Teacher ’ s Role in the Reading Apprenticeship Framework : Aid by the Side or Sage by the Stage

Despite decades of efforts, alarming statistics about the literacy crisis from secondary school teachers indicate that the reading abilities of the learners are inadequate for the materials to be taught and teachers wonder if adolescents are literate enough, language-wise, to leave school and enter colleges or universities. The common mode of teaching allows students a passive role in class which leads to their being disengaged from literacy. How we teach literacy is of great importance if students are to become empowered as lifelong readers. As individuals differ in their reading abilities, teachers must move beyond testing for comprehension if students are to embrace a new way of being literate. Although research has taught us much about what is needed to read, it has provided much less knowledge about effective means of helping students learn to read. This study hoped to design a literacy program to respond to this need through a Reading Apprenticeship Framework as a partnership of expertise, drawing on what the teacher knows and does as a reader and on preuniversity students’ often underestimated strengths as learners using exploratory mixed method design.


Background
Random views and alarming statistics about the literacy crisis from secondary school teachers indicate that there seems to be a mismatch between the language proficiency level of the students and the syllabus that is to be covered.Often teachers declare that the reading abilities of the learners are inadequate for the materials to be taught and they wonder if adolescents are literate enough, language-wise, to leave school and enter colleges or universities.
In a world driven by information technology, the complexity of reading literacy is increasing as the format of texts becomes more diverse and increasing numbers of citizens are expected to use information from these materials in new and more complex ways.Varied texts such as CD-ROMs, Web pages, newspapers, and magazines place different demands on the reader.As information technology grows, we will encounter even more varied texts and will be called on to use information in new ways.
Alluded to within this brief statement are a number of potential sources of trouble for the adolescent reader: decoding, fluency, vocabulary, background knowledge, and critical thinking.Yet, this list does not exhaust the factors contributing to adolescents' experience of success (or failure) at literacy tasks.According to Edelson and Joseph (2004), in addition to these requisites, readers must also develop and maintain a motivation to read and learn, the strategies to monitor and correct their own comprehension during the act of reading, and the flexibility to read for a wide variety of purposes in a wide variety of media, all while developing their identities not only as readers but as members of particular social and cultural groups.
Helping students to attain the abilities fundamental to literacy is definitely challenging and a variety of instructional approaches have been developed to this end.Each of these approaches is based on the assumption that a particular key link in literacy development-motivation, purpose, knowledge of strategies and flexible utilization of them, word-reading skills, or schemata -has been weakened.To Delgado-Gaitan (1990) literacy is a socio-cultural process, and it follows that literate ability has to do with the socio-cultural knowledge and cognitive skills that are not the L2 readers' greatest points.
In the EFL context at the lower levels of most language curricula, literacy is more text-centric, rather than reader-centric.Literacy instruction at this level calls for using "functional" exercises, as well as reading stories and journalistic texts.At the higher levels, textual analysis skills and critical thought come into play (Barnett 1991;Jurasek, 1996).This is where most students underperform as they have not been prepared for such readings.According to Paul (2001) the common mode of teaching allows students a passive role in class which leads to the crisis of schools today, being disengaged from literacy.Thus, a classroom that is set out to teach for a new literacy would be one that honors all forms of representation.In such a classroom, students would be free to read in a variety of the "languages of the mind" (Tishman & Perkins, 1997).This freedom to read in various forms must be explicitly declared and modeled by the teacher.This more contemporary teacher role is represented in Kern's (2000) words as the guide by the side, not the sage on the stage.The goal is pedagogy of interpretive practice in which students and teachers use the unique literate environment of the classroom to reflect consciously and explicitly on interaction processes in various social contexts (Kramsch, 1993).Therefore, there is room for socio cognitive principles to be introduced in classrooms and that is why Kern (2000) discusses that the macro-principle of communication should be translated to the realities of classroom teaching and curriculum.As a result, the goal of a literacy-based curriculum should be to engage learners in activities that involve communication.Teachers in new literacy classrooms should become more aware of the literacies they bring to their expertise in order to open up resources for students' learning (Guthrie, 2001;John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996;and Byrnes, 1998).Acquisition of literacy is the need for socialization and interacting with texts that characterize particular discourse communities (Kern, 2000).According to Gergen (1995), learning is a social and collaborative activity, where the teacher acts as facilitator and the student is responsible for constructing her own understanding in his own mind.Thus, given opportunities involving critical dialogue, learners may develop skills which can be transferred to subsequent modes of thinking and communicating and as the interaction level is high, learners will become more engaged in the literacy tasks.
An instructional framework that best fits the criteria of a new literacy classroom could be Reading Apprenticeship.Reading apprenticeship is an approach to reading instruction that helps young people develop the knowledge, strategies, and dispositions they need to become more powerful readers (Greenleaf, Schoenbach, Cziko, and Mueller, 2001).The notion of apprenticeship has long characterized student and teacher roles in foreign language classroom.In literacy-based language teaching in Kern (2000) words, students are apprentice discourse analysts and intercultural explorers.
"In any apprenticeship, an expert practitioner or mentor models, directs, supports and shapes an apprentice's growing repertoire of practice.The apprentice actively engages in the task, learning by doing with appropriate support and gradually moving toward skillful independence in the desired practice" (Scohenbach, Braunger, Greenleaf & Litman, 2003, p.133).
Many students in today's diverse classrooms have trouble handling the conceptual demands in reading material when left to their own devices to learn from text.Through engagement in different dimensions of reading Apprenticeship framework students get to understand the acts of reading as evaluative pursuits.The Reading Apprenticeship Framework (RAF) involves teachers in integrating four interacting dimensions of classroom life that support reading development (Schoenbach, Braunger, Greenleaf, Litman, 2003. p. 135): 1.The social dimension involves developing a sense of safety in the classroom and making good use of adolescents' interest in peer interactions.
2. The personal dimension involves addressing adolescents' interest in exploring new aspects of their identities.
3. The cognitive dimension involves developing student's repertoires of specific comprehension and problem-solving strategies, with an emphasis on group discussion of when and why particular cognitive strategies are useful.

The knowledge-building dimension involves identifying and expanding the knowledge students bring to a text.
As such in a classroom community of readers, the metacognitive conversation is the central dynamic that animates and links the four dimensions of the Reading Apprenticeship framework.The concept of metacognition refers to one's knowledge about one's cognitive processes or anything related to those processes (Flavell, 1976, Brown, Bransford, Ferrara & Campione, 1983;Paris, 1988, Hudson 2007).In metacognitive conversation, teacher and students discuss their personal relationships to reading in the discipline, the cognitive strategies they use to solve comprehension problems, the structure and language of particular types of texts, and the kinds of knowledge required to make sense of reading materials (Schoenbach, Braunger, Greenleaf, & Litman, 2003).Through metacognition, apprentice readers begin to become aware of their reading processes (Paris & Jacobs 1984).
Thus Reading Apprenticeship is an approach to reading instruction that is believed to have the potential to help young readers develop the knowledge, strategies, and dispositions they need to become more powerful readers.In brief, the aim of Reading Apprenticeship is to help students become better readers of a variety of texts by: engaging them in more reading; making the teacher's discipline-based reading processes and knowledge visible to them; making the their reading processes and the social contexts, strategies, knowledge, and understandings they bring to the task of making sense of subject-matter texts visible to the teacher and to one another; helping them gain insight into their own reading processes; and helping them acquire a repertoire of problem-solving strategies with the varied texts of the academic discipline (Schoenbach, 2000, p.23).

The Study
Persistence, sustained attention, and cooperation are demanding for learners.Therefore, building the right context is crucial.Although research has taught us much about what is needed to read, it has provided much less knowledge about effective means of helping students learn to read.Thus, hoping to respond to this need, this study looked at the roles the teacher should adopt in a RAF to develop pre-college EFL learners' reading literacy drawing on what the teacher knows and does as a reader and on learners' often underestimated strengths.In the Reading Apprenticeship Framework of this study reading strategies were taught in a context of inquiry.Such a context affords teachers the opportunity to support motivation with the principles of: a) having knowledge goals in reading instruction, b) providing hands-on activities related to reading, c) giving students realistic choices, d) using interesting texts for instruction, and e) weaving collaboration into students' classroom lives (Guthrie, Schafer, & Huang, 2001).

Procedure
Intending to provide insights into what teaching strategies are useful in facilitating the delivery of the Reading Apprenticeship Framework, the study was carried out in an English language school over a duration of two months and in 36 sessions.
The type of Purposeful Sampling adopted in this study is Typical Sampling which, according to Creswell (2002), is a sampling in which the researcher studies a person or site that is "typical" to those unfamiliar with the situation.Finn and Achilles (1999) found that students in classes of fewer than 17 had statistically significant literacy achievement gains in all subject areas and at every level.In this study for better achievement results, it was tried to keep the number of learners fewer than seventeen.
The subjects who participated in the actual study were language learners attending an intensive course of English at intermediate level of proficiency.The subjects came from a variety of native language backgrounds: Malay, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Arabic etc.Most of the learners were secondary school leavers who wished to pursue their education at a college or university in or outside Malaysia but lacked the required English proficiency.All the students at this language school sit for a written and oral placement test upon registration.Therefore, those sitting in one class might be assumed homogenous; but the fact that the pre-test of the study showed otherwise was cherished, as the heterogeneity factor helped me to see how the framework worked for learners at different levels of proficiency.On the very first session, all seventeen learners sat for a pre test, adopted from PISA 2000.The mean and standard deviation were calculated.As the overall ability of the researcher to provide an in-depth picture diminishes with the addition of each new individual (Creswell, 2002), six learners from different nationalities, two who scored the highest, two who scored the lowest and two whose scores were closest to the mean were selected to represent better, weaker and average students to maximize what could be learned from the context.
Learning cognitive strategies is a challenging enterprise.To learners, the strategies are abstract.For teachers, the process of modeling and scaffolding strategies requires time and care.Nevertheless this study found that even low-achieving readers' reading can develop with effective instruction.Observation field notes, learners' reflections, insights from the final interview and feedback from the peer observation sessions all complemented the findings on the efficacy of the apprenticeship.

The Instruction/Apprenticeship
In light of the requirements for increased reading literacy, Reading Apprenticeship puts the teacher/researcher in the role of expert and students are "apprenticed" into the ways reading is used and the strategies and thinking that are particularly useful.Rather than offering a sequence of strategies, the RAF in this study focused on creating a classroom where students became active and effective readers and learners.It should be noted that, although reading strategies have been placed under the categories of pre-reading, while-reading and after-reading (e.g.Auerbach and Paxton, 1997;Maria and Hathaway, 1993) the focus in this RAF was on 'while-reading' strategies.
From the beginning, reading apprentices were engaged in the whole process of problem solving to make sense of written texts, even if they were initially unable to carry out on their own all the individual strategies and subtasks that go into successful reading.The hidden, cognitive dimensions in particular were drawn out and made visible to the students.The teaching and learning environment required the interaction of students and teacher in multiple dimensions of classroom life to develop students' confidence and competence as readers of various kinds of challenging texts.
Making it safe for students to discuss reading difficulties mitigated their potential embarrassment.Strategies that address individual needs involved: Offering personalized scaffolding.
Using flexible means to reach defined ends Creating a caring classroom in which differences were seen as assets.
The overarching practice in this RAF was building ample one-on-one time into the class structure.Adapting Hunter's (1991) lesson design mode, everyday the lesson was started by eliciting from the learners themselves how that very strategy could help them in real life and why it was important to know how to use it (Purpose).Then the strategy was introduced with examples for its actual usage (Input).Using think-aloud, an example or two would be modeled for them to see what a more proficient reader would actually do in the face of a reading problem (Modeling).
As Smith (1988) stresses the importance of learner's personal sense of group membership, the learners were then assigned to groups to do the tasks together.Learners acted upon cues from what they read, experimented with multiple literacies and received feedback from peers and the "novice tutors".They were given reading tasks to do in small groups, so that through interaction they could help their peers to manage the task and not just sit idol, waiting for the class to read out the correct responses as groups needing more scaffolding were monitored (Guided Practice).Working in small groups allowed for participation of everyone as they felt more comfortable and able to reach consensus.Research recommends no fewer than three and no more than five for small group discussions to insure the involvement of all (Miller, 1997); thus, learners were asked to sit in groups of 3-5 for the desired peer support.
A particular risk with any kind of scaffold is when its use becomes habituated.When the provided support is fixed and constantly expected, students are not given the opportunity to ever become independent (Silver & Kogut, 2006).Thus, after relative assurance was gained of their ability to handle the tasks, they were given more reading tasks and asked to try their best to handle them independently (Independent Practice).
In the first half of the framework, the strategies were introduced one at a time.To some of the more complex strategies more than one session were dedicated.Single strategy instruction enabled lower-achieving learners to understand, to gain command, and to transfer the strategies to a variety of texts (Guthrie, Wigfield, Barbosa, Von Secker & Richardson, 2001).In the second half of this 8-week framework, the strategies were combined.Learners need to be shown what teachers mean before they can effectively do what they are asked to do.
One consistent feature in the reading lessons was the encouragement of students to read and think aloud to increase students' conscious awareness of the various problems faced and strategies used during reading.Although it was not expected from all the students to be equally competent, they were expected to follow the modeling of the strategies albeit their proficiency differences.There was an even mix of different proficiencies in different groups.Groupings that are required to discuss topics require a range of perspectives that are likely to be enhanced in mixed-ability groupings (Web, 1989).With respect to the dialogue that occurs when students are working together, Wells (2002) notes: "It is not necessary for there to be a clear difference in expertise for participants to assist each other…whenever the dialogue that occurs in joint activity leads to an increase in individual as well as collective understanding, there is an opportunity for each participant to appropriate new ways of doing, speaking, and thinking, and thus to augment the…resources they can draw on, both in the present and in their future activities" (p.61) However, it was observed that having a more competent learner in each group who subtly took on the role of the "expert" and shared his think-alouds with his other peers can prove more beneficial.This allows apprenticeship to happen at two levels: At one level, the teacher as the expert and all learners as apprentices and at the second level, the more proficient readers in the groups as the mentors allowing the less proficient readers constant access to a model.
Besides the use of think-aloud, metacognitive discussion was another prominent feature of the reading sessions.Most of the discussion whether instructor-led at the first level of apprenticeship, or peer-led at the second level of the apprenticeship, revolved around the detection of what was hindering comprehension, awareness and use of learned strategies and finding contextual clues for resolving reading problems.
The description above provides a general view of the dimensions of RAF.While each reading session differed somewhat from one another depending on the specific objectives of each lesson, the following dimensions of RAF adapted from Greenleaf, Schoenbach, Cziko, & Mueller (2001) underscores a typical reading session.

Findings
On the last day of the semester the learners were given the same pre test to compare their performance on the exact same test that they had taken 2 months ago.All learners' post-test scores showed improvement compared to their pre-test results.On average, the mean progress of the 6 learners was 14.4%.Observation field notes, learners' reflections, insights from the final interview and feedback from the peer observation sessions all complemented the findings on the efficacy of the apprenticeship and signposted the roles the teacher should take up to better utilize the potential of the RAF and therefore to aim for higher reading literacy development on learners' side.

Modeling of reading strategies
First and foremost, modeling the strategy played an important role in the RAF.For each strategy, a sample paragraph was given out, read out loud, and the metacognitive think-aloud shared with the learners; only then would the learners be asked to get on task with their group-mates.
On learners' reflections on the effectiveness of the modeling and instruction, they were consistently giving responses such as "clear"," understandable", "superb", "great", "very good", etc.All students found the modeling "helpful", and "a good reference".Similar comments from students with different proficiencies added confidence that the modeling was actually helpful.One of the more proficient readers, DH, mentioned that he "couldn't do the tasks without it".A student with average proficiency, HM, also wrote that "it happened in his brain as well."The feedback from the peer observers revealed the modeling had been "very clear", "step by step" and "useful".
On marrying strategy instruction and think-aloud, the findings are in line with studies by Oster (2001) who advocates the use of think-aloud in reading instruction, as well as Baumann, Jones and Seifert-Kessel (1993), who examined the effects of think-aloud on reading strategies and comprehension.In the literature, reading teachers have been encouraged to think aloud as a form of modeling cognitive processes and by the students as a form of practice and learning (Baumann et al. 1993;Davey, 1983;Nist and Kirby 1986;Oster 2001;Womack, 1991).Empirical studies have also proved the effectiveness of using think-aloud to improve reading (Womack, 1991;Liaw, 1995).The demonstration and modeling of strategies is a key feature of instructional scaffolding that students need to be successful with texts.Learning is mediated through language by differences in perspectives among co-participants (Bakhtin, 1984;Habermas, 1984).

Making good use of peer interaction
The idea of group work was to support the social dimension of the RAF and to help learners' build confidence.Smith (1996) stresses the importance of apprenticeship and the learner's personal sense of group membership, which leads to a literate identity.There was a more competent learner in each group who subtly took on the role of the "expert" and shared his think-alouds with his other peers.Thus, apprenticeship happened at two levels: At one level, teacher as the expert and all learners as apprentices and at the second level, the more proficient readers in the groups as the mentors allowing the less proficient readers constant access to a model.
Regardless of the proficiency level, all students unanimously agreed that working with peers and sharing think-aloud proved fruitful and they all thought a maximum of 3 is ideal for such interaction.Experimental comparisons, undertaken largely in the USA, have shown positive effects of cooperative, collaborative and mastery learning for small-sized groupings as well (Slavin, 1990).
The feedback from peer observations corroborates the effectiveness of the interaction: "Students enjoyed pair work/group work during the lesson.It helped them to understand the topic better through discussion."(Peer observer 5) or "doing practices in groups helped in building students' confidence."(Peer observer 4) A related finding on the use of the RAF pertains to how strategies were employed as an effort of a small group.As far as the element of peer interaction is concerned, the findings support Palincsar and Brown's (1984) and Anderson and Roit's (1993) studies that provide evidence on the usefulness of combining the elements of think-aloud with collaboration.In Driscoll's words (1994), the learners' interaction with peers is an important source of cognitive development as they become aware of the inconsistencies in their thinking; this is in line with Piagetian peer teaching and social negotiation concepts.
In small groups, students were able to pool their resources and through metacognitive talk resolve the reading problems.A second level of apprenticeship occurred in small groups as the better readers mentored the less proficient students and constructed "a scaffold for each other's performance" (Donato, 1994).Mercer (2000) also found that the think aloud and negotiation of meaning allows for such social interaction.Anderson (1991) and Kamhi-Stein (1998) advocate such collaboration among the L2 readers considering the limited vocabulary and linguistic resources that they possess.Working collaboratively allows students to compensate for each others' lack of resources in the face of reading problems (Goh, 2004).

Providing scaffolding
Another factor essential to the effective implementation and delivery of the RAF was scaffolding or in Graves and Braaten (1996) words, "temporary supports that help a learner bridge the gap between what he or she can do and what he or she needs to do to succeed at a learning task".Roehler, Duffy and Applebee (1991) all agree that a key component of a strategies instructional model is scaffolding and it has to include instructional actions designed to shift responsibility for strategy use from teachers to students as a diverse learner needs not only exhortation but also a good model.
In each session, after modeling the strategy, the teacher moved around the classroom and spent some time with each group.The more introvert learners were closely monitored.With time, practice and feedback, learners would gain the knowledge and motivation to use independently what they have learned.The goal was for students to become self-regulated in their strategy use (Vygotsky, 1978).
Two levels of apprenticeship took place in the form of expert-novice relationships-one at the teacher-student level, the other at the peers level.
The students' reflections on issues of scaffolding were consistent with the researcher's observations.For every single strategy, the whole class found the offered scaffolding "easy and fast to understand", "good to improve reading", "effective", "makes understanding better", etc.
Not only the weaker students, but also the better readers benefited from the 2-level apprenticeship.In DH's words "when you hear yourself explain something to your friend, you understand it better also".
Feedback from other observers on the scaffolding factor was just as positive.
"The scaffolding provided was effective.It had been carefully and systematically prepared in advance.It was progressively removed once students were ready."(Peer observer 2) The significance of scaffolding in the RAF is in tone with Vygotsky's (1986) zone of proximal development-what a child can do in cooperation today he can do tomorrow alone.One version of ZDP had attained influence in UK's literacy policy.The teacher's role is to provide 'scaffolding' for the learner's linguistic development to 'support pupils' early efforts and to build confidence (DfEE, 2001).The important factor in scaffolding is for the teacher/coach to be present at the moment of need to prompt the strategy use, or else the 'teachable moment' (Moses, 1998) passes the student by.
The procedure of instruction in the RAF was a) model the strategy, b) do the first reading task together with the class, c) on the second task, let peers help each other and discuss their think-aloud while the teacher monitored, observed and listened carefully to identify where, when and to whom 'scaffolding' should be offered and d) have learners do the reading tasks with minimum support from both their peers and the teacher.Wary and Lewis (2000) proceed to redefine the ZPD as a four-stage process as well where expertise is transferred from expert to novice, which is the corner stone of apprenticeship: 1) demonstration, 2) joint activity, 3) supported activity, 4) individual activity (p.26).
At the end of the process, the reason that the expert can withdraw is because learners themselves have become the expert or in Greig's (2000) words the process of learning enables the replication of teacher's expertise.
In 36 hours of apprenticeship, through the modeling of each strategy and sharing of think-aloud, teacher's discipline-based reading processes were successfully made visible to the learners.What is more, working in small groups, benefiting from a second level of apprenticeship, thinking together and having constant access to a model (either the teacher or the better reader of the group), made learners' reading processes visible to themselves and to each other; and finally with direct strategy instruction, gradual removal of scaffolding and learners' growing confidence, learners at different proficiency levels became more capable of handling authentic texts and more enabled to "break the code" (Schoenbach, Braunger, Greenleaf, & Litman, 2003) of academic language.

Discussion
There is a wide gap between research and practice, with little strategy instruction happening across classrooms (Pressley, 2000).The positive impact of the RAF implies that teachers potentially have a useful instructional technique to help learners improve their reading literacy and deal with various text types.

Reading instruction
A number of educators have discussed characteristics of instruction designed to encourage learners to become more strategic (Baker 1994;Rosenshine and Meister, 1994;Rhoder, 2002).First, instruction is most effective when the instructor 1) carefully explains the nature and purpose of strategy; 2) models its use through thinking aloud; 3) provides ample practice; 4) lets peers remind each other of the benefits of strategy use through interaction; 5) provides a content base embedded in authentic purposes.Instructional time for direct-strategy instruction and modeling must be made available.Hence, if the objective of the reading lesson is to encourage fluent reading or reading for leisure, the procedure may not be suitable.

Peer interaction
A key factor in successful delivery of the RAF is good utilization of peer interaction.While peer interaction proves beneficial for most learners, there are some who are possibly not comfortable to ask for support in the face of a difficulty, especially if they sit in groups of learners with different proficiencies.Thus, as long as the teacher ensures the presence of at least one student of higher proficiency in the group who can play the role of the 'coach', it may be beneficial to allow the learners to determine who they are willing to work with.Action and interaction within groups may be affected by group composition.Group composition may vary by attainment/ability, friendship, gender and behavior.Groupings that are required to discuss topics require a range of perspectives that are likely to be enhanced in mixed-ability groups (Web, 1989).Thus, teachers should consider individual differences in composing small groups as it can play a deterrent role in maximizing the potential of the second level of apprenticeship.

Metacognitive conversation and think-aloud
The data shows that metacognitive conversation and think-aloud are other crucial aspects of the RAF.The underlying assumption is that teachers in the RAF are themselves proficient in carrying out the think-aloud, as any uncertainty on the side of the teachers will make them unable to help learners become comfortable with using the skill.Teachers are required to model reading strategies through think-aloud and to provide examples for their students to boost their motivation to use them (McEwan, 2004).Therefore, considering the benefits of being able to model thinking-aloud implies the need for trainee teachers to master the skill prior to stepping into the classroom (Goh, 2004).

Teacher education
Along the same lines, one of the implications of this study is for teacher education.Recent research using the PISA (2000) database has shown that students in countries with an unequal distribution of qualified teachers have lower scores than those from countries with a more equitable distribution of teacher resources (Chiu & Khoo, 2005).Researchers say the biggest impact on student literacy can be achieved by simply redirecting professional development money toward training teachers to use literacy-based strategies (Brozo, 2006).By sending trained teachers who can bridge the gap between research and practice to classrooms, and by helping English learners to perform more effectively at colleges or universities, societies as a whole will be strengthened and enriched.

Conclusion
Close analyses of learners' and teacher's respective roles in a literacy-based classroom, classroom interaction dynamics, and the formulation and framing of instructional tasks, reveals that positive practices like RAF flourish in the classrooms of teachers who understand literacy acquisition and the richness of the L2 learner's mind.How we teach literacy is of great importance if students are to understand the acts of reading as evaluative pursuits, and if they are to become empowered as lifelong readers.Teachers must move beyond teaching skills and testing for comprehension if students are to embrace new ways of being literate (Wilhelm, 1997).(Greenleaf et al, 2001) : University of Maryland College Park.