Promoting Reading Literacy

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3260 – 3263

INTE 2014

Promoting reading literacy Guadalupe Echegoyen Monroy* Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, ENP Plantel Núm. 6 “Antonio Caso”, Corina Núm. 3. Col. Del Carmen. Delegación Coyoacán. C.P. 04100, México, D.F. México

Abstract This research promotes reading comprehension of poetic texts for High School students through the use of Information Technology and Communication (ICT). The gradual and consistent development of the reading comprehension of literary texts can open a door for the love of reading. Such approach to literary texts also fosters the development of meaningful learning through the reading comprehension of poetry. Furthermore, it promotes self-awareness with the use of ICT tools familiar to high school students, as well as given them access to the writing of others. © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license

© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review underresponsibility responsibility of the Sakarya University. Peer-review under of the Sakarya University Keywords: poetry; teaching; ICT; reading comprehension.

1. Promoting Reading Literacy Literature teachers face serious problems from the time the students start High School: their students usually lack solid skills to approach literary texts. This is often due to poor reading comprehension skills. Such weakness hinders their ability to gain further general knowledge, as well as to acquiring a wider vocabulary, or expressing what they think and feel. I propose that High School students can acquire meaningful learning through the reading of literary texts. This can help them to improve their general reading skills. Furthermore, through the reading of literature young high

* Guadalupe Echegoyen Monroy E-mail address: [email protected]

1877-0428 © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Peer-review under responsibility of the Sakarya University doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.991

Guadalupe Echegoyen Monroy / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 174 (2015) 3260 – 3263

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school students learn about other ways of life, as well as about different ways of thinking. Such experience can further their personal and intellectual development. For these reasons, it is of major importance that high school students develop solid reading comprehension skills. Such skills promote other mental abilities, such as: logical, analytical, and critical skills that will be helpful in their everyday life and in their future. Taking into account the above mentioned ideas, the aim of this research was to create a didactic sequential process that would allow students to comprehend gradually and coherently poetic texts. The meaning of love was chosen as the central theme of the texts given, its continuous presence throughout the history of human kind in a variety of literary and art genres. Love can be found in texts from classical myths and folk tales to modern songs, films and videos. It has provided minstrels, poets, writers, and playwriters with material that has been handled in a numberless variety of nuances. It should be noted that the chosen texts for this sequence are organized in gradual complexity. In the last sessions, the complexity of the lexical level and the use of rhetorical figures increase significantly. On the other hand, it should be mentioned that the fast development of electronic resources that has taken place in the last decades has produced a dramatic change in the handling of teaching resources at different levels. Younger generations handle a new variety of information and communication resources: internet, emails, twitter, Facebook, and so on. PCs, tablets and mobile phones are part of their everyday life. This explains why in the proposed didactic sequence, some of these appliances are handled as support tools. This includes: videos, music, links, blogs, Power Point presentations, podcasts, and emails. The handling of such appliances in an education environment can strengthen the construction of knowledge in an integrative way and can produce meaningful learning. The didactic sequence includes six sessions in which the reading of literary texts of gradually ascendant complexity is evaluated. The proposed reading texts belong to a variety of geographical areas and historical periods, so that the students can experience a wide panorama of literary texts and notice how the same topic is handled in different periods, places and social spheres. The texts included were by the next authors: Anacreont, Luis de Góngora y Argote, Antonio Machado, Nizar Kabbani, Nicanor Parra, Mercedes Villaseñor, Mario Bendedetti, Jaime Sabines, Nicolás Guillén, Efraín Huerta, Pablo Neruda, Luis Cernuda y Pedro Salinas. Specialized terms such as poetic genre, literary devices and a number of rhetorical figures are included in the sequence, as well as some features of the different aspects of literary texts, including its phonetic, lexical-semantic, and morfosyntactic dimensions. The sequence was applied to a group of forty five students in a World Literature class at the UNAM’s Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, Plantel Núm. 6 “Antonio Caso” [Antonio Caso High School, High School Number 6 of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City]. During the first and last sessions two questionnaires (A and B) were applied to evaluate the outcome of the didactic sequence. The questionnaires were focused on finding out whether students enjoyed reading poetry and what kind of literary texts they have already read. The following was found: a)

During the first session, 47.37% of a total of forty five students indicated that they enjoy reading poetry. At the end of the didactic sequence, this percentage increased 9.77%

b) At the beginning, 47.37% of the total of students indicated that they have already read three or more poetic texts. At the end of the sequence this amount increased 4.14%.

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Fig. 1. Outcome of the proposed sequence.Questionary A. Questionary B. Enjoy poetry and experience reading poetry. Evaluated points.

The outcome proved that the reading comprehension of poetic texts can be undertaken in class with a didactic sequence which provides guidance at different stages of the reading task. In this way, the reading is divided in different sections or stages to understand the overall meaning and structure of text. It was also confirmed that the ICT are helpful teaching tools that help teachers to show clearly, and in an attractive way, the contents and structure of literary texts to young students. Their handling also proved useful to establish a more direct and easier teacherstudent interaction (at distance), which the characteristic shyness of teen-agers usually makes difficult. It was also confirmed that the teaching of one poetic resource requires one whole session in which texts of different authors and periods can be handled. In terms of the learning of poetic devices, a significant progress from the first to the last sessions of the didactic sequence was shown by the questionnaires: Resultados de la Propuesta

90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0%

Cuestionario A Cuestionario B

Sujeto lírico

Aliteración

Metáfora

Anáfora

Puntos Valorados

Fig. 2.Outcomes of the proposed sequence. Questionary A. Questionary B. Lyric Subject. Alliteration, Metaphore. Anaphore. Evaluated points.

Before the didactic sequence showed that the proposed analysis of each text fostered the student´s interest to undertake their own analyses. After the sequence, the students wrote their own texts and included images and videos which they themselves set to music and which were even played live by some of them. This outcome shows that the ICT are helpful teaching tools in a literature class for young readers. They can improve the students’ reading comprehension and stimulate particularly their interest in reading poetic texts.


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