Teaching Reading: Bringing Different Approaches Together Svetlana Bogolepova Moscow Pedagogical State University “Intellect-Service” secondary school

The Phonics Approach The Russian Approach aims to develop and consolidate children’s phonological, phonemic and morphological awareness; teachers initial sounds, sound blends, consonant and vowel combinations; teaches explicitly; is systematically organized and sequenced. The Russian Approach teaches the technical side of reading, not paying much attention to meaning; teaches vowels in different positions in a word, sound of letter combinations; teaches explicitly.

Think and Share! Children will find it more natural to start with sounds and learn which letters make them, since they are moving from experience with the spoken language to the new worlds of written letters and words. Mc Guiness (1997) in Cameron, 2001, p. 149 Is it always applicable to your EFL classroom?

The Look-and-Say /Linguistic/Whole-Word Approach focuses on whole-word recognition of most common words; emphasizes building up a sight vocabulary based on most common words; develops lexical knowledge (collocations); students are not explicitly taught that there is a relationship between words and sounds.

The Multi-Sensory Approach uses all senses: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile. Language Experience expects child to learn reading as naturally as speech; child’s oral language is basis for oral instruction; children learn by reading and rereading books with the teacher’s guidance.

What are the limitations of each approach? Phonics and the Russian Approach: not much experience with spoken language; purely deductive: little development involved (top-down approach); not all the words correspond to rules; child’s logic is not developed enough.

What are the limitations of each approach? Whole-Word and Language Experience: mostly cares for visual learners; child can work out patterns wrongly; takes different time for an individual child to remember a word (combination); doesn’t satisfy the needs of analytical students; limited exposure to the language.

Why not bring them together?

Activities to Teach Reading the Phonics Way reading drills http://donpotter.net/PDF/Remedial%20Reading%20Drills%20-%20Margin.pdf worksheets and simple readers (http://www.starfall.com/); songs and chants: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm4rESpmWE4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYCkBK9RTkU&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZOIl0VCrco&feature=related video lessons http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mMQVBy1ubY&feature=relmfu word cards with sound blends highlighted in colour.

Activities to Teach Reading the Phonics Way Games: I Spy Miss Bell’s bag match the word to the sound all in a row circle the words with a particular sound. Phonological Awareness: - clap if you hear a certain sound; if you hear a long vowel, clap twice/raise two hands, if you hear a short vowel, clap once/raise one hand; rhyme a word.

Whole-Word Reading notice board and words (phrases) of the week (day) matching sorting Fishing threasure hunt Bingo and dominoes http://www.mes-english.com/ word searches and crossword puzzles http://www.discoveryeducation.com/free-puzzlemaker/?CFID=1079255&CFTOKEN=28022795 guess the word collecting competition memory games intensive and extensive reading.

Multi-Sensory Activities sand letters; letters/letter combinations from dough; miming; echo; tracing http://www.mes-english.com/worksheets/flashcards/animals2_spelling.php ; letter mazes http://www.printactivities.com/Mazes.html ; choral reading.

My experience. teach the alphabet; teach a number of words as whole-words; teach the phonemic alphabet; teach phonics. What way of teaching reading works for your students? What games and activities do you find useful? Share your experience, please!

References. http://www.balancedreading.com/assessment/abecedarian.pdf http://www.slideshare.net/fiandp/reading-approaches-for-an-efl-classroom http://www.hishelpinschool.com/reading/appteachreading.html http://www.dorbooks.com/tips.html Cameron L. Teaching Languages to Young Learners, 1991 Никитенко З.И. Специфика обучения английскому языку в начальной школе, 2010