Fun and Effective English Teaching: Reading/Writing

1. Fun and Effective English Teaching: Reading/Writing Autumn Jackson English Language Fellow UNMUL, Samarinda

2. Second Language Literacy • Second Language Literacy = Reading and writing skills in a second or foreign language • Both are also difficult skills to learn/teach in L1! • Positive L1 transfer • good at reading and writing in Bahasa good at reading and writing in English • Both reading and writing are PROCESSES • Both need scaffolding • pre-, during, and post- format

3. Teaching Reading: Issues • Reading is an interaction of information • Ideal: efficient reading is a fluid interaction • Recommendations: • Literacy in L1 is a really good thing! • Literacy strategies + intensive language development • Adjust instruction and materials for students’ needs

4. The Importance of Vocabulary • Fluent reading = frequent word recognition. Vocabulary is ESSENTIAL! • Foster vocabulary building with: • Idiom of the day • Word of the day • Word walls • Thematic word charts • Vocabulary notebooks • And with strategies like context clues • Sue's boss was a callous man. He did not react to her tears and apologies.

5. Comprehension + Details • Find the balance, and vary activities so students have opportunities to do both • Pre/During/Post • Pre: preview topic, ask questions; make predictions; introduce key vocabulary; situate the text in its genre and audience • During: focus on understanding; outline and summarize main ideas; look for answers to pre-reading questions; make predictions; interpret pictures or charts • Post: find main points; answer comprehension questions; make graphic organizers; compare texts; rank events; connect to personal experience

6. Example Reading Activities • Jigsaw Reading: each student (or group) is responsible for a segment of a long text • 1. Teacher distributes sections of reading • 2. Students read their own (for general comprehension) • 3. Students form groups so that the whole text is in one group • 4. Students share summaries of their segments • Total Physical Response + Reading: teacher reads and students act (or vice versa)

7. Let’s try it! - Detail Recall Task Outline: 1. Listen to the pre-reading information. 2. Read the text on the following slide. DON’T take notes or copy the text. 3. Listen to me read the main idea of each paragraph. 4. In small groups of 3 or 4, recall as many of the details as you can remember and write them down. 5. Compare your details with the actual reading.

8. Excerpt from In the Starlight: Research and Resources for English Learner Achievement Development of Literacy An important finding is that by and large, for second language learner children, word-level components of literacy (e.g., spelling) can be , with proper instruction, at levels equal to native-language children. However, this is not the case for text-level skills, like reading comprehension. Findings also suggest that oral language skills are an important dimension of literacy development. Having well-developed second-language oral proficiency is associated with well-developed text-level skills such as reading comprehension. The Role of First-Language Literacy in Second-Language Literacy Development There is a lot of research evidence that certain components of second-language literacy development (e.g., word reading, reading comprehension, reading strategies, spelling, and writing) are related in important ways to performance on similar components in the first language. Good literacy skills in the first language can facilitate second-language literacy development to some extent. Classroom and School Factors Unfortunately, there are very few studies that examine the development of literacy in language-minority students. However, what is evident from the existing research is that focusing instruction on key components (such as phonemic awareness, decoding, oral reading fluency, reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing) has clear benefits. Enhanced teaching of these various elements provided an advantage to second-language learners. The more complex programs that were studied typically tried to teach several of these elements simultaneously and were usually successful.

9. Teaching Writing: Issues • Findings from National Literacy Panel (US): • Speaking skills don’t affect word-level writing skills. • Speaking skills have a strong impact on text-level writing skills. • Education in general impacts writing ability. • Major problems with teaching writing: • Grammar • Rhetorical structure • When to correct? • (local vs. pattern) • Robert Kaplan’s “doodles”

10. Teaching Writing • Writing to, with, and by students • “to” – modeling writing • “with” – shared, guided, or interactive writing • “by” – individual or group writing • process writing: guide students through all stages; correct grammar and mechanics toward the end 1) Prewriting; 2) Drafting; 3) Revising; 4) Editing; 5) Publishing • Vary the focus of activities • Sometimes sentence-level, sometimes paragraph-level, sometimes text- or genre-level

11. Writing Activities • Dialogue journals • Students write weekly (I call it a “freewrite”) and the teacher writes back • Can correct errors or not • Genre analysis and mimicry • Read examples of target genre • Analyze according to specific categories: language, format, audience, purpose • Create a “template” or “rules” for this genre • Write your own ________ (whatever the genre is)

12. Use “creative” writing as a gateway! http://beautyfulindonesia.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html

13. Mix it up! • Vary types of writing • Sentence, short story, poem, haiku, academic essay, newspaper article • With one picture: write, pause, change the situation • EX/ This hand is a woman’s. http://www.unodc.org/southeasterneurope/en/Corruption.html

14. Reading + Writing: Dictation Game Noisy, fun reading and writing (and speaking and listening) competition! 1. Students line up in 2 rows (A and B), facing each other. 2. Students on one side (“A”) each receive a unique text. 3. “A” students read (dictate) their texts to their partners in “B” rows. 4. “B” students write down what “A” says. 5. Whoever finishes first (and most accurately!) wins! (Teacher should collect them in the order that students finish and check for accuracy.)

15. Contact Information • Teacher Resource Site: www.mengajarenglish.com • Facebook: “Indonesia English Language Fellows” • Literacy Resources: • en.elresearch.org/issues/5‎ • www2.aasa.ac.jp/~dcdycus • www.ohio.edu/linguistics/esl/reading • www.ohio.edu/linguistics/esl/writing • US National Literacy Panel on Language Minority and Youth: www.cal.org/projects/archive/natlitpanel.html‎