Teaching Reading Thai to L2 Learners Issues, Challenges and Strategies

1. Teaching Reading Thai to L2 LearnersIssues, Challenges and Strategies Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong University of Hawaii’i at Manoa yuphapha@hawaii.edu Languages of Southeast Asia Conference , UCLA January 31st, 2009

2. Outline • Characteristics of Thai language • Characteristics of Thai orthography and writing convention • Discussion & demonstration of the challenges and reading strategies for L2 learners learning to read Thai used in teaching at UH Thai program

3. About Standard Thai • Tai language family • Tonal language- 5 tones in Standard Thai • SVO and topic-comment sentence structure • “isolating/analytic” language (no inflection/conjugation) • C(C)V(C) syllable structure • Derivation (compounding and reduplication) as dominant and productive morphological process • A “pro-drop” language, dominance of zero anaphora in inter- and intra-sentential reference • “discourse-oriented” language

4. characteristics of Thai script • developed from "Grantha", an ancient Brahmi script of South India, since 1283 A.D. • alphabetic, fairly systematic letter–sound mapping • write from left to right • the vowel symbol(s) are in fixed position(s) around the initial consonant • tone markers to represent tones, the position of the tone marker is on top of the initial consonant.

5. Thai Orthography (cont.) • 44 consonant forms, 42 in actual use (2 obsolete) representing 21 consonant phonemes • 28 vowel forms representing 18 single vowels sounds (9 short, 9 long) and 3 diphthongs • But also “unseen” vowels (such as a and o) • 4 tone markers (2 were added to handle tones in loan words), interacting with initial consonants in “live” syllables to represent 5 tones

9. Thai writing convention • no space among words/morphemes • rarely use punctuation marks to mark clause and sentence boundaries • space may be used to separate words in lists, before and after numbers, clauses or sentences but can be random

10. Thai script examples

11. Cognitive processes in reading • decipher the symbols(graphemes), word division/identification (lower level) • comprehend the meaning of the graphemes and the message conveyed (higher level) • word meaning • text meaning (clause, sentence, discourse)

12. interactive model of reading proposed by Rumelhart (1977) as adapted by Ehri (1998: 6)

13. Challenges for L2 learners in learning to read Thai Lower level: • learn to "decode" or "decipher" unfamiliar scripts • learn to identify syllable boundary Higher level • learn to identify word boundary and word meaning • learn to identify clause/sentence boundary • Learn to identify “zero” pronouns and other ellipsis

14. Example of Thai writing convention (using English to demonstrate) howtofryanegg overmediumheat warmasmallamountofoilorbutter inasmallskillet crackanegginto thepanandcookuntilthewhiteappearssolid about 3 to 4 minutes How to Fry an Egg Over medium heat, warm a small amount of oil or butter in a small skillet. Crack an egg into the pan. Cook until the white appears solid, about 3 to 4 minutes.

15. Strategies for reading Thai for developing L2 readers (1) • Identify syllable boundary • Use cues from vowel forms to determine position of initial (I)/final (F) consonants • Use cue from tone marks to determine I position (tone mark on I) [Discussed in J. Marvin Brown’s AUA Language Center Thai Course Reading and Writing: Mostly Reading]

16. Strategies for reading Thai (2) • Identify (make an educated guess) of (potential) word boundary • Need to know about word morphology of Thai compoundsand reduplications • lexical items in Thai seems to be largely bisyllabic compounds • Use maximum collocation approach

17. Strategies for reading Thai (3) • Identify phrase, clause, sentence boundary • Need to know “connectives” (relators, conjunctions), their variant forms and their positions in a clause and learn them as “sight words” • Use “connectives” as “punctuation words” • Single connective: และ(and), แต่/แต่ว่า(but)

18. Strategies for reading Thai (4) • Set connectives • Giving examples เช่นaaa bbbb ccc (และ)dddd (เป็นต้น) ได้แก่aaa bbbb ccc (และ)dddd (เป็นต้น) ไม่ว่าจะเป็นaaa bbbbccc (หรือ)dddd for example aaa bbbb cccandddddetc.

19. Strategies for reading Thai (5) • Time relation: เมื่อ ---E1----- (แล้ว)E2 ก็+Verb---- When ---E1---------,----E2----------- • Concession (contrast): variant forms ถึงแม้ว่า—E1------(ก็ตาม)(แต่)E2 (ก็)+verb แม้ว่า —E1------(ก็ตาม)(แต่)E2 (ก็)+verb ถึง —E1------(ก็ตาม)(แต่)E2 (ก็)+verb Even though –E1---,--E2------ • Time period ตั้งแต่ ----(Time 1)----------(จน)ถึง-----(Time 2)-------- since ----(time 1)----------until ------(time2)---------

20. Strategies for reading Thai (6) • Identify the position and function of “zero” pronouns and other elliptical units เที่ยว-เมืองไทย ไม่-ไป-ไม่-รู้ Travel Thailand not go not know เที่ยว เมืองไทย ถ้าเรา ไม่ไป เที่ยวเมืองไทยเราก็ ไม่รู้ Travel Thailand. If one doesn’t go (travel Thailand), one won’t know. • Need to know both syntactic structure and expected position of “connectives”

21. Reading instruction at UH:How do we use these strategies? • Explicitly teach strategies of language learning to students. • “independent” learners • Teach Thai writing system in First Year Thai, covering basic foundation (the “regular” consonants and vowels) in one semester. • Reading syllables and making syllables • Tone Rules (Gedney’s Tone Box) • start using paragraph-length text in Thai as instructional materials in Second Year Thai.

22. Reading Instruction at UH (2) • Start with “paragraphs”, the unit of Thai text with clearly defined boundary. • Pre-intensive reading process • Identify potential clause and sentence boundaries (and their relations), using connective words/sets as the main clue (along with spaces) • Identify main verbs (or verb clusters) • Identify boundaries of unknown words from strings of unknown characters by looking for potential doublets and compounds • Identify potential names (as opposed to words) • Observe sentence and paragraph structure

23. Reading Instruction at UH (2) • Intensive reading (reading to learn) process • silent reading for meaning • question and answer with instructor to clarify syntactic or vocabulary usage or meaning in context • reading aloud with translation, one “sentence” at a time. Instructor also reads aloud to correct and provide a model for students • silent reading to review and reflect • additional question and answer with instructor • instructor read to students before doing comprehension activities orally (question-answer, summary of content etc.)

24. Reading Instruction at UH (3) • Strategies for text comprehension • Discourse structure/cohesion (Halliday & Hasan (1976): Cohesion in English) • Reference • Lexical cohesion: • repetition A conference will be held on national environmental policy. At this conference the issue of salination will play an important role. • synonymy A conference will be held on national environmental policy. This environmental symposium will be primarily a conference dealing with water.

25. Reading Instruction at UH (3) • hyponymy (superordinate vs. subordinate concepts) We were in town today shopping for furniture. We saw a lovely table. • metonymy (part vs. whole) At its six-month check-up, the brakes had to be repaired. In general, however, the car was in good condition. • antonymy The old movies just don’t do it anymore. The new ones are more appealing • Collocation Politician-congress ละเมิด (violate) กฎหมาย (law)

26. Examples

27. นัก- ชาว- น่า+verb x-ใจ เที่ยว ท่อง+เที่ยว สถาน-ที่ สน+ใจ น่า-สน+ใจ น่า-เที่ยว+น่า-ชม

28. sa-wat-dii สวัสดี Q&A http:// www.hawaii.edu/thai

29. Annette M. Zehler, Saloni Sapru (2008). “Learning to read in Khmer” in Learning to read across languages : cross-linguistic relationships in first and second-language literacy development. Keiko Koda, Annette M. Zehler,ed. New York : Routledge

31. Thai Vowel positions In relation to initial consonants • “before” /ee/ • “after” /aa/ • “above” /a/ • “below” /u/ • Combination form /aw/ /ia/

32. Thai compounds (1) • 4 main types of compounds 1) Regular compounds (คำประสม) เครื่อง + บิน เครื่องบิน machine fly airplane 2)Semantic “doublets”*(คำซ้อน): compounds with components that share semantic similarity (synonyms, near-synonyms, same semantic field), typically components are mono-lexemic/mono-syllabic บ้าน + เรือน บ้านเรือน house house * Vongvivapanond, Peansiri E. 1992. "Lexicological Significance of Semantic Doublets in Thai." in Papers on Tai Languages, Linguistics, and Literatures in Honor of Willliam J. Gedney on his 77th Birthday. Compton, C. J. and J. F. Hartmann, eds. DeKalb: Center for Southeast Asian Studies. Monograph Series on Southeast Asia, Occasional Paper No.16.

33. Thai compounds (2) 3) Phonetic “doublets”: a non-meaningful syllable added to a mono-syllabic/lexemic word with similar phonetic features (as a filler to make a 2 syllable word) มาก + มายmaak-maay a lot กว้าง + ขวาง kwaa-khwaawide 4) Elaborate Expressions: multi-syllable (typically 4) expressions based on the above compound types by inserting syllable(s) for the sake of rhyme (such as English artsy-craftsy) or syllable(s) that have some semantic relations. เจ็บ+ป่วย pain+sick เจ็บ ไข้ ได้ ป่วยcep khay day puay pain fever get sick

34. Writing Systems • Logographic/Ideographic : ex. Chinese • Syllabic: ex. Devanagari, Kana character • Alphabetic: • regularity in letter-phoneme mapping: Thai vs. English • word/syllable boundary marking device: space (English), other device (Thai)