A Comparison of Reading Models, Their Application to the Classroom and Their Impact on Comprehension

Reading, an important skill in any language, becomes more difficult in a foreign language. The investigation of expository text comprehension between language groups conducted in 1999 at Vytautas Magnus University and South Carolina University (Škudienė, 1999) showed that the students of both language groups (Lithuanian and English) performed better in literal comprehension tasks. On these grounds, the assumption was made that teachers emphasize a bottom-up rather than a top-down model of reading. The aim of the research was to investigate whether a top-down or a bottom-up model of reading is emphasized during pre-, while-, and postreading activities at the intermediate level of the English language instruction. The results of the research exhibited that most of the pre-reading and while-reading activities used in reading instruction are based on top-down models while post-reading instruction is interactive with more emphasis on bottom-up models.