Phonics in the ESL Classroom

As a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in a bilingual school, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that there is a need for the explicit teaching of reading skills in English from the first year of primary education. 

Students entering Year 1 are ill-prepared for the challenges presented to them by written English even at the elementary level typically found in most English books, as well as textbooks of subjects taught in English.  This is because, unlike their mother-tongue, Spanish, is not a transparent language.  Whereas in Spanish there is clear grapheme-phoneme correspondence with just one sound per letter in most cases and very few homophones, in English, there are 44 sounds to the alphabet’s 26 letters and a wide variety of homophones to contend with.  If this creates confusion for young native speakers learning to read, the difficulties faced by young Spanish-speakers will be much greater, especially when one considers the limited amount of oral exposure to English most of these students actually receive.

Pupils’ initial contact with English in its written form is therefore crucial as it has implications for reading comprehension in this language later on.  The acquisition of reading and writing skills which will aid pupils in their progress in the foreign language is often slow and cumbersome.  Even older students from Years 3 or 4 onwards, encounter difficulties with even short texts in the English language. Many teachers assume that students will develop these literacy skills as they progress through primary school.  Their teaching methodologies and strategies are built around textbooks which pay little if any attention to the explicit development of reading skills in the foreign language and they depend instead on the transference of reading skills from students’ mother tongues to fill in the gaps. Later, when students are expected to read texts and extract meaning from them, teachers resort to translation or divert attention towards less reading-dependent activities.

Without solid grounding in direct reading instruction, pupils are unable to relate the oral language they have become familiar with at infant levels to what they see written before them in their English or content subject textbooks.  This creates an obstruction to reading comprehension and rate of progression both in the content areas being studied in English as well as in the foreign language itself.  It can also have an impact on oral expression as new language learnt via the written medium cannot be easily transferred to the oral medium without some knowledge of how this should be done according to specific orthographic conventions.  It goes without saying that the opposite is also true.  Language learned orally can be difficult to connect to its written form for many students encountering problems with reading in English.

These discrepancies between the written and the oral code can ultimately result in oral communication in English being impeded.  On the one hand, utterances may be obfuscated due to transference of Spanish orthographic and pronunciation conventions to English. On the other, English language learners may find English unrecognisable in its oral form.

Thus, the very purpose of foreign language learning, to communicate in another language, be it in its oral or written form, is confounded by a fundamental lack in the teaching process.

The aforementioned difficulties are, as previously suggested, potentially more pronounced in schools with bilingual sections following CLIL methodologies where students have to learn content in English.  It is precisely within these bilingual contexts where explicit, systematic reading instruction should be introduced at an early age to develop pupils’ reading comprehension skills at a faster pace.  This will enable them to focus more on higher level comprehension strategies when studying content rather than struggling with basic decoding which should have been mastered in the first years when learning to read.

In order to find the most effective methodologies in the teaching of reading at pre-primary or infant levels, it is necessary to first look at how young children learn to read, both in Spanish and in English.  For this reason, it is useful to examine and gain an understanding of the cognitive processes involved in reading.  The most accepted theories on reading processes are built around the idea that there are two paths or routes to meaning.  The phonological or indirect route relies on knowledge of grapheme-phoneme correspondences.  The lexical or direct route on the other hand depends on the recognition of words on a global level (Clemente Linuesa, and Dominguez Gutierrez, 1999).

How this understanding of what happens in our brains when we read is related to the ESL context can be demonstrated by a study conducted in Canada comparing the cognitive processes of Spanish-speaking children to those of English-speakers.  It was found that the latter group were able to recognise more words globally than Spanish-speakers who relied more on the phonological route (Jiménez, Siegel, O’Shanahan, Mazabel).  This reliance on the phoneme-grapheme relationship to interpret the written code is a logical foundation upon which to base an ESL reading programme in the first year of Primary Education.  Additionally, and as stated before, the very cognitive processes involved in reading rely on a consciousness of this relationship in order to understand the mechanics of decoding and its application to the interpretation and comprehension of text (Chall, 1983; Clemente Linuesa and Dominguez Gutierrez, 1999; . Goswami and Bryant 1990).

The usefulness of an examination of the methodologies generally considered effective in both Spanish and English-speaking countries thus becomes apparent.

In Spanish-speaking countries, the approach most commonly used, and in keeping with the transparent and syllabic nature of Spanish, is one based on the deconstruction of words into syllables and phonemes.   Students are first taught the vowel sounds and once they have mastered the ability to identify and produce these sounds are taught to combine them with consonant sounds.  Thus, children are taught the basic components of most Spanish words when learning, me, ma, pe, pa, and so on.

In Anglophone countries, there has been much debate in recent decades regarding the effectiveness of the two most frequently adopted approaches to teaching beginning reading to English-speaking children.  One is meaning-based and the other, code-based (Chall, 1983). The meaning-based approach, otherwise known as the Whole-word or Analytical method where students memorise whole words as if they were ideograms, became very popular in the 1960s when traditional code-based methods came to be considered boring and old-fashioned.  Hundreds of studies have been conducted since Chall published her book “Learning to Read: The Great Debate” in 1967 in which she advocates the use of code-based methods or Synthetic Phonics where students are taught to focus on the alphabetic and phonological nature of English to decode print. These studies in general suggest better results when using code-based methodologies to teach reading (Slavin, R. E. and Cheung, A. 2003).

In the area of ESL instruction, English has often been accused of having an arbitrary orthographic system riddled with irregularities, thus complicating the learning of the language.  It has been shown however that English spelling does have conventions that can be learnt and applied successfully in the majority of cases.  The main problem with mastering English spelling according to Jones is that many of the irregularities happen to be frequently-used words thus suggesting greater irregularity than is really the case.  Yet, only 3% of English words are so irregular that they require learning by rote (1996). 

Once it has been accepted that there is logic to English orthography, it is simply a matter of finding the most appropriate methods to help young students face the daunting task of learning to read in a language which is not their own.  By teaching them specific strategies to decode written English, students are being given tools which will enable them to develop autonomous reading skills useful for most reading and writing contexts during the primary school phase and beyond.

The fact that both English and Spanish have alphabetic systems with many consonants sharing similar sounds makes it possible to eliminate much of the work involved in the teaching of these sounds.  This will allow for the development of much-needed phonemic awareness of the numerous vowel sounds that comprise English pronunciation (Jones, 1996).   A possible starting point might therefore be the teaching of some common and high-frequency consonant sounds.  This will give students confidence to experiment with sounds later on as they will realise that there are many similarities between the two languages.  The teaching of vowel sounds should be limited to high-frequency ones within the context of students’ limited English lexicon.  I would suggest a careful study of the language and lexical items being taught to the students at which the reading programme is being directed. 

Any ESL literacy programme based on synthetic phonics should incorporate other strategies as well which will contextualise the reading process, thus focusing not just on the mechanics of reading but also on its ultimate aim which is comprehension.  This is an approach that most balanced L1 reading programmes attempt to follow.  It is not good enough to have children who are good decoders only.  They should be able to make sense of what they read and be able to extract meaning from the texts with which they interact. 

Decoding is however necessary for comprehension to take place. To this end, it is useful to consider Chall’s six levels of learning according to which, first we learn to read and then we read to learn.  In order for reading to evolve into a meaningful experience, it is necessary to have reached a necessary level of automaticity to allow for the processing of textual information (Carnine, Silbert, Kame'enui and Tarver, 2004). Without this, too much time and energy is spent on making sense of the words on the page and not enough on processing and reflection which requires real comprehension of the text being read. As Carnine, Silbert, Kame'enui and Tarver write in their article on reading development “When word recognition places too many demands on cognitive capacity, less cognitive attention is available for allocation to higher-level comprehension processes. Trying to read for meaning without the necessary cognitive resources is not a rewarding experience.” (2004).

In the area of ESL education in Spain, the number of bilingual schools has increased exponentially in the last few years. From 2007 to 2012 the number of primary schools with Bilingual sections, both public and “concertado” or semi-private, just in the region of Castile y Leon, has increased from 181 to 319.  Additionally, one should add to this the 19 public schools that are developing the British Council Bilingual programme (CSIF, 2012).

The explicit teaching of reading in English therefore makes increasing sense and serious and urgent consideration must be given to how we assist our pupils in facing this task. 

As stated before, hundreds of studies have shown the effectiveness of Synthetic Phonics in teaching beginning reading. The very nature of Spanish and the way in which early reading is taught in Spain gives added impetus to the direct teaching of reading via Synthetic Phonics in the ESL primary classrooms.  Given that Spanish children are generally taught to read using synthetic methods where the relationships between letters and sounds are taught first, it makes sense to use similar methodologies when introducing students to reading in English.  The transference which is most likely to occur can be harnessed through the use of a structured ESL reading programme to direct student learning towards effective reading habits in English which will help them to process content more effectively and inevitably impact on oral communication as well. 

In the face of decades of empirical studies showing the advantages of this approach with native speakers of all socio-economic backgrounds as well as English language learners, ESL teachers cannot continue believing that transference of skills from the mother-tongue or the adoption of a vaguely analytical approach which more often than not tends to be unstructured and largely ineffective, is good enough. 

A great deal has been learnt in recent decades about how we read (Chall, 1983; Clemente Linuesa and Dominguez Gutierrez, 1999; Goswami and Bryant 1990).   Empirical studies have demonstrated effective methodologies in teaching reading to English language learners of all ages and levels as well as the cognitive processes involved (Slavin and Cheung 2003; Jiménez, Juan E., Siegel, Linda S., O’Shannahan, I., Mazabel, S.; Johnston R., Watson J., 2005. Jones, M.L., 1996). With this understanding comes the responsibility to design carefully considered didactic proposals which include reading as a fundamental element.

To conclude, in the last decade, the number of schools here in Spain adopting Bilingual Programmes has increased exponentially.  Students are now not only required to learn the mechanics of English but are also expected to use it and, more importantly, learn in it.  Most schools have chosen a model which requires the learning of Environmental Studies: Science, History and Geography, as well as Art in English.  Most parents and teachers would agree that the need to have an appropriate level of reading competence in English is most necessary in the area of Environmental Studies.  The reality is that most English learners lack the very tool which would give them autonomous access to this and other content subjects like Art and in other cases, though to a lesser extent, Physical Education and Music. 

Few ESL teachers are equipped to face the daunting task of teaching young children to read in English and precious few English textbooks give any importance to this area of English language learning.

In order to initiate any early reading programme in the ESL classroom, it is necessary to first of all understand the nature of the processes involved in reading.  In recent decades, reading research has given us a greater understanding of the cognitive processes that come into play when we read.  As is inevitably the case, there are different schools of thought on this matter.  However, the psycholinguistic approach which views reading as being governed either by a phonological route which relies on awareness of the relationship between phonemes and graphemes or a direct or lexical route which relies on a global visualisation of words, is currently the most widely accepted by reading experts (Clemente Linuesa, and Dominguez Gutierrez, 1999).

If one accepts this approach as the one which best explains how young children learn to read, the importance of including contextualised, explicit early reading instruction where phonological awareness of English sounds is developed, as well as Synthetic Phonics, becomes clear. (Chall, 1983; Clemente Linuesa and Dominguez Gutierrez, 1999; Goswami and Bryant 1990 1983; Slavin and Cheung, 2003).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clemente Linuesa, M. and Dominguez Gutierrez, A.B. (1999). La Enseñanza de La Lectura: Enfoque Psicolingüístico y Sociocultural. Madrid. Píramide

Carnine, D. W., Silbert, J., Kame'enui, E. J., Tarver, S. G. (2004). Reading Development: Chall's Model. Downloaded on 13 April 2016 from http://www.education.com/reference/article/Chall-model-reading-development/

Chall, J.S., (1983). Learning to Read: the Great Debate (2nd Edition), New York. McGraw-Hill

Goswami , U. and Bryant P., (1990). Phonological Skills and Learning to Read.

Jiménez, Juan E.,  Siegel, Linda S.,  O’Shannahan, I.,  Mazabel, S. (en prensa). Analizando Procesos Cognitivos y de Lectura en Niños Hispano-parlantes que Aprenden Inglés como Segunda Lengua y Niños Canadienses de Habla Inglesa.

Jones, M. L., (1996). Phonics in ESL Literacy Instruction: Functional or Not?

Downloaded on 13 April 2016 from

 http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED436104.pdf

Slavin, R. E. and Cheung, A. (2003) EFFECTIVE READING PROGRAMS FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS A Best-Evidence Synthesis. Downloaded on 13 April 2016 from http://www.csos.jhu.edu/crespar/techReports/Report66.pdf