Philippine Normal University

National Center for Teacher Education

College of Graduate Studies and Teacher Education Research

Linguistics in Reading

Final Examination

BONJOVI H. HAJAN
M.A.Ed in English Language Teaching
September 17, 2017
1. Using the interactive reading framework below, explain the role of linguistics (and its
core areas) in reading instruction and learning.

Reading is both a mental and a social phenomenon. Knowledge on linguistics and its core
components is pivotal in understanding complex reading materials faced by ESL learners in the
reading contexts. The interactive reading framework shown above seeks to integrate both
psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives of reading, meaning the ability of the reader to
make meanings depends heavily on his mental mechanisms to process the written texts and the
backgrounds where he is from as a reader.

The mental mechanisms I am asserting here requires the good grasp of some linguistic
elements such as the knowledge on morphology (word level), syntax (sentence level mostly
dealing with structure), and semantics (the concern of meanings). This suggests that reading
instruction should devote ample time in activating students’ prior knowledge and in determining
the knowledge gap from which the teacher can bridge. Complex sentences, for example, may
necessitate students to spend more time than usual to process the information because they are
not structurally trained. In this situation, chunking as a reading strategy may help accomplishing
the goal towards comprehension.

Furthermore, the reading backgrounds I have emphasized above is much likely related to
the sociolinguistic aspects that the students (readers) are accustomed to—meaning, being able to
phrase complex sentences with the help of syntactic parsing is not enough for the students to
make sense of what they read, instead it is necessary to go beyond and look at sentences from a
broader perspective. This is where pragmatics, discourse and sociolinguistics (where meanings
are generally based on contexts) become relevant. The process of meaning-making in reading
will not be successful without the touch on these three higher components of linguistics. The
reading teacher should see to it that he or she takes into account the background of the students
when deciding which reading materials to use, otherwise, the students though morpho-
syntactically aware may find it difficult to decipher meanings.

The whole process of reading is so complex that it requires an integrated knowledge on

every aspect of linguistics for linguistics forms the bedrock of language teaching, including
reading.
2. Compare the teaching of reading in a first language situation with that in a second
language situation. Describe how the understanding of basic linguistic concepts helps a
reading teacher in first and second language reading instruction.

Traditionally, Chomsky has claimed that every child is gifted with the mechanism in his
brain to process linguistic complexities, and he called this, Language Acquisition Device or
widely known as LAD. Emerging ideologies such as behaviorism and interactionism, however,
started questioning this theory since language acquisition must go beyond what is implicitly
taking place inside the brain and what the brain needs in supplementary to reinforce and enhance
reading successfully.

If learning to read in the first language just as when we were kids is grueling, how much
more difficult is it to learn reading the second language where sounds, words and phrases are
completely absurd and queer?

In the context of second language teaching, reading teachers are challenged with day-to-
day instructions. Knowledge on linguistics is a definitely huge benefit that aids reading teachers
to address reading issues seen among ESL learners. In this connection, I would like to take into
full account few important hypotheses proposed by Krashen (1982).

The first hypothesis is the acquisition-learning distinction which Krashen regards the
most fundamental of all the hypotheses. The acquisition-learning hypothesis tackles the
principles underlying between language acquisition and language learning. Acquisition and
learning are two distinct sides of an identical coin and, therefore, their uses insofar as second
language is concerned must not be interchanged. Acquisition here refers to the unconscious way
of learning the language. It happens in a non-tutored set up and the child is not actually aware
that he is learning but he has this right “feel” of the sound grammaticality. On the other hand,
learning is described as a conscious process of acquiring the language. There is a tutored or
formal set up and the child “knows” that he is learning certain grammatical rules. In connection
with teaching reading, we should integrate reading activities which make students experience the
real-life situation where language is used naturally in such an authentic environment. The second
hypothesis concerns the study of language order or the reality about how language should be
approached, the natural order hypothesis. It maintains that the acquisition of language occurs in
an expected order. This is true to both first language acquisition and second language acquisition.
This notion implies that our reading instruction should be inductive starting from the very basic
grammatical prompt to a more complex cue. This can be supported through carefully planned
instructional activities that are well organized in terms of difficulty level where bottom-up
approach precedes the top-down approach. The third hypothesis extends the reach of the
acquisition-learning distinction. While there are two separate processes of acquiring and learning
the language, it is important to note how the processes are used in L2 performance. The monitor
hypothesis seeks to describe ways how a child governs and manages the learning of the
language. This hypothesis is responsible for self-correction and repairing while learning is in
progress. Here, reading teachers should give more time for students to reflect on their mistakes
rather than correcting them right there and then. While feedback means a lot to students, the way
it is provided to them must be cautiously thought of. With the monitor hypothesis comes the
input hypothesis. The input hypothesis attempts to answer what is perhaps the most significant
question in our field, and gives an answer that has a latent impact on all areas of language
teaching, especially reading. The significant question here is: how do we acquire language? If the
Monitor hypothesis is correct—that acquisition is central and learning more peripheral, then the
goal of our reading instruction should be to encourage acquisition. Lastly, the affective filter
hypothesis pioneered by Dulay and Burt (1977) relates how affective factors come in play during
the course of second language acquisition. This supposition regards motivation, self-confidence,
and anxiety. As English teachers, it is of utmost price to not only provide a comprehensible
input, but also create a learning atmosphere that is non-threatening. This is to condition learning
and encourage student to learn more. In connection with teaching reading, it is worth the
inclusion to design reading activities that foster motivation and confidence while eliminating
anxiety.

Those being said, the following approaches are important to be incorporated in second
language teaching with no exception to reading: Grammar Translation Approach where it deals
primarily with explanation of a grammar rule, with example sentence, vocabulary presented in
the form of a bilingual list, a reading selection emphasizing the grammatical rules and the
vocabulary, and exercises designed to provide practice on the grammar and vocabulary of the
lesson; Audio-lingualism where it is a sound pedagogical approach that focuses the students'
attention away from the new structure, emphasizing mimicking (Lado, 1964); Cognitive-code
Approach which is nearly resembling grammar-translation, but differs to some extent in a way
that Cognitive-code seeks to help students develop all four major language skills, specifically
reading rather than fairly focus on literature in the target language which is the concentration of
grammar-translation; Direct Method where the instructional approach is inductive because the
goal is for the students to guess, or work out, the rules of the language; and the Natural Approach
treating acquisition favorably over learning where the objective of the course is semantic,
meaning the process is geared toward enabling students to talk about ideas, perform tasks, and
solve problems rather than solely analyzing language structure which is the primary concern of
the direct method.

In summary, although reading alone is an intricate process and to instill the skill to
students is far from being just complex, second language teachers need to be equipped with
deeper understanding of linguistics as the backbone of teaching and pedagogical approaches
anchored on language teaching and learning as a stylistic complement to the content of teaching.
For first language teachers, teaching reading is also a challenge but not as much as it is in second
language context. The hypotheses and theories mentioned above can be a great consideration for
both first language and second language teachers in teaching skills in English, especially reading.
3. Develop a research problem with corresponding (three) research questions relevant to
the study of Linguistics and Reading. Back this up with a minimum of two theoretical
concepts that is cogently discussed.

Reading competence has been reasonably an issue in the Philippines. Luz (2007)
corroborates this occurrence pointing out that in elementary schools, particularly in the Division
of Manila, test scores from Phil-IRI (Philippine-Informal Reading Inventory) disclosed that only
one-sixth to one-third of pupils have the ability to read independently at the desired grade level.

There are several reasons for reading failure. However, one thing that is always of
interest is how teachers in the reading classroom make the students learn and master the desired
skill. Thus, careful inspection on what is happening in the reading contexts is necessary since
student are expected to learn the skill first from the formal learning environment with the proper
guidance of the reading teachers.

As proposed by Kuhn and Stahl (2004), chunking is one important ingredient in reading
fluency with the benefits for strengthened processing speed (Yubune, 2012; Nishida, 2009; Ellis,
2003; Newell, 1990); enhanced reading comprehension (Ellis, 1996, 2001; Tuchiya, 2002;
Ushiro, 2002); and the stimulation of direct reading with direct understanding (Shiokawa, 2008;
Terashima, 2002).Tenma (2002) pointed out that without much knowledge on how to parse
certain words, the learner is likely to have difficulty understanding where one semantic unit
begins and another ends. Interestingly, even if the learners carry out phrase processing, when
adding information from newly read chunks to the previously read English text, they fail to
understand the relationship between the new and old chunks without knowledge of the syntactic
structure—thus, leading to the misinterpretation of text. It follows eventually that without the
needed skill in chunking, when students encounter long, complex sentences, they have the
tendency to take so much of their time to process the information without the guarantee of
comprehension. The teaching of the English language skills, specifically reading should focus on
low-level processing, including vocabulary, phrase/syntactic structures, and filling knowledge
gaps.
 Thus, I would like to consider one essential aspect which is phrase and sentence
processing. Since failure in reading is largely rooted in the way learners deal with the syntactic
structure, an investigation of a strategy that aids in processing such a complex syntactic structure
which, in turn, has a potent impact on comprehending the text becomes relatively indispensable.
This brings me to the proposal of the research study entitled “Chunking As a Strategy to Improve
Reading Comprehension of Grade 11 ESL Students.”

In this study, my goal is to look into the effectiveness of chunking as a reading strategy in
improving reading comprehension of Grade 11 ESL students. In particular, I would like to
address the following research questions:
1. What does the reading comprehension of Grade 11 ESL students portray?
2. Does chunking as a reading strategy have an impact on reading comprehension of these
students?
3. Does chunking as a reading strategy have an impact on the development of chunking
skills among these students?
4. Develop a lesson plan for teaching language/reading using the story The Wimmy
Wuggen & the Moggy Tor. The lesson plan in Reading, which should consider
instruction in any Linguistics areas/branches discussed in the class (i.e. phonology,
grammar, semantics, etc.), must highlight comprehension instruction.

“The Wimmy Wuggen & the Moggy Tor”

Once upon a time, a wimmy Wuggen zonked into the grabbet. Zhe was grolling for poft because
zhe was very blongby.
Thw wimmy Wuggen grolled and grolled until zhe motted a moggy Tor.
Zhe glined to the moggy Tor, “Ik am blongby and grolling for poft. Do yum noff mehre ik can
gine some poft?”
“Kex,” glind the Tor, “klom with ne, wimmy Wuggen. Ik have lodz of poft in ni bove.”
So the Wuggen womt with the Tor to hiz bove. Dhem and Wuggen glind to the Tor, “Vhat kind
of poft do yum habt?”
And the moggy Tor glind, “Yum Wuggen zar excellent poft!”

(Please see the succeeding pages for the lesson plan)

 Lesson Plan

I. Learning Objectives:

After this lesson, pupils are expected to do the following:

1. familiarize with unfamiliar terms used in the selection;
2. create meanings using unfamiliar words through context clues;
3. characterize the characters in the selection; and
4. draw a story map based on the read selection.

II. Subject Matter

Topic: Vocabulary: “The Wimmy Wuggen & the Moggy Tor”

Reference: Textbook
Material: PowerPoint presentation
Values: Vocabulary development, Appreciation of the Characters

III. Procedure

A. Introduction
Greetings
Good afternoon, class! Have you taken your breakfast already? Please arrange your chairs and sit
up properly.

B. Motivation

This morning class, we will start with our lesson on Vocabulary. However, before we begin, I am
going to show you a very short video. I want you to watch the video and pay close attention to it
because afterwards, I will be asking the class a couple of questions.
Video presentation (Teacher presents a short video clip taken from Tom and Jerry Episodes on
YouTube).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UL-h7k6HgA
After watching a 3-minute video clip, the teacher asks the following questions:
a. What is your observation about the video/ what can you say about the video?
b. What can you say about the characters in the video? What are they doing?
c. What is the role of Tom? What about Jerry?
d. What is the relationship of Tom and Jerry in the story? How close are they?

C. Unlocking of Difficulties

This morning class, we will be reading a story entitled “The Wimmy Wuggen & the Moggy
Tor” but before that, I have sets of words here which you need to be familiar with so you will
understand the story.

Zonked Poft
Grabbet Blongby
Grolling Motted

D. Instruction/Delivery
Now that you have learned the unfamiliar words from the list, I will be grouping the class into
four, each will be given the copy of the text.
The Wimmy Wuggen & the Moggy Tor”

Once upon a time, a wimmy Wuggen zonked into the grabbet. Zhe was grolling for poft because zhe was very
blongby.
Thw wimmy Wuggen grolled and grolled until zhe motted a moggy Tor.
Zhe glined to the moggy Tor, “Ik am blongby and grolling for poft. Do yum noff mehre ik can gine some poft?”
“Kex,” glind the Tor, “klom with ne, wimmy Wuggen. Ik have lodz of poft in ni bove.”
So the Wuggen womt with the Tor to hiz bove. Dhem and Wuggen glind to the Tor, “Vhat kind of poft do yum
habt?”
And the moggy Tor glind, “Yum Wuggen zar excellent poft!”

In a group, you are tasked to read the story silently for 5 minutes and afterwards, I will read the
text aloud and pose questions. Each group should be ready to answer my questions. Your
answers will credited with points and added to your daily score card.
(Thorough discussion follows)

E. Practice
I want you to write a paragraph or two about the characterization of the characters in the story.
Use the words you learned from the story.

F. Enrichment/Application
This time, within the group, you will draw a story map of what you have learned from the story. I
will give each group a manila paper and coloring materials. I want you to be as creative as you
can be. This activity will be allotted for only 10 minutes. After you have drawn your story map,
the group leader will show it to the class and explain the concept of your story map.