When thinking about the relationship between oral language and the reading process, the five components of reading play a huge role in this. Children need to develop phonemic awareness where they understand that sounds and language are one unit. This first step is completely oral. After phonemic awareness, children must acquire phonics where they understand that for every written letter, there is a speech sound that accompanies it. Putting these letters together to make words is what creates sentences, paragraphs, and more complex language.Once children have practiced reading words, they must do so fluently. Fluency is the ability to read quickly but also accurately. A child must have a deep understanding of phonemic awareness and then phonics because they will be fluent readers only when they can understand what sounds letters, blends, and words make and sound them out quickly as they read. Fluent readers also need to take into account vocabulary, which is the process where they learn new words and investigate how these new words affect the meaning of a text. Vocabulary is the component that introduces new language and new ways to communicate to readers who are already familiar with the process of reading itself. Students that read with fluency and are able to use strategies to understand new vocabulary are able to comprehend what they read, which is the essential goal of the reading process. Without the four other components in the reading process, comprehension would not be possible, yet essentially, the reading process itself all depends on the acquisition of the oral language, since the phonemic awareness step is the first building block to the five components of reading.
This oral development of language is essentially important in ELL students so that they are able to make the growth in more than one language that they need to make in order to be proficient speakers. As Pauline Gibbons writes in Scaffolding Language Scaffolding Learning, "the development of the spoken forms of language are essential for second language learners as a bridge to the more academic language associated with learning in school, and with the development of literacy (2002, p.14). As students develop oral language, their reading processes and academic language will benefit from this, since the two are so closely linked.
Melissa,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your statement, "The reading process itself all depends on the acquisition of the oral language, since the phonemic awareness step is the first building block to the five components of reading." This is exactly the way I see oral language. It is a bridge to the reading process. Problems with spoken language often predict future difficulties in learning to read, as well as in other academic areas. This shows how important oral language is as a foundation to the reading process.
Melissa,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your analogy that phonemic awareness is the "first building block", or foundation to the reading process. Could you imagine trying to learn a foreign language without hearing the correct pronunciation of the sounds that the language consists of? It would be impossible. Without the oral language "bridge", a student would never get to the other side of becoming a fluent reader.
-Shannon