Relevance Strategy in Reading and Reading Instruction

Abstract

On the basis of reviewing the previous reading strategies research, we find that the previous three general models of reading strategies have their own limitations and that, although all the previous models take notice of the role relevance plays in reading, they invariably fail to specify how relevance functions in reading. Relevance is not only a notion of large category which includes relevant information, relevant knowledge of language, culture, background, context, etc. necessary for reading comprehension, but also a mechanism by which these aspects of information and knowledge are accessed and retrieved for reading process and comprehension process. Enlightened by the Relevance Theory, the authors in the present research aims at analyzing strategy for reading and reading instruction and proposing a relevance-based approach to reading and reading instruction. They have given in it a systematic analysis of the cognitive features and cognition laws involved in reading and comprehension and put forward the notion of Relevance Strategy in reading and reading instruction, arguing that reading or reading instruction is a cognitive-inferential process, with Relevance as the kernel, of searching relevant information and knowledge and arriving at maximal relevance (i.e. solution or interpretation of reading material). Either the bottom-up, or top-down, or interactive models of strategies cannot ignore the kernel function of relevance. In the application of sub-strategies, relevance is also playing a major role. The authors, therefore, also argue that the traditional decoding model of Reading Comprehension instruction should be replaced by a pragma-cognitive model. Reading (Comprehension) should not be regarded as merely decoding words, phrases or sentences, but as an integral cognition of the reading material. A teacher should help students form a unitary cognitive environment so as to cognize the reading material as a whole.