Oral Language and Code-Related Precursors to Reading - Essay Example

Oral Language and Code-Related Precursors to Reading Introduction Juan Guzman is a nine-year old English language learner from Mexico. The language he uses at home is Spanish and there is no usage of the English language, including all members of his family. His parents have had little schooling and could thus not teach him English and monitor his reading progress. Although he is in third grade elementary school, he is however reading at a low second grade reading level. His rate of reading is slow; his silent reading is poor, and he has in fact difficulty reading silently. He has an older brother named Bryan who is currently in the fourth grade but reads at high second grade reading level. The family moved from Mexico to the Untied States five months ago. Juan describes his interests as playing basketball, swimming, and fishing, which he normally undertake with his family, particularly his father and brother. He claims having a big difficulty in school though, specifically in reading and writing English words. He says that way back in Mexico, he used to appreciate Science, but right now where every subject matter including Science needs to be learned and understood in the English language, he begins to dislike the subject matter. He has average scores in Math concepts exhibited by his scores in quizzes and long examinations. He is however poor in word attack and English vocabulary, which affects his performance in other subjects including Science, which used to be his favorite. I was able to talk to Juan’s aunt once, upon visiting Juan and gathering information from his family about things related to his reading progress. This is where I found that both of Juan’s parents live in Mexico and had little schooling. The aunt related that both boys frequently scan their notes upon arriving home and practice reading orally. However, there are some questions that she could not answer, such as the correct pronunciation of a word or the meaning of a particular word, or if the sentence the boys have just uttered is grammatically correct, since she herself has a limitation in the English language as she jus migrated to the United States five months ago. Juan is thus left with only the school to rely on when learning to read. Statement of the Problem A student with language difficulty may be assisted by activities that evaluate his/her reading ability towards progress. Observations During Reading and Tutoring Sessions Juan appears to be persevering during reading sessions and tries hard to understand each word. Often, when he could not pronounce a word, he approaches me and asks how it is pronounced. He repeatedly utters the new-learned word until he thinks it sinks in. He also tends to use the new word in sentences and read it orally rather than silently in which he appears to understand better through oral reading than silent reading. When asked to try to read silently without moving his lips, he ended up moving his lips anyway and read the text in a whisper. He states that he has difficulty understanding what the book says when he reads it silently. Whenever he chooses a book to read, it is observed that he prefers those with several pictures and big letters. He does not appreciate books laden with lots of texts written in smaller letters albeit having pictures in them. I noticed that he would just look at the pictures especially if they were glossy ones, and upon finishing, would return the book in the shelf. He does not attempt reading from a book laden with huge texts and written in smaller letters. In a tutoring session undertaken on September 10, 2008, the identified goals were to assess Juan’s reading interests and attitude and to assess his self-selection of books. In fulfilling the assessment on his reading interests and attitude, the activity involved was to complete the interest and attitude reading inventory. For assessing his self-selection of books, the activity involved was allowing him to select one book to read by himself and one book he would like to be read to him. During the first day of the tutoring session, I tried to establish rapport with my tutee. We sat at the classroom library in which I invited and allowed him to choose a book that catches his attention. Through observation, I noticed a bright smile on Juan’s face. This is actually a positive sign about showing his interest in the one-on-one tutorial session. A few minutes later, he picked a book and showed it to me. The book he chose had several colorful pictures with big prints and a strong cultural connection with his personal life. Corn is Maize by Aliki is one of Juan’s favorite books. He exhibited eagerness to start reading, although his reading fluency or pace was slow at this time. There is thus a need for future fluency activities to accelerate his speed. He was eager to make questions and share pictures from the book that he found interesting. According to his interview answers, he prefers expository books and folk tales over all other kinds of books. As per the book he chose to be read to him, Juan selected Jade and Iron: Tales from Two Cultures by P. Aldana. He was likewise extremely excited and eager to ask questions during the reading of The Tears of Sombrero Grande. Although it seems early to anticipate, it however appears that comprehension is Juan’s area of strength. Juan is able to follow the story and made good predictions as he reads. He engages in repeated reading and likes to read the pages of the story more than once; however, his fluency during this stage was low. This observation will be validated with more testing to be performed in the next tutoring sessions. Juan has a positive attitude towards reading. He responded to most of the questions in full, with a few “yes” and “no” answers. It was interesting to note that he answered extensively the open ended questions especially those relating to his relationships with his family living abroad. My first session left me with the idea that Juan has the spirit and determination to succeed especially with constant encouragement. The session on September 15, 2008 started by establishing rapport with Juan and informing him about the procedures for the test involving oral portion of the IRI, graded passages, and graded word lists. These test activities aimed to assess Juan’s oral reading and comprehension ability as well as his word recognition skills for words in isolation. The Graded Word list was administered with the Pre Primer level as the starting point. Juan recorded a perfect score in the Pre-Primer, Primer, and Reader One levels. In the second reader level, he mispronounced two words. He again mispronounced two words in the third reader level. Both incidents of mispronunciation involved errors pertaining to consonant blends (ld). Juan exhibited an appearance of hesitation at level four, which lasted for more than five seconds in two occasions. He committed eleven errors at this level, indicating that a higher level will be frustrating for him at this time. Half of the errors made at this level involved word endings, such as changing “ous” to “y”. As the words became longer, the more Juan is likely to just stare at the word beginning and added the “y” ending. Observations during Comprehension Tests On the next tutorial session schedule on September 23, 2008, the set goals were assessing Juan’s oral reading comprehension and fluency as well as developing fluency. In order to achieve the first objective, oral portion of the IRI will be administered alongside graded passages. In achieving the goal of developing fluency, activities prepared were familiar reading, which was set at 5 minutes; shared reading; and reciprocal questioning. To develop Juan’s fluency and to encourage him to read in phrases rather than in single words, he was made to read aloud for approximately seven minutes from his selected book. Our shared reading which also aimed at developing Juan’s fluency consisted of reading passages from Kids Communicate by Ann Rossi. I read about a page of the book to him, careful to use punctuation and to give appropriate expressions into my voice. After this, both of us read the same section of the story together. I slowed my pace slightly but still read fluently and expressively. Then, Juan reread the same piece alone. We chatted about the story as we went along. The next activity was reciprocal questioning. We asked three questions to each other about the story we just read. Juan’s questions were merely literal questions about minor details. During the fluency test I was noticed that he used finger-pointing when reading the passages. Listening comprehension from IRI tests showed that Juan can answer questions more accurately when he reads passages orally rather than when someone reads to him. He answered correctly only to fewer questions on level three passages read to him than when he had the opportunity to read the story aloud by himself. It seems that he had greater comprehension of the texts if he was allowed to read aloud than when he read them silently. Only 40% was recorded for his listening comprehension on level three passage. He, however showed to enjoy reciprocal questioning very much in which he asked questions and assumed the role of a teacher. He requested to perform this activity in our next tutoring session. Pertaining to comprehension, Juan appeared to perform better comprehensively when he was allowed to read aloud in which he can sometimes answer effectively after reading the pages more than one time. After the administration of the IRI test for this session, Juan asked me to read a story from the book we started last week, Jade and Iron by Luis Garay. I read aloud the story titled Antonio and the Thief by Saul Schkolnik, a folktale from Chile. Observations during Readability Tests On the next tutoring session scheduled on September 29, the goals set were determining Juan’s readability of written material, his reading level in a specific material, his vocabulary level in a specific (social science) area, his ability to recognize word families as rhymes, and his ability to recognize initial three-letter blends. The set goals also aimed at analyzing Juan’s developmental spelling process, as well as determining his ability to decode unfamiliar words with the use of letter-sound relationship only. Activities involved in ascertaining the first three goals involved the usage of the Cloze Test, while the fourth and fifth goals involved the Phonic Test, Richard Gentry’s Developmental Spelling Inventory for the 6th goal, and the Name Test for the last. During the reading session, it appeared that Juan was discouraged to decode long words. He exhibited a tendency to work on the first part of the words and ignored the rest. He was successful in decoding until two-syllable words only and exhibited troubles with three-syllable words and more. Further, he was successful decoding most of the initial consonant sounds except the “j” and “g” sounds where he displayed signs of difficulty. He also showed difficulty with words that started with blend sounds, such as blind, flow, brew, and brim. Juan’s cloze activity lasted for more than twenty five minutes. At this point, he had difficulty concentrating and finding the correct words, and later expressed about being tired during the course of the activity. He read the passage several times and finished the activity nonetheless. He was very happy and relaxed during our shared reading activity in which we read together Elaine Good’s Fall is Here! I love It! This session was a little bit stressful for Juan in which he showed signs of restlessness and/or frustration after the spelling test and the Name Test activity. Based on the observation, it appears that Juan feels uncomfortable reading isolated or unfamiliar words. In a session scheduled on October 10, the goals set included estimating Juan’s hearing vocabulary in Standard English as compared with a cross-section of U.S.A. persons of the same age, developing context-sensitive independent learning strategies, learning word meanings from context, making predictions about a word’s meaning, and verifying from context and references. In order to accomplish the goal for estimating Juan’s hearing vocabulary in Standard English, the means set was administering the PPVT-III Peabody picture Vocabulary Test. Guided reading and SQRRRL and PAVE process strategies were conducted for the set goal of developing context-sensitive independent learning strategies, while Easy reading was conducted on making predictions about the meaning of a word. Juan exhibited enjoyment during the administration of the PPVT-III Peabody Vocabulary Test, a test of receptive vocabulary. In this test, I had to show him four pictures while he had to say a single stimulus word based on them. He had to indicate verbally or non-verbally which picture best represented the stimulus word being presented. He was eager to point to the pictures upon carefully listening to the word. He also provided some cognate words in his mother language; thus, transferring and using his background knowledge to increase understanding. We used Margaret Davidson’s Nine True Dolphin Stories for guided reading The stories in this book were short, interesting, and lent themselves to the DRTA format. Moreover, Juan’s interest inventory stated that marine animals were one of his favorite topics. We partner-read orally the first four pages of the first selection titled The Story of Pelorus Jack, stopping at several points to check for understanding. I used SQRRRL (survey, question, read, retell, review, learn) reading strategy during this activity. Juan seemed to be familiar with this reading strategy. After surveying the pages and making a prediction, Juan read the final page silently. He read slowly while finger-pointing the text. He moved to the beginning of the text several times in what seemed to be an attempt to grasp the meaning of the whole. When asked a few questions, he showed difficulty recalling central information. I redirected him to go back and reread on paragraph to find the answer to the question. He did better the second time when asked the same question. We used a second grade level expository book about dolphins to practice the PAVE process. We partner-read a few pages and Juan seemed to enjoy learning the characteristics and habits of dolphins. In another tutorial session scheduled on October 14, an activity involved was administering the Abecedarian Reading Assessment in a pursuit to acquire diagnostic information about Juan’s early reading skills. Easy reading was also conducted to build reading fluency. To improve Juan’s fluency and/or reading rate, repeated readings were performed. Guided reading was also conducted for the task of making predictions about a word’s meaning. To provide practice in identifying initial two-and three-letter blends, we carried out the Blend Bank Activity, while Dolphin Blend Activity to provide practice in identifying final consonant blends. For guided reading, we read Margaret Davidson’s Five True Horse Stories. The stories in this book were short, interesting, and followed the DRTA format. We partner-read orally the first four pages of the first selection titled The Story of Justin Morgan, in which we stopped at several points to check his understanding. Again, we used the SQRRRL reading strategy during this activity. After surveying the pages and making a prediction, Juan was made to read the final page silently. His reading was slow, but with more confidence this time than in previous tutoring lessons. He finger-pointed the texts while he read, but did not repeat the words anymore, which he usually did in our previous lessons. Together, we completed the story map tree. He hesitated to answer the first reading comprehension question, but looked back at the story passage and the story tree to find the right answer. These actions make us infer that Juan is starting to apply appropriate reading strategies. For an activity on easy reading aimed at building his reading fluency, Juan read Molly the Pony: A True Story by Pam Kaster. He did not hurry through the text; but read smoothly and paused correctly instead, according to punctuation marks present. The Blend Bank activity, which was aimed at providing practice in identifying initial two-and three-letter blends, involved selecting words from a pile and pronouncing them. Juan identified the initial blend sounds sl, str, bl, br, gr, thr, scr, and sw. However, he struggled with the str, sl, thr, scr, and gr sounds. It was inferred that more practice will be beneficial for Juan in order to perfect these sounds. The Dolphin Blend activity, which purported to provide practice in identifying final consonant blends, consisted of selecting and matching index cards with the word parts on the dolphin’s body. Juan practiced the final consonant blends nd, sk, mp, st, and ld. Results of Tests The placement level indicated for Juan by the Graded Word Lists was Grade One level because he had no errors in that list, indicating that his independent level is at level one. His instructional level is recorded at level two-three, while frustration level is at level four. The graded passages started at level one in which Juan had a perfect score in word recognition and comprehension. Results of Comprehension Test At level two, Juan recorded a score of 96% in word recognition, 75% in oral comprehension, and 62.5% in silent reading. Upon finishing the first line from the level three passages, Juan’s reading posture while seated suddenly changed to a more straight forward position. While having this posture, he started using his “reading” finger. He finger-pointed the passages word by word during this part of the reading test. It was also observed that he lacked intonation although he observed periods and commas. Moreover, his reading speed slowed down a little bit further. His word recognition at this level was 95% although his comprehension level dropped down to 60% during oral reading, while 40% during silent reading, indicating his difficulty in reading texts silently. Juan’s scores indicate that his comprehension level decreases dramatically with silent reading as compared to oral reading. His reading rate appears longer during his silent reading than during oral reading. This suggests that he can focus better in the passage while reading aloud than when reading silently. Fluency and listening tests will hopefully help in figuring out the areas in Juan’s difficulty in reading (Farstrup and Samuels, 2002). IRI Results Juan was made to listen to level B passages from IRI test while level three passages were read to him. He answered a few questions but did not recall many details from the story. For familiar reading aiming to develop Juan’s fluency, Juan selected his favorite book Corn is Maize for the purpose, which is a level 2 book. He read this book with expression. Juan’s IRI results indicate an instructional level of difficulty, in which he committed six mispronounced words. Listed below are some of these words and their mispronunciation: Correct words Mispronounced words Best bet Wish weak Cold cod Hold hod Several serve Such suck Level four of the IRI test placed Juan in frustration level, where he incurred more than 5 errors. He began answering this level with a show of hesitation. Some of the words which he pronounced erroneously were the following: Correct words Misread words Amused hamus Ancient hâ Cemetery cemetry Mechanic machine Mysterious mystery Portion portation Savage savak Scarlet scatel Vicious visanus On the other hand, results of Juan’s reading comprehension exhibited mistakes in identifying the main idea, details, sequence, vocabulary and cause and effect/detail indicating that he needs improvement in this area. The results of Juan’s reading comprehension test showed a 64 percent of error for the area of main idea, 80 percent of error for detail, 62.5 percent for sequence, 43 percent for both cause and effect and inference, and 25 percent for vocabulary. His word recognition at Pre primer level, primer level, and level 1 was 100, while 96 for level 2 and 95 for level 3. His oral comprehension at level 1 is 100, 75 at level 2, and 50 at level 3. Silent comprehension is mounted at 62.5 for level 2, while 30 for level 3. His average comprehension scored 68.75 at level 2 and 40 at level 3, while listening comprehension was recorded a 70 for level 3 and 40 for level 4. In the qualitative analysis of uncorrected miscues in context, Juan mounted a result of 13 miscues and 8 substitutes in which syntactic acceptability was recorded at 9 out of 13, while 5 out of 13 for semantic acceptability. The most frequent type of miscue in qualitative analysis that Juan committed was by far the area of substitution in which he scored 61 percent (8/13). In this area, almost half of the words resulted in meaning change due to errors. Most of the time, Juan expected to make real words from the corrections of letters and rarely settled for a nonsense word. In terms of reading comprehension, it appears based on the results that Juan had the most difficulty in the areas of main idea and details. He also tended to lose attention as he found each word harder to understand. He exhibited weaknesses in recalling details as well as in making inferences. These results show that these areas need careful monitoring during reading and classroom activities. Juan’s listening comprehension is recorded at level 3, one grade above his instructional level, indicating potential for advancement. During oral comprehension at passage level 3 and silent reading passage, Juan became disappointed. There were some physical cues and gestures leading to this assumption. He exhibited signs of anxiety such as body tension, rigid posture in which he was seated very straight forward and excessive finger-pointing. He started answering the test with some signs of hesitation. Results of CLOZE Test The Cloze test procedures help to identify individual’s reading ability, reading comprehension, strengths, and weaknesses upon identifying the difficulty level of materials most appropriate for instruction (Stubbs and Tucker, 1974). There were deleted words in the reading passages which Juan should supply correctly. The passage selected for the Cloze Test was selected from Social Studies Communities by Houghton Mifflin, a Social Science textbook. The passage consisted of approximately 300 words in which the first and last sentences were left the same and every seventh word was deleted beginning with the second sentence. A total of fifty deleted words comprised the test, which Juan should supply correctly. There were two passages comprising the test with 25 deletions each. Juan’s scores showed that 42% of correct responses placed him at the instructional level, indicating that this third grade passage corresponds to his instructional reading level. It was determined that Juan used language cues during the reading by looking at the percentage of each type of errors. Further, the percentage for syntactically and semantically appropriate errors shows that Juan gained meaning and read with the use of some context cues. However, there were responses coded as having no logical meaning, which shows that in some instances, a complete breakdown in comprehension occurred. If Juan was relying on context cues at all, he was doing so in a disjointed fashion at the level of single words immediately surrounding the deletion only. For example, in deletion number 1, “…is an important (part) of being in a community…” in which part is the deleted word, Juan’s response of ‘citizens” instead of “part” indicates a lack of capability to use language logically to construct meaning, according to what the author intended. In deletion number 12, “…need food to eat (and) water to drink…,” Juan wrote “food” instead of “and,” revealing the non-usage of language to construct meaning. It was emphasized in many literatures that a student would benefit from learning what appropriate strategies to use when difficult text is encountered (Joachims, 1997). This is shown in instances where Juan would benefit from lessons requiring him to make predictions about what he expects to read, upon which he would confirm or discount after reading (Storch, et al., 1985). It as also inferred that Juan might also benefit from the Cloze activities by exploring semantic and syntactic considerations. Activities that aim to focus Juan’s attention on meaning would help him recognize that reading must include understanding the meaningful message communicated by the reading material. Results of Abecedarian Reading Assessment In the results presented by the Abecedarian Reading Assessment Summary Form administered to Juan on October 15, he committed three mistakes on letter knowledge. Juan knew the names of all letters and punctuation marks except for mistakes on letters b, l, and v, which he said was d, I, and u respectively, indicating that it was not because of lack of awareness in these letters that caused the mistake, but his misinterpretation of how these letters were written in the text. He committed mistakes in phonological awareness, particularly rhyming perception, identifying perception, rhyming production, and identify production. Juan had no difficulty with rhyming but did not seem to be able to hear phonemes in words. His wrong responses were for m in GUM and z in MAZE in which he did not hear the m and z sounds. In the area of alphabetic principle, he sounded the words before responding. He however, missed the ACT / ACTRESS item. In terms of vocabulary items, he showed quick responses and enjoyed making sentences. He only missed the word BATH, which he mistook as BUS according to his sentence “You go in the bus to school.” He did not know what a POISON is and left No Response for this item. For the Synonyms part, he provided HURT as the synonym for TOUCH. The decoding part was slow and labored for Juan, in which he tended to figure out shorter words with simpler structural patterns. He had difficulty decoding irregular words, such as saying SAD for SAID; COULDN’T for COULD; PLACE for PIECE; and CANE for CANOE. In the Regular Word list, he read STREET for SWEET; AMZO for AMAZE; HURSH for HUSH; and SLAIN for SLANG. Juan exhibited gestures showing that he did not enjoy the administration of the Abecedarian Reading Assessment Test. Because he relies on visuals so much to get the meaning of a text, the Abecedarian Reading Assessment Test gave him difficulty and was thus, stressful to him. The results showed that some of his answers were out of plain guessing, in which his main concern was to end the test as soon as possible. Results of the PPVT-III Peabody picture Vocabulary Test Juan scored a standard score of 79 in the PPVT-III, indicating a moderately low score. He committed an error in the basal set while more than eight errors in the ceiling set. His test results revealed one error in Set 6, four errors in Set 7, three errors in Set 8, and mounted 11 errors in Set 9. All sets comprised 12 items each. His raw score of 89, with an equivalent standard score of 79, indicates an age equivalent of 6 years and 8 months, within the lower limit of 6 years and 4 months and upper limit of 7 years and 1 month. Results of the Developmental Spelling Test (Monster Test) Juan was evaluated to be under the phonemic spellers and transitional spellers. Phonemic spellers spell words like they sound, which Juan tended to do most of the time, such as spelling the word amused as hamus. He also tended to think how words appear visually in which a visual memory of spelling patterns are apparent, making him be evaluated as a transitional speller. Some of the words he misspelled that made him be assessed as a transitional speller are monter (monster), dest (desk), botem (bottom), and tipe (type). As a phonemic speller, the words misspelled were humen (human) and coles (calls). The independent level of difficulty in reading capability is the level intended for Juan to experience. In this level, students can read text with ease and without a need for assistance. Since almost all the words are recognized and understood upon seeing, silent reading is rapid at this level of difficulty and comprehension is generally excellent (Gillet, et al., 2000). A student would exhibit fluency in oral reading at this level, with rare interference with comprehension of occasional miscues or divergences from the written text. Juan is currently in the instructional level of difficulty in which the material is not really easy but is comfortable, however. Students at this level will benefit more with instruction by being comfortably challenged. While comprehension is good, help is needed in order to decode some concepts or vocabulary (Aarnoutse and Leeuwe, 1998). The listening level is also an important part of improving the reading capability of students. This may not be an actual reading level, but it is nevertheless important since it is related to a student’s reading abilities. It is said that this level provides a potential for a student’s reading improvement (Gillet, et al., 2000). Conclusion Reading is an important task in every student’s life. In order to do this, he however needs to acquire language efficiency and fluency. An ESL student like the subject in this case study had difficulty in reading because of his inadequacy in the English language. However, the regular tutoring sessions held with him aided him in several ways in which his reading, listening, comprehension, and oral skills were evaluated which in urn were used as means for what activities and materials to use for his progress. It is hence inferred that a student with language difficulty may be assisted by activities that evaluate his/her reading ability towards progress. Proper usage of appropriate tools for evaluation is crucial in the progress of the student, such as the Peabody Test, Abecedarian Reading Assessment, Comprehension Test, and Developmental Spelling Test (Monster Test). Goal setting with concrete means to achieve them are also useful in ascertaining the student's progress. All of these lead to the conclusion that a student with language difficulty may be assisted by activities that evaluate his/her reading ability towards successful acquisition of language and its usage. References Aarnoutse, C. & Leeuwe, J. (1998) Relation between reading comprehension, vocabulary, reading pleasure, and reading frequency. Educational Research and Evaluation. Farstrup, A. E. & Samuels, S. J. (2002) What research has to say about reading instruction? International Reading Associations, Inc. Gillet, J. W. Crawford A. N., & Young J. P. (2000) Understanding reading problems: Assessments and instruction (Fifth Edition). Longman. Joachims, T. (1997) Text categorization with support vector machines: Learning with many relevant features. Springer. Storch S. A. & Whitehurst, G. J. (1985) Oral language and code-related precursors to reading: Evidence from a longitudinal structure model. Journal of Educational Psychology. Vol. 77. Stubbs, J. B. & Tucker, G. R. (1974) The Cloze Test as a measure of English proficiency. Modern Language Journal. Vol. 21, No. 7. Read More