Readers and texts

 Reading is with a purpose as there is no free reading. 

In this post, we are going to talk about our understanding of how the interaction of reader characteristics, motivation, text complexity and purpose of reading impact comprehension and engagement. 

My name is Abdoulaye SAWADOGO, I'm from Burkina Faso. I teach French at the International School of Ouagadougou. In Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistic, reading is said as: " Perceiving a written text in order to understand its contents". Does it mean we read to understand, or we can read without understanding! As I said, reading is a form of communication as a message is read. That message is constructed, and in reading it, the aim is to deconstruct it, a process that leads to understanding. 

First of all, the topic itself can spark the readers interest in the sense that he can mobilize his primary knowledge of the topic to better understand the written message. For example person that likes traveling is more likely inclines to enjoy reading texts that talk about traveling and adventures. That can increase the reader's motivation an he can feel like learning new things related to what s/he enjoys more.

Second, the complexity of a given text can be an opportunity of investigation if it sparks the reader's interest. The message can be made complex in the sense that there are a lot of strange words from a given language where the author travelled too. As the reader likes such adventures, s/he can be more open to know more as it is a subject that is interesting to him/her. In this case, complexity can be seen as an opportunity for investigation. In addition, there is the opposite side of reading that can be something completely new to the learner but the motivation to learn more can lead him/her to dig deeper. 

Third and last, we can have situations where the reader does not want to read due to some internal or external factors. In that situation teachers have to do their best to increase that motivation or try to know reason why that motivation is absent. It can be due to difficulties in reading. Someone who is not a fluent reader cannot have good motivation to read. Added to that, the lack of motivation can be the topic itself, as we can have people who will: I don't want to talk about that. That can be due to some personal reasons which can be connected to bitter experiences in life. 

References: 

  1. Guthrie, J. T. (n.d.). Motivations for Reading. Reading Rockets. Retrieved October 4, 2023, from https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/motivation/articles/motivations-reading 
  2. Gambrell, L. (n.d.). Reading Motivation: What the Research Says. Reading Rockets. Retrieved October 4, 2023, from https://www.readingrockets.org/topics/motivation/articles/reading-motivation-what-research-says 



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