Reading and writing

reading is getting meaning from symbols that represent the language we speak.

Parental Influence on Learning to Read - Children learn to speak by listening to the talk of parents and others around them. They can learn to read in much the same way. Young children can begin to learn to read by listening to a parent read aloud while looking at the print being read.

@@Phoneme Knowledge@@, Phonemes are @@small units of sound@@. Children learn, for instance, that words such as "boy" and "ball" begin with the same sound but that "hat" and "toy" do not.

^^Letter Name Knowledge^^. Learning to ^^identify letters by name^^ is another important skill.

%%Sound-Symbol Relationships%%. When children can %%associate the sound they hear in a word with the symbol, or letter, that represents that sound,%% they are learning sound symbol relationships.

Pre-School Language Program - Public or private preschool programs offer activities that range from those with academic objectives to those encouraging play activities alone.

Kindergarten Reading Readiness Programs- Pre-reading activities may include %%listening to and talking about stories and engaging in repetitive pattern rhymes, songs, and word games on a daily basis.%%

Phoneme Knowledge - Phonemes are ==small units of sound==. Children learn, for instance, that words such as "boy" and "ball" begin with the same sound but that "hat" and "toy" do not. They also come to know that there are three sounds in the word "cat." This pre reading skill can begin to be learned at home as parents talk, sing, and play word games with their children.
Letter Name Knowledge - ==Learning to identify letters by name is another important skill.== Children should be able to look at the single letter b, for instance, and say its name. Parents who talk about letters in signs, ads, and on grocery items, and who also ask children to pick out letters themselves, give children a big advantage in learning to read.
Sound-Symbol Relationships - When children can associate the sound they hear in a word with the symbol, or letter, that represents that sound, they are learning sound-symbol relationships. For instance, children may know that the first sound they hear in the word "dog" is represented by the letter d.

Developing Reading Fluency - Fluency %%means reading with speed and accuracy%%. The most effective and efficient way to acquire this advanced reading skid is for a youngster to read as much and as often as practicable.

Beginning Reading

In the 1990's, there were four dominant reading curriculum programs used in primary grade reading programs in the United States and elsewhere in the world where English is the language of instruction.
These programs are most often referred to as literature-based code emphasis, whole language, and eclectic reading curricula.

Literature-Based Programs - Reading textbooks, or readers, containing stories of literary quality with high appeal for children are the core of these programs.

They are written for specific grade levels. Selected vocabulary from each story is studied, and students learn a variety of reading skills as well.
These include word recognition skills, comprehension development, study and reference skills, and literary appreciation.

Code Emphasis Programs - Readers in these programs are also written for specific grade levels. The focus of student attention in these readers, however, is on phonics. Phonics is the intensive study of sounds, letters, and word elements such as consonant blends—br, bl, th—and vowel combinations—ou, oo, ea.

These programs are very structured. Children often learn to sound out individual words in isolation. Then they read stories that include examples of the same or similar words.

Whole Language Programs - have been growing in popularity since the mid-1980s Usually they do not have a designated grade level content, nor do they necessarily have a specific curriculum.

Instead of readers, library books or trade books, often called natural language books, are selected by students and teachers to be used for reading and classroom discussion. Studying "theme clusters" is a typical whole language classroom activity.
While studying a theme on rivers, for example, students may pursue related topics in the context of mathematics, science, social studies, health, and reading. Specific reading skills are learned as the need arises on an individual or small group basis.

Eclectic Reading Programs - These programs use materials and methods selected from various sources.

An eclectic program might include some features of any or all of the three programs described above. Most primary-grade teachers use components of many different curriculum approaches on a day-to-day instructional basis.

Special School Reading Programs - to assist pupils who are having trouble learning to read.

Most of these programs attempt to individualize instruction as much as possible. Staff teachers and psychologists use various tests to diagnose a student's specific problems.
Then a program of instruction is planned and implemented to meet the specific needs of that student.
Special reading programs may include early intervention, Reading Recovery, and all-day kindergarten language development.

Assessing Reading Progress - Standardized reading tests and other language evaluations are commonly administered in schools. Federally mandated tests known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress are administered every four years, and many states require their own tests at various grade levels. The results of these tests are most often used to determine the general progress of all students in the schools. When properly interpreted, however, they can be useful in assessing individual pupil progress in reading.

Developing Lifelong Readers - We learn to read at home and in school. We become fluent readers through positive home influences, supportive schools and teachers, and wise personal choices. The third and highest level of reading proficiency, literacy, is vital to an individual's intellectual and emotional development and to one's ability to make positive contributions to society.

Writing - a way to record and communicate feelings, experiences, and thoughts. Unlike speaking, writing enables people to give their ideas permanence.

The Writing Process - Each writer has his or her own approach to developing a piece of writing from idea to finished piece, but there are some common elements in writers' processes.

Finding an Idea - Writers' topics come from their own ideas, experiences, opinions, and beliefs. Use your journal to begin a list of possible topics.

Drafting - Most writers do not produce a finished work in one try. First, they outline their ideas in a preliminary version, or rough draft.

Revising - change the order of some sentences or paragraph so that your the meaning will be clearer.

Copyediting - After you are satisfied that your meaning is clear, you need to make sure that your writing is correct in spelling, punctuation, and grammatical usage.

Reading is an important language receptive skill because it increases one’s knowledge and
appreciation of life and its complexities.

Reading is the process of interpreting meanings of written or inscribed signs and symbols as received through the eyes like letters, numerals, punctuations, illustrations.

Writing is the process of inscribing visible symbols and representations of meaningful sounds and quantities such as letters, numerals, punctuations.

Writing is an important language productive because it helps preserve knowledge and values about life and its complexities.

Reading is a language skill which can be developed through constant practice.

Pre-reading stage aims to induce the readers’ motivation to read and to activate their schema or background knowledge. Activities done during this stage include previewing, freewriting, surveying, questioning, making, assumptions about the author, identifying the purpose, and selecting a reading system such as SQ3R (survey, questions, read, recite, review).

While-reading stage, you may ==reread the text until you fully understand its meaning==. The specific skills in this stage include getting the meaning of words through context clues, predicting, inferencing, monitoring, comprehension, annotating the text, and reflecting.

Post-reading stage. The skills include reflecting, summarizing, paraphrasing, drawing, conclusions, making graphic organizers, and journal writing.

BASIC READING SKILLS

Rapid Reading – aims to locate specific information or main ideas in a very short span of time. Examples of this include skimming and scanning, which are both pre-reading skills. a. Skimming – When you try to get the general ideas by reading through the text quickly, what you do is skimming. It is a ==type of quick reading which aims to get the main idea and to get the overview of the material.== It is usually done when reading newspapers, magazines, books, and letters.
b. Locating the main idea – It involves ==the identification of the central message of a reading selection.==
c. Scanning – It is a quick reading strategy which aims to get specific information from a given text. This is useful in locating the specific name of a board passer, looking for an old email in your inbox, or checking specific information in a graph.
Previewing – is %%a skill wherein a reader looks over a material and focuses on the information he/she find relevant.%% Previewing also allows readers to set the purpose and link the content of the material to their background knowledge. This is during pre-reading stage.
Literal Reading – involves %%the understanding of ideas and facts that are directly stated in the printed material.%% Skills under this category include note-taking, paraphrasing, and summarizing. These are done in post-reading stage.

. Summarizing – This involves condensing a lengthy text into a shorter passage which is usually 15 to 30 percent of the source material.
b. Paraphrasing – restating ideas from the original text.

Inferential Reading – refers to %%the process of deducing facts and ideas not directly expressed in the text. It is also known as “reading between the lines”%%. This skill includes making generalizations, inferences, and conclusions. This is applied during while-reading stage.
Critical Reading – refers to %%the close and thorough evaluation of the claims in the text in terms of relevance, validity, and logic. This skill includes distinguishing facts from opinions and detecting logical fallacies.%% As with inferential reading, critical reading happens in the while- reading stage.

TYPES OF READING

Developmental Reading – A systematic instruction which aims to develop the students’ reading skills.
Pleasure Reading – a more passive type of reading that primarily aims to provide enjoyment and entertainment.
Functional Reading – designed to help students learn basic functional reading ability
Remedial Reading – Aims to correct the effects of poor teaching and poor learning

What is Linguistic?

Linguistics is the “scientific study of human language”.
It is concerned with how language is formed-“from the sounds and gestures of speech up to the
organization of words, sentences, and meaning”- and how it works.
It is also concerned with “the relationship between language and cognition, society, and history”.
It is also a complex structure built up of smaller units connected to each other.

Sentences are ==the largest unit in linguistics that shows grammatical structure.== Sentences are made up by combining the correct words based on the rules of grammar.

What is Discourse?

Originally the word “discourse” comes from the Latin word ‘discursus’ which stands for
“conversation, speech”.
It is an utterance, talk, speech, discussion, and conversation; an extended expression of thoughts or ideas.
Discourse is a term used in linguistics to refer to a continuous stretch of (specially spoken) Language larger than a sentence- but within this broad notion, several different applications may be found.
Discourse is language “above the sentence”.
It is a form of social practice in which language plays a central role.
It is a unit that is larger than sentences. It has a structural pattern that holds more meaning than a sentence.
Words are larger than letters, sentences are larger than words, and discourses are larger than sentences.
Discourse is focused on how we connect sentences together. A discourse is mainly about how language is used to connect sentences together so that it carries more meaning than a single sentence.

What is Text?

A large unit of written language.
A group of ideas put together to make a point or one central idea.
Has structure which requires the ideas in the discourse to be relevant to each other.
An actually connected discourse.
Properties of a Well-Written Text

Organization

Refers to the arrangement of ideas in a text
Creating an outline of ideas before you start writing can help your work become organized.
Outline- provides a format in which ideas can be arranged in a hierarchy- that is , it distinguishes the
general ideas from the specific or subordinating ideas.

Coherence and Cohesion

Refer to the connection of ideas and connection between sentences and between paragraphs

In order for you to assure coherence and cohesion, you need to use transitional or cohesive devices.

Appropriate Language Use- refers to the acceptable style of language for a particular form of text.
Proper Mechanics- refers to the conventions of writing which includes capitalization, punctuation,
spelling, numerals, abbreviations, acronyms and contractions.
Morphology

the study of words, how they are formed, and their relationship to other words in the same language.
Analyzes the structure of words and parts of words, such as root words, prefixes, and suffixes.
Morpheme
%%The smallest grammatical unit in a language.%%
Two Types of Morpheme:

Free Morpheme- can function independently as a word
Examples: house, cat, blood
Bound Morpheme- a word element attached to a root word (the main part of a word) to give it another meaning.

cannot function independently as a word
Examples: affixes (prefixes and suffixes)
Affix- a morpheme that is attached to a root word to form a new word

Prefix- a morpheme that comes before a root word
Ex.:
Auto- (automobile)
In- (incorrect)
Over- (overchange)
Suffix- a morpheme that comes after a root word
Ex.:
-ful (forgetful)

ish (childish)
ive (active)
A text is a connected discourse, which ==means that all ideas in the text must be related in the sense that they would express only one main idea==, or that the text must have unity by combining all ideas to