Strategies for Reading in an Unfamiliar Language

     In order to gain some understanding of what it must be like to be a second language learner in my classroom, I made an attempt to read an article in Italian.  I thought, initially, that it might not be that difficult and that I might be able to use my knowledge of Spanish, another Romance Language, to figure out what I was reading.  I quickly discovered that despite some similarities between Spanish and Italian the knowledge I had was not going to help me read or understand the article in Italian.  Immediately, I began to understand what my English language learning students must feel like when presented with text that is beyond their stage of second language acquisition.  "One of the most important things you should know about each of your English language learners (ELLs) is which stage of acquisition they are in.  Knowing and understanding the stage and its characteristics are critical for effectively differentiating instruction for these students" (Hill & Flynn, 2006, p.14).

     Initially, I tried to tackle the entire article but found myself scanning the text because I was unable to make any meaning.  So, I decided to scale back and take it sentence by sentence starting with the title.  I was still unable to gain much meaning so I decided to take it word by word with a focus on the letter/sound relationship in attempt to make any connections between what was familiar to me and the Italian words on the page.  As Gibbons (2002) states about reading in another language, "you will find that your reading relies much more on graphophonic cues that does your reading in English, and so you read much more slowly-the resources that are available to a fluent speaker of the language are not available to you" (p. 78). 

     I found myself using other strategies to attempt to gain some understanding of the article.  I first drew upon the knowledge that I had about the article and where it came from.  I found the article on an Italian cooking website so I used that information to activate my background knowledge about Italian cooking.  I have eaten at many Italian restaurants and have even traveled to Italy and explored the country for a couple of weeks.  I also enjoy cooking and have made several Italian dishes at home.  This knowledge helped me to understand a couple of the words in the title of the article, tagliatelle and bolognese and italiana.  I knew that tagliatelle was a type of pasta, that bolognese referred to meat sauce and italiana probably referred to the fact that this article discussed Italian food or cooking methods.  Even though I could now understand a portion of the title I was not able to fully grasp what the article was about.  Next, I moved on to observe the picture that was included in the article.  The picture helped to confirm that I was on the right track.  I could see that there was pasta with a meat sauce that looked like an Italian dish I'd seen before.  Now that I had spent 20 minutes "reading" the article and could understand 3 words from the title, I was really on to something!  When I looked ahead to the rest of the article I found myself feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.  I scanned ahead to see if I could make a connection with any more words in the text.  I did find a few that I connected with, Spaghetti alla Carbonara, Risotto, cucine, olio, formaggio and mozzarella di bufala.  However, my simple understanding of these words were not enough to help me gain any real understanding of what the article said.

     "Goodman (1967) refers to three kinds of knowledge on which readers draw to gain meaning from text: semantic knowledge (knowledge of the world); syntactic knowledge (knowledge of the structure of the language); and graphophonic knowledge (knowledge of sound-letter relationships)" (Gibbons, 2002, p. 78).  I certainly attempted to use all three of these types of knowledge to gain meaning from what I was reading.  My semantic meaning was the most helpful as my life experiences gave me access to some of the vocabulary and overlying concepts presented in the article.  However, my lack of syntactic and graphophonic knowledge of the Italian language prevented me from being able to read and understand the article as a whole. 

     The experience of reading this article gave me insight as to what is appropriate for English language learners in the classroom.  Presenting them with text that is far too challenging for their stage of language acquisition would be totally ineffective while causing feelings of frustration for the student.  Gibbons (2002) suggests choosing texts that offer repetitive language and/or events, universal themes, clear illustrations that coincide with the text, models of language and content that can be bridged and used to extend reading knowledge (p. 99).  Even more importantly, when working with ELLs we need to choose texts "that encourage children to read-and to want to go on reading" (Gibbons, 2002, p. 100).  

Oral Language and the Reading Process

     Oral language skills support and help to develop the reading process.  Our very first experiences with language are oral and this is the type of language that we develop first after birth.  From birth, children are surrounded by oral language.  Oral language is where is all begins.  The development of oral language is the first step in making reading and writing possible.  In the beginning, children imitate the language that they hear and soon begin to create their own language in order to communicate.  Early readers come from homes where rich language and a great deal of oral language are used (Dickinson & Tabors, 2001).  Language processes are the basis for learning to read. When we read we use what we know about language and how it is structured to make sense of what we are reading.  Gibbons (2002) discusses oral language and, "the development of spoken language as a tool for learning and as a bridge into literacy"(p.12).

     From birth to age 1 oral language consists of the experimentation with sounds.  Once children reach ages 1-2 their oral language really starts to grow.  Children at this age are starting to say words, initially one word at a time but eventually putting a couple of words together.  By 18 months most children can pronounce four-fifths of the English phonemes and use 9 to 20 words (Bloom, 1990).  Children 2-3 years old experience dramatic growth in their oral language development.  Typically, a child's oral vocabulary grows from 300 words to 1,000 and they can comprehend, but cannot yet use, another 2,000 to 3,000 words (Morrow, 2009).  When children turn 4 not only do their vocabularies continue to grow but they also begin to develop an understanding of sentence structure.  By the time children are 5-6 years old they have vocabularies of about 2,500 words (Morrow, 2009).  As children continue to grow so does their language. 

    Teachers should provide plenty of language rich learning opportunities such as learning centers for all content areas, opportunities for dramatic play, outdoor play and thematic unit studies to continue to develop oral language.  Teachers also need to provide plenty of time for conversations of varying types so children have the opportunity to use acquired language.  "It is not an exaggeration to suggest that classroom talk determines whether or not children learn, and their ultimate feelings of self-worth as students.  Talk is how education happens (Gibbons, 2002, p. 38)! 

     Without the development of oral language and knowledge of vocabulary and language structure, children have a very difficult time reading and comprehending.  Furthermore we know that using oral language enhances literacy based learning experiences.  "Actually producing language encourages learners to process the language more deeply than is required when they simply listen, and tends to stretch or push learner language in a way that listening alone does not" (Gibbons, 2002, p. 15).  There is no doubt that a deep connection exists between oral language and the reading process.


References

Cooper, D. J., & Kiger, N. D. (2009). Literacy: Helping students construct meaning. Belmont: Brooks/Cole.

Morrow, L. M. (2009). Literacy Development in the Early Years: Helping Children Read and Write. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Philosophies About Teaching Literacy

     When discussing the underlying philosophies of teaching literacy I would bet that most educators will state that a balanced approach that is rooted in the five essential reading components is best.  This is certainly what I found when chatting with fellow educators regarding their personal philosophies. 

     The educators that I spoke with agreed that a comprehensive literacy program must be balanced in order to be successful.  A literacy program should offer students time to learn reading and writing skills through teacher instruction and modeling and an opportunity to use these learned skills with an appropriate amount of teacher scaffolding until students are able to be successful independently.  I feel that teachers should use authentic texts to not only teach and model reading and writing skills but to foster a deep love of literature, reading and writing in students.  When students love the books and stories you are using to teach, learning to read and write becomes a pleasure instead of a struggle.  According to Cooper and Kiger (2009), “The goal of all literacy instruction is for students to read authentic literature”.  I would agree however, there are many steps that need to be taken and things that teachers need to consider before students are able to reach that ultimate goal of independently reading and understanding authentic literature.

      As Dr. Donald Langenberg, a physicist in the business of rocket science said after studying how children learn to read, “teaching reading is really much harder than rocket science.” (Hearing on the Importance of Literacy, 2000). However, thanks to extensive scientific research in reading, we have deep insight on the five essential components required for literacy programs and instruction to be considered comprehensive. These five components are phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension. The ‘Big 5’ must be included in all balanced literacy programs and should be the basis for literacy learning from the very beginning.  Teachers need to gauge their students abilities within the five essential components and meet them where they are.  Instruction is based on what students know and what they need to know in order to become successful readers and writers.  By identifying the missing pieces and the strengths of each student, you are able to then differentiate your instruction to meet the instructional needs of each student. Furthermore, this information will help you to set both short-term and long-term goals for students. 

     In today's educational environment, assessment certainly has its place in conversations about philosophies.  I feel that assessment is an important element of a balanced literacy program and should be viewed as ongoing.  Assessment and teacher evaluation should be used as tools that drive instruction.  Assessments allow us to gather information about our students learning and use that information to plan our instruction.  If you don't know what your students have learned and how well they have learned it, how can you effectively plan what to teach next if there are gaps in what students know?

     Even though philosophies are personal and are based on ones own educational experiences, trainings and time spent teaching children, I found in my discussions that the foundation of most philosophies is basically the same.  Teachers want to educate children using the most effective practices so that they become successful lifelong learners. 

If you are not familiar with the National Reading Panel's findings, follow the link below for information on the five essential components of reading instruction.
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/publications/nrp/smallbook.cfm

Here is a link to the Put Reading First Document published by The Partnership for Reading, a
collaborative effort of the National Institute for Literacy, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the U.S. Department of Education.
http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/PRFbooklet.pdf

Here is a link to the Put Reading First Parent Guide to share with your families.
http://lincs.ed.gov/publications/pdf/PRFbrochure.pdf