Argumentative essay

The National Reading Panel offered a listing of the research literature about beginning reading
through instruction. They stated that the beginning reading skills is enhanced by simply
instruction in phonemic understanding, phonics, vocabulary, and also comprehension
strategies. The Panel also favored guided oral reading through, teacher professional
development related to beginning reading, and by using computer technology in the
development of earlier reading skills. A vital problem, however, was much of the scientific
evidence pertaining to beginning reading training was ignored in the development of the actual
report. The Panel made a decision early in its process to focus on only a not many topics and
limit its review to experimental proof. Even so, the conclusions with the Panel certainly were
being credible, as far as they went, covering effectively the teaching regarding some beginning
reading through skills particularly, letter, sound, and word-level skills.
For phonemic awareness , some phonemes may not be present in the native language
of English Language Learners (ELL) and, therefore, it may be difficult for students to pronounce
and distinguish auditory, as well as to put in a meaningful context. For instance, is important that
the instructions have meaning, so that the words and voices of students manipulate familiar. It is
therefore necessary for students to have knowledge of English vocabulary in which they
understand phonemes. Teachers can teach phonemic awareness while also explicitly teaching
vocabulary, meaning, and their pronunciation to students.
Children's minds are trained to categorize phonemes in their first language, which may
conflict with the English phonemes. Therefore teachers can activate phonemic awareness in
English for the students to understand the linguistic characteristics of the student's native
language, including phonemes that exist and do not exist in the students native language.
According to Hiebert et. al (1998), English language learners (ELL) respond well to
activities such as language games means and said wall, especially when the activities are
consistent and focus on a specific voice and letters. Songs and poetry, with rhyme and
repetition of them, easy to remember and can be used to teach phonemic awareness and print
concepts for them. This rhymes appear in any language and the teacher can ask the students or
their parents to share this rhymes and be taught in the class, and construct phonemic
awareness activities around them.

Based on the article, phonics is the understanding that there is a predictable relationship
between phonemes and graphemes . Readers use these relationships to distinguish common
words and to decode unfamiliar. According to CIERA (2001), phonics instruction is a way of
teaching reading that emphasize learning how letters communicate 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.
There are some considerations that need to be taken into account when teaching
students in English phonics. According to Peregoy and Boyle (2000), students who are not
literate in their own language or that language has no written form may not understand some of
the concepts and need to be taught about the print function. They also concluded that students
may have learned to read and write in a native language in the which the letters match up to
different sounds than they do in English, or they may have learned to read and write in a
language with characters that match 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. These examples represent not
only the challenges of teaching English Language Learners to read in English, but also signify
that teachers can effectively teach phonics and all the components of reading first if they are
armed with the knowledge of the students and their native language.
For the next part which is the vocabulary development where it refers to the information
stored knowledge about the meaning and pronunciation of words necessary for communication.
Vocabulary development is important for early reading that when a student comes to the word
and the sound, it also determines whether the word makes sense based on his 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 the meaning of the sentence. Vocabulary development is also a major
indicator for reading comprehension. Readers cannot understand the content of what they read
unless they understand the meaning of most of the words in the text.
Vocabulary development is one of the biggest challenges to reading instruction for
English Language Learners, because to read fluently and understand what is written, students
need to use not just phonics, but the context. It is likely for students to actually read
phonetically, not understanding what they have read because they do not have the vocabulary.
Therefore, the vocabulary needs to be taught explicitly and become part of the daily curriculum
in addition to learning to read. This can be done through class time committed strictly to English
as a Second Language (ESL) or English Language Development (ELD).
The scientific research on vocabulary development shows that children learn the
majority of their vocabulary indirectly in the following three ways:
through conversations, generally with adults;
listening to adults read to them; and
Reading extensively on their own (CIERA, 2001).
According to CIERA (2001), these result have serious consequences for English
Language Learners , whose parents and other adults in their lives often are not fluent in English.
It is therefore very important for teachers to know and incorporate suitable methods so that
students will be to learn vocabulary directly, including: explicitly teach vocabulary before
students read the text, how to use the dictionary, how to use prefixes and suffixes to decipher
the meaning of words, and how to use instructions context.
Moving to the next list is fluency, where it is the ability to read words accurately and
quickly. Fluent readers recognize words and understand them at once. Reading fluency is an
important factor that is necessary for reading comprehension. If the children read aloud with
speed, accuracy, and proper expression, they are more likely to understand and remember the
material than if they read with difficulty and in an efficient manner.
Two instructional approaches have usually been used to teach reading fluency. One,
guided repeated oral reading, encourages students to read the verses loud with systematic and
explicit guidance and feedback from their teachers. 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.
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 English Language Learners take part in read-aloud 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 National Reading Panel (2000) complements
CIERA's recommendations about initial literacy in the native language. The National Reading
Panel stressed 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). In
addition, fluency is not to be confused with the accent. Many English Language Learners will
read and speak English with an accent because they start learning English, and others will have
the rest of their lives. Students can read fluently in English with native language accent.
In conclusion, The National Reading Panel was too constricted in focus, which did not
report a lot of credible science that can and should inform the policy debate about early literacy
instruction. There is good scientific data in accordance with the conclusion that the intervention
favored by the Panel is not enough. Effective reading instruction occurs over many years and
changes to the child's developmental level, the dynamics is not captured at all by the Panel
emphasis on discrete skills at just the right level of development certain. Effective literacy
instruction is a balance and mix of skills teaching and holistic literature and writing experience.













Reference
Center for the Improvement of Early Reading Achievement. (2001). Put reading first: The
research building blocks for TEACHING CHILDREN TO READ. The Partnership for Reading:
National Institute for Literacy; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; and
U.S. Department of Education.
Hiebert, E. H., Pearson, P.D., Taylor, B.M., Richardson, V., Paris, S.G. (1998). Every child a
reader: Applying reading research to the classroom. Center for the Improvement of Earl
Reading Achievement. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan School of Education.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence-based assessment of
the scientific research and literature on reading and its implications for reading instruction:
Reports of the subgroups (NIH Publication No. 00-4754). Washington, DC: National Institute of
Child Health and Development.
Peregoy, S. F. & Boyle, O. F. (2000). English learners reading English: What we know, what we
need to know. Theory into practice, 39(4), 237-247.
Snow, C., Burns, S., & Griffin, P. (Eds.). (1998). Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young
Children. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.