What Knowledge Do Learners Need
Before Starting Extensive Reading?
Rob WARING
Notre Dame Seishin University
ERF World Congress, Sept 4th, 2011.
Kyoto
Assumptions
There is a threshold of knowledge needed before students can
read extensively:
linguistic – very basic words, grammar etc.
alphabetic
understanding of book and text structure
understanding of how text flows
We could call this ‘bootstrapping’ knowledge
In addition, learners need to understand why they need to read
extensively
Definition of ER
ER involves reading with a primary focus on the message to
practice the skill of reading
The following are preferred but not essential
faster is better than not
reading more is better
reading enjoyably is better
Occasional reading speed bumps are to be expected
No clear line between IR and ER
INTENSIVE READING
EXTENSIVE READING
Language
development
MAIN FOCUS
Content, message,
story
Careful
READING
Holistic
Slower
SPEED
Faster
Dense with unknown
words
Awareness raising
TEXT DENSITY Few unknown words
SKILLS
Practice of the skills
This implies …
Initially, the reading can only be intensive to some degree until
the automatic recognition of given words and phrases is
reached.
Before starting to read, students need some level of awareness
of:
-form-meaning relationships (/æpl/ is rendered apple )
-how letters represent sounds (phonics)
Automatic recognition of a given word will be hampered by
unknown co-text – slowing the building of automaticity
Therefore, it’s essential that initial reading material is highly
controlled to build automatic sight recognition of the core
‘kick-start’ vocabulary quickly
Bootstrapping
Learning the code (probably individually and discrete)
learning a kickstart oral vocabulary
learning how letters refer to sounds
decoding how letter combinations work
etc.
Combining phase
combining the discrete items into larger units
contextualizing items
Automatizing phase – e.g. controlled practice
automatizing that knowledge so it becomes less conscious
automatizing from the small to the large
Then on to Extensive Reading
Sequential or concurrent bootstrapping?
One approach is to do all this concurrently
-learning the code, combining, automatizing in one class and
ER in another at or about the same time
-this is good for consolidation and making connections
-does it overload learners?
Another is to deal with each separately initially (possibly
sequentially) and bring in ER later
-easier to manage / teach
-less load on the students
-possible forgetting if little reinforcement and few
connections are made
Furukawa (2008)
A concurrent approach
from 7th grade in cram school
80 minutes normal class; 80 minutes ER for 48 weeks
30,000 books to choose from, 2000 CDs, 100DVDs
By 9th grade they had read 670,000 words and outperformed
students 2 years older also attending cram school on the reading
and listening aspects of the ACE test after controlling for the
same time in classes
ER made the difference
Bootstrapping what knowledge and skills?
Minimum linguistic knowledge
words, phrases
grammatical
alphabetical / phonetic
knowledge of how sounds match meanings and written words
Textual
Text shape: sentences, paragraphs, speech
Direction: left to right text, left to right page order etc.
Text type: story book vs alphabet book vs text book
Book structure: Cover, body, etc.
Bootstrapping what knowledge and skills? 2
Story / Plot Structure
Beginning, Middle, End
Told in time order
Plausible events
Sense of narrative
etc.
Metalanguage of reading (probably in L1)
reading speed, automaticity, repeated reading, parts of
speech (noun, verb, adjective), basic grammatical terms
(subject, object) etc. etc.
Learning the code: Don’t start with the
alphabet
Words follow the alphabetic principle that letters are used to
represent speech sounds (phonemes)
We don’t use the alphabet for reading – reading is sound basedi.e. – phonic: /kæt/ not C-A-T /ai/ not E-Y-E
The alphabet is used for spelling (for writing) not pronouncing /
reading
Writing is usually the last skill to be learnt in EFL
So introduce the alphabet later when they start to write
No need to confuse them with two systems for sounds and
letters early on
Bootstrapping the sound-letter code
Systematic Phonics (hat + e = hate ; b oo k = book)
Focus on underlying patterns for dealing with unmet words
But:
Often very mechanical, and repetitive
Lots of memorization and behavioristic learning
Tries to protect children from mistakes
Temptation to keep on teaching phonic elements when the
kids want to / are ready to read
Can lead to boredom
Active Phonics
Uses game play, movement and activity and makes children
think more than traditional systematic phonics
Children should sound out words
Order of presentation: Vowels, consonants, Vowel consonant
combinations, longer words with basic vowels etc.
Start with regularly spelled words, irregulars later
Problems with phonics
It probably involves some one-to-one teaching / monitoring
Students / parents may not understand the reason the students
are ‘delaying’ reading
Bootstrapping the vocabulary
EFL Children don’t have the huge benefit of oral vocabulary L1
Children do.
Students probably need an oral vocabulary of about 200 words
before picking up their first book to read it
These can be learnt contextually by listening to stories being told
with very easy picture books e.g. Oxford Reading Tree
Or de-contextually through flashcards and games etc.
A bootstrap vocabulary
Function words
about at for from into of with to he I it she some they we what where
you there this down in on and but a/an the not out why
really very ok
Content words
angry big every good happy sorry goodbye here yes no please now
be do have ask come get give go know listen look play say see show
take tell thank think want watch
run start talk wait walk
day friend man name
A bootstrap vocabulary 2
Some of these words are probably known orally or as loanwords by
10 year-olds
a.m. address afternoon air America apple April arm august bag ball banana bank
baseball bath bathroom beach bed beef bicycle bike bird black blue boat body
book boy boyfriend bread breakfast brother brown bus cake car cat cheese
chicken chocolate class classroom clock coffee cola computer cup dad dance
December dictionary dinner doctor dog door dress ear eight eleven English eye
face father February first fish five floor flower food football fork four Friday fruit
game girl girlfriend glass golf green hair hall hamburger hand hat head home
homework hotel hour house hundred ice inch internet January jeans juice July
June key kilo kilometer knife lamp leg lemon madam march meal meat menu
mile milk minute miss Monday money month moon morning mother motorbike
mouth movie Mr. Mrs. music newspaper night nine November October office
orange paper park pasta pen pencil phone pizza rain red restaurant rice river
salad sandwich Saturday school sea second September seven ship shirt shoe
shopping sir sister six skirt snow soccer sport station steak store student study
sun Sunday table taxi tea television ten tennis thousand three Thursday today
tomato tomorrow train tree Tuesday two water Wednesday white word world
yellow yesterday
Building automaticity / sight vocabulary
Recognition games (find the odd one out)
Discrimination games (find cat in a jumble of words)
Once they’ve read a text once:
Repeated readings
Reading 10% faster
Timed readings
Race your partner
(all with comprehension)
Bootstrapping Grammar
Grammar isn’t the basis of language – meaning is
The grammar of a sentence often emerges from the properties of
the main verb and its meaning
(human subject) give (something one can give) to (someone)
She
gave a birthday present
to her boyfriend
*Happiness
gave
a walk
to a fish
(human subject) give (someone)
She
gave her boyfriend
*Happiness
gave
the fish
(something one can give)
a birthday present
a walk
Bootstrapping Grammar 2
There are a very few grammatical patterns that need teaching explicitly:
- word order
- tenses
- relative clauses
Most of the rest is basically lexical or grammaticalized lexis (and messy!)
-If patterns, not only but also, etc.
-prepositions
-comparatives and superlatives, as ____ as
-for, since, during, while
-conjunctions etc.
A lot of grammar is late acquired, so why focus on it so early? (e.g. articles)
Grammar awareness comes after massive exposure so at the bootstrapping
stage, it’s best to avoid discussion of grammar except possibly basic word order.
The above suggests
To bootstrap initial knowledge there should be some focus on:
intentional learning – e.g. word games, phonics games
incidental learning – assisted graded reading; reading
along, buddy reading
Later intentional reinforcement can be added – early unassisted
graded reading, repeated readings, fluency work
It should be fun, not serious work.
Then they can move on to early teacher-selected and selfselected unassisted reading
Which materials to start unassisted reading
with?
Many teachers say they can’t do ER because their students aren’t ready
linguistically – thus they need this threshold knowledge
Most EFL Graded Readers are said to be too difficult for absolute
beginners – even the level 1 books
Foundations Reading Library (from 75 headwords)
Building Blocks Reading Library (from 170 headwords)
Penguin Readers / Bookworms, etc. (from 200/250 headwords)
It’s likely beginners can only read these intensively (i.e. main focus on
language forms not meaning)
Many reading series jump through the levels too quickly so we can
expect some regress in speed as learners move up levels
This implies learners should not stick with one graded reader scheme so
they can smoothen out the gaps between levels.
The problem with Child L1 texts
Child L1 material:
assumes an oral vocab of several hundred words
isn’t scaffolded as carefully as graded reader materials – thus
learners may meet many rare words
isn’t graded to match normal EFL courses and syllabuses
is not always age appropriate
Phonics readers
These carefully control the spellings / sight/sound combinations
students read
But often have unnatural and contrived language as there is a lot
of alliteration (Sue sang seven songs)
They are more like practice books than graded readers
The first reading experience:
Knowledge-based approaches
Whole-word reading (memorizing book, dog, father as whole words)
focuses on complete words not underlying patterns
Whole language reading (e.g. teacher reads to a class)
learn by reading and working it out as you go, little analysis
requires a lot of oral exposure to see patterns
Reading aloud
Based on memorizing whole words
Often kids do not internalize the meanings / patterns, only parrot
them
It doesn’t prepare them well to deal with unfamiliar words
Can lead to passive students
What to do?
Most Asian EFL languages are not orthographically transparent
(one sound = one letter as in Spanish or Finnish) so some help in
decoding the system can be helpful initially
Some children may not need phonic instruction as they can
move to whole-language reading smoothly. Others will need
some help.
If in doubt – teach phonics – it will help even those who don’t
really need it, but greatly help those who do
Teaching phonics helps writing and spelling
Move on to whole-language reading as soon as possible
Learning lists is a fast way to learn words. It is decontextual
(whole word learning) and needs contextualizing as soon as
possible
Affective considerations
Learners need to be emotionally engaged / drawn in by the texts or
presentation so :
they can notice things e.g. words
they will be stimulated to want more
they can follow the story more easily
They need to feel success and achievement
The text / reading presentation should challenge them to think not just
let the story wash over them
It’s not always necessary to be too clear when presenting, as it leaves a
space into which the children can think. Clarity comes at the end.
They need to link the new to the old so it can be internalized
Younger learners need to be free to learn the way they want and not
forced into categories of ‘good’ ‘bad’ ‘fast’ ‘slow’ etc.
We should encourage them to not worry about mistakes
The best approach for building bootstrapping
knowledge?
There isn’t one ….
The appropriate balance and sequence of learning / teaching the
code, building an initial oral vocabulary and so on depends on:
the students
the class size
the learning styles
resources
teaching styles
time available
the curriculum
etc.
Thank you for your time
Contact
Rob Waring
waring_robert@yahoo.com
www.robwaring.org
What minimum Teacher knowledge / resources
are necessary?
Knowledge of what ER is and its aims
Ability to read and pronounce English well
Appropriately leveled books / reading materials