When and Where Did I Find It: I came across this word while reading Chapter 30 of our beloved Reading Handbook. This was the second time reading this chapter and I had the word circled from when it was assigned in LTED 600.
The sentence that I found this word in was the following:
"Sometimes unterstanding occurs from the bottom up with the reader procesing many individual ideas in text (and sometimes referred to as propositions) and how the ideas are related to one another by the text to construct a general understanding of the text's meaning, whith such summary meanings sometimes referred to as macropropositions." (p.549)
Formal Citation: Kamil, M. L., Mosenthal, P. B., Pearson, P. D., & Barr, R. (Eds.). (2000). Handbook of reading research: Volume III. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
What the Word Means: According to Kamil, Mosenthal, Pearson, and Barr (2000) macropropositions are the summary of meanings/ideas (propositions) that an individual processes while reading. Considering that propositions are the individual ideas behind text the macropropositions are more like topics (summary of ideas).
My Level of Familiarity: I must admit that this word and its meaning is completely unfamiliar to me. After looking it up, I know its basic meaning but I am still unsure of its overall concept.
Should I Know This Word? I think that it's a good word to understand and a concept that I as a future literacy specialist should be familiar with. Comprehension seems to be affected by this concept of combining propositions to create a topic of summary of propositions. This sounds confusing (and personally understanding this makes me feel pretty smart) but I think that at the base of this jibberish this word can play a crucial role in students' abilities to comprehend. Combining small ideas together to create one broad idea. I think that as a teacher I ask my students to do just the opposite by thinking of the small ideas and meanings that relate to a topic and it's important to understand this other concept of comprehension.
Do I Think Others Should Know This Word? Who and Why? I think that literacy specialists and reading teachers should know this word for the same reasons listed above. In my experience it's rare that teachers approach reading in this narrow to broad way and I feel as though it's something to be able to recommend to classroom teachers if necessary.
Ah... our "beloved Handbook of Reading Research." :-) Yes, despite the conceptual density of this chapter, it does help reading teachers (or content area teachers who use reading to learn as a part of their instructional routines) develop a deeper, more principled understanding of the complexities of an expository text.
ReplyDeleteAlso, just so you are aware, Kamil, Mosenthal, Pearson and Barr are not the authors of this chapter.