A critical aspect of the non-native students' academic adjustment in English-speaking countries is their English language ability, including their reading fluency and comprehension. Even when these students are considered proficient readers of English at an advanced level, they display different reading processes when dealing with the complex input of a second language (L2) text, as compared with their native English reading classmates. Despite the importance of comprehending highly sophisticated academic reading in international education, there is a lack of research in the field as to how advanced L2 readers cope with the texts with which the highly educated native speakers engage. This study, therefore, examined meaning construction processes of highly proficient L2 readers during reading the texts that vary in degree of cohesion. To describe readers' approaches to text cohesion and also recognize readers' perceptions of their own process, the study used a close observation of reading processes of nine highly proficient graduate students at a U.S. university with the use of qualitative research methods. The students participated in two interviews - pre-reading interview and post-reading cognitive interview - and two think-aloud verbal protocol sessions. Participants read one high-cohesive and one low-cohesive text during the think-aloud sessions, and then shared the meaning they constructed from the texts and also their thinking about the texts. The data from the instruments were analyzed qualitatively using a grounded theory approach. The results of the study reveal that the readers' meaning representation processes emerging as the result of reader and text interaction display differences at the local and global levels of processing of the high- and low-cohesive text. The processing differences between the readers are most apparent in texts with low text cohesion. The low cohesive text allowed the readers, especially, the creators of meaning, to conduct more elaborative processing compared to their performance with the high-cohesive one, in which all readers attempted to create a catalogue of facts trusting the explicitly provided text cohesion features. These results have implications for theories of text processing as well as the design of materials and instruction used for advanced L2 readers and lower level L2 readers.

Orientador: Roxane Helena Rodrigues Rojo / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-17T10:27:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fernandes_MarlyAparecida_M.pdf: 6123004 bytes, checksum: 7620e5cdb899b78ba84761f609860fa1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010 / Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo discutir os modos/formas de se apresentar a leitura como objeto de ensino e aprendizagem em determinados livros didáticos de Língua Portuguesa de Ensino Médio presentes nas escolas públicas brasileiras. Esses livros didáticos foram analisados e aprovados pelo programa Nacional do Livro Didático para o Ensino Médio (PNLEM/2006). Fundamentamos nossas análises nos pressupostos da teoria dos gêneros do discurso e de compreensão ativa responsiva postulados por Bakhtin e seu Círculo para compreender a natureza dos textos selecionados para compor os livros didáticos de nosso corpus, atentando para o favorecimento de formação de um leitor crítico e responsivo. Nossas análises centraram-se nos textos em seus respectivos gêneros discursivos e nas propostas de atividades de leitura elaboradas pelos autores desses livros didáticos a partir desses textos. Nosso olhar, dessa forma, procurou orientar-se pela configuração dos respectivos projetos didático-autorais para leitura dos livros didáticos que circulam no Ensino Médio público brasileiro. / Abstract: The present work aims at discussing how reading is taken as a learning and teaching object by some Portuguese Language school textbooks, used in Brazilian Public High School Portuguese classes. These selected school textbooks have been analyzed and approved by the National Program of Textbooks for High Schools (PNLEM/2006). The analysis, which reveals a qualitative and quantitative nature, was carried out with three Portuguese Language school textbooks for the first to third grades of middle school. We adopted, in our analysis, some theoretical conceptions related to the bakhtinian theory of speech genres and the idea of active responsive understanding postulated by Bakhtin and his Circle. Our analysis focused on the reading activities and corresponding speech genres presented by the named school books. The main concern was to figure out the didactic and authorial reading projects, centering on the possibilities of constructing a reflexive and critical reader by the mediation role of these texts as well as of the reading skills proposed by the analyzed schools textbooks. / Mestrado / Lingua Materna / Mestre em Linguística Aplicada