English Language Learners and the Five Essential Components of Reading
Instruction
By:
Beth Antunez
<https://www.readingrockets.org/people-and-organizations/beth-antunez>
Find out how teachers can play to the strengths and shore up the weaknesses
of English Language Learners in each of the Reading First content areas.
This article provides recommendations and considerations for instruction of
ELLs within each of the Reading First components. It should be kept in
mind, however, that the Reading First components did not originate from
studies including ELLs, and that despite research indicating a need for
native language instruction, any discussion within the context of Reading
First is about teaching ELLs to read in English.
1. Phonemic awarenessPhonemes are the smallest units making up spoken
language. English consists of about 41 phonemes. Phonemes combine to form
syllables and words. For example, the word *stop* has four phonemes
(s-t-o-p), while *shop* has three phonemes (sh-o-p). Phonemic awareness
refers to the ability to identify and manipulate these phonemes in spoken
words. It is also the understanding that the sounds of spoken language work
together to make words.
The following two songs, the first in English, and the second in Spanish,
represent poems that, because of their easy rhyme and repetition, can be
used to teach phonemic awareness.
*Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,*
*All dressed in black, black, black,*
*With silver buttons, buttons, buttons,*
*All down her back, back, back*
*She asked her mother, mother, mother,*
*For fifty cents, cents, cents,*
*To see the elephant, elephant, elephant,*
*Jump over the fence, fence, fence.*
*He jumped so high, high, high,*
*He reached the sky, sky, sky,*
*And he never came back, back, back,*
*‘Till the fourth of July, ‘ly, ‘ly.*
*Bate, bate, chocolate,*
*tu nariz de cacahuate.*
*Uno, dos, tres, CHO!*
*Uno, dos, tres, CO!*
*Uno, dos, tres, LA!*
*Uno, dos, tres, TE!*
*Chocolate, chocolate!*
*Bate, bate, chocolate!*
*Bate, bate, bate, bate,*
*Bate, bate, CHOCOLATE!*
Considerations when instructing ELLs in phonemic awareness
- Some phonemes may not be present in ELLs’ native language and,
therefore, may be difficult for a student to pronounce and distinguish
auditorily, as well as to place into a meaningful context. For ELLs, as
with all students, it is important that instruction have meaning, so that
the words and sounds students are manipulating are familiar. It is
therefore necessary for ELLs to have knowledge of the English
vocabulary words
within which they are to understand phonemes. Teachers can teach phonemic
awareness while also explicitly teaching vocabulary words, their meaning,
and their pronunciation to ELLs.
- Children’s minds are trained to categorize phonemes in their first
language, which may conflict with English phonemes. For example,
Spanish-speaking children may speak, read, and write *ch* when *sh* should
be used because in Spanish, these two combinations produce the same phoneme
(International Reading Association, 2001). Teachers can enable phonemic
awareness in English for ELLs by understanding the linguistic
characteristics of students’ native language, including the phonemes that
exist and do not exist in the native language.
- Scientifically-based research suggests that ELLs respond well to
meaningful activities such as language games and word walls, especially
when the activities are consistent and focus on particular sounds and
letters. Songs and poems, with their rhythm and repetition, are easily
memorized and can be used to teach phonemic awareness and print concepts to
ELLs (Hiebert, et al., 1998). These rhymes exist in every language and
teachers can ask students or their parents to share these culturally
relevant and teachable rhymes with the class, and build phonemic awareness
activities around them.
2. PhonicsPhonics is the understanding that there is a predictable
relationship between phonemes (the sounds of spoken language) and graphemes
(the letters and spellings that represent those sounds in written
language). Readers use these relationships to recognize familiar words and
to decode unfamiliar ones.
Phonics instruction is a way of teaching reading that stresses learning how
letters correspond to sounds and how to use this knowledge in reading and
spelling. The goal is to help children understand that there is a
systematic and predictable relationship between written letters and spoken
sounds (CIERA, 2001).
Considerations when instructing ELLs in phonics
- Students who are not literate in their own language or whose language
does not have a written form may not understand some concepts and need to
be taught about the functions of print (Peregoy & Boyle, 2000).
- Students may have learned to read and write in a native language in
which the letters correspond to different sounds than they do in English,
or they may have learned to read and write in a language with characters
that correspond to words or portions of words. For example, “alphabetic
writing systems such as the three different ones used for English, Greek,
and Russian represent speech sounds or phonemes with letters or letter
sequences. In contrast, in logographic writing systems, such as Chinese,
each written character represents a meaning unit or morpheme; while in
syllabic writing systems, such as kana in Japanese and Sequoyah’s Cherokee
syllabify, each written symbol represents a syllable (Peregoy & Boyle,
2000, p. 241).”
- In Spanish (the native language of 77 percent of ELLs in U.S. schools,
[NCBE, 2002]), the letters *b*, *c*, *d*, *f*, *l*, *m*, *n*, *p*, *q*,
*s*, and *t* represent sounds that are similar enough to English that
they may transfer readily to English reading for many students.
Consequently, many students need minimal phonics instruction for these
consonants. In contrast, vowel letters look the same in Spanish and English
but are named differently and represent very different sounds. Therefore,
English vowel sounds and their numerous spellings present a challenge to
Spanish literate students learning to read English because the one-to-one
correspondence between vowel letters and vowel sounds in Spanish does not
hold true in English (Peregoy & Boyle, 2000).
These examples represent not simply the challenges in teaching ELLs to read
in English, but also illustrate that teachers can effectively teach phonics
and all of the Reading First components if they are armed with knowledge
about their students and their native language.
3. Vocabulary development
Vocabulary development refers to the knowledge of stored information about
the meanings and pronunciations of words necessary for communication.
Vocabulary development is important for beginning reading in that when a
student comes to a word and sounds it out, he or she is also determining if
the word makes sense based on his or her understanding of the word. If a
student does not know the meaning of the word, there is no way to check if
the word fits, or to make meaning from the sentence. Vocabulary development
is also a primary determinant of reading comprehension. Readers cannot
understand the content of what they are reading unless they understand the
meaning of the majority of words in the text.
A second grade class of ELLs is about to engage in a lesson in which they
sequence events in a story. The teacher chooses to use the book, *The
Tortilla Factory* by Gary Paulsen, which recounts the steps in making
tortillas.
To begin the lesson, the teacher shows students a bag of tortillas and asks
students to show by thumbs up: Who has eaten tortillas? Helped make
tortillas? Knows what ingredients go into making tortillas? Can show
motions for types of ways to manipulate the dough? Teacher prompts students
to name key vocabulary as she writes these words on index cards placed into
a pocket chart: *dough*, *corn*, *plants*, *kernels*, *round*, *grind*,
*bake*, *factory*. Either the teacher or a student then explains each word.
Before reading *The Tortilla Factory* aloud, the teacher distributes these
words on index cards to pairs of students. While the teacher is reading
aloud, pairs hold up their words and/or model the motions that go with the
vocabulary for each part of the tortilla making process that is detailed in
the book.
Considerations when instructing ELLs in vocabulary
- Vocabulary development is one of the greatest challenges to reading
instruction for ELLs, because in order to read fluently and comprehend what
is written, students need to use not just phonics, but context. It is
possible for students to read completely phonetically and not comprehend
what they have read because they do not have the vocabulary. Therefore,
vocabulary needs to be taught explicitly and be a part of the daily
curriculum in addition to learning to read. This can be done through class
time devoted strictly to English as a Second Language (ESL) or English
Language Development (ELD).
-
Scientific research on vocabulary development demonstrates that children
learn the majority of their vocabulary indirectly in the following three
ways:
- Through conversations, mostly with adults;
- Listening to adults read to them; and
- Reading extensively on their own (CIERA, 2001).
This finding has serious consequences for ELLs, whose parents and other
adults in their lives are often not fluent in English. It is therefore
extremely important for educators of ELLs to know and incorporate the ways
that students learn vocabulary directly, including: explicitly teaching
vocabulary words before students read a text, how to use dictionaries, how
to use prefixes and suffixes to decipher word meanings, and how to
use context
clues (CIERA, 2001).
- In the discussion of literacy development for ELLs, it is useful to
consider a theory that distinguishes the language proficiency needed for
everyday, face-to-face communication (BICS, for Basic Interpersonal
Communicative Skills) from the proficiency needed to comprehend and
manipulate language in the decontextualized educational setting (CALP, for
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) (Cummins, 1992). The BICS/CALP
distinction highlights the fact that some aspects of language proficiency
are considerably more relevant for students’ cognitive and academic
progress than are the surface manifestations commonly focused on by
educators. Additionally, in terms of vocabulary development, it highlights
the fact that an ELL student may have the vocabulary to hold a conversation
about weekend activities, but might not have the vocabulary to comprehend a
science or social studies text.
4. Reading fluency, including oral reading skills
Fluency is the ability to read words accurately and quickly. Fluent readers
recognize words and comprehend them simultaneously. Reading fluency is a
critical factor necessary for reading comprehension. If children read out
loud with speed, accuracy, and proper expression, they are more likely to
comprehend and remember the material than if they read with difficulty and
in an inefficient way.
Two instructional approaches have typically been used to teach reading
fluency. One, guided repeated oral reading, encourages students to read
passages out loud with systematic and explicit guidance and feedback from
their teacher. The other, independent silent reading, encourages students
to read silently on their own, inside and outside the classroom, with
little guidance or feedback from their teachers.
Considerations when instructing ELLs in fluency
- The Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA)
states that ELLs should learn to read initially in their first language. If
this is not possible, students need to see and hear literally hundreds of
books over a school year in order for fluency to be modeled to them. CIERA
recommends that ELLs participate in read-alouds of big books, read along
with proficient readers, and listen repeatedly to books read aloud in order
to gain fluency in English (Hiebert et al., 1998).
- The NRC complements CIERA’s recommendations about initial literacy in
the native language. The NRC asserts that learning to speak English first
contributes to children’s eventual fluency in English reading, as oral
proficiency provides a foundation to support subsequent learning
about the alphabetic
principle through an understanding of the structure of spoken English
words and of the language and content of the material they are reading
(Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). This reinforces the recommendation for
vocabulary development in ELLs: that in addition to reading instruction,
ESL or ELD instruction must be an integral part of curriculum for ELLs.
- Fluency should not be confused with accent. Many ELLs will read and
speak English with an accent as they are beginning to learn English, and
others will have one throughout their lives. Students can read fluently in
English with a native language accent.
5. Reading comprehension strategies
Reading comprehension is the culmination of all of the reading skills and
the ultimate goal of learning to read. The purpose of mastery of each of
the four previous skills is to enable comprehension. Likewise, reading
comprehension facilitates mastery of the other four skills. For example,
the NRP found that reading comprehension is clearly related to
vocabulary knowledge
and development. The NRP also found that comprehension is an active process
that requires an intentional and thoughtful interaction between the reader
and the text that can be explicitly taught through text comprehension
instruction.
Considerations when instructing ELLs in comprehension
- The NRC, in discussing reading for meaning, or comprehension, explains
that the four other Reading First skills are interrelated with the skill of
comprehension and also makes the case for native language literacy
instruction:
“The abilities to hear and reflect on the structure of spoken English
words, as required for learning how the alphabetic principle works,
depend on oral familiarity with the words being read. Similarly, learning
to read for meaning depends on understanding the language and referents of
the text to be read. To the extent possible, ELLs should have opportunities
to develop literacy skills in their home language as well as in English
(Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998, p. 324).”
- As ELLs may be working diligently to translate concepts
literally, figurative
language such as “crocodile tears” or “sweet tooth” can be perplexing.
Hiebert et al. (1998) recommend scanning students’ text beforehand to
anticipate these difficulties and engaging students in a discussion about
literal and figurative meanings of these expressions.
- Frequently, when students are behind their peers in learning to read,
as is often the case for ELLs, their remedial programs consist of phonemic
awareness, phonics activities or vocabulary development in isolation.
They are not exposed to authentic texts or challenged to think critically
or inferentially about stories. Teachers of ELLs must expose their students
to quality literature and higher order thinking skills. This can be done
through the use of graphic organizers, modeling “thinking aloud,” and
stopping often in the text to question and summarize. KR IRS 13824
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