Return-Path: <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id i89GQ9R07608; Thu, 9 Sep 2004 12:26:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 12:26:09 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <1ee.2a338a47.2e71dd30@aol.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: RSStone74@aol.com To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-4eff@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-4EFF:2831] ESOL and Flawed Reading Theory X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: 9.0 for Windows sub 5113 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Status: O Content-Length: 3284 Lines: 53 I've monitored discussions on the NIFL list serv for well over a year and find the ESOL discussion the most intriguing. The two most significant challenges faced by ESOL students: 1) the language barrier itself and 2) Western reading theory that says the focus of reading development needs to be on decoding and individual word identification rather than on the synthesis of ideas as expressed in two different languages. There is quite a paradox there, if you stop to think about it. There isn't an excellent reader on the planet who reads by using decoding as the primary reading strategy. It's laborious and inefficient -- yet, it is the increasingly required strategy for beginning reading instruction. ESOL kids (including children growing up in close-knit Native American cultures and other cultures that are isolated by cultural communication differences, low-literacy, and poverty) are routinely guided through decoding and word identification exercises that contribute to their reading problems. With less exposure to reading in the home than other children, these kids have little choice but to follow the reading-as-decoding model. Such exercises divert these students from what is the true main event of reading -- the identification of ideas communicated by authors. ESOL students require strategies for linking ideas expressed in their own languages with ideas expressed in English, their second language. Ideas are not expressed through decoding and individual words. They are expressed through sentence structure and culturally-oriented word choices. A reading methodology being used by a growing number of tribes and public schools with a high percentage of ESOL students is focusing on the identification of ideas rather than individual words. Many of these students are eliminating their reading problems in a matter of months rather than years. Make phone calls and ask these schools about the success of this reading intervention: Decatur High School, Decatur School District, Decatur, Texas Highline High School, Highline School District, Burien, Washington Mount Rainier High School, Highline School District, Burien, Washington Union Gap School, Union Gap School District, Union Gap, Washington Tranor Middle School, Washoe School District, Reno, Nevada Over 100 schools are using the methodology, including a half-dozen tribal schools. It's working. Yet, because the methodology disagrees with current popular reading theory, academicians dismiss it as a joke. It is no joke. The methodology is demonstrating that the majority of reading problems can be eliminated quickly and efficiently, including problems associated with ESOL -- but not by continuing to cling to old ideas about reading and reading development (decoding and individual word identification as the main events of reading). ESOL students face the same core problem as English-speaking students: reading theory that is grossly flawed. But ESOL students and students from cultures hindered by low-literacy have an additional barrier -- families that, because of low literacy, have no choice but to trust that educators know what they are doing. Please -- think about it. Rhonda Stone Executive Director The Literacy Alliance RSStone74@aol.com
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