Literacy Unlocking the Mystery of Language Acquisition

The Doors of Language Learning  1: Listening  2: Speaking  3: Reading  4: Writing

What is Literacy? 1. Reading 2. Writing

Areas of Language Study  Academic English  Vocabulary Building  Grammar & Structure of Language  Why study a foreign language?

Academic English  The fabric of textbooks and manuals  Highly organized thought processes  Specialized vocabularies

Vocabulary building  Why do large vocabularies characterize executives and possibly outstanding men and women in other fields? The final answer seems to be that words are the instruments by means of which men and women grasp the thoughts of others and with which they do much of their own thinking. They are the "tools of thought."  ---Johnson O'Connor

How you you build vocabulary?  It takes repetitions of a word used in context for that word to be added to active vocabulary.  Study of root words and compounds  Prefixes and suffixes  Read, Read, Read!  “The Sin of Silent Reading”

Learning Grammar & Structure  “Bathed” in the sounds of the language.  Patterns of grammar and spelling  Irregularities  Idioms

Language Learning Games  Bingo  Tic-Tac-Toe  Vocabulary Bees  Spelling Bees  Concentration – Memory Match  Chain Drills  Foldables

Why Latin? Isn’t Latin “dead”? Facts:  60% of English words have Latin roots  90% of words 3 syllables or more  Romance languages are spoken by 750 million people in 57 countries.

Language and Logic  Rules  Order  Structure

Resources  English From the Roots Up – Joegil Lundquist  Vocabulary From Classical Roots – Norma Fifer & Nancy Flowers  (source for Latin, Logic and classical education materials)  Ways Children Learn – Geeta Rani Lall  (website of the National Committee for Latin and Greek)  An ESL Teacher’s Handbook – Don Edic for LEI  A Natural History of Latin – Tore Janson