[MUSIC] Welcome back to Teach English Now. Let's have a brief discussion about what we learned from our discussion between Dorothy and the Scarecrow. First of all, the Scarecrow represents a learner who simply doesn't have a lot of knowledge about reading. You could say that this Scarecrow represents a reader who lacks reading skill. Now, there are many reasons that you might encounter a non-reader like this. And Dorothy, basically, discovered five. Let's talk about each one in a bit more detail. Automatic Recognition Skills. One reason a person could be a non-reader is that the learner doesn't have automatic recognition skills. In other words, it is the actual letters and the accompanying sounds that are giving the reader problems. This reader simply doesn't know how to decode the letters and sounds to make words. This happens with second language learners a lot because they may have a different alphabet in their first language, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic, for example. Or, even if they do have an understanding of a Roman alphabet, sometimes referred to as Latin script, there are different rules that apply. So a Spanish t, teh, is actually pronounced different from an English t, even though they written the same way. A t, teh, in Spanish, touches the back of the teeth and feels softer. Whereas, an American English t is further back on the alveolar ridge, that weird shaped bump behind your teeth. Finally, some readers are still, to put it simply, trying to figure out how to read, and may not read well in their own language. This is especially true if you are teaching younger second language learners. So, what do you do when you identify that the primary problem of your reader is the inability to recognize and decode letters and sounds? First of all, there's a lot for a teacher to learn to help learners to decode language. For example, you may want to spend time learning phonics rules. Phonics refers to a method of teaching learners to read by connecting sounds with letters or groups of letters. But what rules do you start with? What rules should you focus in on? While that can be different from language to language, consider, at the very least, the seven major phonics rules for second language learning suggested by May and Elliott. One, the "C" Rule. Hard c in cat, is different than soft c in city. Two, the "G" rule. The hard g from gate, is different from the soft g in gem. The VC Rule. Short vowel sound is usually followed by a consonant, digraph, or blend. For example, bat, bath and bask. Four, the VV Rule. When two vowels are together, usually the first vowel is long and the second vowel is silent. For example fee, boat and seat. Five, The VCe rule. One syllable words that end with a consonant and -e has a long vowel sound. The e is silent. For example, nice, plate and vote. Six, the CV rule. Use the long vowel sound when there is only one vowel in a word or syllable. For example, he, go, and my. Seven, the "R" Rule. R changes the vowels before them. For example, cat become car, feat becomes fear, and cape becomes care. While I will sometimes teach these phonics rules, there is a danger to focusing on sound and letter recognition. Can you guess what that danger is? You may already realize that a focus on sound can often be boring to students, and can get students to think about language as not connected to meaning or culture. In fact, there is a debate between phonics professionals and whole language professionals, a debate that is worth learning about. We have provided a reading to just whet your appetite about that debate. It is a good one, with smart people and proven research on both sides of the coin. Vocabulary and Structural Knowledge. Another reason a person might be a non-reader is because they lack vocabulary and structural knowledge. For some researchers, teaching vocabulary may be more useful than teaching phonics. For many theorists, not being able to read is linked more directly to the fact that students don't yet know what words mean. In other words, if you want to teach someone how to read, teach them to identify vocabulary and simple sentence structure, nouns, verb, adverbs, particles and so forth. They also argue that with so many ways to make similar sounds in English, for some words it is easier to learn the entire word rather than trying to decode the word using phonics. Reading teachers call these sight words. There are word lists that can help you to identify the top 100, 1,000, and 2,000 most common words. And that can give you an indication of what words to focus on. If you are teaching for academic purposes, consider the academic word list your best friend. Discourse and Knowledge of Genres. Another important thing that you may have to teach is discourse or genre. I like to think of different genres as different kinds of recipes, and help my learners to think about the recipe for a letter, and how that might be different from the recipe for an essay or a text message. Teaching learners to be aware of how different genres are written gives them more confidence to read the genres and to predict what will happen next. Having students outline as they read, especially for essays and formal writing, can help students see the structure of the reading, and learn to identify common rhetorical patterns. World Knowledge. Why does a knowledge of genres help students to read? Well to be honest, a knowledge of anything and everything helps students to read. The more they know about the world, the greater their capacity at prediction. While there have been numerous studies on what makes good readers, almost all reading researchers agree that good readers are good at making predictions, and that good readers tend to have a greater ability to focus on meaning instead of sound. So what does that mean for teachers? Well, it means that at least, at some point in time, you want to encourage all your readers to practice the skill of predicting. A fancy way to say this is that good readers use semantic cues to help them out. So, what is a semantic cue, and how does it help with prediction? A semantic cue is a clue that helps a reader follow the story. The clue has something to do with meaning, and can often be derived from an understanding of the word's relationships to the outside world. So, if I gave you the sentence, the woman sat at her window crying, while at her feet, the child banged on the rattle. Do you see any clues as to who the woman is and what she is feeling? The child? Do you see clues that might indicate where she is? I am guessing that most of you made the following predictions. One, the woman is sad, perhaps waiting for someone. Two, the woman could be a mother and the child is likely her baby. It has a rattle. Three, the rattle is a baby toy, not a snake rattle. Of course. Four, the woman is likely in her home or residence, not at a business office. Now, these last two predictions you probably found ridiculous. Of course, the rattle is the toy, not the snake rattle. Of course, the woman is at home, not at a business office. But, remember, when you don't have world knowledge, story knowledge and semantic cues, reading a story can be terribly confusing. Imagine a poor reader looking through a dictionary and coming to the conclusion that the child is holding on to a snake rattle. That is what happens when you have a lack of ability to recognize semantic cues, and that's the importance of predictions. So when you make predictions, are you always right? Perhaps not. But good readers are fluid in their ability to make predictions, and can change their minds quickly. For example, the woman might not be sad. She could be very happy, right? And perhaps she is happy because of something she sees from the window. We simply don't know, but we're willing to find out. In other words, you, as a reader, are constantly making assumptions, and adding and amending your own views of the text. And for you smart readers with lots of world knowledge, you do it almost effortlessly. Reading Strategies. Finally, when you teach learners how to read, there are a number of strategies that you will want them to use to understand the text. Understanding a text may mean that students have to reread, scan for information, look up words in a dictionary, ask questions to a neighbor, compare information from the story with information elsewhere, and form opinions and think critically about the truthfulness of what they read. In the next module, we'll go over a number of strategies for reading more carefully and discuss two kinds of strategies, extensive and intensive reading strategies, in more detail. For now, just recognize that when you teach reading, you are very much like a debate moderator. If you will see reading more as a discussion with learners and their views on one side of the room, and a reading with its views and ideas on another side of the room, you will see your role more quickly. You are giving a voice to the reading, you are giving a voice to your learners, and you are trying to see if, through both, a consensus of knowledge can be reached. Is it weird to think of a book or reading as having a voice, and that students have their own voice and can accept or challenge what the book says? Well, weird or not, that perspective can help change the way you have class discussions, and invite learners to read. It is also a useful metaphor to help you with our second problem reader, our Tin Man. We'll see him in the next video. See you there. [MUSIC]
