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Phonological Awareness

2. The Five Essential Components of Reading Instruction

The findings of the National Reading Panel were highlighted in President George W. Bush’s plan for improving education—the No Child Left Behind Act—signed in 2001. The Partnership's goal was to ensure that reading instruction was taught effectively with evidence-based methods, such as those put forth by the National Reading Panel. In doing so, the NRP reviewed approximately 100,000 published studies on best reading approaches. Their analysis clearly delineated best practices for reading instruction, and coupled with the Common Core State Standards the following reading instructions remain as recommendations for beginner readers with implications for ELLs:

  • Students must receive explicit instruction in phonemic awareness
  • Students must receive systematic phonics instruction
  • Teachers must teach students methods to improve fluency with strategies to enhance comprehension.

A combination of techniques was found to be effective in teaching native and second language learners to read, called "The Essential Five":

  • Phonemic awareness is the breaking apart of words into smaller segments of sound known as phonemes. Reading to children at home, at school, using rhymes and songs, segmenting words by clapping them out, are all practices that teach basic phonemic awareness. When children are not read to and these activities are not reinforced, they must be taught explicitly the breaking down of words into smaller units of sound.
  • Phonics is the knowledge of letters that represent sound phonemes, and thatsounds are blend together to form written words.Skilled readers phonetically sound out new or unknown words without having to memorize them first.
  • Fluency is the ability to recognize words easily, read with speed and accuracy, use expression, and understand what it means to read for meaning and understand what was read. Children gain fluency by practicing reading until the process becomes automatic. Guided oral repeated reading is an effective approach to help students become fluent readers.
  • Guided oral reading is reading out loud with explicit guidance and feedback from the teacher or another skilled reader. The combination of practice and feedback promotes reading fluency.
  • Teaching vocabulary words is an effective way to build fluency. Teaching them either as they appear in text, or by introducing new words separately are both effective methods of vocabulary instruction that facilitates better reading ability overall.
  • Reading comprehension strategies are techniques for helping individuals to understand what they read as they read. Summarizing strategies help early readers comprehend as long as the focus moves toward providing evidence for what was read with examples, references, and citations. Students should also be taught to break text and stories down into discreet elements, such as story grammar for literature, with organizational patterns and text features for non-fiction. Close reading strategies help older readers as they highlight, take notes, and apply a hands-on approach to the reading process.  students summarize what they've read, to gain a better understanding of the material.

Considerations for ESOL 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 facilitate phonemic awareness in ELLs by using the linguistic characteristics and phonemes of students' native language as catalyst to teaching them in English.
  • Research continues to suggest that ELLs respond to meaningful and engaging hands-on activities such as language games, miming out stories and writing products, and through the consistent use of word walls. Songs and poems, with their rhythm and repetition should be used to teach phonemic awareness and concepts about print (Hiebert, et al., 1998).

Considerations for ESOL 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 should be taught phonics explicitly (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.
  • The one-to-one correspondence between vowel letters and sounds can vary drastically from one language to another. For example, certain English vowel sounds and word spellings are challenging to language learners, especially Spanish literate students learning to read.  (Peregoy & Boyle, 2000)

Considerations for ESOL Vocabulary Development

Vocabulary development involves a reconciliation of what a learner already knows about a word, whether it is the root, prefix, suffix, or meaning, and its use in the context from which they 

encounter it in text.  It is vital that beginning readers and learners of English develop a strong vocabulary base and be taught to not just sound it out, but use it in context and use context to determine what it means. 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, then the dictionary or thesaurus would be the resource at-hand. Vocabulary development is among the primary determinants of reading comprehension, and when reading comprehension breaks down it is usually due to lack of vocabulary understanding (Peregoy & Boyle, 2000). Readers will not understand what they are reading unless they can first understand the words they encounter in the text.

Considerations for 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, especially for second language learners.
  • Students learn vocabulary indirectly in the following three ways:
    • Through conversations teachers, parents, and peers;
    • Listening to adults read to them;
    • Reading widely, extensively, and independently.

    When ELLs do not hear English in the home, speak it, or read it, their will stay seriously behind and take longer to reach English proficiency. ELLs must be taught how to directly incorporate vocabulary into their speaking and writing, while reading it regularly enough to assimilate.  They must also be taught how to use dictionaries, prefixes, and suffixes to decipher word meanings, as well as use context clues.

Considerations for ELLS in Reading Fluency and Oral Reading

Fluency is the ability to read words accurately and quickly, with readers recognizing and comprehending the words they encounter instantly. when they do not, they apply fix-up strategies and metacognition to problem solve consistently and efficiently.

Considerations for ELLs in Fluency

  • The Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement (CIERA) recommends that ELLs read widely and consistently to become proficient in their first language. Modeling fluency requires that students be exposed to hundreds of read-alouds each year. This can, and should, include read alongs with proficient readers,repeated readings and listening to books on tape (Hiebert et al., 1998).
  • Do not confuse fluency with a child's accent. Many ELLs read and speak English with an accent and many will have them throughout their lives depending upon when and how they acquire and learn the English language. Students can read with an accent, and still be reading fluently.

Considerations for ELLs in Reading Comprehension

  • Engage students in discussions about literal and figurative meanings of words and expressions. Teach them idioms and cognates.
  • Expose ELLs to authentic texts and challenge them to think critically or inferentially about what they read, but teach them close reading carefully and with scaffolding.
  • Expose ELLs to quality, culturally familiar literature to teach higher order thinking skills. Accompany this instruction with the use of graphic organizers, modeling "thinking aloud," and stopping often in the text to question and summarize.
Peregoy, S. F., Boyle, O. F. (2000). English Learners Reading English: What We Know, What We Need To Know. Theory into Practice, v39 n4 p237-47 Aut 2000.