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UNIVERSIDAD MAYORFACULTAD DE EDUCACIÓN
PEDAGOGÍA EN INGLÉS PARA EDUCACIÓN BÁSICA Y MEDIA
A STUDY ON TEACHING AND DEVELOPING READING SKILLS FOR PUBLIC ELEMENTARY EDUCATION.
Seminario para optar al título profesional de Profesor de Inglés para Educación Básica y Media y al Grado de Licenciado en Educación
Herrera Bustos Elizabeth del CarmenManríquez Escobar Javier EnriqueOyarzún Soto Ramón Cristóbal EnriqueRíos Rosales Guillermo PatricioVéjar Boitano Juliette Silvia
Profesor Guía: SR. Ricardo Cornejo Meza.
2008
INDEX
1.1. INTRODUCTION
…....................................................................................................PAGE 1
1.2. PROBLEM. Development of the linguistic skills; A sociocultural
and psychological challenge:
.......................................................................................................PAGE 2
1.2.1 PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY LIMITS IN
ELT
........................................................................................................PAGE 4
1.2.2. PROBLEM SUBSTANTIATION
……………………………………................................................PAGE 5
1.2.3. RELEVANCE OF THE PROBLEM
………………………………………............................................PAGE 6
1.3. THESIS OBJECTIVE
.......................................................................................................PAGE 7
1.4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
……………………...………….....................................................PAGE 8
1.5.METHODOLOGY
……………………........................................................................PAGE 9
1.1. INTRODUCTION
We belive that in Chile, Schools in general present
shortcomings in the teaching of English as a second language, specially
the Public Municipal schools; there exist many reasons that might be
causing this problem.
A direct influence of the cultural and familiar environment
take place across the language learning processes in education.
It was demonstrated that the families of low sociocultural
level use very simple phrases and concrete vocabulary.
This restricted language seems to be reinforced by over
protecting attitudes that does not favour the dialogue with these children.
The high level of working out or absent parents, added to a
poor use of language in children of low socio-economic range impact in
the school adaptation and is an obstacle in learning to cognitive skills
like reading or calculating .
Children who learn to speak assimilates the "sound" of the
words; but not only that, its meaning and its way of organizing them, the
grammar or natural structure of a language, which determines also a way
of thinking.
The differences in the development of the language reflects
also the development of thought, which plays an important roll in their
school education.
1.2. PROBLEM
Development of the linguistic skills; A sociocultural and
psychological challenge:
Numerous children, who come from socioeconomic
disadvantaged strata, do not manage to continue successfully trough
school programs in the first years, although they may have the same
intellectual capacity as their pairs in Private education, because they enter
to the basic school at a level of development of the linguistic skills that
do not allow them to carry this learning out successfully.
Often this problem is supported in a long term, with
educational consequences that exceed learning of the reading. Juel (1998:
23) sustains that “The probability that a child remains backward reader at
the end of the fourth year, if reader was slowed down at the end of the
first year, is 88 %” .
According to this numbers, serious presence of this problem
is seen in pupils of NB5. Numerous investigations show that in some
persons, the initial difficulties to learn to read are ballast supported
during long years, and this extends troughout their adult life.
It has been demonstrated also that a direct relation exists
between, school premature desertion, course failure or year repetition and
the learning level of reading and calculation during the first basic years.
In accordance with information contributed by Doctor
Amanda Céspedes (1996: 56) “20 % of the children in school age,
presents a verbal inability that can go from light to severe, this
percentage rises up to 40 % in sociocultural low levels.”
The majority of the unskilful verbal children might manage
to read and to write in NB1; but this learning is not instrumental, it does
not serve them to acquire information from written texts. These children
are not dyslexic, they are functionally illiterate.
As consequence of these inabilities, children presents:
1.-Indifference, rejection or franc distaste towards reading.
2.-Poor comprehension of the language, both oral and written.
3. - Poverty in his expression, both oral and written.
4. - Severe disortography.
And here we are talking of learning a first language.
1.2.1. PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION AND STUDY LIMITS IN
ELT
Our Thesis investigation will be focused directly in one of
the teaching-learning processes that presents the most evident difficulties,
both for native and non-native students of English, the Reading Skill,
and we will concentrate our effort in expossing that dificulties related to
7th and 8th Grade Elementary Education, NM5 and NM6 in Chilean
Public Education.
The main focus of our investigation is going to be how ELT
strategies -designed by MINEDUC and suggested by the new theories on
reading skills acquisition- are known, being used and applied in public
schools. We will focus on the knowledge and understanding of the
syllabuses and learning progress maps (LPM). Considering these
instruments we will analyze especially how the reading skills are being
taught in practice.
1.2.2. PROBLEM SUBSTANTIATION
The gap between theory and practice in teaching is a
remarkable subject that has puzzled the minds of educators and
theoretists throughout history. Particularly in Chile there exists an
organism that vigilates and outlines the development of education for
public schools, MINEDUC.
The MINEDUC created a set of references for all schools in
Chile, the Syllabuses that give a fair account of the Mandatory
Minimmum Contents, the Main Aims both educational and emotional
for students in the Chilean system of education.
It is important to notice that compulsory education is a 12
years period in our country, it includes the entire school period for all
Chileans. So far this period has been divided in two large section,
elementary education and high school education. Elementary education
consists in an 8 years period were ELT is taught in the last four years,
including students from 11 to 14 years old. We will analyze the
development of ELT reading skills for the last two years of elementary
education, NB5 and NB61.
1 It´s important to mention that the educational sistem in Chile is almost unique,
Costly Paid Private schools co-exists with Public state, low budget, poorly financed
schools and with hybrid co-financed schools that may vary depending on their
administration and tradition. These three different types of schools not only compete
for prestige and access to the same superior educational system, but are also
meassured with the same government standards and ultimately, students are supposed
to know at least the same Mandatory Minimum Contents. It is been proven by
experiments in other nations educational systems that this type of educational politics
not only results in a failoure of the educational illustrated-democratic premises, wich
are to educate all men as equally born with same rights and potentiallities, but this
systems accentuates the cultural differences in social classes.
1.2.3. RELEVANCE OF THE PROBLEM
It is not a wild chance to choose reading skills´ teaching for
a close analysis; it derives from the dispositions and proposals for ELT
that the MINEDUC has set. Last year (2007) the MINEDUC in a joint
effort with various universities and schools all through the country
presented a set of LPM. These Maps have only considered the reading
skill for ELT. That is one important reason for this investigation. We will
consider the new developments for teaching reading skill developed by
methodologists in English speaking countries, considering specially the
Searchlight Model applied in England and the ALTE framework
proposed by the european community. So, we have the considerations
and the theory given and presented by the MINEDUC in its Syllabuses
and LPM.
It has been proven that reading is a highly difficult skill to
be learned or taught. Following Krashen´s (1981) theory on second
language accquisition and Second Language Learning, that divides the
process of learning any language in four mayor skills: speaking,
listening, writing and reading, modern trends of theoretical
investigations, specially in teaching english, demonstrates that reading is
the hardest and slowest skill to be taught and learned. This is independent
from the types of intelligence a learner may have most developed, for this
is mostly related to the structure of languages. It is interesting to notice
that native speakers of english accquire reading skills in a compartive late
stage of their developmet compared to spanish or finish speakers, mostly
because english, as a written language, is logographical, and spanish or
finish are mostly fonological. The main trends in acquiering reading
skills points out that, although reading may be the best tool to learn a
For further discussion on this topic see www.opech.cl
second language, it must be used freely and commanded by learners´will
and dispositions.
This may be very hard when reading skills are becoming
mandatory and when instructors and learners have to face a non solvable
problem. How can we promote reading? Maybe it is not at all necessary
to teach reading skills.
1.3. THESIS OBJECTIVE
Our investigation will be centred in the existing gap between
theory and practice, especially in the application of the MINEDUC
syllabus and the real practice of teachers working at public schools.
Many questions arise from this perspective. How are the teachers using
the English syllabus? Does this syllabus include the new ELT
investigations and developments? Is the material provided by the
MINEDUC, i.e. the English texts and teachers’ guides suitable for
teaching reading skills? And if so, how does this material is being used
by teachers? Because of the wide array of these inquisitions we will
focus mostly in the teaching of reading skills.
If we focus on the practice of teaching reading skills we
have a far more simpler and delimitated field of investigation. Our
objective is first, to give a complete and fair account, with examples, of
the activities propossed by the MINEDUC for theaching reading skills in
ELT, and second, see how does this theory work in practice.
1.4. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
As presented before, we will work using the MINEDUC
Syllabus and LPM. We have translated this LPM and Syllabus in to
english for a closer study. Based on its own propossals we will also take
in account the ALTE framework and the few books on developing
reading skills included in the Syllabus and LPM bibliography.
We will also consider new developments in ELT, such as
comparative grammar and linguistics of writting. We present this work in
the belief that the natural approach to the teaching-learning process is the
most complete and correct way of approaching the study of any
language, and that it is also fun and exiting. Learning a second language,
such as english in our casespeciallity, can and must be. This intuition
arises in any learner´s mind, and it is highly evident when both
instructors and students are asked about their prefferences and
expectations. Reading might be difficult, but it doesn´t need to be
booring.
Finally, and as presented in the introduction, we have
acknowledge the most significant studies made in our country on
teaching reading skills, just to present a wide array of the constant
preocupation and difficulties language teaches may encounter when
facing the need to teach reading skills.
For the questionaries we have developed a methodology that
follows.
1.5. METHODOLOGY
With the purposse of obtaining relevant information that can
backup our investigation on the use and application of the MINEDUC
Syllabus we applied a questionnaire to active english teachers in chile
Public Educational System.
This teachers are all currently working in municipal schools
so we will keep their names in secret.
We are only asking for their career´s degree and years in
excersise.
Questions are built to be answered using alternatives, with a
hyerarchy based on frequency; focusing both in the methodological
aspects and the contents being taught.
The results will be presented and tabulated according to
minimmum and maximmum ranges for each question, with the objective
of obtaining a general view as close to reality as possible, related to the
truth of the application and use of the english syllabuses in NB5, public
education.
1.5.1. INVESTIGATION METHODOLOGY
The present study began consulting individual and in group
several bibliographies, in order to gain information, clarify concepts and
know the relationship between theory and practice regarding the
application of government programs related to English reading
comprehension in inside the classroom. With this objective, were revised
Ministry programs proposed for the development of comprehensive
reading ability in English for 7th and 8th years plus the Progress Maps
(MINEDUC).
This was the basis for the realization of the theoretical
framework, as a starting point for research work.
1.5.1. TYPE OF RESEARCH
This design is an ethnographic research, because is the
description of a social problem that directly affect the teaching learning
process.
"Etymologically, the term" ethnography "(from gr. Ethnos
people and grafìa = description) is equivalent to the science that seeks to
study and describe the races or peoples. These people are, therefore, the
starting point of any analysis. This may have different sides depending
on aspects of linguistic, cultural, etc.
Concurrently, the analysis may turn on a region, a
community or any other human group which constitutes an entity, whose
relations are governed by custom or by certain mutual rights and
obligations.
To gather the data and analyse them was applied a scientific
methodology. Despite, in the social sciences mathematical and statistical
methods of verification and hypotheses testing may be less stringent.
Being aware of understanding of human being and their society cannot be
reduced and done mechanically.
1.5.2. UNIVERSE
The universe studied was delimited to public schools from
different sector and municipalities of Santiago city, in “ La Granja”,
“Santiago centro”, “Lo Barnechea”, “Peñalolèn” and “San Miguel”. All
of them belong to the JEC program (full school day).
1.5.3. SAMPLE
The sample was limited to students at social risk. The
teachers selected have at least ten years experience working in public
schools and they are English teachers.
1.5.4. USED INSTRUMENT
We present the complete questionnaire applied in schools.
Questionnaire for English teachers level NB5 NB6 7° & 8°
grades.
Dear teachers:
The following survey will allow us to compile the mayor possible
information about your experience and praxis on reading skills
strategies applied to ESL students in our country.
Your answers will be a significant contribution for the pedagogic
improvement work in the above mentioned subsector of learning.
Remain confident of that this information will be kept in anonymity
and confidential.
When answering you have to consider neither right nor wrong
answers, but only opinions / actions that respond to your educational
contribution.
Thank you very much for your collaboration
Personal information:
Professional degree:
………………………………………………………
Grade you teach: …………………………………………………..
Years of service:
…………………………………………………………
Questionnaire for teachers
Instructions: for the following questions arrange the alternatives, from
1 to 5 considering 5 the major frequency and 1 as the one with least
frequency, if there are others you may add them.
1.-What types of activities do students prefer doing in English
class?
………. Handout completion
………. Listening comprehension activities
………. Reading comprehension activities
………. Speaking
……… Others? Which ones?
…………………………………………………………………………
…………………
2.-Which of the following activities would you add to work in
English classes ?
to improve them?
………. Implementation of a bilingual bulletin weekly.
………. Creation of a classroom library with a variety of English
texts.
………. Personal reading of short texts in English to share in classes.
………. Project development related to the topics studied in classes.
……… Others? Which ones?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------
3.-What type of materials do students use to work in English
class?
………. Notebook, pencils and English text book
………. flashcards
………. use of Spanish – English dictionary
………. English readings (books from the classroom library)
……… Others? Which ones?
…………………………………………………………………………
…………………
4. -In order of importance, which of the following materials, do you
consider the students should preferably use in reading
comprehension activities?
………. Notebook, pencils and English textbook.
………. Magazines, and newspapers, cuts
………. Spanish dictionary
………. Classroom library with English reading books
……… Others? Which?
5.-What cognitive skills do you consider are being developed by the
students in classes?
………. knowledge
………. Comprehension
………. Application
………. Analysis
……… Others? Which ones?
…………………………………………………………………………
………………….
6.- Choose the topics you prefer to work with your students in
NB5and NB6 levels?
____ Songs ____ Biographies
____ Letters ____ E-mails
____ Stories ____ Picture stories
____ Questionnaires ____ Comics
____ Others ........................ .......................... ....................... ...........
.................
7.- What Syntactic contents do you teach in NB5 level ?
____ Simple and compound sentences in affirm., interrog. and
negative forms .
____ Present Simple, present continuous.
____ Future: will and going to
____ Regular and irregular comparative and superlative adjectives
____ Past simple, ¨Past continuous,
____
Others.................................................................................................
................................................. ..............................................................
........
8. - What syntactic contents do you teach in NB6 level?
____ Word order in aff. Int. and negative forms of simple and
complete sentences
____ Present, past, future, past continuous and present perfect
tenses.
____ Connectives and, or, but & because.
____ Frequency adverbs: usually, often, seldom etc.
____ Others ------------------- ---------------- ---------------------
9.- Which Sequence do you follow in teaching Grammar ?
______ a) Presentation, practice, production
______ b) Practice, reading, translation
______ c) Translation, practice, rules
______ d) Others -------------- ----------------------- ------------------
10.- Which of the following techniques do you consider important
in teaching Reading?
____ Using authentic texts
____ Select and adapt stimulant texts connected with the students’
experiences.
____ Select brief and simple texts.
____ Use texts provided by students.
_____ Others -------------------------------- ------------------------
11. - To link the topic of the text with the students’ experience and
knowledge,
What activities would you choose in the pre-reading stage?
____ sharing in English or Spanish if necessary
____ sharing concrete material given by the students
____ Answering True or False / Yes or No questions.
____ Others ----------------------- -------------------------
----------------------
12. - To predict the content of the text , you prefer :
_____ using the title, illustrations or other visual tracks
_____ doing a brainstorm of ideas in Spanish.
_____ Solving exercises of True or False or Multiple choices
______ Others ---------------------------- --------------------------------
13. - What activities do the students usually do to
understand keywords?
_____ Identify them by means of illustrations, mimic or translation.
_____ matching an illustration with the word or written phrase.
_____ Using the dictionary or glossary given by the teacher.
_____ Identifying words by means of tracks given by the teacher.
_____ Others
14. - To Identify the central idea, in the stage of Reading , which
generic activities would you apply ?
______ Identify Characters
______ solving exercise of True or False, or Multiple choices.
______ following tracks given by the text.
______ Selecting or providing the title that better represents the
content of the text.
______ Underlying or copying the sentence that better reflects the
central idea.
______ completing sentences
______ Others ------------------------------- -----------------------------
15.- To locate specific information the students could...:
________ Correct errors of information
________ Solve exercises of True or False, or Multiple choice
________ Match information
________ Circle or underline information
________ Others --------------------------- -------------------------
16.- To consolidate morphosyntactics and lexical aspects you
would ask the students to:
_____ Classify lexicon by means of maps of words
_____ Label illustrations.
_____ Complete sentences with 2 or 3 words .
_____ Match sentences.
_____ Others ------------------------ -----------------------
------------------------
17.- To show reflexive or metacognitive learning you could ask
the students ( in the mother tongue ) :
_____ Establish relations between the content of the text and their
reality.
_____ Express opinions, agreements and disagreements.
______ Others ------------------------------
----------------------------------
1.6. DATA ANALYSIS
The analysis of data is presented as commentaries to each individual question according to the results we have gathered from our investigation.
1. Comments: it is very clear that students prefer listening
comprehension and games instead of reading comprehension
activities.
2. Comments: according to the questionnaire’s results
students and teachers do not really tend to work in developing reading
skills but give relevance to the personal reading of short texts and
songs
3. Comments: the materials preferred by students are the
classical non technical resources.
4. Comments: there is a clear tendency to use materials that
are not especially relevant in reading comprehension activities.
5. Comments: these results are showing a tendency to give
more importance to comprehension cognitive skill.
6. Comments: the highest preference infers a teachers’
tendency to prefer songs instead of those traditional reading
comprehension activities proposed by the syllabus.
7. Comments: it is clear that the teachers give priority to
teach simple and compound sentences forms more than adjectives and
English tenses
8. Comments: according to the results specified in this table
the teachers give more importance to word order in sentences than to
teach the English tenses.
9. Comments: it is clear that the majority of teachers give
the highest preference to the form PPP, presentation, practice and
production following the traditional class order
10. Comments: these results are giving a mayor importance
to the fact the teachers select and adapt texts for their students.
11. Comments: it is clearly observed here that the teachers
apply the learning strategies suggested by the syllabus.
12. Comments: the results observed here, make clear that
the teachers express the highest preference to visual resources
13. Comments: These results demonstrate that the students
mainly use didactic means or simply translate the texts
14. Comments: These results make clear that the teacher
mainly apply some of the generic activities suggested in the syllabus.
15. Comments: according to the results specified in this
table the students apply true or false and multiple choice exercises to
locate specific information, which is proposed in the syllabus.
16. Comments: there is a clear tendency to use words maps
to classify lexicon.
17. Comments: it is noticed that the teachers give the
highest preference to contextualize the texts’ contents, and express
opinions which is suggested by the syllabus.
1.7. CONCLUSIONS
The results obtained from the questionnaire applied to the
teachers, have provided important, and relevant information about the
teaching learning process inside the classroom, so we can get important
data to detect what kind of relationship there is in teaching reading
skills between the theory and practice.
The questions from 1 to 6 are referred to the practice
developed by students in the classroom. At this point there is a clear
tendency to develop the listening and speaking skills instead of
reading, but they give certain relevance to reading comprehension
because they utilize text book and personal short reading texts, which
is presenting an interest to teach reading comprehension. At the same
time these proof demonstrate that there isn’t enough use of new
technical resources like: computers, videos, electronic board, language
laboratory, etc…
On the other side, the teachers employ the textbook
provided by the Educational Ministry, but it is not the resource
preferably used by teachers and students in the practice.
Having in mind that, the cognitive skills more developed
are those of the first level expressed in the Bloom’s Taxonomy
“comprehension and knowledge” this result can be interpreted as there
is a difficulty to reach the others levels apply and analysis for example.
The topics preferred by the teachers are songs and stories which can be
explained like a clear difficulty to understand more elaborated themes,
or more over to say those that need certain grade of comprehension
followed by subsequent analysis.
It is observed, that the teachers give priority to teach simple
and compound sentences instead of do it with the English Tenses. If we
consider the fact of all languages are basically formed by structural
grammar in this case “verbal’s tenses” we may deduce that a student
who doesn’t manage this important knowledge must use a dictionary
more than necessary , so he/she may loose motivation and may finally
give up.
In order to obtain relevant information this study considers
to know, if the teachers manage the enough concepts to develop the
reading skills, expressed in the syllabus, and what grade of application
they exercise in the practice. It is clear that the majority of the teachers
interviewed apply the class order P.P.P. in their class planning; this
may be interpreted like there is current knowledge being applied by the
teachers. The fact they find out and select the text according their
students’ needs is an indicator of a professional work from teachers, or
maybe they are aware of the students’ great difficulty to read
comprehensibly the texts proposed in the students’ book.
Deduced from questions 11 to 17 we may say that teachers
manage the concepts to develop reading comprehension and they apply
some of the generic activities proposed by the syllabus.
Finally we may say that in the relationship between the
theory and the practice there is a certain grade of discordance which is
not supporting the English learning inside the classroom.
1.8. Basic Bibliography
MINEDUC ELT programs for basic education
MPA Sector Lenguaje y comunicación subsector Idioma Extranjero
Inglés. Mapa de Progreso de Lectura.
ALTE Framework for English Language. (www.alte.org)
Rose, Jim (editor) (2006). Independent review of the teaching of early
Reading.
Esther Usò- Juan, Martìnez- Flor, Alicia (Editors) (2006) Current
Trends in the development and Teaching of the Four Language Skills.
Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin- New York.
Grellet, Francoise, (1995),Developing Reading Skills, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge.
Nutall, Christine, (1996),Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign
Language, Heinemann, London
