Phonological Awareness and Teaching English as a Second Language

1. Phonological Awarenessand Teaching English as a Second Language Linda Siegel University of British Columbia Vancouver, CANADA

2. Special Thanks to: • Suk Han Lee and colleagues at the EMB • EMB • Mei Lan Au • Alice Lai • Nonie Lesaux, Orly Lipka, Rose Vukovic • Chinese Rhenish Church Hong Kong Synod • Hong Kong Institute of Education • Ian Smythe

3. Aims of this presentation • To understand the role of phonological awareness in the development of English speaking, reading and writing • To understand the English language learning of ESL speakers • To understand how to develop English language skills in ESL speakers

4. Inspiration for the ideas English Immersion in Xian • Also Beijing, Lanzhou, Guangzhou, Shanghai North Vancouver Canada – ESL teaching Hong Kong EMB Project

5. How Is Language Learned? • A child’s first language is learned by listening and speaking. • Reading and writing comes much later after there is a good oral language foundation. • Children speak first in single words and then in short sentences. • Children learn nouns, adjectives, and verbs first. Grammar comes later.

6. Good Language Education • Listening and speaking are stressed to help develop comprehension and reading skills. • Conversation and oral language skills, not dictation, are important.

7. Principles • Listening skills are about the ability to extract meaning from a string of words. • Reading is about extracting meaning from a series of written words.

8. Principles • You cannot extract meaning from spoken language unless you understand the meaning of words. • Understanding of sounds precedes understanding of the written word.

9. Terminology • Phonological Awareness – the ability to break down speech into smaller segments • Phoneme – the smallest unit of sound • Phonics – a method of teaching reading that emphasizes the association of sounds with letters

10. Terminology • Phonological awareness training – teaching the sound structure of words • Auditory training • Phonics training – teaching the connection between sounds and letters • Training with print

11. Teaching English • It is important to first develop oral language skills. • Phonological awareness skills should be taught orally without print. • Phonological awareness training helps children learn vocabulary and reading skills.

12. Danger of teaching writing early • They will learn English like they learn to write Chinese – as a series of keystrokes. This limits the size of the vocabulary. • They can never develop fluent and accurate reading. • They will have trouble with talking to people and writing good English.

13. North Vancouver Study

14. Aims of the VancouverStudy • Identify children at risk for literacy difficulties • Provide an appropriate intervention • Assess the effectiveness of the intervention

15. Longitudinal Study • Screening at age 5 when children enter school • Tested every year on reading, spelling, arithmetic, language and memory skills • Results at grade 6 – age 12

16. Longitudinal Sample • All the children in the North Vancouver School District • 30 schools • Varying SES levels • 20% English as a Second Language(ESL)

17. Arabic Armenian Bulgarian Cantonese Croatian Czech Dutch Farsi Japanese Korean Kurdish Mandarin Norwegian Polish Punjabi Romanian Languages In The Study • Finnish • French • German • Greek • Hindi • Hungarian • Indonesian • Italian • Russian • Serbian • Slovak • Spanish • Swedish • Tagalog • Tamil • Turkish

18. Kindergarten KINDERGARTEN L1 English ESL GRADE 5

19. Grade 6 KINDERGARTEN L1 English ESL Dyslexic Dyslexic Normal Normal GRADE 5

20. KINDERGARTEN SCREENING • LETTER IDENTIFICATION • MEMORY • PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSING • SYNTAX • SPELLING

21. Letter Identification c r m k b w o s y t a u d q x l g e z n j p h v i f

22. Phonological Processing

23. the and sit when book

24. anacampersote mithridatism qualtagh ucalegon groak

25. Phonological Awareness • Ability to break speech down into smaller units  words  syllables  phonemes

26. Syllable Identification

27. Rhyme Identification

28. Phoneme Identification

29. Working Memory

30. Sentence Repetition Sentences are spoken orally to the child and the child is required to repeat them exactly. Examples. Drink milk. I like ice cream. The boy and girl are walking to school. The girl who is very tall is playing basketball.

31. Oral Cloze

32. SIMPLE SPELLING • child’s name • mom • dad • cat • I • no

33. LAUNCH INTO READING SUCCESS • RHYME DETECTION • INITIAL SOUNDS • SEGMENTATION • BLENDING • SOUND DISCRIMINATION

34. Other Important Abilities • Vocabulary – understanding and producing the meanings of words • Syntax – understanding the basic grammar of the language • Differences between Chinese and English • Verb tenses • Plurals • Articles

35. LITERACY ACTIVITIES LISTENING TO STORIES ACTING OUT STORIES SINGING SONGS LETTER OF THE WEEK LETTER COOKIES

36. Grade 6 MEASURES OF READING

37. Grade 6 READING COMPREHENSION

38. Grade 6 SPELLING

39. Grade 5 Phoneme Deletion

40. SES & Reading

41. SES & Spelling

42. Conclusions • It is possible to identify children at risk for reading disabilities in kindergarten. • It is possible to provide a classroom based intervention to bring these children to at least average levels of reading. • Children learning English as a second language can perform at native speaker levels and bilingualism may be an advantage.

43. Hong Kong EMB Project Primary 1

44. AIMS OF THE PROJECT • Improve English oral language skills of P1 children in Hong Kong • Vocabulary and Grammar • Train phonological awareness skills • Improve reading skills

45. Hong Kong Study • Experimental group received phonological awareness training • Control group - same SES • All government schools – mostly low SES

46. Study Design • Experimental and Control Schools • Pretest Fall 2002 • Intervention for Experimental Schools 2002-2003 • Post-test Summer 2003

47. Components • Only English is used in the classroom • Build up vocabulary & ability to follow English instructions • Use of games, story-telling, etc. to provide rich English language environment

48. INITIAL PHONEME DELETION

49. WORD READING

50. PSEUDOWORD READING