ABSTRACT
This paper takes the position that the Web and online reading have not created new literacies. Rather, what the Web has done is to make explicit aspects of reading and text comprehension that have always “been there” but that have gone largely unattended in traditional curricula, large-scale standardized accountability testing, and most reading research. Traditional curricula, assessments, and much of the reading research are based on assumptions that reading is an individual act, conducted on individual texts, in isolation from others to answer questions posed by teachers, test constructors, and researchers. Learning to read has largely focused on word recognition, consistent with a Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). Instruction in reading comprehension and learning-through-reading has been dominated by generic strategies largely focused at the word, sentence, and paragraph levels, with some attention to the overall text level. Examples of generic strategies include summarizing, finding main ideas, learning vocabulary in context, and making inferences (Alvermann, 2001; Bean, 2000; Beck & McKeown, 1985; Guthrie, Anderson, Aloa, & Rinehart, 1999; Guthrie & Ozgungor, 2002; Meltzer, Smith, & Clark, 2002; Palincsar & Brown, 1984; Pressley, 2002; Rosenshine, Meister, & Chapman, 1996). These kinds of strategies have had limited success in improving the reading achievement of the nation’s children, especially with respect to advanced levels of reading in core disciplines such as science, history, and literature (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004; Carnegie Council on Advancing Adolescent Literacy, 2009; Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO], 2010; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2004, 2006; Rampey, Dion, & Donahue, 2009).
