Learning Literacy Skills

Learning Literacy Skills
By: Bishara Adam
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Literacy Skills in English
What is Literacy?
Literacy is the ability to understand and evaluate
meaning through reading and writing, listening
and speaking, viewing and representing.
Literacy skills need to continually expand and
diversify because our rapidly changing social and
economic environment requires competence in a
range of new communication forms and media.
Literacy competence is central to achievement in
all areas of learning as students progress through
the early, middle and later years of schooling and
into the workforce and personal life.
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The Importance of Literacy
Adolescents entering the adult world in the 21st century will read and
write more than at any other time in human history.
They will need advanced levels of literacy to perform their jobs, run
their households, act as citizens, and conduct their personal lives.
They will need literacy to cope with the flood of information they will
find everywhere they turn.
They will need literacy to feed their imaginations so they can create the
world of the future. In a complex and sometimes even dangerous world,
their ability to read will be crucial.
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Key Competencies of Learning Literacy
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Categories of Literacy Skills
• Receptive – what you
receive and how you
make meaning (read,
listen and view)
• Productive – what you
produce and how you
create meaning (speak,
write and present)
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Factors in foreign language learning contexts
that can influence the learning task
(becoming skilled readers and writers):
Nature of the written forms of the
first language.
Learner’s previous experience in L1
literacy.
Learner’s knowledge of the FL.
Learner’s age.
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The
First Language
Each language is structured differently, and the different
structures offer users different suggestions to meaning.
So when we learn our first language, our brain / mind ‘tunes
into’ the way the particular L1 works, and we learn to pay
attention to particular cues to meaning that are most helpful.
When we meet a new language, our brain / mind automatically
tries to apply the first language experience by looking for
familiar cues.
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The
First Language
Part of learning a foreign language is developing new
understandings about the particular cues to meaning that the new
language offers, and that differ from those of our first language.
The transferability of knowledge, skills and strategies across
languages depends closely on how the two written languages
work.
English is a complicated alphabetic written language, and almost
always requires learners of it as a foreign language to develop
new skills and knowledge, in addition to what can be transferred.
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Learner’s Previous Experience In
L1 Literacy.
Literacy knowledge and skills partly developed = only some aspects
are available for transfer, and they may be only partially mastered.
We must consider the methodology of teaching literacy skills in the
first language.
Do we use the same?
Using a quite different approach to teach how to read in the foreign
language classroom may be a good idea, because it helps children to
differentiate the languages and the literacy skills required in each; it
may also confuse children by requiring them to cope with different
definitions of ‘good behavior’ or ‘success’ in reading.
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Learner’s Previous Experience In
L1 Literacy
Social aspects of first language literacy may also influence
learning to read in a foreign language.
The extreme case when a child’s L1 does not have a
written form, or when the medium of education is a second
language, so that the child does not learn L1 literacy.
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Learner’s Knowledge Of The FL
Phonological awareness in the foreign language, the ability to hear the
individual sounds and syllables that make up words, will develop from
oral language activities, such as saying rhymes or/and singing songs.
Vocabulary knowledge is extremely important. In the early stages
children should only encounter written words that they already know
orally.
Pronunciation skills in the foreign language will both affect literacy
and be assisted by literacy development.
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Learner’s Knowledge Of The FL
Since written words are turned into spoken words in the
reading process (and vice versa in the writing process),
inaccuracies in pronunciation may stop finding the right
spoken word to match what is read.
Seeing words written down can help towards accurate
pronunciation because of the visibility of all the letters of a
word; sounds that might be unstressed, and thus not noticed
in listening, will be evident in written form.
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Learner’s Age
Age of starting to learn to read coincides with first language
reading experience.
However, there are other factors that may make learning to
read and write in English a very different experience for
children of six or ten years of age:
The youngest children are still learning how written text
works, so that they may not be able to transfer even the most
general concepts about text and print.
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Learner’s Age
They are still mastering the fine motor skills needed to shape
and join letters, and so producing a written sentence takes a
long time, and, because their attentional capacities are also
limited, they may only be able to write a small amount.
Because of constraints of memory, when reading a sentence,
they may not be able to recall the beginning by the time they
have reached the end.
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Learner’s Age
Teaching children between the ages of 6 and 9 years to
read and write in English as a foreign language can make
use of some methods used with children for whom English
is a first language (it could be a good idea to put on extra
stress on those aspects of English literacy that contrast most
strongly with the learner’s first language reading and
writing).
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Starting To Read And Write In
English As A Foreign Language
Objectives for readers & writers up to age 7
TEXT:
Attitude to literacy: enjoy being read to from a range of
books; enjoy looking at books.
Print conventions: learn how text is written down in lines
and pages, with spaces between words, capital and small
letter.
Participate in range of literacy events in school, and link to
out of school literacy events.
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SENTENCE:
Learn to copy short sentences that have a personal meaning,
and read them aloud.
WORDS:
Learn a basic set of words by sight.
Begin spotting words and letters in books.
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MORPHEMES / SYLLABLES:
listen to rhymes, chants and songs, and, by joining in with
them, learn by heart, and be able to say or sing them.
LETTERS / SOUNDS:
Learn the names, shapes and sounds of some initial consonants.
Begin to learn the alphabet in order, by name.
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Continuing to Learn to Read
By the time children reach 10 years of age or thereabouts, their
first language oracy and literacy are probably quite firmly
established:
they understand about how written text works;
they are in control of the fine motor skills needed for writing;
they are able to talk and think about the differences between
languages.
At this age, reading and writing can be part of foreign language
learning, even for beginners, but we must not forget that only familiar
vocabulary (and grammar) should be used initially in written form.
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Creating A Literary Environment
In The Classroom
Labels
Posters
Messages ( a ‘ post box’)
Reading aloud it can be done in several ways:
Teacher reads aloud, children just listen, and perhaps look at
pictures.
Teacher uses a ‘big book’, i.e. a large book with large
enough print so that all children can see.
Each child uses a text.
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In The Classroom
From listening and watching an adult read aloud, children can
see how books are handled, how texts encode words and ideas,
how words and sentences are set out on a page.
Reading aloud familiarizes children with the language of written
English:
The formulaic openings: ‘once upon a time…
The formulaic closings: ‘and so they all lived happily ever after.
The patterns of text types: stories and information text.
The patterns of sentence types.
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In The Classroom
It is very important that children
regularly read aloud individually
to their teacher, since it is only by
listening carefully to how children
are making sense of written words
that we can understand their
progress in learning.
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Learning Literacy Skills

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