Learning literacy skills

[5.1] How to study this unit

[5.2] Literacy skills in English
[5.3] Factors affecting to read in English as a foreign language
[5.4] Formal approaches to teaching literacy skills
[5.5] Developing reading and writing as discourse skills and learning

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formats for different types of discourse

Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

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5.1. How to study this unit?

Please, read unit 6, (Learning literacy skills) from Teaching Languages to Young
Learners, paying special attention to the sections that are explained next.

5.2. Literacy skills in English

Literacy can be considered either cognitive or social, since when we use language,
writting or reading, we do it for two reasons: to express ourselves and to share
information, feelings, knowledge with others. Individuals need to use and master
specific skills and be able to read and write different types of texts.
On the other hand, literacy is part of everyones life, it is not just a set of rules children
learn and use at school. We are involved every day in a lot of situations in which
reading and writing skills are required: these situations are called literacy events.
Therefore, from a wider point of view, becoming literate is a process that does not start
at school, but long before. However, there is a narrower view, much more traditional,
which states that literacy is only about writing and reading texts. If we took this
traditional view, literacy would be a process which starts at school.
Understanding is closely linked to reading and writing. When a fluent reader decodes
the meaning of a text, three different types of information are used:
Visual information: written words are made up of symbols.
Phonological information: spoken words are sounds or a combination of
sounds.
Semantic information: relationship between words and meanings.

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

Why do some children have trouble learning to read in their first language?
Vygotsky thinks that written language is a second-order meaning representation,
since spoken language is and has always been used to express ideas, and later on,
written language was developed as a response to the need of representing talk.
On the other hand, written language is not as natural as spoken language for children:
the distance between the child and the writer is much bigger than when having a
conversation with someone. Therefore, when facing with a written text, children have
much less support than when speaking. This makes reading much more demanding
than speaking.
When learning to write and read in English, children benefit from direct teaching
because English spelling and word order is not conventional, but very irregular and
with lots of exceptions. Therefore, children need the teacher's help in order to
understand how to pronounce and write: English phonological and orthographic
system and its syntactic rules are very different from the Spanish ones.
How skilled readers operate
We have seen before that when a reader decodes the meaning of a text, she/he has to
use visual, phonological and semantic information, together with his/her previous
knowledge of the world.
The understanding of the texts is a dynamic process and it is completed as the reader go
along. This is called text base, that is a temporary meaning of the text. Skill must be
developed at different scales, when reading a text, information is needed from all of
them:

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

5.3. Factors affecting to read in English as a foreign

language
As we saw in unit 4, when learning a foreign language, learners use their first language
internalized patterns to fill the gaps of information they have. Teachers must help
students understand the particular rules, cues, patterns that the new language has in
contrast with their mother tongue.
In the case of English, the knowledge that can be transferred is not enough: English is a
very different language from Spanish in many senses and spelling and pronunciation is
especially difficult for Spanish speakers, so learners must develop new skills and not
rely too much on internalized patters from first language.
When children are still learning to read in their first language, several situations might
take place:
Children might mix strategies (forward and backward transfer).
Children might expect that they will learn to read in a foreign language in the same
way they learnt to read in their mother tongue.
If we decide to teach children in a different way:
o

It might help them to differentiate the skills that are required in each

language.
o

It might confuse them.

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

On the other hand, oral skills and vocabulary are very important in learning to read
and write. At first, children should only read words they know orally, words they are
used to hearing and using. Oral skills affect and are affected by literacy
development: seeing written words can help correct pronunciation and if we speak
correctly we can recognize written words easily.
As far as age is concerned, we cannot forget that writing and reading is a very different
experience depending on childrens age: younger children are still developing their
writing skills in their first language and their attention capacities are limited. When
children are about 10 years old, they have already developed literacy in their first
language and reading and writing can be integrated into their foreign
language learning.
Besides, younger children (up to age 7) can benefit from different types of activities
in which literacy does not require direct teaching. They can learn how text is
written, copy short meaningful sentences, learning simple set of words, listen to
rhymes, songs, etc. We can also use labels, posters, written messages, etc, so that they
are more exposed to the foreign language.
When children are learning to write and read they have to make a lot of connections
between sounds, symbols and meaning, so we must use activities in which they can
experience learning in a complete way: see, hear, and manipulate letters (see the
example of the letter S in page 142)

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

5.4. Formal approaches to teaching literacy skills

We can begin to read and write from different levels (sentence, word or letter). Lets
have a look at some approaches to teaching reading:

All these approaches have advantages and disadvantages, things that are relevant for
language learning context, and things that should be adapted. We need to be able to
analyse and choose the way we want our children to learn. We can even mix two
approaches sometimes. Being a teacher involves being able to think critically and look
for the best way to adapt to their students needs.

5.5. Developing reading and writing as discourse skills and

learning formats for different types of discourse
How can we help older children to develop their written discourse skills?
Fluency: in order to be fluent writers, children need to write often. It is important to
encourage them to choose topics they like.
For older children more complex written texts can be a good source of new
information: they discover new aspects of language. In general, children are not as
fluent in written language as they are in spoken language.
Learning to write or read for an audience is an interesting exercise. Possible
activities to practice and develop these skills can be:

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

writing emails and letters

writing/reading very simple stories

writing/reading simple articles

On the other hand, how can children become familiar with the different types of
discourse organizations they can find? There are several things that teachers must do:
Using text from different genres
Making explicit the structure of texts
Showing children how the different pieces of a text are put together
A good exercise would be to give children parts of a text and ask them to organize them,
so they can think and discuss about the parts of a text and how they should be
organized for narrative, descriptive texts, etc.

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

Lo + recomendado
Clases magistrales
Learning literacy skills
La profesora Beatriz Rubio explica cmo al decodificar el significado de las palabras
utilizamos tres tipos de informacin: visual, fontica y semntica. Tambin seala
cmo la alfabetizacin y el aprendizaje del lenguaje forma parte de la vida diaria,
incluso antes de la escuela.

El vdeo est disponible en el aula virtual

No dejes de ver
Resources for teaching English in primary education
Here you can find some webs for teaching English in primary education, some of them
focus on the communicative approach, but all of them have interesting ideas we can use
with our class.

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

The web is in the virtual classroom and in the following link:

http://www.educa.madrid.org/web/ies.garciamorato.madrid/Ingl%E9s/ens_infantilyp
rimaria.htm

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

+ Informacin
A fondo
Literacy and language teaching
If you are interested in literacy and how we can help learners to write and read more
effectively, have a look at this book of Richard Kern.
The reference is in the virtual classroom and in the following link:
http://books.google.com/books?id=HiOj4TV_3DoC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage
&q&f=false

Bibliografa
KEM, R. Literacy and language teaching. Oxford Applied Linguistics. Oxford. 2000.

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

Test
1. Literacy is considered:
A. Mainly social.
B. Mainly cognitive.
C. Both.
2. From a wider point of view, we consider that becoming literate
A. Is a process that starts at school, when children learn to write and read.
B. Is a process which starts long before children learn to write and read.
C. Is a process which never finishes.
3. When a fluent reader decode the meaning of a text, he/she uses:
A. Mainly visual information.
B. Morphological and syntactic information.
C. Visual, phonological and semantic information.
4. Vygotsky thinks that written language is

A. A response to the need of representing talk.

B. A first order meaning representation.
C. Demanding activity children cannot carry out until they can read properly in
their first language.
5. A text base is...
A. The objective meaning of the text.
B. The subjective meaning of the text.
C. The temporary meaning of the text.
6. When children are still learning to read in their first language:
A. Children might mix strategies (forward transfer).
B. Children might mix strategies (backward transfer).
C. Children might mix strategies (forward and backward transfer).
7. Oral skills...
A. Are independent from literacy development.
B. Affect and are affected by literacy development.
C. Affect literacy development but are not affected by it.

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Didctica de la lengua inglesa en Educacin Primaria

8. Reading and writing can be integrated into childrens foreign language learning
A. When they have already developed literacy in their first language.
B. When they are still developing literacy in their first language.
C. When they are about 9 years old.
9. The language experience reading approach:
A. Starts children reading and writing at sentence level.
B. Children learn to read and write without any direct teaching.
C. Focuses on letters-sounds relations.
10. In the phonetic teaching...
A. Children learn the letters of the alphabet and how they can combine.
B. Children compose sentences from a set of words that increase gradually.
C. Children learn through exposure.

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