Teacher Discussion Forums

your sirs and ladies:

Reading is a crucial skill for students of English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL), and understanding the rationale behind these methods is essential for teachers who want to improve their reading lessons.There are two main approaches on teaching reading. One is bottom-up processing.It focuses on developing the basic elements in the text. The other is top-down approach. It focuses on the background knowledge about the text.
What do you think of the two approaches? Which one is better to teach reading in senior high middle school?

I would say that both of them are useful. Maybe mixture of the two would be a good idea. And it also depends on the text because if it is a text about a topic your students have no information about, it would be pointless to try to apply their background knowledge.
Hope this is useful.

Some students will need the bottom up approach and some the top down so you should try to teach both. I would also strive to use theory and practice in my lessons and to teach the social practices behind the readings and wrtings.

You might want to read Halliday on teaching. We discussed this at http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewt ... t=halliday