Wallace’s Critical Reading Framework
For Non Professional Readers: Students’ Perception
Intan Pradita
English Language Education Department, Islamic University of Indonesia, Jl Kaliurang, Yogyakarta, Indonesia
Keywords: Critical Reading, Language Awareness, Intermediate Readers.
Abstract: Critical reading for pedagogical purpose, as constructed by Wallace (1999), proposes some principles that are
applicable to be used by teachers. This research is aimed at describing the students’ perception on the
employment of Wallace’s framework in the teaching of critical reading. The survey was conducted to 78
students, after accomplishing one-semester course. The questionnaire consists of three representative features
of the framework. The first is field, on how the writer describes what is going on in the text. The second is
mode, on how the writer organizes the content in the text. The last is tenor, on how the writer indicates his or
her relationship with the readers. There are 50,2% students who perceived that field aspect is understandable,
48,2% students who marked that mode aspect is understandable, and 54% students who agreed that tenor
aspect is undertsandable. However, the margin is relatively close for the affirmative and the opposite side. It
ranges 1,5%: 1%. The positive remark of 1,5% showed that some contributing activities have influenced the
students’ critical reading ability. T-test results show that discussing texts presents the most significant factor
(0.016), followed by think aloud practice (0.022), and checking the dictionaries (0.03).
1 INTRODUCTION
Critical reading has been put into consideration by
some scholars since the rise of language awareness
(Carter, 2003). It was started by Van Essen (1997)
who brought the issue of repositioning language
awareness, from drilling and translation practice into
more holistic analysis of a text. This was warmly
accepted by both linguistic and pedagogy scholars, in
terms of an agreement that a text should be brought
more than just descriptive purposes. Fairclough
(2001) proposes that language represents social
aspects, such as social relation, power distance, and
social identities. This approach evokes the
importance of bringing texts into more real-used to
enable the students building a meaningful relation
with the text instead of accepting the text simply as
the text they need to accomplish at school. Bolitho
and Tomlinson (1995) manifested language
awareness through their workbook; Discovery
Learning, and applied it as a research. They shared
that by implementing language awareness for reading
and grammar skill, it improves both students’
cognitive and affective skill. However, it has to be
supported by conducting task-based action and
providing experiential effects. In short, language
awareness is a promising approach to help the
students to be critical in analysing texts. The next
question is then whether or not it is suitable for all
reading level. Some studies prove that by
implementing language awareness has helped the
students to improve their critical literacy ((Kaufer,
Ishizaki, Collins, & Vlachos, 2004; Olarak, 2014) but
the participants in the studies are high achievers and
the research itself took more than one year. The
researcher in this case is wondering on how
applicable language awareness approach to teach
critical reading for intermediate or even beginner
readers. This is important for some scholars who
concern to struggling readers (Idol, 2015; Tam,
Heward, & Heng, 2006). They believe that the main
issue of poor readers are their self-stimulation
schemata. Most of them do not perform background
knowledge to analyse the texts. Thinking map and
instructional flash cards were proven to enable the
poor readers to think gradually (Idol, 2015). The other
studies concern to non professional readers (Christina
& Leal, 1998; Dar, Rahimi, & Shams, 2010; Wallace,
n.d.). Non-professional readers in this case mean the
readers who are exposed to critical reading but not
necessarily for professional purposes. It is closer to
education or training purposes. Christina & Leal
(1998) highlighted that letting the students discuss the
192
Pradita, I.
Wallace’s Critical Reading Framework - For Non Professional Readers: Students’ Perception.
DOI: 10.5220/0007164401920197
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 192-197
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

texts in clusters with their friends and providing
authentic issues in the texts enabled the students’
motivation to participate and generate their ideas
effectively. Most of the studies have not yet provide
a conceptual framework which covers not only
recommended activities but also about the planning
and evaluation On her research of language
awareness to teach critical reading, Wallace
constructed her own framework of critical reading,
such as building the principles of critical reading in
pedagogical setting, text types, and also the
procedures to teach critical reading (Wallace, n.d.,
1999). Her framework is under the influence of
(Wright & Bolitho, 1993) and Halliday (1978). As a
conclusion, Wallace’s critical reading framework
seems promising to be implemented in the classroom
setting, by also considering external supports,
especially in terms of strategies. Thus, this research is
aimed at answering the research questions below;
a.) How is the students’ perception of the
implementation of Wallace’s critical reading
framework?
b.) What strategic reading strategies that
influence as the contributive factors to analyze
the concepts of fields, modes, and tenor?
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Being critical is an issue to be delivered in the first
place, that many scholars emphasize their
encouragements on implementing critical thinking in
the teaching process. Wright & Bolitho (1993: 292)
assert that the teacher is the central focus to
implement language awareness.
“The more aware a teacher is of language and
how it works, the better”
It is strongly recommended that a linguistically
aware teacher will help them to build a successful
communicative teaching. They recommend that the
use of authentic text will probe both the knowledge
and the awareness of each text given to the students.
A brief framework of language awareness in the
teaching of critical reading involves identifying,
comparing, analysing, and negotiating. Further, in the
affective scope, the framework encourages
introspecting, reflecting, and applying insights. On
how to teach critical reading, the teacher should have
and should teach a comprehensive grammar
knowledge first before moving to the critical areas
such as nationality and identity (La, 2007). Regarding
this issue, grammar has been notorious in EFL
context in terms of on how the students face it as
difficult subject, on the option of using L1 or L2 to
make the students understand better, and on how the
instruction should be made (Hidayati, 2012;
Savignon & Wang, 2003). Furthermore, in terms of
critical thinking stimulation, the second stage after
understanding grammar, it is also sensed to be
problematic by Wallace (1992). She notices that in
both advanced readers and limited proficiency
readers, there are three points that are lack to build
students’ critical thinking, let alone the critical
reading skill. It is that there is no attempt to bring the
reading activities in a social context. There is also less
effort to use provocative text and almost unfound that
there is a teacher encouraging the students to interpret
texts of which it addresses ideological assumptions.
Moreover, the interaction of the students and their
reading text tend to be either submissive or assertive,
depending on their prior knowledge. In the side of the
students, bringing critical reading may not be easy for
the students have also limited desire to read (Widiati
& Cahyono, 2006). Some of them do not have a good
background information and limited vocabularies.
In Indonesia, as one of EFL countries, the issue of
critical reading has been developed since the 2006
Curriculum until the revised 2013 Curriculum
(Ministry of Education and Culture Affair, 2013). The
learning is mostly text analysis by highlighting three
points, which are the social function, the text
structure, and the language features. This is in line
with the framework that is formulated by Wallace
(1999).
The framework covers two sub-features; the text
analysis framework and the principles to teach critical
reading. On the framework, Wallace fully adopts
Halliday’s framework of register analysis (1978) as
displayed in Figure 1.
In terms of key principles in critical reading,
Wallace (1999) proposes that the very first principle
is that it is necessary to let the students airing their
personal feelings, on anything they feel during the
learning process. The second is that the students
should not work individually to response the text but
more like negotiation. Thus, it should be held as
communal action. In critical reading, it does not
perceive the students to be categorized as native or
non-native speakers, because the texts will be cross
ideology or cross-cultural. The third is, on the text
types chosen as the learning media, it is necessary to
have authentic materials as the basis in critical
reading. The last one is that critical reading involving
not only logic, arguments, or sentiments, but also the
ideological values of the given texts.
Wallace’s Critical Reading Framework - For Non Professional Readers: Students’ Perception
193

Figure 1: The Framework of Text Analysis by Halliday
(1978).
Based on the figure above, it is clear that in order
to read critically, a reader should be able to
understand and analyze three concepts of text
analysis. In terms of field and mode encourage readers
to examine instrinsic features in a text. In other words,
the level is on reading comprehension as the
foundation of critical reading. The last concept is
tenor which enable readers to analyze a text critically,
because it involves extrinsic features. Halliday (1978)
believes that grammar can accommodate readers to
reach each concepts. For example, to know the major
or minor participants, the readers can employ their
background knowledge of active and passive voice
and causations. Another one is when the students are
asked to find the degree of certainty, a reader can
employ the former knowledge of modality. It is
expected that the reader will understand that grammar
is not only perceived as a formula, but also as a social
process. Wallace (1999) emphasizes that when the
readers perceive that they are able to assess each
concepts, it means that their critical reading is
developing. Related to be able to achieve the critical
reading ability, the employment of reading strategies
is inseparable. Carell (1989) and Block (1986) have
introduced reading strategies in general which
mention that a reader should be able to identify the
purpose for reading, make sense of the texts, and
solve the problems during reading process. It includes
rereading, questioning self, underlining, context clues
predicting, and restating. As the updates, Parkinson &
Dinsmore (2017) share their coding of both cognitive
and metacognitive strategies in assessing texts. They
name the coding as strategic processing which means
that a reader can combine cognitive and
metacognitive strategies to understand or analyze a
text. Throughout the debate of which strategies are
more helpful to enable the readers in understanding a
text, Parkinson & Dalmore (2017) prove that readers
tend to combine both strategies, although Vrugt &
Ourt (2008) claims that metacognitive learners who
are aware of they are doing metacognitive process
during reading process tend to be the most succesful
readers.
3 RESEARCH METHOD
There were 78 respondents in this study who attended
the class of Critical Reading and Literacy in one
semester. The questionnaire contains 38 questions
that assessed the indicators based on field, mode, and
tenor competencies as represented in Halliday’s text
analysis framework. There were 5 more questions
regarding their affective and psychomotor skills. The
questions were the adaptation of strategic processing
by Parkinson & Dinsmore (2017), and based on the
criteria as referred by Bolitho & Tomlinson (1995),
Wallace (1999) such as discussion, task-based
practice, collaborative work, restatement, and
highlighting the important information. The data were
then analysed by using Independent unequal variance
T-test to measure which factors that contributes to the
students’ perception of the applied critical reading
framework.
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4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.1 Text Analysis
The first theme is to display the survey result of the
students’ perception of each concept. As presented in
Table 1, the most dominating perception is
understandable. It infers that most of the students
perceive the framework as helpful to enable them
analysing a text critically. The second dominating
perception is difficult, which implies that the
distribution of middle scale is close. The researcher
tried to narrow the scope into difficult and
understandable, by adding the percentage of each two
aspects. In terms of fields, 40.22% students still
perceive it as difficult, and 55,7% students perceive it
as understandable. The Z-score is 1.38, which means
that the perception has a minimal margin error. In
terms of mode, the students who perceive it as
difficult is 49.05% and those who consider it as
understandable is 50.6%. The Z-score is 1.03, which
also prove that it has a minimal margin error. The last
concept is tenor, which is perceived to be difficult by
48.53% students, and considered to be
understandable by 56.5% students. The Z-score is
1.16. As an overall descriptive analysis, mode is
considered to be the most helpful for the students to
assess a text critically, followed by field. In terms of
tenor, it is clear that the number of students who
perceive it as very difficult is 4.22% or the highest
percentage among other similar scale. As mentioned
by Wallace (1999), indeed, tenor is placed as the last
stage of critical reading. Thus, it requires more
strategies to enable the students analyse a text
critically. To this extent, as proven by Bolitho &
Tomlinson (1995), metacognitive strategies are
necessary to support the concept of tenor.
Table 1: Survey Result of Text Analysis Perception
Aspects
Very
Difficult
Difficult
Understandable
Very
Understandable
FIELD
0.66%
39.6%
50.2%
5.5%
MODE
1.65%
47.4%
48.2%
2.4%
TENOR
4.22%
44.3%
54.2%
2.3%
Based on the table above, it is also surprising that
2.3% students perceived tenor concept as very
understandable. As proposed by Parkinson and
Dinsmore (2017), strategic processing is claimed to
exceed the effects of only employing metacognitive
strategies. However, Vrugt & Ourt (2008) also claim
that metacognitive strategies have been more helpful
to create successful readers. On the other hand, it is
not really surprising that field is perceived to be the
least difficult one. This is known by the number of
students in the first scale or very difficult is just
0.66%. It confirms to Wallace’s theory (1999) that
field is the very first stage of critical reading, which is
more on reading comprehension. We can also refer to
La (2007) who reminds that language awareness
should be supported by a sufficient foundation of
grammar and vocabulary resources. It is relfected in
each concept that simple sentences are presented
more in field and mode. Some indicators of fields and
modes even employs the lower level of syntax, which
are words and phrases. For example, in field concept,
a reader can assess the adjectives to infer the
characteristics of the participants in the text. The
reader can also recall their knowledge of adverbs and
preposition of place to indicate the circumstances,
and draw a conclusion about degree of certainty by
exploring the verbs. If the writer uses mental process
verbs, it implies that the described participant does
not do any action yet. It is different when the writer
uses materials process verbs, it means that the
described participant has made a significant action.
In terms of mode, the reader can also recall their
memory of transition signals, which mostly in the
form of phrase instead of a clause. However, a
sufficient understanding on tenses is also required
here. This is assumed to be the cause of 1.65%
students perceived mode concept as very difficult. The
tenses here is used to help readers identifying the
genres and text types. For example, if the text uses
present tense, it will not be a narative or recount text.
On the other side, of the text uses past tense, it is not
about descriptive text. It seems to be easy that the
students are required only to deal with present and
past tense. Indeed, when the students are faced to
simple tenses, they were more contributive in the
classroom. However when they dealt with
combination tense; for example, present contionus
tense, they tend to be confuse.
In terms of tenor, it requires the reader to interact
to the writer of the text. The background knowledge
is more demanding, that it is not only about grammar
and vocabulary resources, but also a backgorund
knowledge of another resource. For example when
the students were given a question to be solved,
whether they wanted to be an entrepreneur or an
employee, they should read more than one recource
to have a more convincing argument.
The students, in this tenor practice, were given
two texts. The first one inferred that being an
employee is more promising, and the second one is
the opposite. Before the texts were distributed, the
lecturer asked each students about their choise which
based on their background knowledge since they were
Wallace’s Critical Reading Framework - For Non Professional Readers: Students’ Perception
195

children. After reading the texts, the lecturer asked
the same question, and apparently most of the
students change their first impression. This activity
was quite tricky, for the lecturer should provide a
contextual and authentic issue, yet provocative. The
students should be able to find out the hidden agenda
that each writer aimed to do. Especially on how the
writer directs the reader into certain choice between
two options. Thus, the students have a space to
discuss instead of answering criterion-based
questions. Another issue about being non-
professional reader might also play a role in this case,
that even some of the students are poor readers. Thus,
in the end of the subject, those who perceive each
concept to be very difficult is relatively high. As a
reflective part, it is necessary to elaborate on what
strategies are influential to help the students in
understanding each concepts.
4.2 Contributing Strategies to support
Text Analysis
Reading strategies have been a common issue in
exploring readers’ comprehension of a text. There is
no sufficient evidence that critical reading has
specific strategies, or separated strategies than
metacognitive ones. Thus, in this research, it is
beneficial to assess which reading strategies than play
as contributed factors in terms of fields, modes, and
tenor.
After conducting T-test of each reading strategies,
it is found that each strategy works differently in
every concepts. It is presented by the significance
coefficient of P- value, which ranges P< 0.09. The
summary of each strategie are described in Table 2.
Table 2. Key Principles Perception.
Key Principles in Critical
Reading
Sig.
Fields
Mode
Tenor
I like reading a text by also
underlining difficult
words
0,053
0,685
0,141
I directly search in the
dictionary whenever I find
difficult words
0,28
0,03
0,872
I ask my friends about
difficult words rather than
checking in the dictionary
0,459
0,071
0,391
I like having discussion
with my lecturer
0,514
0,016
0,107
I highlight my favourite
parts in the text that I am
reading
0,035
0,147
0,14
I can retell the text I have
just read
0,549
0,022
0,309
I felt annoyed if there
is/are people in my group
who are slow to response
in the discussion
0,01
0,127
0,314
I felt annoyed when there
is/are submissive people
in my group during
discussion
0,032
0,606
0,266
Firstly, it is important to trace back on Wallace’s
principles of critical reading practices in the
classroom setting (1999), and Bolitho & Tomlinson
(1995) about the exploration of discussion, or non-
individual work. We found that in performing
strategic processing, discussion involves three
criteria, such as; self-contribution, tolerance, and trust
(Parkinson & Dinsmore, 2017). In terms of fields, the
students found it problematic when they have either
submissive or passive members. In this side, the
students were failed to build tolerance and self-
contribution. This can actually be interpreted that the
students were engaged in the discussion, thus they
expect more from their friends. In compared to the
concept of mode, and tenor, the students tend to
neglect whether their friends are submissive or even
passive (proven by P = 0.606 and P = 0.127). It means
that a qualified discussion did not happen during
working on mode, and tenor concepts. Indeed, the
level of trust is presented in mode concept (P= 0.071,
P= 0.016, and P=0.022) for “asking difficult words to
friends”, “discussing with my lecturer”, and “retelling
text”. Thus, independent discussion is recommended
during field concept, whereas, a guided discussion
with the lecturer is recommended during mode
concept. When it deals with communality, the
students are not yet into acceptance of submissiveness
when the stage is relatively in the start up level.
However, they are open to communality when they
are stepping ahead into more difficult stage of text
analysis (it is shown by the coefficient P=0.016 and
P=0.022 as the contrary of feeling annoyed as the
baseline). Due to the expected strategy is independent
discussion, it is considerable to employ the
suggestions from Hidayati (2012); and Savignon &
Wang (2003). It is that the lecturer should provide a
clearer and guided instructions. Furthermore, for
those who perceived the framework as very difficult,
the lecturer is recommended to try the thinking map
by Idol (2015).
The use of dictionary works effectively during
mode analysis (P= 0.03). The strategies of
“underlining context clues”, and “highlighting
favourite parts” are found effective in field concept.
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The last two strategies also work in a good way in
tenor concept, although the coefficient is P> 0.09,
which are P= 0.141 and P= 0.140.
By looking at the table, the concept of tenor is
perceived to be less strategic than the other two. The
most closely significant coefficient is “I love
discussing with my lecturer” which means that the
role of the teacher is significant. This is actually
related to the previous studies mentioning about
teacher’s role and students prior knowledge (Wallace,
n.d.; Wright & Bolitho, 1993).
5 CONCLUSIONS
The students perceive that Wallace’s critical reading
framework has helped them to analyse a text
critically. This is proven by 56.5% students perceive
each concepts of fields, modes, and tenor as
understandable and very understandable. In order to
achieve the positive perception, some strategies are
relatable to be supporting factors. In terms of field,
underlining and highlighting favourite part worked
effectively. In terms of mode, the use of dictionary is
more recommended. However, the most influential
strategy is guided discussion by the lecturer.
Therefore, the recommendation is that the lecturer
should provide graded instructions so that
independent discussion can be achieved.
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