How Far is Goodman`s Approach to Studying Reading Applicable to Language Teaching?

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper aims to critically examine the applicability of Goodman`s approach to second or foreign language reading contexts. It mainly focuses on Goodman`s two main models: top-down model and transactional socio-psycholinguistic model of reading. Despite a range of solid theoretical strengths of Goodman`s approach, a critical evaluation may suggest that guessing strategies are more effective for poor and younger readers who rely more on text as a compensation for problems in recognising words, and that L2 readers are not as skilled at making use of the strategies as L1 readers because of their limited language ability. The second limitation is that using redundancy rules may not be universally applied to L2 reading process because of linguistic differences between L1 and L2. Finally, it is noted that Goodman`s approach includes the idea of low-level processing like `recoding` in explaining the role of cue systems in reading process, although his definition of reading does not include any relationship between the reader and word print. These all may give important teaching implications for using his approach as an compensatory strategy, and thus a balanced application with other sorts of approaches is needed.