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Introduction. Basic vs. proficiencyLiteracy in the USInstructional casualtiesLearning to read in grades 1-2ShameReading is not naturalShifting the blameTraining teachersThe local settingwww.childrenofthecode.org. Listening and speaking come before reading.This is an important point becau
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2. Introduction Basic vs. proficiency
Literacy in the US
Instructional casualties
Learning to read in grades 1-2
Shame
Reading is not natural
Shifting the blame
Training teachers
The local setting
www.childrenofthecode.org
3. Listening and speaking come before reading.
This is an important point because we must remember that reading is essentially a language skill.
4. Work on linguistic knowledge before teaching learners to read. More specifically, engage learners in a lot of listening to familiarize them with the sounds, stress, rhythm and intonation of the language. In addition, teach core vocabulary.
6. Alphabetics
7. Alphabetics
15. If text is read in a laborious and inefficient manner, it will be difficult for the reader to remember what he has read and relate the ideas expressed in the text to his or her background knowledge. This is because information necessary for integration will fade from memory before it has been integrated with current information and background knowledge. Thus meaning construction will be negatively affected.
16. The answer is that skilled readers:
Recognize letters in groups, or chunks
Break words into syllables with little conscious analysis
Use their knowledge of how words are spelled to read by analogy
Employ their knowledge about the way a written text is structured
Activate their extensive vocabulary
Hall and Moats (1999)
19. Eye movement research has taught us that skilled readers:
fixate on almost every word
process every individual letter in every word
perceive letters in chunks, not individually
do not rely on context to recognize words
Hall and Moats, 1999
21. Bottom line
In the early stages of teaching FL/SL reading, learners are learning to read not reading to learn. In other words, they are learning how to identify words automatically, accurately and rapidly. To that end they need practice with easy texts where all the words are familiar so that they can develop sight vocabulary. If when they are working on building sight vocabulary learners are required to practice with texts for which they do not have the lexical coverage the attention they should be directing at practicing reading will be channeled to working on the meanings of the lexis they don’t know. This defeats the purpose of practice at this stage.
Does this mean that they shouldn’t be learning more vocabulary at the time they are learning to read. No.
This question is best answered by understanding the difference between a language lesson and a reading lesson.
If when they are working on building sight vocabulary learners are required to practice with texts for which they do not have the lexical coverage the attention they should be directing at practicing reading will be channeled to working on the meanings of the lexis they don’t know. This defeats the purpose of practice at this stage.
Does this mean that they shouldn’t be learning more vocabulary at the time they are learning to read. No.
This question is best answered by understanding the difference between a language lesson and a reading lesson.
22. Bottom line (II)
Mastering decoding takes time. It depends on massive practice with easy texts. In an FL/SL context this means reading texts with familiar vocabulary and content. Once decoding skills are in place learners can move to text with some new vocabulary. This does not mean that learners should not be exposed to texts from which they can learn more lexical items and facts about the world. Indeed, these texts are important too. But they should not be used for learning to read.
23. Bottom line (III)
If when working on building sight vocabulary learners are required to practice with texts for which they do not have the lexical coverage the attention they should be directing at practicing reading will be channeled to working on the meanings of the lexis they don’t know. This defeats the purpose of practice at this stage.
25. Reading rate
26. Slow reading Excessively slow, disfluent reading leads to less overall reading
Excessively slow, disfluent reading is associated with poor comprehension
Excessively slow reading leads to reading frustration
Rasinski 2002
27. One goal of reading instruction is to help children become fluent readers. When children are fluent they read automatically, decoding words quickly and accurately. Fluent readers read with prosody – that is, they use the appropriate pitch, pace, phrasing, and expression. Fluent reading aids comprehension.
Mandel Morrow, Kuhn and Schwanenflugel (2006) Reading fluency
28. According to the report of the U.S. National Reading Panel, fluency is a predictor of reading success. Although it has been found that fluency is a major goal in reading instruction, teachers are not as familiar as they should be with fluency strategies, and they are not using them regularly.
Mandel Morrow, Kuhn and Schwanenflugel (2006) Reading fluency
30. It is often assumed that if students can decode they will become fluent. Research has indicated that this is not necessarily so, and therefore students need training in fluency strategies.
Mandel Morrow, Kuhn and Schwanenflugel (2006) Reading fluency
32. Why is prosody problematic? There are features present in spoken language that provide clues to a speaker’s intent such as gestures, facial expression, intonation, and stress. These are not present in printed text.
Hook and Jones 2002
33. Mapping prosody onto text
35. Fluency instruction
41. The goals of vocabulary learning When we plan the vocabulary goals of a long-term course of study, we can look at three kinds of information to help decide how much vocabulary needs to be learned: the number of words in the language, the number of words known by native speakers and the number of words needed to use the language.
Nation 2001
42. How many words are there in the language? Webster’s Third New International Dictionary contains around 114,000 word families excluding proper names.
Nation 2001
43. How many words do native speakers know? Recent reliable studies suggest that educated native speakers of English know around 20,000 word families.
These estimates are rather low because the counting unit is word families which have several derived family members and proper nouns are not included in the count.
For each year of their early life, native speakers add on average 1,000 word families a year to their vocabulary.
Nation 2001
44. How much vocabulary do you need to use another language? There is a very small group of high-frequency words which are very important because these words cover a very large proportion of the running words in spoken and written texts and occur in all kinds of uses of the language.
Usually the 2,000- word level has been set as the most suitable limit for high-frequency words.
Nation 2001
45. Since reasonable comprehension of a text requires the understanding of about 98% of its vocabulary, more than 2,500 word families should be familiar to the learner.
Laufer (1992) suggests 5,000 word families.
Laufer 2005
46. How should teachers and learners deal with these words? The high frequency words of the language are clearly so important that considerable time should be spent on them by teachers and learners.
The words are a small enough group to enable most of them to get attention over the span of a long-term English programme.
This attention can be in the form of direct teaching, direct learning, incidental learning, and planned meetings with the words.
Nation 2001
47. Specialised vocabulary There is a very important specialised vocabulary for second language learners intending to do academic study in English. This is the Academic Word List. It consists of 570 word families that are not in the most frequent 2,000 words of English but which occur reasonably frequently over a very wide range of academic texts.
Nation 2001
48. Adding the academic vocabulary to the high frequency words changes the coverage of academic text from 78.1% to 86.6%.
With a vocabulary of 2,000 words, approximately one word in every five will be unknown.
With a vocabulary of 2,000 words plus the Academic Word List, approximately one word in every ten will be unknown.
Nation 2001
49. Contextualized vs decontextualized vocabulary learning Even though many language educators who adhere to communicative teaching do not accept learning from lists, there is ample evidence that people can learn a large number of words in lists and even remember many of them later.
Laufer 2005
50. Selecting words for instruction The most important perspective on word selection at the peresent time is that of Beck, McKeown, and Kucan (2002).
Beck et al. view vocabulary as falling into three tiers.
The first is high-frequency words and the third rare words that are specific to particular content domains.
Pearson, Hiebert and Kamil, 2007
51. Beck et al. believe that vocabulary instruction should focus on second-tier words.
Words in the second tier characterize the vocabulary of mature language users when they read and write. They are best thought of as less common labels for relatively common concepts: stunning in place of pretty, pranced instead of walked, astonished but not surprised.
Pearson, Hiebert and Kamil, 2007
