Reading models in foreign language teaching

Abstract

Reading continues to be essential nowadays in spite of the audiovisual media. Thus, the availability of a pattern to master the mental processes activated when reading would be a panacea, but there is no such a unique reading model. Conversely, the ones devised up to now are partial and incomplete, as the authors themselves declare. This is why psychologists and linguists do not stop researching to find formulae which account for the mental processes taking part in reading as well as how they perform to achieve meaning from the written discourse. This paper tries to pinpoint the main features of the most representative reading models of the last three decades, underlines as much as it concerns to the L2 reading process and shows how the various components of the reading models have evolved to line themselves up under the interactive paradigm. Moreover, it also suggests a psycho-pragmatic model of reading for learners of English as a second language made up of psycho-pragmatic, interactive and pedagogical elements.