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Blending Cognitive and Socio-constructive Pedagogies: Building Autonomous Readers in the ESL Classroom

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The Idea and Practice of Reading

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Abstract

The dynamicity of technology used to present information and the resultant fluidity in text forms have led educators to concede that autonomy in reading and adaptability to changing forms of texts need to form the core of any reading instruction that aims to develop independent and/or lifelong readers. Working with a cognitive/socio-constructivist perspective, this chapter discusses the effects of a strategy training programme on reading competence of adult ESL readers. Viewing reading as a social process, the strategy programme conceived by the researcher harnessed the power of distributed cognition available in group interactions to empower individuals in the group to reach beyond their current levels of reading competence. The strategy training programme was designed based on two factors: (i) that interpersonal strategy development opportunities might facilitate intrapersonal strategy development; and (ii) that individual cognitive awareness needs to precede social interactions if collaboration was to have any learning effect. The strategy training programme reported in this paper therefore provided scope to develop in readers an awareness of strategies they used, and also opportunities to view and learn reading strategies used by peers. Results of the study showed that all learners demonstrated an increase in their reading comprehension performance—a consequence of increase in their reading strategies repertoire and the retention of newly acquired reading strategies, both contributive factors to independent reading comprehension.

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  1. Department for Training and Development, EFLU, Hyderabad, India

    Kshema Jose

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  1. Kshema Jose
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  1. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India

    R. Joseph Ponniah

  2. Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu, India

    Sathyaraj Venkatesan

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Jose, K. (2018). Blending Cognitive and Socio-constructive Pedagogies: Building Autonomous Readers in the ESL Classroom. In: Ponniah, R., Venkatesan, S. (eds) The Idea and Practice of Reading. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8572-7_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-8572-7_5

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