics for the post-test of the experimental and control
groups
Table 1.4. Comparison of mode, mean, median and SD for post-test of the
experimental and control groups
Table 1.5. Comparison of mean and standard deviation between the experimental

and control group in pre-test and post-test
Table 2.1. Activities motivated students in the pre-reading stage
Table 2.2. Activities attracted students in while-reading stage
Table 2.3. Useful activities to students in post-reading stage
Table 2.4. Students‟ difficulties in reading
Table 2.5. Teaching methods in helping students overcome difficulties in reading
2. Charts
Chart 1.1. Percentage of the raw mark in the pre-test
Chart 1.2. Percentage of the raw mark in the post-test
Chart 2.1. The students‟ opinion about the reading tasks
Chart 2.2. The students‟ opinion about teaching methods
Chart 2.3. The students‟ opinion about learning reading with top-down process
Chart 2.4. The students‟ opinion about their reading skill after a course with top-
down process




v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II
ABSTRACT III
LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS IV
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Hypothesis 2
3. Aims of the study 2
4. Scope of the study 2

5. Methods of the study 3
6. Design of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
1.1. Theory on Reading 4
1.1.1. Definitions of Reading 4
1.1.2. Reading comprehension 5
1.1.3. Types of reading 7
1.2. Teaching Reading skill 9
1.2.1. Principles of teaching reading 9
1.2.2. Stages of a reading lesson 11
1.3. Top-down approach 14
1.3.1. Definition 14
1.3.2. Top-down versus Bottom-up processing 14
1.3.3. Top-down approach in reading 15
1.3.4. Top-down techniques in teaching reading 17
1.4. Summary 20
CHAPTER 2: 22
vi
METHODOLOGY 22
2.1. Setting of the study 22
2.1.1. Subjects‟ background information 22
2.1.2. The teachers and teaching methods 23
2.1.3. Materials 23
2.2. Subjects 24
2.3. Methods 24
2.3.1. Test 24
2.3.2. Questionnaire 25
2.4. Procedures 25
2.4.1. Data collection 25

2.4.2. Data analysis 26
2.5. The application of top-down techniques in reading class 26
CHAPTER 3: 28
FINDINGS, DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS 28
3.1. Findings 28
3.1.1. Analysis of the test results 28
3.1.2. Analysis of the questionnaire results 33
3.2 Discussion 43
3.2.1. Discussion on the students‟ part 43
3.2.2. Discussion on the teacher‟s part 45
3.3. Implications 46
3.3.1. Top-down techniques should be applied widely at Equest Centre 46
3.3.2. Arousing students‟ motivation and interest 47
3.3.3. Enlarging students‟ background knowledge 47
3.3.4. Suggested activities for improving reading skill through top-down
approach 48
3.4. Summary 50
PART C: CONCLUSION 51
vii
1. Summary of the study 51
REFERENCES 53
APPENDIX 1: I
SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE I
APPENDIX 2: THE PRE-TEST V
APPENDIX 3: THE POST-TEST IX
APPENDIX 4: SAMPLE LESSON XIII



1

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
It is undeniable that English in the life of any society in the world today has
been becoming more and more important. The widespread need for English as an
international language puts a considerable pressure on the education resources of
any countries. In case of our country, since our government carried out the open
door policy to attract foreign investment and co-operate with other countries,
teaching and learning English has become necessary. Moreover, English is a means
of international communication in the fields of science, technology, culture,
education, economy and so on. That is the reason why at present, learning English is
not only the interest but also the great and practical demand for many people,
especially for people who always want to assess the modern world. Therefore,
learning English at a lot of English Centre is becoming popular.
Understanding the importance of English, all teachers at Equest English
Centre have an attempt to satisfy the learners‟ need. At Equest English is the foreign
language dominating the teaching and learning programs for 10 years. Despite a
prejudice that learning English at a center is less effective than that at some
universities, colleges, or international schools, learners at Equest, regardless of their
ages, always strive for a good command of English as they are well aware of their
learning purposes. Through 10 years of development, Equest has provided a number
of learning English programs. Therefore, there are 38 000 learners learning English
at Equest in 2013.
However, to master English learners need to grasp a lot of different skills
such as listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among these skills, reading is an
important one because it does not only help student develop other language skills,
but also provides them knowledge on the target language. According to Byrne
(1986), “reading is an important way of expanding the students’ receptive
2
knowledge of the language and in terms of classroom activities, it is an effective
way of simulating students to talk and write”.

In addition, after a master course with methodology subject, I realized that
top-down approach with its techniques and characteristics can be applied in
teaching language skills effectively, especially in reading skill.
All in all, the above has encouraged the writer of the thesis to carry out the
study entitled “A study on the use of top-down approach to improve reading skill
for learners at Equest English Centre”.
2. Hypothesis
This study is designed to test the following hypothesis:
“Top-down approach helps to enhance reading comprehension for learners at
Equest English Centre”.
3. Aims of the study
This study is carried out to aim at:
- Investigating the effects of using top-down t approach in teaching reading to
learners at Equest English Center.
- Investigating the teachers‟ and learners‟ perceptions regarding reading
activities using top-down approach.
- Formulating pedagogical implications and making suggestions for improving
the teaching and learning of the reading skill at Equest English Center.
4. Scope of the study
In this study, the investigator intends to use top-down techniques to help
learners at Equest English Center to improve their reading skills. These techniques
were experimented over a period of one course and were applied in the three stages
of a reading lesson: pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. Due to the limited
time, the researcher could not implement the research for a longer period of time
3
and on a larger population. The sample population is 50 freshmen from two classes
of the same English proficiency level.
5. Methods of the study
To achieve the aims mentioned above, quantitative method has been chosen for
the study. Data for analysis in this study are gained through the following sources:

- Pre-test and post-test
- Survey questionnaires
6. Design of the study
This minor thesis consists of three parts:
Part A: Introduction which presents the rationale, aims, research questions, scope
and methods of the study.
Part B: Development which is divided into 3 chapters:
- Chapter 1: “Literature review”, sets up theoretical background that is
relevant to the purpose of the study.
- Chapter 2: “Methodology”, shows the setting, the subjects, the methods, the
way to collect data and the effects of using top-down approach in teaching
and learning reading skill at Equest English Centre.
- Chapter 3: “Findings, Discussion and Implication”. In this chapter, the
findings and some discussions are shown. The implication of the study also
includes some suggestions to improve reading skills for learners at Equest
English Centre.
Part C: Conclusion which summarizes the key issues in the study, points out the
limitations and provides some suggestions for further study.




4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter is primarily concerned with the theory on reading, including
some definitions of reading as well as reading comprehension and types of reading.
This will be followed by a review of teaching reading skill, consisting of principles
of teaching reading, common methods of teaching reading and stages of a reading
lesson. The next part presents a review of definition of top-down approach, the

differences between top-down and bottom-up approach, and the top-down
techniques in teaching reading.
1.1. Theory on Reading
1.1.1. Definitions of Reading
For many students, reading is a very important skill. Concerning the role of
reading, Anderson (1999) confirms that “the more exposure the student has to
language through reading, the greater the possibilities that overall language
proficiency will increase”.
There are a numerous definitions of reading which range from simple to
complex ones. Each researcher focuses on different aspects of the teaching and
learning process. Some of them concentrate on the decoding and comprehending of
the reading texts while others pay attention to the roles of the readers.
Goodman (1971: 135) regards reading as “a psycholinguistic process by
which the reader, a language user, reconstruct, as best he can, a message encoded
by a writer as a graphic display”.
According to Carell Devine and Eskey (1988:13), “reading is a process in
that it starts with linguistic surface representation encoded by a writer and ends
with meaning, which reader constructs. There is, thus, an essential interaction
between language and thought in reading. The writer encodes thought in language
and the reader decodes language to thought”. In this definition, it can be seen
5
clearly the interrelationship between the writer, the reader and the text. Moreover,
Harmer (1983:153) also thought that “reading is an exercise dominated by the eyes
and the brain. The eyes receive massages and the brain then has to work out the
significance of those massages”. However, Hafner and July (1982:4) thought
differently. According to their opinion, “reading involves the identification and
recognition of printed and written symbols which serve as stimuli for the recall of
meanings built up through past experiences and further construction of new
meanings through the readers’ manipulation of relevant concepts already in his
possession”.

According to Anderson (2003: 68), reading can be defined as “a fluent
process of readers combining information from a text and their own background
knowledge to build meaning. The goal of reading is comprehension…The text, the
reader, fluency and strategies combined together define the act of reading”.
In brief, each researcher has a different definition of reading. From my point
of view, the idea of Anderson is quite clear and easy to follow. Reading is a process
that the readers understand meaning by combining information of the text and their
own background knowledge.
1.1.2. Reading comprehension
In teaching and learning a foreign language in general and teaching reading
in particular, reading comprehension plays an important part. It can be understood
as the ability to draw attention to the required information from the text as
efficiently as possible. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the definition of
reading comprehension.
According to Richard and Thomas (1987: 9), “Reading comprehension is
best described as an understanding between the author and the reader”. This point
of view concentrates on the reader‟s understanding of the message based on the
individual‟s background knowledge. They stated that “reading is much more than
6
just pronouncing words correctly or simply knowing what the author intends: it is
the process whereby the printed pages stimulate ideas, experiences and responses
that are unique to an individual”.
Moreover, Abbott (1981:82) gives out a research on the nature of reading
comprehension. According to him “there are two broad aspects or levels. Firstly,
there is basically visual task that of deciphering the marks on the page, the brain
receiving signals from the eyes. Secondly, there is cognitive task that of interpreting
the visual information, so one is not simply barking at point”.
Study the nature of reading comprehension, Grilled (1981: 3) indicated that
“Reading comprehension or understanding written text means extracting the
required information from it as effectively as possible”. This means that the student

can show his understanding by re-expressing the content of the text in many ways
such as summarizing the text or answering questions etc.
Reading comprehension is a process of deriving meaning from the print and
integrating the new information with the old one (Koda, 2005: 14; Sweet and Snow,
2003: 1). The old information is the reader prior background knowledge and
experience. Goodman (1975) added that reading should be “an active, purposeful
and creative mental process” of extracting meaning partly from textual clues and
partly from their prior knowledge.
From these theories above, it can be understood that readers show their
active parts in the process of comprehending a written text; they are not simply a
decoding machine, but they must think and consider what sort of old information
should be activated and when it should be made use of to facilitate the
comprehending process. In other words, according to Durkin (1993), “reading is the
construction of meaning of a written text through the interactions between text and
reader”.
7
The definitions presented above give us an overview of reading and reading
comprehension. With the literature review of some types of reading, we can
determine what factors are involved in efficient reading.
1.1.3. Types of reading
According to Nutgall (2000: 38), there are two main types of reading,
namely, intensive and extensive reading. These are not just two contrasting ways of
reading but an infinitive variety of interrelated strategies; both of them are
complementary and necessary.
1.1.3.1. Extensive reading
Extensive reading is a fluency activity, mainly involving general
understanding. It provides valuable reinforcement of the language already presented
and practiced in the class as well as giving students useful practice in inferring
meaning from the context of the text.
Lewis and Hill (1985:109) state that “extensive reading means students have

a general understanding of the text without necessarily understanding every word”.
It is obvious that when reading extensively, readers do not need to have intense
concentration on the content of a long text and total comprehension because the
objective of extensive reading is to cover the greatest possible amount of text in the
shortest possible time. In other words, extensive reading can be compared to the
activity of ploughing through the text in a uniform fashion. Extensive reading is
therefore regarded as means of entertainment and pleasure.
According to Carrell et al. (1997), extensive reading often, such as in an EAP
(English for academic purpose) setting, involves rapid reading of large amounts of
material or longer contents, such as a whole book, for getting a gist or a focus
generally on the meaning of what is being read. Especially, this pattern of reading
gets the reader to focus on reading itself rather than mastering the particular
structure of a skill.
8
Moreover, the aim of extensive reading is to encourage readers to cover a
large amount of material in a comparatively short time and to gain a general
understanding of what is read instead of analyzing the detailed information.
Basing on the importance of extensive reading, Nuttal (1982:168) shows that
“the best way to improve one’s knowledge of a foreign language is to go and live
among its speakers: The next best way is to read extensively in it.”
In short, this kind of reading is necessary for students because it actively
promotes reading outside the class and gives them an opportunity to use their own
knowledge of the language for their own purposes. Moreover, this kind of reading is
regarded as pleasure and interest. That is why extensive reading is highly
motivating.
1.1.3.2. Intensive reading
The remaining two kinds of reading activity, content study reading and
linguistic study reading are also often grouped together and called intensive reading.
Different from extensive reading – reading for fluency, readers can read
without the aid of the teachers and without understanding the text in detail –

intensive reading is regarded as reading for accuracy. It “involves approaching the
text under the close guidance of the teacher or under the guidance of a task which
forces the students to pay great attention to the text in order to arrive at a profound
to detailed understanding of the text not only of what it means, but also of how the
meaning is produced. The “how” is as important as the “what”, for the intensive
reading lesson is intended primarily to train students in reading strategies”.
(Nutall, 1982:23)
According to Nuttal (1996), the students should try to understand a text as
fully as necessary in an intensive reading setting. Besides this, intensive readers are
9
often required to study a small amount of material in an analytical manner under the
teachers‟ guidance (Good, 1926).
In both reading patterns, the teacher‟s role may be also significant. In the
extensive reading situation, the teacher should always encourage students to choose
for themselves what they read and to do so for pleasure and for general language
improvement. But in intensive reading, the teacher often chooses, directs and
designs what kind of book that students should read in order to develop specific
receptive skills (Harmer, 2001).
Many researchers suggest that getting students to read extensively would be
an effective way to have them enjoy reading, and thus students may love reading.
Besides this, slower or unmotivated students may be motivated by other enthusiastic
classmates and start to love reading as well. Good (1926) also argues that in terms
of retention for the purpose of answering informational questions, extensive reading
seems relatively effective.
1.2. Teaching Reading skill
1.2.1. Principles of teaching reading
In order to teach reading effectively, it is important for teachers to apply
certain principles. Anderson (2003) and Hedge (2000) have set out several
principles of teaching reading.
1.2.1.1. Exploit the student‟s background knowledge

Background knowledge can affect reading comprehension. Students‟
background knowledge includes all of the experiences that a reader brings to a text:
life experiences, educational experiences, knowledge of how texts can be
organized rhetorically, knowledge of how one‟s first language works, knowledge
of how the second language works, and cultural background and knowledge.
10
The teacher can significantly enhance students‟ comprehension if he or she
activates their background knowledge by setting goals, asking questions, making
predictions, teaching text structure, and so on.
1.2.1.2. Build a strong vocabulary base
Vocabulary can facilitate successful reading. The teacher should explicitly
teach basic vocabulary and teach students how to use context to effectively guess
the meaning of less frequent vocabulary.
1.2.1.3. Teach for comprehension
Besides testing comprehension, it is necessary to teach students how to
comprehend. A technique the teacher can employ to help students in the process of
constructing meaning from a text is questioning the author. This activity should be
done during the reading process. It requires the teacher to model the reading
behavior of asking questions to make sense of that is being read. Students learn to
engage with meaning and develop ideas rather than retrieve information from the
text. In the process of reading, students should ask themselves some questions such
as “What is the author trying to say here? What is the author‟s message? What is the
author talking about? What does the author mean here? Does the author explain this
clearly?” (Beck et al., 1997: 34, 37).
1.2.1.4. Teach reading strategies
To achieve success in reading, students should know how to use a range of
strategies that match their purposes for reading. Teaching them how to do this
should be a prime consideration in the reading classroom. A technique the teacher
can use to help students identify reading strategies is to get them talk about their
thought processes as they read. The students can listen to their own verbal report or

listen to other students‟ verbal reports to become aware of their reading strategies.
1.2.1.5. Encourage students to transform strategies into skills
11
An important distinction can be made between strategies and skills (Kawai,
Oxford, and Iran-Nejad, 2000). Strategies can be defined as conscious actions that
learners take to achieve desired goals or objectives, while a skill is a strategy that
has become automatic. This characterization underscores the active role that readers
play in strategic reading. As learners consciously learn and practice specific
reading strategies, the strategies move from conscious to unconscious; from
strategy to skill.
For instance, when students are taught how to guess meaning of unknown
vocabulary for the first time, they are using a strategy. As student‟s ability to guess
the meaning become automatic, they move from using a conscious strategy to using
an unconscious skill.
1.2.1.6. Set criteria to select reading texts
Teachers should usually pay attention to two questions: “What kind of text
do we use in the classroom?” and “How do we create reading purposes for those
texts?”. They may have little flexibility in addressing the first, but they will need to
consider the second carefully because this may be the key to motivate students to
read texts they do not find interesting. Interest is the first criterion to select a
reading text. Other factors are the variety of topic, length of texts, rhetorical
organization (for example, description, review, comparison), and the reading
purpose.
1.2.2. Stages of a reading lesson
It is common practice that a reading lesson includes three stages: pre-
reading, while-reading, and post-reading. (William, 1984, cited in Hedge, 2000).
Each stage has its own aims and procedures.
1.2.2.1. Pre-reading stage
12
This stage plays a decisive role in the whole process of teaching reading

comprehension, so most experienced readers employ pre- reading and other
strategies to make reading easier. Pre- reading aims at introducing the text to the
students and helps them make careful preparation before reading the text. It is
advisable for the teacher to create a reading motivation and a positive attitude
towards reading for students so that they can achieve a high level of success and
become confident that they can read effectively.
As for Doff (1988), there are many activities a teacher to carry out so as to
help students before they start reading such as introducing the text briefly,
presenting new vocabulary, revising grammatical structures or giving guiding
questions.
Moreover, in my opinion, the teacher should activate the students‟
background knowledge and provide some information about the text. This is aimed
to help the students to predict the content of the text they are going to read.
Prediction is an important ability that the students should develop in order to
comprehend various kinds of texts, especially the texts that the students are not
familiar with.
1.2.2.2. While-reading stage
While- reading stage is carried out when all students actually set their eyes
on the text and this stage is the main part of a reading comprehension lesson. The
aims of this stage focus on making the students anticipate in the process of
understanding the whole text, and interpreting exactly what the author wrote. In
addition, it helps the students break up the organization of the text; understand the
text structures; classify the text content and recognize the writer‟s purpose and
attitude.
13
Moreover, it helps the students improve their reading speed and techniques.
Besides, this stage offers an opportunity to apply effectively what they have learnt
from the text to their purpose of study and communication.
Because this stage plays a very important role in a reading lesson, it must be
carefully designed.

1.2.2.3. Post-reading stage
Post- reading is the implementation of various activities carried out after the
students have read the text. Some post- reading activities are extension of the work
done at the pre- reading and while- reading stages. Some relate only loosely to the
reading text itself.
According to Durkin (1981:486), “one reason for post- reading discussion in
class is to offer pupils the chance to see in what way their reading did or did not
succeed, and why”. In fact, there is more than one purpose for post- reading stage.
One of the purposes of post-reading work is to check whether the students
have understood the text or not. The teacher can ask the students some questions
about the texts which are not given in the book or require them to discuss in group
and in pair and so on. Another purpose is to consolidate or reflect upon what the
students have read. To achieve this, the teacher should help the students focus on
the important points as writer‟s opinion, the main ideas of the text, the specific
paragraph or phrase in the reading text. The third purpose of post- reading work is
to expand on the topic or language of the reading text, and perhaps transfer things
learned to another context.
Setting up and organizing post-reading work depends very much on all the
objectives of the program as a whole. Post- reading work should, thus, contribute in
a coherent manner, to the writing, speaking and listening skills that the program
aims to develop.
14
In conclusion, the three stages offer the teacher a frame work to conduct a
reading lesson in general. Pre- reading instruction makes students interested in a
text and predicts the content of it through accessing necessary information and/or
activating schema. During-reading instruction helps students read strategically,
mainly focusing on decoding skills. Post-reading instruction extends or deepens
what students comprehend from the text.
1.3. Top-down approach
1.3.1. Definition

As to top-down teaching strategy, the learner‟s prior knowledge is activated,
which is capable of enhancing learner‟s language learning, and making possible
reading comprehension. In other words, in top-down strategy, “content schemata”
are to be activated; prior knowledge plays a major role in learner‟s comprehension.
Carrell (1988) argued that a lack of content schemata activation would lead
to insurmountable processing difficulties with second language readers. Hudson
(1982) has even argued that a high degree of background knowledge can overcome
linguistic deficiency.
In addition to prior knowledge as a key point, top-down model is actually a
whole-language teaching approach, in which readers focus on the context, and
manage to construct meanings in the text (Treiman, 2001). In this sense, top-down
reading strategies contain predicting, inferring, and focusing on meanings (Grabe,
1991). Reading is actually “a psychological guessing game”, in the words of
Goodman (1970).
1.3.2. Top-down versus Bottom-up processing
Bottom-up processes are those that take in stimuli from the outside world -
letters and words, for reading - and deal with that information with little recourse to
higher - level knowledge. With top-down processes, on the other hand, the uptake
of information is guided by an individual‟s prior knowledge and expectations.
15
Bottom-up approach focuses on the text as the convergence of encoded
messages to be deciphered. Instructors who uphold bottom-up processing focus
on how learners extract information from the printed page, and on whether or not
learners deal with letters and words in a systematic fashion. Therefore, the goals of
the bottom-up approach are automatic word recognition and rapid reading rate. To
reach the aims, explicit instruction in phonics and spellings is crucial; students
should not be “word-bound” in bottom-up processing (Grabe, 1991).
In most situations, bottom-up and top-down processes work together to
ensure the accurate and rapid processing of information. However, theories about
the cognitive processes involved in reading differ in the emphasis that they place on

the two approaches. Theories that stress bottom-up processing focus on how readers
extract information from the printed page, claiming that readers deal with letters and
words in a relatively complete and systematic fashion (e.g., Gough 1972). Theories
that stress top-down processing hold that readers form hypotheses about which
words they will encounter and take in only just enough visual information to test
their hypotheses (e.g., Goodman 1967, Smith 1971).
In short, the greatest difference between top-down processing and the
bottom-up processing is that, according to Goodman (1967), readers do not use
every piece of information in the text. That is to say, the readers select some parts of
text according to their current purpose and use them only so as to predict meaning
and to confirm the predicted meanings by relating the readers' own previously
acquired knowledge (Carrell, 1988a).
1.3.3. Top-down approach in reading
Goodman (1982) performed a research on reading comprehension and
presented in “the Psycholinguistic Guessing Model”. He believed that the process of
reading the text in a letter-by-letter and word-by-word manner and picking up the
information is not called reading comprehension. Rather, a good reader reads
selectively and does not look at every word on the page, but he uses his prior
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knowledge and reads the text by predicting and confirming information (Grabe,
1991). It was a kind of top-down processing.
Many researchers have insisted that "the concepts which a reader brings to a
text are actually more important than the text itself for comprehension" (Mikulecky,
1990: 4). Among those concepts that the readers use in the process of
comprehension, the knowledge about the content of the text, rather than the
knowledge of the language of the text, is emphasized. As for linguistic knowledge,
Segalowitz, Poulsen and Komoda (as cited in Anderson, 1999: 3) stated that focus is
mainly put on "higher-level" reading skills, such as "integrating prepositional units
across sentences, generating and updating a schema or representation of the text as a
whole, and integrating textual information with prior knowledge".

There is an agreement among reading specialists that a reader should be an
"active participant" in the process of comprehending a text. Simply explained, the
meaning is constructed by the reader, who creates connections between what s/he
encounters in the text and what s/he knows about the world as well as about the
language (Grabe, 1991; Hudson, 1998). The key element here is the emphasis on
the reader's background knowledge. The importance of the prior knowledge has
been investigated through psycholinguistics and schema theory. On the other hand,
top-down processing leads readers use their background knowledge to comprehend
the text. Thus, this processing should be more often introduced to English reading
instruction because it has tended to be neglected. Teaching top-down process will
enable the students to read actively, or interact with text.
As was mentioned before, reading is an interaction between text and the
readers, in which the readers use not only their decoding skills but also other kinds
of knowledge. Mikulecky (1990) explained it citing the passage used by Branford
and Johnson: