An analyse of the problems facing ESOL students in the area of reading and how the teacher can address these issues.
1.1 vocabulary is a fundamental aspect of a reading comprehension. According to Payne and Whittaker (2006, p.96) explains, comprehension skill is the basic of academic task which possible to be the important approach to collect information.
Having a range of vocabulary is very important that may help the learners to understand the text, according to,Shieh and Freiermuth (March -2010,p.111) researchers have that" a learner's vocabulary knowledge can be correlated predictable to performance of reading comprehension task" and could lead to develop their capability of guessing the meaning of the words from the context. The students who read regularly have higher rate of vocabulary knowledge than the others who almost do not read.
Reading comprehension is the significant of the skills. According to Crystal and Johnson (2003, p.6) believes “as skill reading is one of the most important”. Most second language learners face difficulties in the reading skills. Firstly, some of the learners could not understand the text because the students have limited range of vocabulary due to this fact the learners do not know how to use the strategies of reading. The teacher might help the learner during a guessing activity which encourage students attempt to know the meaning of difficult words related to the text, which is more sufficient. According to Hedge a (2008) indicates, by civilizing the process of guessing the meaning of the words from the text that is could help the learners to build up the abilities of guessing the meaning. but KERR has contradicted that (20 09, p..6), the learners must not using the processing of the guessing the meaning of unknown words form the text because they do not want to. Also using dictionaries provide the students with some information. According to Harmer (2004,p.172) proposes, using
dictionaries by the learners is helpful to collect data. This enables the learners to know how the language of the vocabulary has been structured. Nuttall has (2000,) argued that “it is wasteful to look up every new word because many of students use dictionary far too much”. Regardless of this point of view, dictionary is considered to be a great aid for students to know how each word related to each other and figure out the part of speech for any words
1.2 Secondly, learners have another problem with words which have different sets of the meaning.
Comprehension is the purpose of reading. Comprehension is the process of constructing meaning from a given text and applying that to the students background knowledge.
In order to enhance their vocabulary, to improve their comprehension of the text, students much first have background knowledge of basic definitions that will help them connect and build new vocabulary with former vocabulary. The students must also have the ability to look at the context of an unfamiliar word and be able to decipher the meaning based on the words or phrases that surround it. The foundational skills of accomplishing this is through studying early fundamental vocabulary words and then connecting new words with priorly known words of similar meaning. (Center for Research on Education, n.d.)
Using reading strategies successfully is important in constructing meaning from text. Good readers employ many strategic reading skills automatically throughout the reading process, before, during and after. Some of these skills are cognitive which involves cognition or thinking, while others are metacognitive involving reflection or thinking about thinking. Strategic readers employ both cognitive and metacognitive skills, including but not limited to, previewing text, understanding text structures, activating prior knowledge, making connections, making predictions, drawing inferences, summarizing, and monitoring comprehension (Tompkins, 2011).
The book is a practical and useful resource for teaching reading comprehension. A teacher can find a wide range of malleable strategies offering scaffolds and fostering students’ reading across all interdisciplinary areas. Each chapter offers a description, procedures, and reproducibles which can be adapted to the needs of ELLs. The strategies presented in the book help teachers plan for explicit and meaningful instruction; as a result ELLs will possess conceptual understanding of content knowledge and the ability of using various reading strategies supporting students’ comprehension Swan, M., & Smith, B. (Eds.). (2014).
English language learners are found in every state and number of English language learners are increasing every year. These English language learners come from a range of backgrounds. There are over 470 different languages included in the categorized group of English language learners, however 75 percent of the students that will be encountered in schools will have a home language of Spanish as stated by Linan-Thompson and Vaughn (2007). There are goals for effective practice of English language learners and are based on comprehension, learning, and student interest. In earlier grade levels students are taught skills to start a foundation on, such as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, and vocabulary. After achieving these skills it is possible to develop an English language learners literacy skills to be used in all content areas. According to August and Hakuna (1997) there are attributes that contribute to positive student outcome. These tributes include, explicit skill instruction, student directed activities, instructional strategies for enhancing understanding, opportunity to practice, student assessment, and a curriculum that is balanced. Students also learn content when the instruction is focused on routine, redundancy, and structure. Linen-Thompson and Vaughn (2007) states teachers who teach explicitly by modeling and explaining skills in the context can provide students the meta-cognitive thinking required by proficient readers.
Words could be mixed to develop phrases, clauses and sentences. Words can be parted by spaces in language composition. A word belonging to two or more specific purposes joined together is called a compound (e.g. a record player, a classroom, a second-hand). ( Webster’s and Cambridge Dictionaries).Words that belong to eight various word groups such as: nouns (apple), adjectives (green), pronouns (you), verbs (to write), adverbs (here), prepositions (before), conjunctions (while) and interjections (hey). At the most basic level, knowing of a word means knowing of its meaning and its form (Thornbury, 2002), lots of words have different significance and are crucial and of the upmost importance to have knowledge of them because they can be expressed differently in another language. They should be studied and learn them in which manner to express them.
“With strengthened reading skills, ESL/EFL readers will make greater progress and attain greater development in all academic areas (Anderson 1).”
That is the goal of being a fluent reader. Mrs. Baughman uses the components of a story to teach comprehension. The components of the story are the setting, the plot, the conflict, and the resolution. If students can easily pick out the answers for the components of a story then their comprehension is growing. Another way to teach comprehension is by using graphic organizers like Venn-diagrams, story maps, and cause and effect charts. Teachers can also ask questions to make sure students understand the text. Not only does the teacher need to ask questions, but so do the students. If a student can ask questions, and with guidance answer it themselves they understand the material. The same goes with summarizing texts. A good way to check comprehension is to see how well the students summarized the texts. Doing so, can show if they really understand the material or they are just reading without thinking about it. Group work is a good way for students to share their thoughts on texts and help explain it to others in an easier way. If students do not comprehend text then their reading skills for the future will not be good. Teaching comprehension is not by just asking questions. There are many ways to check it that give a better view on how students are
Learners are able to translate what is the intended meaning of the Reading Text 1
Reading is considered one of the most important skills that EFL students need to acquire. According to Bowman, Levine, Waite, and Gendron (2010), reading is important not only in developing language intuition and determining academic success, but also for completing certain task. However, one measure which is used to make the process of teaching and learning effective is related to selecting and adapting reading materials so that they can improve students' comprehension and vocabulary acquisition when they read. Thus, the teacher should provide the students with the texts that can encourage them to keep reading.
Zarei, Abbas Ali; Gujjar, Aijaz Ahmed (September 2012). The Contribution of Electronic and Paper Dictionaries to Iranian EFL Learner's Vocabulary Learning. International Journal of Social Sciences & Education;2012, Vol. 2 Issue 4, p628
Dadzie (2008 cited in Owusu & Acheaw, 2014) states reading is the ability to understand words that help students’ knowledge growth and develop. In addition, Weaver (2009) states that reading is a process to determine students’ brain, emotion and belief bring to get knowledge or information. From both of statements, it can be assumed that reading is an activity to understand text that determines students’ ability, intelligence to get or gain information of what they read. Likewise, following Cline, Johansen & King (2006) reading is decoding and understanding written texts. Decoding means how the students translate the text in order to understand the information from text. In addition, Tang, Carol & Weekes (2013)
In this information–driven age, preparing students to read a variety of texts with complete understanding should likely be one of our educational system’s highest priorities. Understanding is more than just the ability to produce information on demand (knowledge) or the ability to perform learned routines (skills). “Understanding is the ability to think and act flexibly with what one knows.” (Active Learning Practice for Schools, n. d.) A review of the literature in the area of reading comprehension of elementary-age students shows two principle areas of focus. There is a body of literature that examines the development of proficient vs. struggling comprehenders and another body of literature that compares methodologies for teaching reading comprehension.
Recently, people need to boost their skills with another thing, it is vocabulary. Students who learn English as L2 need to know vocabulary much in order to add their understanding about English words. In simple meaning, vocabulary is set of words in language that are known by that person. Cambridge Advanced Learners dictionary defined vocabulary as all the words known and used by a particular person. There are many advantages of having wide vocabulary, first it can express yourself better and impressing others. Second, vocabularies allow people to have finer distinction in their thinking. Third, vocabularies in the field of study allow people to think better and more productively about the aspect of the study. Fourth, having wide vocabulary make people are more accurately to describe something. Fifth, wide vocabulary also can make people have better job, salaries and friends because they have good self confidence. As we know before, there are four categories of vocabulary; reading vocabulary, listening vocabulary, speaking vocabulary and speaking vocabulary. Reading vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when reading and generally the largest type of vocabulary. Listening vocabulary is all the words he or she can recognize when listening to a speech by using tone, gestures, topic and context of the conversation. Speaking vocabulary is all the words he or she uses in speech and it is to be a subset of listening vocabulary. The last, writing vocabulary is words that are used in various forms of writing from formal to informal one. (Wilkins, 1972) once said “without grammar, very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary, nothing can be