There have been articles in the Vancouver Sun the past two days about private high schools issuing passing grades to international students who then fail the provincial English exam. Now there is talk of getting rid of the provincial exams. So this raises the question of how people who were not brought up speaking in English can catch up.
I have done some reading on the subject and thought the following might be of interest.
Language is first and foremost sound. If you can listen and understand a language you will find it easier to read it and learn to speak it. I could never get motivated to learn Latin at school because I could not listen to ordinary people using it. Modern research on how we learn is showing that listening comprehension is at the core of language learning and language improvement. The ability to hear words, to listen and understand, is essential not only to developing speaking fluency, but also in order to become a good reader.
The ability to read well, in your own language or in a foreign language is usually the best indicator of success at school or in the work place. That is why literacy is such an important social issue in most countries, for native speakers as well as for non-native speakers of that language. And literacy is greatly influenced by the ability to understand what we hear.
Interesting research by Dr. Paula Tallal, Co-Director of the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University , and Director of the Scientific Learning Corporation has established that poor readers are usually people who have trouble decoding sound effectively. Good readers often have benefited from exposure to a wide variety of spoken language at an early age, and poor readers are often those who did not receive that benefit at home.
Dr. Ed. Hirsch Jr., founder of the Core Knowledge Foundation and professor emeritus of education and humanities at the University of Virginia has written extensively on cultural literacy. As he points out, different family educational backgrounds can have a decisive impact on reading skills at school. This difference is not evident in the first few years, but become evident during what is called the “fourth-grade slump”.
"In fourth grade, poor children's reading comprehension starts a drastic decline-and rarely recovers. The Cause: They hear millions fewer words at home than do their advantaged peers - and since words represent knowledge, they don't gain the knowledge that underpins reading comprehension. The Cure: Immerse these children, and the many others whose comprehension is low, in words and the knowledge the words represent- as early as possible."
Hirsch points out in a paper from American Educator in spring 2003 entitled “Reading Comprehension Requires Knowledge-of Words and the World” that fluency in a language is key to reading and education. Fluency is “greatly enhanced by word and domain knowledge (knowledge of the subject).”
Research has, in Hirsch’s view, reached the following consensus on the three most important principles of literacy.
1.
Fluency allows the mind to concentrate on comprehension:
2.
Breadth of vocabulary increases comprehension and facilitates further learning; and
3.
Domain knowledge increases fluency, broadens vocabulary and enables deeper comprehension.
What this means is that the more fluent you are, the better you comprehend what you hear and read. If you understand better you can acquire more new words as you come across them in your reading. The more words you already know, the more you can learn from your listening and reading. The more words you know the more different subjects you can enjoyably read about, and this in turn enables you to understand even more of what you read, learn more words and become more literate. It is a tremendously powerful “virtuous cycle”. Those who read poorly fall further and further behind those who read well. The difference in vocabulary level starts to become evident at grade four and the difference gets greater and greater through life, with major consequences in terms of educational and professional success.
What is interesting in Hirsch’s article is his emphasis on building oral comprehension and background knowledge rather than trying to teach specific reading skills, as the most effective way to improve language skills.
The internationally recognized expert on literacy, Thomas Sticht, has written that
"oral comprehension typically places an upper limit on reading comprehension; if you don't recognise and understand the word when you hear it, you also won't be able to comprehend it when reading. This tells us something very important: oral comprehension generally needs to be developed in our youngest readers if we want them to be good readers."
This is also true for foreign language learners. Sticht quotes a study that
“assessed the reading potential of 42 native English speakers and 32 speakers who had English as a second language, in an adult literacy programme. The native speakers had an average reading level at grade 6.2 level and a potential at grade 6.4 level. The non-native English speakers read at an average grade 4.3 level and had a potential at grade 4.4 level.
Generally speaking, these data on listening and reading suggest that adult literacy educators may have to provide many of the least able adult readers (less than fourth grade ability) with not only effective instruction in phonemics, phonics and other decoding knowledge, but also extensive opportunities for these adults to develop lots of new vocabulary and content knowledge using their “oracy” skills. This way, they can raise the adults' reading potential by listening and speaking and the instruction in decoding can help them comprehend what they are able to read at their new level of potential.”
Teachers have traditionally focused their efforts on teaching learning skills, reading skills, inferring skills, decoding skills, grammar skills, writing skills etc.. Stephen Krashen was one of the first foreign language teachers to point out that an emphasis on “comprehensible input” lead to better language learning results than an emphasis on grammar and correction. Krashen has long championed “extensive reading” as an essential tool for increasing language skills.
Ed Hirsch in the article quoted above states that a native speaker of English who does well on college entrance examinations has probably learned 80,000 words in 15 years or an average of over 5,000 years per year. Most of these words are learned “incidentally” simply because this person has been exposed to so much rich language content through listening and reading during this period. The good student has benefited from the virtuous cycle of word acquisition. How can a new learner, the language improver, ever catch up?
Get an iPod. Listen to advanced material over and over and read. Or, find a private high school that will give you a good mark?
_________________ Steve
Language learning success depends on the attitude of the learner and the time spent with the language. All the rest is unimportant.
Hello! I see you are interested in learning English and I can help you with this. Take note of the blog promova.com/english-vo...in-english about the months of the year in English. Despite the simplicity of the information, it is unlikely that any of the beginners can repeat the names of the months in order from memory. Therefore, you should memorize this information as best as possible.
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