Teaching Languages

toYoung Learners
Chapter 6
Learning literacy skills

Names: Bersy Velsquez

Maricel Ojeda
Topics:
1 Introduction: Literacy skills in English.
Socially . Cognitively
2 About understanding.
Integration of information in reading a text.
3 Making meaning from a text.
4 How skilled readers operate
The analogy of reading a text as seeing the earth by satellite at different scales.
Knowledge and skills used to extract information.
Context:

- Adults come with previous knowledge of using books that will

help make sense of what they read.

- Children are often told what to read by adults so the previous

knowledge is incomplete or inaccurate and they rely on texts to
supply knowledge.
Text:
- Skilled readers knowledge of discourse organization helps
know where the information will be found, focusing in on key
passages and skipping more lightly over passages with less
important information.

- Children are likely to be familiar with story or narrative structure

but to be less familiar with other types of text.
Paragraph :
- Is mainly used to deal with the development of topics in a text,
often right at the beginning a topic sentence gives an overview
of the whole paragraph. The paragraph can be move into more
specific detail.

- Children in their early texts encounter will not be long enough

to use paragraphing organization as their writing develops, so
the need to use paragraph will arise and links can be made with
reading texts, to learn the conventions of paragraph patterns in
English.
Sentence/clause:

- In order to understand this skilled readers draw on their

close up grammatical knowledge of how word are
connected to produce meanings.
 Words:

- Is a key unit of both form and meaning in reading and writing,

perhaps equivalent to a basic level. In terms of forms, words in
written text in English have spaces on either side so they are
easy to spot, easier than in spoken language where words are
often run together. Words are learnt often as wholes, and seem
to be recognized on sight, without too much attention to the
individual letters they make up the word.

-The units are represented by the symbols of a logographic

language.
 Morphemes:

- Is a visual unit, a part of a word that carries a meaning through

its form.
 Syllables:

-Are phonological intra word units.

- It need to be able to hear the sound inside spoken words in order to

understand how the alphabet can be used to write words. Phonological
awareness develops before children go to school, and seems to be linked to
experience with rhyming words songs and rhymes.
-Like many aspects of reading, phonological awareness continues to
develop though experience with reading, so that reading and phonological
awareness are independent and develop interdependently.
 Letters:

- Written letters have names, shapes and sounds, which they must not be
confused in learning and teaching. Learning the names of the letters in
alphabetical order does not help much in reading, whereas learning the
sounds of the letters helps a lot.
-The technical term for these links is GRAPHO-PHONEMIC relationships.
-The information from different levels is different in nature and in how it links
into meaning, information can be predominantly visual, phonological or
semantic. All these different pieces of information are integrated with
previous knowledge to construct a coherent meaning.
 First language:

- When we learn our first language, our brain/mind tunes into the way the
particular LI works, and we learn to attend to the particular cues to
meaning that are most helpful.

- The transferability of knowledge, skills and strategies across languages

depends closely on how the two written languages work.
 The learners knowledge of the foreign language:

- Oral skills in the new language are an important factor in learning to be

literate.

- Pronunciation skills in the foreign language will both affect literacy and be
assisted by literacy development, because written words are turned into
spoken words in the reading process, inaccuracies in pronunciation may
hamper finding the right spoken word to match what is read. Seeing words
written down can help towards accurate pronunciation because of the
visibility of the words.
STARTING TO READ AND WRITE IN
ENGLISH AS A FL
Topics:
1. Goals for early literacy
2. Creating a literate environment in the classroom
3. Literacy Approaches
4. Actions to promote active literacy learning
(inside/beyond the classroom)
5. Continuing to learn to read and write
6. Summary
1. Which are the objectives for early literacy?
DISCOURSE
CONTEXT TEXT

LETTERS Literacy SENTENCES

Skills
Goals

SOUNDS: MORPHEMES WORDS

2. How to prepare a literate environment in the
classroom?
Monolingual Label Bilingual Label
 Post box

English message
board
3. What approaches can you rely on to teach reading?
Approach Definition Characteristics Positive Negative
Children seem to Children are more Put the learner It works only for
learn to read motivated. first. some children.
without any Meaning comes first. Highlight A child needs
Emergent Literacy teaching, Then, attention qualities of good lot of time with
approach gradually, and moves to whole books skilled adult and
through words and letters. (publishers plentiful supply
exposure They link reading develop better of good quality
and oral skills. quality story story books.
Parents can be books)
involved.
It starts with Use of the childs A child can build No focus on
children reading ideas to compose up a collection of letter-sound
Language and writing at the reading text. words that are relationships.
experience approach sentence level. The learning moves known, and
The child uses from a meaningful move to making
his own idea unit to whole more complex
experience as words to letters. sentence
the topic of Focus on It reinforces
texts. punctuation, spaces child-teacher
and full stops. relationship.
3. What approaches can you rely on to teach reading?
Approach Definition Characteristics Positive Negative
It starts from Children practice fast It provides of a After 50 words,
word level, with recognition of whole source of it is not
children looking words through use of vocabulary that efficient, or
Whole words/key at single words flashcards. the child can use even possible,
words approach on cards to Get a good sense of to work out how to remember
encourage rapid achievement and letters combine each word as a
whole motivation by being into syllables. separate whole.
recognition. able to read a whole They can
book quite early understand the
use of function
words.
It focuses on It shows the sounds Children can find It can be very
letter-sound of the different it more natural dry, boring and
Phonics teaching relations, letters in the to start from demotivating, if
approach literacy skills alphabet. sounds and learn done in
from bottom-up. It can be integrated which letters isolation.
into story reading, make them
songs, and rhymes. They are moving
It is important to from the spoken
make activities language to the
meaningful for new world of
children. written letters
and words.
4. How to encourage active literacy learning?
Literacy events
and routines in
the FL classroom

As teachers,
Reading aloud we can Fun with literacy
promote skills

Multi-sensory Encouraging
experience attention to
detail
5. How to help children move on to continue to learn
to read and write?

Teach specific Learn

Fluency in
Reading written Write for an discourse
writing and
strategies language audience formats
reading
forms (genres)
7 Essential Reading strategies
1. Previewing (tittles)
2. Contextualizing
3. Visualizing (see the info)
4. Asking and answering questions
5. Summarizing
6. Skimming (main idea)
7. Scanning (specific info)
 Example:
The steps -Activity aimed at 9 -10 year old children
-Around the rime <ail>.
1. Create a meaningful context by listing words
1. Start from a meaningful context.
in which the rime occurs and make up a jazz chant
that used as many as possible. A graphic drawing is
produced and an oral chant.
2. Focus the pupils attention on the unit and
key feature being taught. 2. The written version was used, with the <ail> rime
highlighted at the end of the lines to draw attention to it.

3. Give input: examples, a rule, etc. 3. The words containing <ail> were taken from the chant and
presented in isolation on the board or on large cards.

4. Provide varied practice. 4. Quick game-like activity could produce words for the children
to recognize.

5. Give pupils, opportunities to apply their new 5. They can apply their new knowledge. The chant can be said
again or compose a new one.
knowledge and skills in different, meaningful
contexts.
6. Conclusion

Feel positive about reading

and writing in FL

Interesting books
Internet

Identify knowledge and

skills (transferred or learnt
from scratch)