Read Ahead- An Indigenous Reading Program And Its Theoretical Underpinnings

Abstract

The paper presents an indigenous reading program- Read Ahead and its theoretical underpinnings. Read Ahead is proposed as an alternate to extensive reading program since it fails to work in indigenous/ESL contexts majorly because of lack of resources and infrastructure. Read Ahead states that, if a quick echo reading of the textbook is done after teacher for fifteen minutes, four times a week, it leads to an improvement in reading skill. At philosophical level, Read Ahead is based on constructivism where the learner constructs the new language by reading text books scaffolded by the reading teacher. At psychological level, it works on schema theory by building schemas for new language input through top-down processing. At linguistic level, it addresses two strands of ‘the four-strand principle’; meaning-focussed input and fluency through repetitive readings. It is proposed that Read Ahead with its strong theoretical underpinnings may prove beneficial in developing reading skill of the learners in ESL contexts.