Teaching Children to Read

There are four main methods of teaching children to read (phonics, look and say, language experience approach, context support), the most popular of which is currently phonics. This method is said to be the most effective in teaching young children to read for the first time, though methods are constantly evolving and approaches do not necessarily have to be employed exclusively. Throughout much of the twentieth century, "look and say" was the method of choice, with children memorizing specific whole words through rote memorisation. This proved to be a fairly poor approach when it came to actually teaching children HOW to read, and so if a child who learnt this way were to come across an unfamiliar word, they may well have found it difficult to pronounce and understand it.

Phonics (or synthetic phonics), as the name implies, involves breaking words down into their individual phonemes in order to sound them out (cat = c-a-t). Teachers/parents begin with simple, single-letter sounds and later move onto the more complex sounds (ou, oi, ea) and then the sounds become even more complex (eigh, ough, etc.). For this method to be effective, it's important that the child has already learned the alphabet, but is ready to use the sounds differently ("c" said "see" in the alphabet song, but "k" in the word cat). It is also important that while learning, children memorize skills, words and sounds on a semantic level - this is done by conveying meaning and telling the child what words mean so that the child does not become disconnected. Without semantics, it is easy for the child to see each word as a croup of sounds that needn't be pulled together, as they have no meaning anyway. Attaching meaning adds purpose and increases the memory trace.

The phonics method has however been criticised, largely for ignoring the fact that the English language is often phonetically irregular, and so when "sounding out" the child may come into some difficulty with particular words. ("GH" can be pronounced in eight different ways - so it's not so clear cut.) David Crystal has said that only around 400 words in English are pronounced irregularly, but he pointed out that among these were some of the most commonly used. Perhaps unfortunately for children learning to read, though, it seems the phonics method is here to stay (at least for now), as it has been hole-heartedly backed by the government.

An opinion shared by many, including the BBC, is that the teaching of such an important skill should "encompass a balance of teaching strategies including a systematic approach to phonics and other word reading strategies, and a significant emphasis on children experiencing a wide range of texts, including moving image and digital - all available to read from the very beginning."

Children should engage with what they are reading if they are to learn effectively - reading schemes are helpful for this, as they tailor texts and topics to specific age groups. Louisa Combs, marketing executive for Collins Big Cat, explained "For example, Key Stage 1 books are written with a mix of high-frequency and decodable words to develop a range of reading strategies, while Key Stage 2 books cover a wide range of genres and subjects, linking to the curriculum." Children should also be reinforced for their achievements, rather than punished for their mistakes. They should be given time to get to grips with materials and explore context cues, including pictures, graphemes and the way that their teachers or parents interact with them and the text. It's also been suggested that reading will better develop if children are aware of the behaviour being modelled by see adults reading and enjoying the experience.

Bibliography:

http://www.readingrockets.org/teaching/reading101
http://www.teachingtreasures.com.au/homeschool/reading-methods/reading-methods.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19812961
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/reading/conditioninfo/pages/teach.aspx
http://www.howtospell.co.uk/spelling-tip-number-2
http://www.theschoolrun.com/school-reading-schemes-explained

Phonological Development (CLA)

Important: No two children develop at the same rate, and so no data charting the development of language and phonetics can be taken as gospel.

On average, spoken language begins to develop when children reach roughly the age of one. This is usually the point at which they utter their very first words, and is called the Holophrastic stage of child language acquisition (CLA). At first, words are not likely to sound exactly as the child intended, but often they still hold some sort of "phonetic resemblance" and are still used to convey a particular meaning consistently. Often a child's lexis will initially revolve around local topics, things they can see or touch, and their vocabulary will be primarily or entirely comprised of high-frequency lexis.
   
Because some sounds or phonemes are harder to produce than others, they develop differently. Vowel sounds are often mastered before consonants, with the average child having learnt and polished all the vowel sounds by two and a half, and only two thirds of the consonants. When consonants occur at the beginning of a word, children are often much more able to pick them up. They also tend to favour consonants when they are 'stops' (p, t, k, b, d, g), 'nasals' (m, n) or 'glides' (y, w), as they are easier to replicate and pronounce. The last consonants a child is likely to produce correctly are fricatives like 'v' or 'z'. The 'th' sounds also prove difficult.

It makes sense that those sounds which occur most commonly are learnt faster, as the child is more able to practise with them. One or two syllable words are most likely to be used by a child in the early stages of development, and 'a' is often the vowel first mastered.

Children often attempt to simplify sounds in order to make their replication easier:

Deletion - codas (end consonants) can by dropped by the clipping of words, syllables which are not stressed can by dropped (banana = nana), and consonant clusters can be reduced to make pronunciation easier (sleep = seep). Consonant clusters tend to be the thing children most struggle with, as they find it difficult to produce all the sounds needed easily and quickly, as their adult models do.   

Substitution - also known as the fis phenomenon, children substitute more difficult sounds with those they have already mastered. For example, 'there' can be changed to 'dere', 'that' to 'nat', 'thumb' to 'fumb'. The fis phenomenon helps to demonstrate that speech and language are independent of each other, as a child can understand the word fish and believe they have produced it correctly, when in actual fact the word they are producing is 'fis'. An example from The Linguist List: "Is that your fis?" "No, it's my fis!"


Bibliography(ish):

http://www.education.com/reference/article/stages-language-development-first-words/
http://quizlet.com/4967917/stages-of-child-language-acquisition-flash-cards/
http://www.kidshealth.org.nz/speech-sound-development
http://revisionworld.com/a2-level-level-revision/english-language/child-language-acquisition/phonological-development
http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/lang-acq.cfm

CLA - Zach

Zach's non-standard language:

 

-          Omission of auxiliary, stative, copula verb, ‘am’  -  “I cutting around the edge”

-          Omission of determiners - “you don’t want to eat skins”

-          Non-standard use of tense due to imitation of model – “I think I don’t” (follows “I don’t think you wanted those…”

-          Fis phenomenon present in non-standard pronunciation of lexis – “frough” rather than through, “dose” rather than those, “dere” rather than there etc.  Although these are often repaired by the model, research suggests that the child is unaware they are even pronouncing the word any differently or in a non-standard way

-          Clipping either die to ease or because Zach has misheard/misremembered the way that the model used the word– “bolognay”

-          Over extension by category – “lasagne” for bolognaise over potatoes

-          Non-standard use of plural – “and here’s the skins”

-          Deictic referencing in a non-standard way – “what’s this lasagne” – it is still an effective way of communicating as the parents understand that he is referencing the bolognaise

 

CDS:

 

-          Positive reinforcement through echoing – “nah I think you don’t” (follows “I think I don’t”)

-          Positive reinforcement through praise – “you are a star” “very good” “okay brilliant”

-          Simplified sentences/interrogatives e.g. “what are you doing now?” “Here it is”

-          Repairs – “and bolognay” -> “and bolognaise”, “I got food on the floor” -> “yeah you threw food on the floor”, “frough” -> “through”

-          Talking in 3^rd person to reinforce titles that the parents would like their child to use – “got a feeling this is one of Daddy’s…”

-          Graduating to 1^st person to help his understanding of pronouns – this is important as young children are egotistical  and may otherwise believe that they are the only “I” – “shall I (.) help?”

-          Tag/open/closed questions to encourage discussion and effective cooperative communication – “it doesn’t go through? (.) why not?” (In this case, the model changes her question from closed to open to encourage Zach into further discussion and conversation. If he is thinking about his actions and surroundings, he is more likely to want to find and use suitable language and grow his communicative abilities.)

-          Exaggerated intonation – probably exaggerated because of Cruttendun’s theory that children find tones difficult to pick up/catch

-          High frequency lexis

-          Keeping discourse on local topics – “what are you doing now?” “what can you see?”

-          Time allowed for activities/thinking – we see this in the indicated pauses, which are as long as 12 seconds

-          Terms of endearment to encourage and poisitively reinforce Zach – “what darling?”

 

CDS used by the parents works subtly to encourage the growth of Zach’s language skills without him feeling as though he is being punished for experimenting with techniques/ new terms in a non-standard way. Speech is positive so that Zach feels comfortable enough to try and imitate adult language and learn from it.

 

Fis phenomenon occurs 3 times

The mother uses 32 interrogatives

HR Magazine

Talking language and gender – celebrating the diversity of office conversation

 

Research from English language experts indicates that gender differences may be innate, with neither gender’s approach to conversation being superior or inferior to the other. That being the case, we looked into why conversations had by different genders should garner equal respect in the work place.

According to research conducted in the field, men and women speak in languages so different that they may as well be countries apart. But, contrary to popular belief, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just something to make our everyday communications a little more interesting.

As an example, women – who are said by experts to talk in a supportive, cooperative manner – supposedly use more tag questions (rhetorical questions that hang on the end of a statement, e.g. ‘I think we need to order a larger quantity of paper clips next month, don’t you?’). Reportedly, females are far more likely than men to use this technique during the average conversation, and its alleged function is to build relationships. That being so, it’s important that in the future when a co-worker makes use of a tag question, male or female, we look at it as an olive branch, rather than uncertainty or a sign of weakness.

 

Commentary:

I wanted the article to be positive, so I focussed mainly on the difference theory being about variances in the languages of the two genders, rather than one being weaker or more dominant. Because I wanted this feeling, I used the dynamic verb ‘celebrating’ within the title so as to introduce the topic of ‘diversity of office conversation’ in a good light. If it’s worth celebrating, it’s surely worth reading about.

Because I was addressing non-specialists, I tried mainly to use high frequency lexis in this excerpt, for example ‘conversation’ rather than discourse. Where I did use jargon – such was the case with ‘tag question’, I explained myself fully, hopefully without patronising readers who are likely to be mature adults. The use of parentheses means that if readers are familiar with the term, they don’t have to read me definition. When I used an English language term, such as ‘rhetorical’ it was one that I felt was high frequency enough that any reader would know what I meant.

I also tried to steer away from the word ‘theory’ while talking about difference, as I didn’t want this explicitly to be a lesson. I thought that if readers of HR magazine felt they were being talked down to or taught something, they might be less inclined to continue reading.

Coursework Idea

One idea I had for coursework was to look at the theories present within a conversation between two individuals of opposite sexes. I thought that I could find pairs of different ages and varying relationships, perhaps from children to mature adults, from siblings to friends, even a romantic heterosexual couple. To control variables, I would give each pair the same topic to discuss, and the same length of time to do it. I'm not sure what subject I would have to use in order to stir up a debate/dialogue that wasn't awkward or mechanical, as I would have to observe/record them overtly, but I'm sure I could do some prior research into hot topics. I could probably do this using some sort of survey, and a longer amount of time might get the pairs to relax into their conversations. Also, I'd probably have to hone in on specific gender theories to make the research more specific. Maybe I could incorporate some power theories too.

Discussion

What text/why?

Our group chose to study the two adverts because we were interested in the overlap between power and gender theory and the comparisons we could draw between the texts. The first made an appeal to potential male platelet donors, the second advertised a railroad card for young adults.

What we found interesting about the donor ad:

-Adjective 'Strong' in title 'Strong men needed to help those weakened by serious illness' - contrast between 'strong' and 'weakened' leaved men feeling that they are heroes capable of saving lives.

-Title is also reminiscent of old army recruitment posters 'Your country needs YOU!' - men feel a responsibility to 'help' others

-'Needed' creates sense of urgency, and demand - the men have been specifically targeted because they are eligible to donate platelets at Southmead Hospital

-Men were further whittled down to a primary audience by list of necessary characteristics for platelet donation e.g blood groups A, B and O

-Influential power AND instrumental - NHS are relatively powerful and their actions directly affect the public. Mostly influential - persuade men to become donors by boosting their ego/face e.g. syntax choices that emphasise direct address and therefore make the men who have been sent the leaflet feel special - 'You have been selected as a potential donor as you live...' - second person pronoun 'you' has been paced right at the beginning to make them feel important - synthetic personalisation, text presumes 'you' (the men) are strong

-Power is in the hands of the men - they are the heroes capable of saving patients' lives - by becoming donors they become selfless heroes - powerful persuasive tecunique

What we found interesting about the railroad ad:

-Conventions of a film poster, specifically a 'chick-flick' - stereotypically appeals mainly to females, done through carefully chosen graphological features (e.g. heart font, pretty female character in the foreground) and slogan 'can he get her back?'

-Age range displayed like certificate for film poster

-'Can he get her back?' - active voice shows male's power, female is the object that needs retrieving, 'he' is the subject - 'damsel in distress' is a common stereotype and may appeal to men and women because men are seen as wanting to be the hero, women seen as wanting to be swept off their feet by prince charming - the man has the power

-Word play 'Saving Precious Penny' - requires small amount of pragmatic understanding. Adjective 'precious' has female connotations, verb 'saving' reinforces idea of prince charming and happily ever after chick-flicks provide, 'Penny' refers to both coin and the female's name - link between women and currency may be offensive to certain women?

-Ideology of heroism - maybe young men can become heroes if they buy the railroad card and place themselves in the 'film' - persuasive power technique

-Deborah Tannen's theory - status v. support - men are supposed to clamour for hero staus, HOWEVER, in this ad independence v. intimacy is reversed - the woman wants independence, unusual for an advert, more normal convention of chick flick

Dominance (and kind of deficit)

 
The ‘Dominance’ theory of language and gender was first instigated by Robin Lakoff, who gave light to her approach in her book Language and Woman’s Place. She described her work on language and power as being ‘less… the final word… than as a goad to further research.’

   Lakoff’s theory was seen as a new way of looking at language between the sexes, in a time when feminism was rising for the second time and the Western world was listening and finally making changes that ‘challenged traditional patriarchal values’.   

   Unfortunately though, Lakoff fell into the same trap as Jespersen had before her, and the ‘Dominance’ approach ended up with many similarities to the ‘Deficit’ theory. Lakoff made reference to women speaking a completely different language, as Jespersen had, something that once again divided the genders so that they could have been seen as two different cultures or even species. Because of this, she is associated more with the ‘Deficit’ theory.

   She claimed that in conversation women would: Hedge (“sort of”, “kind of”), use tag questions (blah blah blah, aren’t you?), use empty adjectives (oh that’s DIVINE), use direct quotation rather than paraphrasing, use a special lexicon (instead of just saying red, they might say crimson, scarlet, rouge etc.), speak less frequently than men, use more intensifiers (SO, VERY, REALLY, blah blah blahhh), lack a sense of humour and so on.

   While it’s easy to count tag questions or uses of hedging, judging whether or not a conversation’s participant is much harder as it’s a subjective measure.

 

Don Zimmerman and Candace West were responsible for much of the work done looking at dominance. They looked closely at mixed-sex conversations in which they discovered men were more likely to interrupt than the women. They did, however, use only a small number of samples in which the subjects were mostly white, middleclass and under the age of thirty five… not very representative of the population as a whole.

    In eleven of the conversations the pair studied, men used forty six interruptions, while women only used two. They concluded from these results that since men were twenty three times more likely to interrupt, they would always be the dominant participant. Or, if they aren’t, they will try to be.

   However Sheffield University’s Geoffrey Beattie argued this conclusion, asking "Why do interruptions necessarily reflect dominance? Can interruptions not arise from other sources? Do some interruptions not reflect interest and involvement?"

   Beattie repeated their experiments, this time recording around ten hours of discussions and noting approximately 557 interruptions. He found that all in all, men and women interrupted almost exactly as much as each other (men = 34.1, women =  33.8). The margin was not exactly statistically significant.

   Despite this, there are far fewer cases of people referring to Beattie’s work – Zimmerman and West’s research remains on top. 

 

The following is a transcript from ‘The Apprentice’

 

SA       =          Sir Alan

B         =          Ben

Y          =          Yasmina

P          =          Paula

 

SA:      Ww what was the point you were making as a human resources manager then (?)

 

P:        Because you got (.) a person ‘ere who works in finance an a person who runs a restaurant

                                                                     SA: But you were the team leader (.) you’re the team leader

 

P:        I understand that  (.) but my skills are in creativity and…

                                                    SA:  Well you know how to work out redundancy on a calculator

 

P:        Yes

 

SA:   Mmmn (2) It’s a feeble excuse as far as I’m concerned, you put yourself up to come in this process and you’re now using the excuse that you’re a human resources manager, so therefore you shouldn’t be in charge of costings (.) If that’s the case why did you put yourself in charge of costings (?)

 

P:      I didn’t put myself in charge of costings Sir alan (.) which is why I nominated two people to look after my costings

            SA: Oh (.) so its not three of you in charge of costings then

                                                                            P: Absolutely not

 

SA:   What your saying is (.) you nominated these two only to deal with costings is that what youre saying (?)

 

P:      I nominated them to look after costs (.) obviously as team manager I would have to keep an eye on that myself as well which is what I was trying to do.

 

B:      I think the bottom line here (.) is that if you’d wanted me involved with those costings (.) then it’s a failure on your part as the project manager for not saying Ben can you come round here and look at it and just make sure its alright

 

P:        Surely an idiot would have worked out that they had that they should be…

                                                                                               B:  Were talking about idiots now (.) well lets talk about 5 pounds and 700 pounds if you wanna talk about idiots at the end of the day you made a complete balls up of it you were the ones responsible for the cock up in the fragrances you were the project manager you were the one who should have come to me getting involved in the costings if you wanted to and

                        P: I asked you to

                            B: And the next day I sold my bloody heart out for you just to do damage control

 

P:      The cost of the fragrances was a cost it wasn’t a cost on its own I asked you to look after costs and you didn’t

 

SA:      Ok who should I fire then (?)

 

P:        Ben should be fired

 

SA:      With all that’s been said so far Ben why shouldn’t I fire you

 

B:      The reason you shouldn’t fire me Sir Alan is that I’m very good at selling I sold my heart out the girls even said I was brilliant

 

SA:      Which girls (?)

 

B:        Erm Yasmina and Deborah the girls who were with me

                                                                              SA:  Really (?)

 

Y:        He was very good at selling Sir Alan

 

B:        Yeh and I’ve still to prove that I’ve got the potential to be an excellent leader

 

SA:   Yasmina whats your opinion on this (?) Because if the fragrance as Ben makes a very strong case for is the culprit then you’ve already accepted half the responsibility

 

Y:      In my mind that was a mistake that I made I shouldn’t be judged on the mistakes I should be judged on how I deal with those mistakes OK (.) We could have spotted the error sooner than we did other than that one mistake I made on that task Sir Alan I did not  make any other mistakes on the day so if its between myself and Paula for the mistake (.) I’m gonna have to say that Paula should be fired

 

P:        Are you talking on the basis of the mistake or overall on the task (?)

 

Y:      I’m just saying that as Project Manager somebody should have taken overall responsibility of the costs and that wasn’t done and I’m saying that it was your responsibility to either do that or delegate that properly.

 

P:        I DID delegate it

                     Y: N n not properly Paula you didn’t

 

B:        You didn’t  just get it a little bit wrong, you got it very very wrong and I’m still not finished

                                                                     P:  I’m not surprised that youre both going to say that I should be fired obviously because

                          B: No because we’re better candidates than you are

 

P:        That is a sweeping statement Ben you’ve shown yourself to be a right thug

                          B: No (.) but I genuinely believe that I’m a better candidate than you and I think that I did outstandingly on sales

                                                      Y: But you might …         

 

Within this excerpt there are a total of twelve interruptions – both men interrupt four times, Paula interrupts three times, Yasmin only once. This makes the ratio of men interrupting:women interrupting 2:1. This result lies between those of Z&W and Beattie, with the sample being far too small to make any real comparison.

 

http://atp.uclan.ac.uk/buddypress/diffusion/?p=736

 

http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/gender.htm

 

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CFIQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ocr.org.uk%2FImages%2F83362-unit-a652-section-b-language-and-media-the-apprentice-transcript-teacher-notes-and-exemplar-responses.doc&ei=HF8sU7DoFYaUhQfTl4HACw&usg=AFQjCNEnK_zVS_RgR2SMnPhDBBRAmB7TUA&sig2=94A4taE6x7v6jcI6girWPQ

 TBC