Teaching Reading/Wri/ng
ALLEX 2016 (based on slides by Ginger Marcus)
• Primacy of the Spoken Language • Pedagogical Implications: when to
teach reading/writing • Reading strategies • Reading activities • Writing
Overview for today
• written language is based on the spoken language
• spoken language came before written language historically
• written language is basically an imprecise representation of the spoken
• for daily communication, spoken language is necessary
• we speak more than we write (most of us)
• spoken language is more efficient for getting meaning across
Evidence for the Primacy of Speech:
• spoken proficiency in a foreign language helps in learning to read but the reverse is not true
– Curtin (2012), first year J-lang learners who checked the dialogue in the textbook first and then used media materials performed worse in class
• no culture uses only written language – there are many spoken languages in the world but not all
of them have a writing system.
• natural order of acquisition: spoken before written
Evidence for the Primacy of Speech:
• What happens if you introduce reading…
Before the spoken? Simultaneously with the spoken? After the spoken?
Pedagogical Implica/ons:
• Leads to DECODING (the translation of symbols into sounds only; no processing for meaning) At radiological evaluation, there were bilateral patchy alveolar
and/or interstitial infiltrates in 16 patients (62%), and solitary pneumonic involvement in 10 patients (38%).
• Focus on orthography decreases time spent developing oral skills
Before the spoken language:
• Could have a negative effect on spoken skills • Sensory/memory overload
• Authenticity issues (e.g., all in hiragana) しょうしょうおまちください。 少々お待ちください。 • Remember that there is a difference between
pedagogical transcription and reading in the target language.
Simultaneously (no /me lag):
• Trained to think about all 4 skills (speaking, listening, reading, writing)
• Time is short; let’s do everything at once • Academic pressure • Native speaker’s own experience in school • Native speaker’s perception of L2 learning • Easier to teach reading/writing • Easier to quantify
Reasons people believe in simultaneous introduc/on:
• subvocalization is possible • native orthography is not efficient for
representing sound; what is efficient? – pedagogical transcription
• vocab, structures, usage, pronunciation already known
• follows natural order of acquiring skills • avoids memory overload • authenticity—can present text authentically • reading reinforces the spoken language
AMer the spoken (/me lag):
Basic assumptions • Fluent reading involves: 1. Graph-sound connection 2. Graph-meaning connection 3. Sound-meaning connection • Reading practice for beginners must begin with
automaticity training • Vocab building: repeated exposure in many different
contexts is key • Balance of Top-Down and Bottom-up skills
-from Nara in Acts of Reading
Meaning
Top-‐Down
BoQom-‐Up
Reading Strategies
Bottom-up strategy
• Focus on orthography • Focus on meaning of words, phrases • Focus on grammatical structures • Paraphrasing (to check comprehension) • Translating M
VOC 字 GR
Top-down strategy
• Prediction • Inference • Association with prior knowledge
M
Info Infer Pred
Vocabulary 字 Grammar
Meaning
General Info Infer Predict
Top-‐Down
BoQom-‐Up
Reading Strategies
Local or intensive reading
• Reading for specific information • Scanning activities (scanning: looking for a
particular word or information) • More focus on linguistic code (bottom-up
strategy)
Global or extensive reading
• Reading for general information • Skimming activities (skimming: reading to
get the main idea) • More focus on meaning, context (top-down
strategy)
Summary of strategies for reading:
• Previewing: reviewing /tles, sec/on headings, and photo cap/ons to get a sense of the structure and content of a reading selec/on
• Predic/ng: – using knowledge of the subject maQer to make predic/ons about content and vocabulary and check comprehension
– using knowledge of the text type and purpose to make predic/ons about discourse structure
– using knowledge about the author to make predic/ons about wri/ng style, vocabulary, and content
from hQp://www.nclrc.org/essen/als/reading/stratread.htm
Summary of strategies for reading:
• Skimming and scanning: using a quick survey of the text
to get the main idea, iden/fy text structure, confirm or ques/on predic/ons
• Guessing from context: using prior knowledge of the subject and the ideas in the text as clues to the meanings of unknown words, instead of stopping to look them up
• Paraphrasing: stopping at the end of a sec/on to check comprehension by resta/ng the informa/on and ideas in the text
from hQp://www.nclrc.org/essen/als/reading/stratread.htm
Reading Activities
• Pre-reading activities • Reading the text • Post-reading activities
Prereading exercises --Why?
--to prepare the reader --to activate prior knowledge --to contextualize the text --to help the learner predict
Yongfang Zhang 21
Yongfang Zhang 22
Post-‐reading ac/vity When do you read a business card? What might be a performance? Time? Place? Roles? Audience? Script?
Business Card Reading Performance from Lesson 7 in New Prac,cal Chinese Reader
• Ding Libo: -‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐请问,您是我们学院的老师吗?
• Prof. Zhang:是,我是语言学院的老师。
• Ding Libo: 您贵姓? • Prof. Zhang: 我姓张,我们认识一下,这是我的名片。
• Ding Libo: 谢谢。(看名片)啊,您是张教授。我叫丁力波,她叫林娜。我们都是语言学院的学生。
• Ding Libo: -‐-‐-‐-‐-‐-‐Excuse me, are you a teacher in our ins/tute?
• Prof. Zhang: Yes, I am a teacher in the Ins/tute of Language and Culture.
• Ding Libo: What is your name? • Prof. Zhang: My last name is Zhang.
Let’s get to know each other. This is my business card.
• Ding Libo: Thank you. (Reading the business card.) Ah, you are Professor Zhang. My name is Ding Libo, and she is Lin Na. Both of us are students in the ins/tute.
Some pre-reading activities • Identify the text and discuss the physical
appearance: website? newspaper article? job ad? menu? horizontal? vertical?
• Skimming (getting the gist) • Scanning (for specific information)--use
authentic texts; build motivation
日程(現地時間)
7月1日(1:00 PM) アルゼンチン スイス
7月1日(5:00 PM) ベルギー アメリカ
7月4日(1:00 PM) フランス ドイツ
7月4日(5:00 PM) ブラジル コロンビア
7月5日(1:00 PM) アルゼンチン ベルギー
7月5日(5:00 PM) オランダ コスタリカ
7月8日(5:00 PM) ブラジル ドイツ
7月9日(5:00 PM) アルゼンチン オランダ
Pre-reading Activities
• Discussion about the topic, genre, style • The text’s role in society (who reads this
kind of text, where does it appear,etc.) • Author and possible intentions • What learners might expect to see in the
text
Reading the text
• When should learners actually read the text?
• What about reading aloud in class? • Silent reading • Authentic tasks
Post-reading Activities --discussion of the text; opposing
viewpoints; summarizing --writing exercise (e.g., commenting on a
blog post, a response email, text message, shopping list)
--ordering in a restaurant --exchanging a business card --making a hotel reservation --buying tickets online
Beginning-level activity: Reading a Chinese menu
• Pre-reading activity – Discuss kinds of food learners like – Types of restaurants they like – Chinese dishes they like – Different types of restaurants in Taiwan – Restaurant culture
Beginning-level activity: Reading a Chinese menu
• Post-reading activities (Performances) – Place an order – Ask the server about dishes – Discuss what you ordered and why
Beginning level activity: Train Schedule
• Pre-reading activities – Discuss train travel in Japan – Discuss what kind of information you would
expect to see on a train schedule board – Show pictures of a train station, schedules
Beginning level activity: Train Schedule
• Post-reading activities (Performances) --Find out the departure and arrival times of your friend’s train from Tokyo to Kyoto --Report the information to another friend who does not read Japanese
Advanced Level Activity: Reading a newspaper article
• Pre-reading activities --Discuss the type of article, type of newspaper and expectations
– Discuss the topic, issues that might be raised – Discuss student feelings about the topic
Advanced Level Activity: Reading a newspaper article
• Post-reading activities – Discuss the author’s viewpoint – Compare viewpoint with those of learners – Discuss learners’ reactions, compare with
native reactions – Give oral or written summaries (report to a
friend what you read) – Debate the issue brought up in the article
About writing:
• Writing is not recoding. – Recoding: opposite of decoding; i.e., direct
translation from base language into target language
• Writing is not just producing discrete symbols to represent sounds.
• Writing is not calligraphy. • Writing is not just composition (i.e.,
structure or grammar).
Writing involves knowledge of: • Orthography (writing systems) • Grammar/vocabulary (linguistic knowledge) • Different styles (formal, casual, polite, expository) • Genres (filling out a form, email, chat, blog entry, letter) • Rules of organization (envelope, essay, letter,
PowerPoint presentation) • Culture (what and how to write is determined by the
culture/social context; how to persuade, how to disagree, how to present information)
• Domain (knowledge about the topic)
Wri/ng Ac/vi/es
• Can focus on process or product • Process involves pre-‐wri/ng, draMing, revising, feedback. – Why do we include process in our instruc/on?
• Authen/city is essen/al – Form and task – (must know the conven/ons, etc.)
Reading/Writing Activities
• Keep the goal in mind: fluent reading/writing (doesn’t happen overnight)
• Build-up is necessary; activities should lead to fluent reading
• Need to be designed to help the learner achieve the goal (automaticity in performance)
• Must be appropriate for the learner’s level of proficiency
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