YES, READING IN L1 IS IMPORTANT, BUT WHAT KIND OF BOOKS? TESL Ontario Aiko Sano OISE/UT 1

Can you think of a good book to recommend for this boy? 2  A native speaker of Japanese  Age 8  Came to Canada last September  Starting to communicate with his teachers and friends in English but needs extra help in comprehending subject contents  Can read Magic Tree House by himself if he tries.  Has age-appropriate literacy skills in Japanese  Enjoys being read to, but not so enthusiastic about reading himself

Conversational fluency and academic language proficiency  Approximately 2 years for conversational fluency but 5-7 years for academic language proficiency (Cummins,1981 )  The amount of formal schooling in L1 is the strongest predictor of how fast ESL learners catch up with their native speaking peers (Cummins et al., 1984)  What do we do with the ESL children who have come to Canada at very young age/Canadian born? 3

Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunner, 1986) 4 Reading comprehension Language comprehension Background knowledge Linguistic knowledgePhonologySyntax Semantics vocabulary Decoding Orthographic knowledge Letter knowledge Knowledge of alphabetic principles Grapheme-phoneme correspondence knowledge Phonemic awareness

The Role of Vocabulary 5

Reading and Vocabulary  A strong relation between V and RC (Anderson & Freebody, 1981), especially in L2 learners (Coady, 1993; Laufer, 1997; Nation, 2001b)  2% or more unfamiliar V blocks RC(Carver, 1994)  V played a stronger role in RC in ESL students than in native speakers (Droop &Verhoeven, 2003)  Positive change in V knowledge can have a direct effect on RC (Proctor et al., 2005)  Reading helps incidental learning of V (Nagy et al., 1985; Sternberg, 1987) 6

The reciprocal relationship between reading and vocabulary Better comprehension of text More reading More incidental vocabulary acquisition High motivation to learn vocabulary 7

But…reverse is true, too! Little vocabulary knowledge Poor Text comprehension Low motivation to read Little incidental vocabulary learning 8

The Beginner’s Paradox 9  “How can L2 learners learn vocabulary through extensive reading when they don’t know enough words to read well?” (Coady, 1997, p. 229)

To make a breakthrough… 10  Graded readers (Wodinsky & Nation, 1988, Nation,2001a)  Explicit vocabulary teaching (e.g. teaching cognate awareness, Nagy et al. 1993; Proctor & Mo, 2009; teaching morphological awareness, Nunes, et al. 2006; benefit both L1 and L2 readers, August et al., 2005; Carlo et al., 2004)  L1 reading in the area related to what they are studying in L2 classrooms….why?

The Role of Background Knowledge 11

The importance of background knowledge 12  Schema theory (Anderson & Pearson, 1984; Carrell, 1983, 1984, 1987; Floyd &Carrell, 1989; Williams, 1987) Teachers should encourage students to continue to develop their knowledge of the world and curriculum content in their L1 while they are acquiring English since this knowledge increases their cognitive power to comprehend and acquire English. Cummins (1996/2001, p.90)

13  “On the one hand, an important part of teaching background knowledge is teaching the vocabulary related to it and, conversely, teaching vocabulary means teaching concepts, new knowledge” (Carrell, 1984, p. 335).  Needs of teaching vocabulary in semantically and topically organized manner: in that way words meaning and background knowledge would improve concurrently. (Williams, 1987) Cyclical nature of teaching concepts and teaching vocabulary

Need to encourage students to read L1 books related to the topics they are studying in L2 14

Importance of information books as part of the “healthy diet” 15  Reading information books provide schemata about the content and the rhetoric organization of expository texts. (Beck& McKeown, 1991)  Young children are capable of, and interested in reading information books. (Dreher, 2003; Papas, 1991)

Information books for ESL students 16  “In addition to encountering subjects with which they may have no prior knowledge or experiences, English learners find the structure of textbooks confusing and the level of new vocabulary- especially technical terminology-almost paralyzing” (Vardell et al. 2006, p. 737).

Positive relationship between reading in L1 and L2 comprehension 17 more content- related L2 vocabulary more background knowledge in content area L1 reading in related area more content-related vocabulary in L1 Intentional learning of related L2 vocabulary Better comprehension

At a library at a Japanese school 18

Books available at Japanese school (in proportion) 19

Number of books available at Japanese school 20

Number of books checked out by each grade at Japanese School over 9 weeks 21

The proportion of fiction and non-fiction books checked out at Japanese School over 9 weeks 22

Recommended proportion of books at school libraries 23 Source: Gakkou Tosyokan Kihon Tosyo Mokuroku, 2009

Practical suggestions for the teachers at Canadian schools 24  The question is not if bilingualism gives students advantages or disadvantages, but the important issue in the classroom is to take advantage of the bilingualism of your students because it is the reality.  ESL students not as someone needing help, but as experts who has access to things written in their L1.  Parents of these students are experts in doing so as well.  But they need to be able to identify the content areas that they can contribute in teaching their children/class.

25  Provide the parents with enough resource to find out what their children are studying at school. Keep them updated.  Provide them with the vocabulary lists required in comprehending the texts. Encourage them to look up these words in bilingual dictionaries and provide explanations to that in their L1. Practical suggestions for the teachers at Canadian schools (Cont.)

26  Be aware of what the students are studying under Ontario curricula.  Make the link between what they learn at Canadian schools and at heritage language schools explicit. Practical suggestions for the teachers at heritage language schools

27  Help children learn new concepts in both languages at the same time.  Provide related readings in L1.  Explain important concepts in their everyday languages as well we introducing more formal languages. Practical suggestions for parents

28  Have enough materials in various languages available in topics related to their study in Ontario curricula. Make sure enough informative books are available, not just literature books.  Ask parents to help choose appropriate books for children. They have a better sense of the content and language quality of the books.  Be aware of what percentage of children speak what language as their first/heritage languages. Practical suggestions for the librarians

December 10, 2009 TESL Ontario Aiko Sano OISE/UT Thank you very much for listening! 29