MAJORSHIP

Area:    ENGLISH
Focus: Teaching Reading and Writing

LET Competencies:

1. Demonstrate understanding of the nature of reading and writing and the theoretical
bases, principles, methods, and strategies in teaching these components
2. Apply skills and strategies gained from reading and writing instruction principles and
techniques

The Teaching of Reading

What is reading?
Reading is a process of constructing meaning through the dynamic interaction
among the reader’s existing knowledge, the information suggested by the written
language, and the context of reading situation.

What are the factors that influence reading in a   second/foreign language?

1. Cognitive development and learning style orientation at the time of beginning
second/foreign language study
2. First language proficiency
3. First language metalinguistic knowledge
4. Second/foreign language proficiency
5. First language and a second/foreign language degree of differences
6. Cultural orientations
(-from Farrell, T.S.C., 2002)

What are the concerns of teaching reading?

1. Schema Activation to make sense of new information in light of what they
already know, and to make the necessary connection between the two.
Some basic pre-reading techniques are
 Brainstorming ideas that a topic bring to mind;
 Previewing a passage, noting headings and bold print;
 Constructing a graphic organizer, web, or outline from passage
headings for use in note taking

2. Vocabulary Development is an important factor contributing to reading

comprehension. Studies conducted on the importance of vocabulary
instruction demonstrate that it plays a major role in improving
comprehension. This instruction can be done through
 Wide reading approach
 Direct instruction
 Superficial instruction
(- from Devine, T., 1986)

What are the principles of vocabulary instruction?

1. Be enthusiastic about content area language.
 2. Relate new vocabulary words to experiences and concepts that students
know.
3. Limit the number of words taught in each unit; concentrate on key
concepts.
4. Help students to see clearly the associations among related concepts.
5. Use mental imagery and symbolic representation techniques to help
students think about new words.
6. Model how to use graphic organizers.
7. Allow students enough practice in working with strategies and graphic
organizers so that their use becomes a habit.
8. Use dictionaries and glossaries appropriately.
9. Repeatedly model how to determine a word’s meaning in text materials.

(- from Gunning, T. G., 2003)

What is the basis for choosing words for vocabulary development?

1. high frequency words
2. academic words/ content area words
3. technical words
4. literary words
5. low frequency words
(-from Nation, P., 2002)

3. Comprehension Development is the main purpose of reading instruction.

For comprehension to improve, the interaction among all three factors
(reader, text, and context) must be taken into consideration.

4. Understanding text Organization helps students to have a blueprint for

constructing a situational model of a story or informational piece. Students
need to learn the following in relation to text organization:
 Text type (narrative or expository)
 genre
 Hierarchy of ideas in exposition
 Significant details in narrative and expository texts
 Use of graphic organizers

5. Application is the part of the lesson that helps readers see the relevance of
learning in their own life, or appreciate the nature of their environment and
understand the significance of knowing about the lessons discussed in the
classroom. This provides a ground for making students remember and value
insights learned in the class. Reading instruction  can end by:
 Valuing
 Appreciating
 Relating lessons to own life
 Linking lesson to explain real-life contexts
 Responding creatively using multiple intelligence

What is the format of a language lesson?

A language lesson has five parts or phases:
 1. The perspective or opening phase where the teacher gives a preview
of the new reading lesson that he/she will teach.
2. The simulation phase where the teacher poses a question (or
questions) to get the student thinking about the coming activity. This is
used as a lead into the main activity.
3. The instruction/participation phase introduces the main activity of
the reading lesson.
4. The closure phase is where the teacher attempts to get the students’
input regarding what they have learned in the lesson that was just
presented.
5. The follow-up and the final phase has the teacher using other
activities to reinforce the same concepts and introduce new ones.

What are the general instructional objectives for a second/foreign language

reading program?
1. To develop an awareness of reading strategies necessary for
successful reading comprehension.
2. To expand vocabulary and develop techniques for continued increase
of vocabulary.
3. To develop an awareness of linguistics and rhetorical structures found
in reading texts.
4. To increase reading speed and fluency.
5. To promote an interest in different types of reading materials.
6. To provide individual feedback on progress in improving reading skills.
7. To provide practice in extensive reading skills.

What are the principles for designing effective and interesting reading
lessons?
1. The reading materials are interesting for the students.
2. The major activity of the reading lesson is students reading texts.
3. Activities and exercises reflect the purposeful, task-based interactive nature of
real reading (predicting, hypothesizing, and revising ideas about what was
read).
4. Activities and tasks allow the learners to bring their knowledge and
experiences to the reading passage.
5. Instructional activities have a TEACHING rather than a testing focus.
6. A variety of different reading activities are used during each lesson ( to
maintain interest, motivation, and pace)
7. Lessons should be divided into pre-reading, during reading and post-reading
phases.

(- from Farrell, T.S.C., 2002)

What is Content-Based Instruction?

 Content-based instruction (CBI) is “…the integration of particular content with

language teaching aims.” It is based on the common underlying principle that
 successful language learning occurs when students are presented with target
language material in a meaningful, contextualized form, with the primary focus
on acquiring information and knowledge.

 Content can refer to academic content or content in terms of cultural themes.

  One of the reasons for the increasing interest among educators in developing
content-based language instruction is the theory that language acquisition is
based on input that is meaningful and comprehensible to the learner (Krashen
1981, 1982). 

 Content becomes the organizing principle; and language structures,

vocabulary, and functions are selected by the teacher that are both necessary
for the content and that are compatible with it.  This contextualizes language
learning for students and focuses the learner’s attention primarily on meaning.

 CBI approaches “… view the target language as the vehicle through which
subject matter content is learned rather than as the immediate object of
study.” (Brinton et al., 1989, p. 5). 

 “When the learner’s second language is both the object and medium of
instruction, the content of each lesson must be taught simultaneously with the
linguistic skills necessary for understanding it “ (Cantoni-Harvey, 1987, p. 22).

 Input must be comprehensible to the learner and be offered in such a way as

to allow multiple opportunities to understand and use the language.  If
comprehensible input is provided and the student feels little anxiety, then
acquisition will take place.

 In other words, Krashen suggests that a second language is most

successfully acquired when the conditions are similar to those present in the
first language acquisition; that is, when the focus of instruction is on meaning
rather than on form; when the language input is at or just above the
proficiency of the learner; and when there is sufficient opportunity to engage
in meaningful use of that language in a relatively anxiety-free environment.

  The importance of meaningful context in language teaching is also the

underlying principle behind the Whole Language Approach, commonly
referred to as Natural Approach.  It is a developmental language model based
on the premise that youngsters acquire language (speaking, reading, and
writing) as naturally as they learn to walk and talk, when they are invited to
engage in self-motivating activities that are stimulating, interesting, social,
meaning-based, purposeful, interactive, and most of all enjoyable. This
approach is based on current research in language acquisition.

What are some strategies in teaching reading?

For Vocabulary Development:
A. Structural Analysis. It is the process of breaking up word parts into its meaningful
components: the root words, affixes and suffixes. In short, it is a process of
decoding unfamiliar words by visually examining the words to discover component
parts, which may lead to pronunciation and meaning.  A person who uses structural
analysis must be able to recognize the root word or base word; inflectional endings
(-s, -ed, -ing), affixes (prefixes and suffixes), and compound words.

For example, the word biology can be analyzed by looking at the part bio (which
means life) and logos (which means the study of).  Taken together, one could know
that biology, in its simplest meaning, is a study of life.

Find out how well you know the meaning of the following word components:

1. anthrop – _________                 11. inter -____________

2. bi, di –____________                 12. intra - ____________
3. biblio –___________                  13.mal  -_____________
4. chron –___________                  14. mid -_____________
5. cosmos -__________                 15. mis -_____________
6. ex - _____________                   16. mono- ___________
7. ful - _____________                   17. phile - ___________
8. hydro -___________                  18. phobia- ___________
9. ism _____________                   19. phon - ____________
10. ist - _____________                   20. sym,  syn - ________

Use structural analysis to get the meaning of the following words.

WORD CLUE MEANING

e.g. polygamous poly- many Having many marriages
gam-
_____ 1.  Megalopolis marriage A. government or state governed by
_____ 2.  Heliocentric ous – adj. priest representing a supreme
_____ 3.  Ichthyolatry Forming/ spirit or god
_____ 4.  Zoomorphic          having B. an X-ray photograph of the breast,
_____ 5.  Androphobe especially to detect signs of
_____ 6. Endogamy cancerous growth
_____ 7. Heptarchy C. a cemetery, especially a large and
_____ 8. Haemostatic elaborate one belonging to an
_____ 9. Idiolect ancient city
_____10. Anaerobic D. with the sun at the center of the
 _____11.Anthropophag universe
i E. the worship of fish
_____12. Theocracy F. a person with a morbid fear or
_____13. Mammogram hatred of men
_____14. Necropolis G. marriage restricted to one’s own
group or tribe
H. not requiring air or oxygen to
survive
I. the unique speech pattern of an
individual person
J. acting to stop the flow of blood or
bleeding
K. an immense city, an urban
complex made up of several
closely linked cities and their
surrounding areas
L. government by seven, a state
divided into seven self-governing
parts
M.   using shapes based on animals
N.    eaters of human flesh, cannibals

B. Context Clue. It is an instructional approach that consists of analyzing words

surrounding an unknown word to determine its meaning. Words are not very useful
when they are presented as isolated elements. They are more functional when they
appear in a meaningful context. Some of the common context clues are the
following:
a. Definition Statements
b. Synonym
c. Antonym
d. Summary
e. Examples
f. Simile
g. Apposition
h. Groupings

C. Intensive/Extensive Reading. It supplements explicit vocabulary instruction because

all the words encountered in print are impossible to include in teaching. Through
this type of reading, students come to experience words as used in wide array of
reading materials.
D. Pleasure Reading. It is another way of making students read, but the materials or
selection that they have brought are for themselves or for sharing with friends and
classmates. Or it may be a selection chosen by the teacher, but for the purpose of
making students develop love for reading. 
(-from Farrell, T.S.C., 2002)
For Comprehension Development         
1. Pre-Reading Plan
2. Previewing
3. Anticipation Guide
4. QARs – Question –Answer Relationships
 5. ReQuest – Reciprocal Questioning

For Activating Prior Knowledge

This strategy is designed to determine what students already know about the topic
that is going to be studied. This will help to create interest prior to reading.
Activating prior knowledge allows students to feel that they are somehow connected
to the topic being studied, helping to create a more positive learning environment
and helping students feel that they are a part of the learning process.

 Procedure
Before beginning a text, discuss the topic that will be covered. Have the
students share what they already know about the topic. Find ways to relate
the knowledge they have with the material that needs to be covered.

 Assessment
Discuss each question and determine from students’ answers which students
need additional information before beginning a lesson. As the lesson
progresses, continue discussion  and questions to determine students’
comprehension of the topic.

Anticipation Guide
This strategy allows students to consider thoughts and opinions they have about
various topics in order to create an interest in the material that is being covered and
to establish a purpose for reading the material.
           
This strategy works best with topics such as literature, science, and social studies
that require information in order to develop opinions. Although subjects such as
grammar and mathematics are more skill related, there are instances in which an
Anticipation Guide with modification would be useful

 Procedure
Begin by listing three or more debatable statements about a topic that
students are going to study. Ask the students to identify whether they agree or
disagree with the statements. Explain that the students need to read the text
carefully and see if they can find statements that support their own views.
After they read the text, discuss the original statements to see if the students
maintain their original view or if they have changed their opinion.

When constructing an Anticipation Guide, keep the following in mind:

 Analyze the material and determine main ideas.
 Write the ideas in short, declarative statements. Avoid abstractions.
 Put statements in a format that will encourage anticipation and predictions.
 Discuss reader’s predictions and anticipations before reading.
 Assign the text. Have students evaluate the statements according to the
author’s intent and purpose.
 Contrast the predictions with the author’s intended meaning.
Language Arts  
Topic:               Writing a persuasive paper
Statements:      Students should wear uniforms in school.
                        Students should be allowed to choose whatever classes they
want to take.
                        There should be no dress code in schools.

 
ReQuest
This strategy encourages students to build on previous knowledge and think about
what might be important information in the assigned reading.  It also gives them the
opportunity to write questions about things they do not understand. One of the
advantages to this strategy is that it breaks the text into short sections so it will not
appear overwhelming to students.

 Procedure
The first step is to choose the text to be covered. Make sure students are
familiar with the entire selection. Next, have the students read the paragraph
or short section and have them think of questions to ask about the topic as
they read. After the read, have students ask their questions and use the text
to answer. Next, ask higher level questions you have prepared. Continue
reading the entire selection and have a question-answer at the end of each
section.

 Assessment
Discuss and evaluate teacher’s and student’s questions and answers.
Discussions can be used to determine students’ level of comprehension by
assessing their responses after reading.  Encourage responses from students
who appear off task. Students should correctly respond to 80% if the
questions during a discussion.

K-W-L (Know-Want to Know-Learned)

K-W-L gives students a purpose for reading and gives them an active role before,
during and after reading. This strategy helps them to think about the information they
already know and to celebrate the learning of new information. It also strengthens
their ability to develop questions in a variety of topics and to assess their own
learning.

 Procedure
Before reading, ask students to brainstorm what is known about a topic.  They
should categorize what is prior knowledge, predict or anticipate what the text
might be about, and create questions to be answered. During reading, have
the class discuss the information, write responses to their questions, and
organize the information.

This strategy may be done on a sheet with three columns: Know, Want to
Know, Learned. Guide the instruction the first few times it is used. Modeling is
effective for the initial use.
 Language Arts
Know                                     Want to know                       Learned

nouns                                     adverbs                                 modifies a verb,
adjective, or  another adverb
pronouns                               prepositions                          combines with noun,
pronoun, or noun equivalent
verbs                                      proper pronunciation          correct use of commas,
colons, semicolons,
quotation marks
 

Social Studies
Topic:     Ancient Egypt

 Know                       Want to know                     Learned

pharaohs              Why did they mummify people?    Believed in an afterlife
buried dead                                         
                                               
pyramid        How long did it take to build a pyramid?  sometimes a lifetime
                                                                                Mummified people

 
 

Mapping
Mapping provides a visual guide for students to clarify textual information such as
characters, setting, problems, reactions, and outcome. This strategy allows you to
visually determine students’ comprehension, and it provides students with a strategy
that they can use on their own when they are dealing with other topics.
  Procedure
Model an example of a map for students, talking through each step and
having students assist in filling in the different areas. After comprehension of
this strategy is assured, have students complete various maps on their own.

 Assessment
Evaluate students’ maps to determine level of comprehension by the
percentage of correct responses.
Evaluate the answers that individual students provide to the questions in their
organizer.

Teaching Writing

Writing is among the most complex human activities. It involves the development of
an idea, the capture of mental representations of knowledge, and of experiences
with subjects. It can be viewed as involving a number of thinking processes which
are drawn upon in varied and complex ways as an individual composes, transcribes,
evaluates, and revises (Arndt, 1987; Raimes, 1985 as cited in White, 1995).
In first language settings, the ability to write well has a very close relationship to
academic and professional success. Grabowski (1996 as cited in Weigle, 2002, p.4)
notes that:

“Writing, as compared to speaking, can be seen as a more standardized system

which must be acquired through special instruction. Mastery of this standard system
is a pre-requisite of cultural and educational participation and the maintenance of
one’s rights and duties.”

Brown (1994), as cited in Weigle, 2002, pp.15-16) provides the following list of
characteristics that ordinarily differentiate written language from spoken language:

 Permanence: oral language is transitory and must be processed in real time,

while written language is permanent and can be read and reread as often as
one likes;
 Production time: writers generally have more time to plan, review, and revise
their words before they are finalized, while speakers must plan, formulate, and
deliver their utterances within a few moments if they are to maintain a
conversation;
 Distance: between the writer and the reader in both time and space, which
eliminates much of the shared context that is present between speaker and
listener in ordinary face-to-face contact and thus necessitates greater
explicitness on the part of the writer;
 Orthography, which carries a limited amount of information compared to the
richness of devices available to speakers to enhance a message (e.g. stress,
intonation, pitch, volume, pausing, etc.);
 Complexity: written language tends to be characterized by longer clauses
and more subordinators, while spoken language tends to have shorter
clauses connected by coordinators as well as more redundancy (e.g.
repetition of nouns and verbs);
  Formality: because of the social and cultural uses to which writing is
ordinarily put, writing tends to be more formal than speaking;
 Vocabulary: written texts tend to contain a wider variety of words, and more
lower-frequency words, than oral texts.
Thus, in L1 education, learning to write involves learning a specialized version of a
language already known to students. This specialized language differs from spoken
language, both in form and in use, but builds upon linguistics resources that students
already posses. In this sense, one can say that L 1 writing instruction is relatively
standardized within a particular culture.

In contrast, Weigle (2002) posits that the same cannot be said of L 2 writing because
of the wide variety of situations in which people learn and use second languages,
both as children and as adults, in schools and in other settings. She further
emphasizes that one cannot write in L 2 without knowing at least something about the
grammar and vocabulary of that language.

Thus, the differences between L 1 and L2 writing are considerable, and in particular
the variety is much greater for L2 writers than for L1 writers.

What Writers Need to Know

Tribble (1996, p.430) enumerates the range of knowledge that writers need to know
in order to write effectively when undertaking  a specific task:
1. Content Knowledge – knowledge of the concepts involved in the
subject area
2. Context Knowledge – knowledge of the context in which the text will be
read
3. Language System Knowledge – knowledge of those aspects of the
language system necessary for the completion of the task
4. Writing Process Knowledge – knowledge of the most appropriate way
of preparing for a specific writing task
Writing Theories
 Writing as a social and cultural phenomenon
It is important to note that writing is not solely the product of an individual, but as a
social and cultural act. Hamp-Lyons and Kroll (1997 as cited in Weigle, 2002) claim
that writing is an act that takes place within a context, that accomplishes a particular
purpose, and that is appropriately shaped for its intended audience. Expanding in the
social nature of writing, Hayes (1996 as cited in Weigle, 2002, p.19) states that:

“Contrastive rhetoric, on the other hand, gained respectability when it became clear
to researchers that many aspects of writing are influenced by culture”.

Leki (1992) and Grabe (1989, as cited in Weigle 2002) point out that variation in
writing in different cultures does not reflect inherent different in thought patterns but
rather “cultural preferences which make greater use of certain options among
linguistic possibilities
 Cultural expectations can have a consequence for the coherence of texts – that is,
the organization of a text into meaningful whole. Coherence, as Leki (1992) notes is
not an inherent quality of the text itself, but rather comes from the accuracy of the
writer’s assessment of what the reader will be able to infer from the text.

 Writing as a Cognitive Activity

In an attempt to discuss the cognitive aspects of writing in detail, a number of
researchers have looked at the process of writing, specifically the use of
retrospective interviews or think-aloud protocols.

Models of the Writing Process

 Hayes and Flower (1980)

- Described the writing process in terms of the task environment,
which included the writing assignment and the text produced so
far, the writer’s long-term memory, including knowledge of topic,
knowledge of audience, and stored writing flaws, and a number of
cognitive processes, including planning, translating thought into
text, and revising.
- Emphasized that writing is a recursive and not a linear process:
thus, instruction in the writing process may be more effective than
providing models of particular rhetorical forms and asking students
to follow these models in their own writing.
 Hayes (1996)
- Viewed the writing process as consisting of two main parts: the
task environment and the individual. The latter is the focus of the
model. Individual aspects of writing involves interactions among
four components:
1. Working memory
2. Motivation and affect
3. Cognitive processes
4. Long-term memory
- Emphasized the importance of reading as a central process in
writing, and discussed three types of reading that are essential in
writing:
1. Reading to evaluate
2. Reading some source texts
3. Reading instructions

 Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987)

- Proposed a two-model description of writing that addresses an
apparent paradox in writing:
1. The fact that virtually everyone in a literate society can learn to write as well as they
can speak
2. Expertise on writing involves a difficult, labor-intensive process that only some
people master
a. Made a distinction between knowledge telling  and knowledge
transforming
 Knowledge telling - similar to impromptu speaking which involves very little
planning or revision. This is the kind of writing which is natural and problematic. The
writing of most children and adolescents falls into this category

Knowledge transformation – involves much more effort and skill, and is not
achieved without a great deal of practice

Ferris (1998, pp.7-8) categorized the different approaches to L 2 composition

according to the following four foci, each of which can be linked to a particular school
of thought:

1. Focus on Form and “current-traditional rhetoric”, 1966 - 

- In L2 writing instruction, early emphasis was on the production of well-
formed sentences; a writing task that typifies this paradigm is the
controlled composition, a narrowly focused paragraph- or essay-length
assignment designed principally to give students practice with particular
syntactic patterns (e.g. the past tense in English) and/or lexical forms
(Kroll, 1991; Silva, 1990, as cited in Ferris, 1998).
- In an extension of this model, “current-traditional rhetoric” (Berlin & Inkster,
1980; Kaplan, 1967; Silva, 1990; Young, 1978, as cited in Ferris, 1998),
students were also led to generate connected discourse by combining and
arranging sentences into paragraphs based on prescribed formulae.
Representative composing tasks might involve the imitation of specific
rhetorical patterns (e.g. exposition, illustration, comparison, classification,
argumentation, etc.) based on authentic and/or student-generated models.
2. Focus on the writer: expressionism and cognitivism, 1976 –
- Researchers in this paradigm have attempted to characterize the
heuristics and procedures used by writers as they plan, draft, revise, and
edit their texts.
- Classroom procedure resulting from this writer-based orientation include
practice with invention strategies, the creation and sharing of multiple
drafts, peer collaboration, abundant revision, and attention to content
before grammatical form.
3. Focus on content and the disciplines, 1986 –
- Rather than replacing writing process with the pedagogical material
characteristic of traditional English courses (vis., language, culture, and
literature), content proponents assert that ESL writing courses should
feature the specific subject matter that ESL students must learn in their
major and required courses (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989, Horowitz,
1990, Shih, 1986; Snow & Brinton, 1988, as cited in Ferris, 1998).
- In this model, students in adjunct, multiskill, and/or English for Academic
Purposes (EAP) courses are given assistance with “the language of the
thinking processes and the structure or shape of content.
- The main emphasis “is on the instructor’s determination  of what academic
content is most appropriate, in order to build whole courses or modules of
reading and writing tasks around that content” (Raimes, 1991, p.411 as
cited in Ferris, 1998).
4. Focus on the reader: social constructionism, 1986 –
- A reader-focused composition pedagogy is instead founded on the social
constructionist premise that ESL writers need to be apprenticed into one or
 more academic discourse communities and that writing instruction should
therefore prepare students to anticipate and satisfy the demands of
academic readers.
- Clearly, the reader-focused approach is highly compatible with the
content-0based approach both philosophically and methodologically.
The table below presents the distinct features of the various approaches to teaching
writing: