Universidad Camilo José CelaREADING AND WRITING

Teacher:Dra. Jelena Bobkina

UNIT 1. LEARNING LITERACY SKILLS

[1.1] Literacy skills in English [1.2] Factors affecting to read in English as a

foreign language [1.3] Formal approaches to teaching literacy

skills[1.4] Synthetic Phonics Teaching versus Analytic

Phonics Teaching.

1.1. LITERACY SKILLS IN ENGLISH Literacy can be considered either cognitive or social, since when we use language, writting or reading, we do it for two reasons:

• to express ourselves and • to share information, feelings, knowledge with

others.

Individuals need to use and master specific skills and be able to read and write different types of texts.

Literacy is part of everyone’s life, it is not just a set of rules children learn and use at school. We are involved every day in a lot of situations in which reading and writing skills are required

literacy events

Literacy theories:• From a wider point of view, becoming literate is

a process that does not start at school, but long before.

• A narrower view, much more traditional, which states that literacy is only about writing and reading texts. If we took this traditional view, literacy would be a process which starts at school.

Understanding is closely linked to reading and writing. When a fluent reader decodes the meaning of a text, three different types of information are used:

• Visual information

• Phonological information

• Semantic information

What kind of info we use when decoding a text? Understanding is closely linked to reading and writing.

Phonological Info: spoken words are sounds/combinations of sounds

Semantic Info:relationship between words and meanings

Visual info:written words are made up by symbols

Why do some children have trouble learning to read in their first language?

• According to Vygotsky

• written language is a second-order meaning representation,

• since spoken language has always been used to express ideas, and later on, written language was developed.

• Written language is not as natural as spoken language for children:

distance between the child and the writer

Reading is a much more demanding skill than speaking.

Direct teaching is necessary because English spelling is very irregular and with lots of exceptions.

Children need the teacher's help in order to understand how to pronounce and write:

English phonological and orthographic system and its syntactic rules are very different from the Spanish ones.

1.2. FACTORS AFFECTING TO READ IN ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

When learning a foreign language, learners use their first language internalized patterns to fill the gaps of information they have.

Teachers must help students understand the particular rules, cues, patterns that the new language has in contrast with their mother tongue.

In the case of English, the knowledge that can be transferred is not enough:

• English is a very different language from Spanish in many senses

• Spelling and pronunciation is especially difficult for Spanish speakers,

• Learners must develop new skills and not rely too much on internalized patters from first language.

When children are still learning to read in L1, several situations might take place:

Still dealing with L1

Mix strategiesForward and

BackwardExpect that they will learn to read

in Englishas they

didin L1

Teachers might decide to teach

literacyskills in a

different way

It might confuse them

It might help them distinguish the skills they need for each

language

Oral skills and vocabulary are very important in learning to read and write. At first, children should only read words they know orally, words they are used to hearing and using.

Oral skills affect and are affected by literacy development:

ORAL SKILLS LITERACY

Age and Literacy

Writing and reading is a very different experience depending on children’s age:

Younger children are still developing their writing skills in their first language and their attention capacities are limited.

When children are about 10 years old, they have already developed literacy in their first language and reading and writing can be integrated into their foreign language learning.

Younger children (up to age 7) can benefit from different types of activities in which literacy does not require direct teaching.

- copy short meaningful sentences, - learning simple set of words, - listen to rhymes, songs, etc.- we can also use labels, posters, written messages,

etc,

more exposed to the foreign language

We must use activities in which they can experience learning in a complete way:

see, hear, and manipulate lettersmulti-sensory learning

Learning letter S shape through a multi-sensory approach:

- learn to write it: paint it, colour in, join the dots, use modelling clay to make an S shape - they must see it around: ex. Posters- cut out examples of the letter S from magazines, newspapers, etc. and make a collage out of them. - can be asked to picture the letter S in their minds- can be asked to pronounce it /SSSSSS/

1.3. FORMAL APPROACHES TO TEACHING LITERACY SKILLS. We can begin to read and write from different levels (sentence, word or letter). Let’s have a look at some approaches to teaching reading:

1.3.1.Emergent LiteracyDescribes the phenomenon in which children seem to learn to read without any teaching, gradually, and through exposure to text and reading. Children spend lots of time being read to from interesting and appropriate books, some will begin to work out for themselves the patterns and regularities that link spoken to written text.

However, attempts to turn this method into full-scale teaching methodology have failed:• some children will need more direct

teaching than others• it would mean adults spending a lot of

time with children reading to them which is not possible in a normal class.

Most important characteristics of emergent literacy that can be applied to the teaching of FL are:

Children choose from a variety of books. Normally choose to read the same book over and

over again : a positive experience. They first pay attention to the main idea of the

text and then pass to words and letters. Children will start by placing interest in the

consonants at the onset of words, then the ones at the end of words.

The link between oral and written language at this stage is very strong.

Parents can play a very important role.

1.3.2. Language ExperienceIt deals with teaching to read and write at sentence level. The main characteristic of this method is that

the child’s own experience will form the topic of the mini-texts that he/she will work with.

children construct sentences, helped by the teacher at first stage, using as help a series of ‘flashcards’ with individual words.

sentence used must be something the child is interested in saying, ex. I went to the doctor yesterday.

This method has been applied comercially and has been used extensively in United Kingdom for L1 teaching and in South Africa for L1 and L2 teaching.

Children move physically the cards, choose them and place them in a tray to form the sentence chosen.Then children read the sentence back to the teacher and write it also in their notebooks.When children have already mastered a number of words they will be able to create new sentences with those words.

Once children reach a stated number of words mastered, defined as sight words, the teacher can start introducing books to read. http://www.quiz-tree.com/Sight-Words_main.html

1.3.3.Key words (Sight words)

Has also been used commercially with success. It starts at word level. Children look at flashcards with words just for a few seconds and try to memorise them.

• Children start with a group of 5 or 6 words, mummy, daddy, like. When the first group is learnt they pass onto the second group of words.

• Once children have mastered a group of 15 words very simple books/stories can be introduced. These books will only use the words learnt.

• Children will read the stories back to the teacher, one or two pages a day and then they will practise alone.

1.3.4. Phonics teaching

It is based in paying attention to the link between letters and sounds. Reading skills in this method are developed bottom up.

LETTERS SOUNDS

Children are normally taught the sounds of the letters and then how these letters combine into words.

It can become quite a dry method and a demotivating one if it is not combined with others. Best is to introduce phonics teaching for 5-10 minutes inside other activities (reading stories, group writing exercises, songs, rimes).

Teaching steps Consonants are easier to distinguish so easier to learn, than

vowels. They can be grouped in different ways: attending to shape, to soft or strong sounds, to frecuency or usefulness, etc.

One option would be:1. b c d g h j m n p t w2. f l r s3. c g (soft sounds)4. v y z Normally the process starts with consonants that appear as

onset of words or in words of only one syllable. They can be practised by writing, finding and underlying

them in a text, pronouncing them and writing words that start/finish or include them, etc.

Long vowels in open syllables me, go, can be explained in the next stage and then the teacher can work with rimes applied to reading and writing: -ite, -eat, -ike.

THE MAIL SNAIL (for 9-10 year olds)I see a snailWith a very long tail.He’s crawling on the railTo deliver the mail.He’s sure to failBecause he’s stuck on a nail.

All this content will cover years of teaching.Phonic method: Jolly phonics http://jollylearning.co.uk/overview-about-jolly-phonics/

All these approaches have advantages and disadvantages, things that are relevant for language learning context, and things that should be adapted.

We need to be able to analyse and choose the way we want our children to learn.

1.4 Synthetic Phonics Teaching versus Analytic Phonics Teaching.1.4.1. Synthetic Phonics Teaching Principles

used in countries like Germany and Austria – taught before expecting children to read books

teaches letter/s-sound correspondences at a quick pace (around one a day) and immediately teaches how to blend the sounds for reading e.g. c-a-t is cat, b-u-s is bus, s-t-o-p is stop

teaches phonemic awareness so that the sounds can be identified all-through-the-word and written e.g. cat is c-a-t, bus is b-u-s, stop is s-t-o-p, boat is b-oa-t

teaches main digraphs (letter combinations) – for blending and segmenting (identifying the sounds all-through-the-word)

teaches irregular keywords (tricky words) – blending them but noting the regular and irregular/unusual parts

uses decodable texts initially – free choice of books when there is fluency

has blending all-through-the-word as the first and main strategy for reading unknown words

word patterns covered at a later stage – for spelling rather than for reading

1.4.2. Analytic Phonics Teaching Principles – not recommended!

starts with whole words learnt by global shape (initial sight vocabulary) and books

uses picture cues, initial letter cues and context information for guessing words

uses text that has a repetitive, predictable sentence – picture gives clue for the new word(s) introduced on that page

gradually introduces the alphabet letter names and sounds and tends to focus on the initial letter to help with word identification (often ‘check the first letter with the word that you guessed’)

segmenting and blending demonstrated away from text

keyword sight vocabulary emphasised – taught visually

blending used as the last reading strategy instead of the first strategy - word patterns covered at a later stage