Multilingual Literacy: an Integrated Approach © Nielsen, 2010.

Multilingual Literacy: an Integrated Approach

© Nielsen, 2010

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LEARNING TO READ ACROSS LANGUAGES

What do research and expert practitioners tell us? That there are six essential elements (sub-component skills) that need to be planned for in the development of reading, the big six:

1.Vocabulary development

2.Phonological awareness

3.Understanding of sound to symbol relationships (mapping principles)

4.Linguistic knowledge (of language structures)

5.Fluency

6.Comprehension

FOUNDATIONS OF CURRICULUM: L2 READING

The simple view of reading is based on a simple idea:

That reading is a straightforward combination of word-recognition skills (i.e., decoding) and comprehension skills.

However, this model does not describe subsets of component reading skills and their interactions.

Implications of this research:

L1; comprehension skills precede decoding skills until about year 4 (high correlations)

L2; this pattern is more complex as L2 readers seldom achieve word-recognition (decoding) fluency levels evident among good L1 readers

Adolf, Catts, & Little (2006); Bowey (2005); Chen & Vellutino (197); Gough, Juel, & Griffith (1992); Gough, Hoover, & Peterson (1996); Hoover & Gough (1992); Joshi, Williams & Wood (1998)


Over 25 years, Carver (1984, 1990, 1997, 2000) expanded on this simple view of reading by adding the notion of reading rate. He defines this notion as primarily comprising of decoding skills and general cognitive processing skill (speed). In this model, the development of decoding skills, comprehension skills and reading rate will determine a learner’s overall reading efficiency.

Carver argues that different sub-component skills are emphasised by reading at different rates and for different purposes. He describes five levels or ‘gears’ of reading:1.Scanning; about 600wpm emphasising visual form recognition

2.Skimming; about 450wpm emphasising visual word recognition plus some prediction of meaning, some sampling of sentences, and inferences about the overall gist

3.Rauding; is reading for general understanding at about 300wpm emphasising all sub-component skills

4.Reading to learn; about 200wpm emphasising rehearsal, active learning strategies, inferencing, active goal setting, and monitoring

5.Reading to memorise; about 130wpm emphasising rehearsal of the actual form in addition to the other processes


Over the course of 15 years of research on L2 reading abilities in the Netherlands, the studies by Verhoeven and colleagues have steadily moved toward a view that assigns a greater role to specific L2 language skills supporting L2 reading, with a somewhat lesser role for the interdependence assertion.

Linguistic Interdependence: refers to a mutual central processing system from which both languages operate. A common language proficiency. L1 supports L2 as ‘prior learning’.

Sousa, 2006


In one contrasting set of studies, van Gelderen et al. (2004, 2007) carried out a three year longitudinal study of 389 adolescent students that found very strong relationships between L1 and L2 reading skills, demonstrating that L1 reading was a much stronger predictor than various L2 sub-components abilities on L2 reading.

These results support L1 to L2 transfer of reading abilities and the Interdependence Hypothesis.

So what does transfer? Or what prior learning in English can be drawn upon for L2 reading development?



It is generally agreed that the following sub-component skills transfer across languages and are thereby available as a scaffold for future learning:

1.Phonological awareness skills

2.Word decoding skills

3.Reading strategies

4.Metacognitive awareness

5.Pragmatic skills

Chiappe, Siegal, & Gottardo (2002); Chiappe, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley (2002); Geva (2006); Geva, Yaghoub-Zaheh, & Schuster (2000); Lesaux et al. (2006); Limbos & Geva (2001); Wade-Woolley & Siegal (1997)



However, transfer of skills from L1 to L2 does not seem to occur for:

1.Vocabulary knowledge

2.Morphosyntactic knowledge

3.Listening comprehension

4.Orthographic script-processing differences

At the same time, these language skills, developed as L2 abilities, do support L2 reading ability.


One important outcome of the … discussion of L1 and L2 relationships, based on research on children, is that L1

transfer skills and L2 development skills both support L2 reading.

Grabe (2010) p145

1.Phonological awareness skills

2.Word decoding skills

3.Reading strategies

4.Metacognitive awareness

5.Pragmatic skills

AND …

1.Vocabulary knowledge

2.Morphosyntactic knowledge

3.Listening comprehension

4.Orthographic script-processing differences

IMPLICATIONS FOR READING INSTRUCTION ACROSS LANGUAGES

1. The importance of focusing instructional efforts on component skills for comprehension: Word recognition (decoding) Vocabulary knowledge Grammar knowledge Discourse awareness Inferencing Monitoring Fluency Extended reading practice Motivation to read

2. The importance of automaticity: automatic word recognition is a critical component of fluent reading. Weaker readers struggle because they are unable to carry out lower-level processing in an easy and fluent way, this problem prevents cognitive resources from being used for comprehension.

3. Modularity: component skills become automatic and informationally encapsulated (literacy loop); that is, they operate quickly, without conscious attention or the application of higher level skills (inductive)

IMPLICATIONS FOR READING INSTRUCTION ACROSS LANGUAGES

3. Word knowledge: we need to know a lot of words well to be good readers, this involves (6 – 10,000)

Phonological and orthographic form Multiple meanings Morphological affixes Collocations of a word and the words it commonly associates with (topic &

register) The level of formality

4. Processing fluency: having readers increase their reading rate at somewhat faster than normal rates can improve comprehension.

5. Readers will read in different ways for different purposes: it is important to give students meaningful reasons to read for different purposes and to raise students’ awareness about how they might read differently when they are trying to achieve different goals (strategy – goal).


The big six:

1.Vocabulary development (language specific)

2.Phonological awareness (cross-linguistic)

3.Understanding of sound to symbol relationships (mapping principles) (both)

4.Linguistic knowledge (of language structures) (both)

5.Fluency (both)

6.Comprehension (both)

… that are components of THE FOUR MACRO SKILLS: Listening, Speaking, Writing and Reading …


The findings from the available research on second-language learners suggests that having well-developed oral language proficiency in (L2)

… is associated with well-developed reading comprehension skills … More specifically, the

available research suggests that comprehension is related to diverse components of … language

proficiency, including oral vocabulary knowledge, awareness of cognates, listening comprehension,

and oral storytelling skills, and syntactic skills.Geva (2006) p.135

RESOURCES FOR READING: RATE LIMITING FACTOR?

..\MiFamilia IWB.notebook

RATE LIMITING FACTOR OR OPPORTUNITY?

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/12377334/saba-y-pedro

http://www.xtranormal.com/

DETERMINING THE LEARNING TASKS, DISTANCE TRAVELLED AND CAUSES OF

STAGNATION

… L2 teachers should examine the language skills of their low-achieving and at-risk L2 learners

rather than looking to affective explanations for individual differences in L2 learning.

It seems likely that negative affective characteristics may have their roots in poor L1

skills.Sparks et al., 2011, p 270

DETERMINING LEARNING TASKS, DISTANCE TRAVELLED AND CAUSES OF

STAGNATION

Task (factor) Analysis

Task analysis involves detailed, fine-grained examination of performance on a task or

problem. A task analysis provides testable hypotheses about the knowledge, skills, and psychological processes required to

complete the task.Resnick, 1976; Resnick, Wang, and Kaplan 1973

Spanish Language Diagnostic (Yrs 1-2) Feb 2005 & (Yrs 2-3) Feb 2006: Distance Travelled

COGNITIVE TASKS

Q

Avg per year level(s)

CONTENT

Oral Comprehension

Grapho-Phonological

Correspondence.

Word Knowledge – Translation.

Recall of Vocabulary.

Written Comprehension.

Written Comprehension

and Written Composition.

1

Feb 2005 4.66

Feb 2006 7.3

Distance Travelled

56.6%

2

Feb 2005

3.6 / 36%(Matching 10 Spanish words with their English translation)

Feb 2006

7.3 / 73% (Matching 10 Spanish words with their English translation)

Distance Travelled

121%

3

Feb 2005

1.16 / 23%(5 target words assessed on numbers and colours)

Feb 2006

4.3 / 85% (5 target words assessed on numbers and colours)

Distance Travelled

270%

© Nielsen, 2010

Spanish Language Diagnostic (Yrs 2-3) Feb 2006 & (Yrs 2-3) Dec 2006: Distance Travelled

COGNITIVE TASKS

Avg No. per year level(s)

CONTENT

Oral Comprehension.

Grapho-Phonological

Correspondence

Word Knowledge – Translation.

Recall of Vocabulary.

Use of L2 Grammatical Conventions

Written Comprehension. Written Comprehension

and Written Composition.

Feb 20067.3

Dec 2006 29

Distance Travelled

297%

Feb 2006

7.3 / 73% (Matching 10

Spanish words with their English translation)

Dec 2006

19 / 50%(Writing English

translations to 38 words in Spanish)

Distance Travelled

160%

Feb 2006

4.3 / 85% (5 target words

assessed numbers and colours

and were given in bilingual questions)

Dec 2006

8.6 / 78%(11 target words

assessed numbers, colours, body parts and the

use of cognates which were given exclusively in L2

questions)

Dec 20061 / 100% &5.4 / 90%

5.8 / 58% 3.4 / 57% 1 / 100%

© Nielsen, 2010

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Multilingual Literacy: an Integrated Approach © Nielsen, 2010.

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