Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
How instructions in phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics and syntax assist students
Devi Rambaran
How instruction in phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics and syntax assist students
As a science educator in a secondary school in the Caribbean, there are numerous problems that
are facing both teachers and students which impacts on the delivery of the curriculum. These
problems include and are not limited to school violence, absenteeism of students and reduced
contact time due to infrastructural problems. Added to this is the fact that many students that are
placed in the school are scoring below the 30 percent mark at the standardized Secondary
Entrance Examination (SEA). This score usually represent the students that have poor reading
and writing skills. From my experience, students who have reading and writing problems are not
able to do well in science. The new vocabulary and the need for higher order skills usually
challenge the students who are coming into the classes with poor literacy skills. Students are
required to read content material, follow instructions in laboratory experiments and write reports.
Students who cannot read and write fluently typically encounter problems which often lead to
frustration with the subject. The nature of literacy includes the spoken-written language
relationships and reading and writing as acts of communication and tools of learning.
To assist students with reading comprehension and writing, one needs to look at linguistics and
the varying branches of this field. Linguistics can be defined as the study of language which has
various branches which include phonology, orthography, morphology, semantics and syntax.
Each of these components plays a significant role in a childs ability to read and write.
Languages are composed of sounds that are assembled to form words which are combined to
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 3
form sentences, which are arranged to convey ideas. There are three basic elements that come
(i) To understand language, one must be able to hear, distinguish and categorize the
(ii) One needs to be implicitly familiar with the structure that constrains the way words fit
(iii) One must be able to understand the meaning of individual words and sentences being
Linguistic knowledge depends upon all three elements being synthesized rapidly and fluently.
Reading comprehension involves two main components- decoding and language comprehension.
If one of the above skills is not developed, children would not develop the comprehension skills
Phonology make use of phonetics (sounds of speech) to see how sounds are arranged in a
language. It investigates sound differences within a language and the sound patterns. It
essentially looks at how the sounds combine to form words and words in sentences. Phonology
for instance deals with hearing the differences between the spoken words sip and ship.
Additionally it involves being able to distinguish between similar phonemes when they are
embedded in the context of whole words. Phonological awareness is the sensitivity of the sound
structure of a language. The English language (with a few exceptions) is written out sound by
sound. For instance, to write the word dog, a child will listen to the individual sounds
(phonemes) and then use the symbols that represent the word. When a child becomes aware of
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 4
the fact that spoken words are made up of sounds, they are described as having phonological
awareness. This includes the awareness of rhyme, the awareness of syllables and the awareness
the relationship between speech and alphabetic orthography. Phonemic awareness is a more
specific term that falls under phonological awareness. This refers to the specific understanding
that spoken words are made up of phonemes, not just sounds for instance how many sounds are
in the word dog. A child learning to read will know that phonemes are the building blocks of
spoken words and they can be rearranged and substituted to make different words. In order to
read words in print, children must understand that speech is comprised of sound segments at the
phoneme level (Yopp & Yopp, 2000). Young learners need to hear sounds in words and link
those sounds to the printed language. They learn that it is easier to use larger chunks rather than
individual phonemes. Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness is what is necessary for
the child to understand that the letters in written words represent the phonemes in spoken words
(alphabetic principle). The alphabetic principle consists of the alphabetic understanding which
the knowledge is that letters corresponds to sounds and that words are composed of sounds. The
Unfortunately, it is a concept that many children often fail to grasp probably due to the lack of
phoneme awareness, which would result in children not understanding what letters in text
represents. Learning that there is a relationship between sounds and letters allow children to
apply these relationships to both familiar and unfamiliar words, and to begin to read with
fluency. Children who are not aware of letter names would not know letter sounds and in
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 5
recognizing words. Children can learn letter names by singing the alphabet song and also by
the use of rhymes. Phonemic awareness and phonological awareness are often confused with
phonics, but phonics is an instructional approach that emphasizes letter-sound relationships and
rules for pronunciation. Research conducted indicated that phonemic awareness is essential to
the process of reading and reading failure has been linked to the lack of phonemic awareness.
language rich environments. The quality and quantity of verbal interactions with young children
play a significant role in building reading readiness. As a science teacher in a secondary school,
may of the students that I encounter should have these skills developed by the time they entered
secondary school. However this is not the case as many of the students entering form one level
(grade six) have poor reading and writing skills. It is not uncommon for a student to reach the
CSEC examination level (grade 10/form five) and not be able to read or write at that proficiency
level. Children who are less skilled in reading comprehension demonstrate poor memory for
words that they have recently heard from a spoken discourse (Perfetti &Goldman, 1976). This
can definitely be seen in classes where in direct instruction, children are unable to recall what
hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks and punctuation. Most significant languages in the
modern era are written down and for such languages, a standard orthography has been
and British spelling in the case of English orthography. In the context of the Caribbean
classroom where traditionally the British version have been taught, the use of various textbooks
have resulted in students using different spelling of the same words such as favor and favour.
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 6
Orthographic processing is the ability to understand and recognise these writing conventions as
well as recognising when words contain correct and incorrect spellings. Children with weak
orthographic processing rely heavily on sounding out common words that should be in memory,
leading to a choppy and laborious style of decoding. These students are also more likely to have
difficulty applying knowledge of root words in order to decode a variation of a word and confuse
simple words like on and to when reading. Furthermore, poor orthographic processing will
almost certainly result in both a high rate of spelling errors and poor written expression.
Morphemes are the minimum meaningful units of a language. The study of how morphemes are
put together is called morphology (or morphemics) and is the segment of linguistics which deals
with the structure and form of the words in a language. Morphological awareness involves the
ability to manipulate the morphological units (i.e. morphemes) and the ability to identify root
words and their derived forms. It is the ability to understand the structure of a word and different
compounding, inflectional and derivational. Compounding refers to the formation of new words
by combining two root morphemes, for instance cow + boy = cowboy. In the context of science,
compound words occur in words such as armpit, backbone, breastbone and earache to
name a few. Many students that I have encountered have been able to decipher the meaning of
these words without having prior knowledge of these words. Notably weaker students usually
have more difficulties in pronouncing and deciphering the meaning of these words. Inflectional
morphology refers to syntactic or semantic relations between words without altering the meaning
of the word. For instance plural and tense agreement as in boys and loved . Derivational
awareness of word structure and sematic functional meanings taking into consideration the root,
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 7
structure, suffixes representing the inflectional and derivational processes (Kieffer & Lesaux,
2008). Morphological awareness develops throughout a childs time in school (Nagy, Diakidoy
and Anderson, 1993) and affects reading comprehension directly as it explained that
morphological awareness leads to increased breadth and depth of word knowledge which would
affect reading comprehension (Guo, Ying, Roehrig, Alysia & Williams, 2011). In a secondary
school setting it is expected that a childs vocabulary would increase while at school as they
would be exposed to several different subject areas. Despite this premise, there are many within
the school system that are not functioning at the reading and writing level that they should be.
External factors such as ill-equipped and untrained teachers to deal with poor readers and writers
and large class numbers to teacher ratio do nothing to aid children with literacy problems. As a
science teacher my goal is to effectively deliver content matter, however the additional challenge
of students with reading and writing problems does impeded the delivery of the curriculum and
requires an integration of spelling and writing prompts in the science lessons. English is a
example used by Chomsky and Hall (1968) describes this principle and how a child can use it to
read and make sense of words. The word muscle has a sematic relationship among words such
as muscular and musculature. Morphological awareness develops with exposure to oral and
written language which would result in older children having a stronger relation with reading.
Children use their understanding of morphology to learn new words and when they learn to read
a good understanding of morphology helps children spell and pronounce words correctly.
Content areas such as science provide a rich array of morphologically complex words that can be
exploited to improve students comprehension skills (Bauman, 2003). For the English language,
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 8
spelling skills are related to childrens growing awareness of how orthography reflects
Reading comprehension has been defined as the extraction of meaning from printed text (Gibson
& Levin 1975). There are two skills that are vital for understanding text and these are decoding
and semantic processing. The ultimate goal of language is to convey meaning. Semantics refers
to the study of how language conveys meaning. Phonology carries information that makes
spoken words distinct and syntax constrains the arrangement of words in language, semantics
refers to the information contained within the language. Semantics is a global term that
A childs vocabulary is greatly enriched when the child learns to examine the structure of words-
to examine words at the morpheme level. The child learns that words with common roots have
common meanings and that affixes influence the meaning of a word in specific ways. Semantic
knowledge therefore impacts a childs reading comprehension and fluent word recognition. This
can refer both to the size of vocabulary and depth of individual word knowledge. In the English
language, many words have multiple meanings, for instance the word duck. This can refer to
the noun (bird) or the verb (action). The more aware the child is about a word and its multiple
meanings, the more rapidly the word is processed. Semantics also affects the speed of accessing
Syntax refers to the study of the structure of language, the way words are arranged together and
the relationship between them. It provides meaning and helps minimize ambiguity. The rules of
English syntax prohibit rearranging words in a sentence in a haphazard way. The words in
English sentences are arranged in a fairly stringent structure. All languages have syntax,
although they are not the same. In no language however, is the word order completely free.
Words are combined in specific and restrictive ways. Syntax investigates how words combine
into successively larger structures to form phrases and sentences. There are four theories in
syntax:
Syntax can also help children figure out meanings for unfamiliar words. Chomsky (1971) found
that children who read a variety of sentence construction had enhanced comprehension and more
syntactic knowledge. This knowledge of how words are used within different syntactic context is
Reading is the product of two cognitive elements which are language comprehension and
refers to a childs ability to understand and draw references from speech that is in a language that
the child understands and it is at the level the child should understand. If a child is expected to
read English text, the child must understand spoken English adequately.
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 10
The problem of learning to read is made up of two components- language comprehension and
decoding. Even among children who have adequate language comprehension skills, there are
children who have difficulty reading because they have only mastered one of the two
components. To be a good reader, a child will need to understand what text is and how it works
and what it is used for. Researchers have found that a childs ability to decode words in the first
grade is an excellent predicator of the childs reading comprehension skill in the fourth grade.
Decoding refers to the childs ability to recognize and process written information. Many
children learn that certain symbols represent certain concepts and ideas. For example, when
children recognise the golden arches of a McDonalds restaurant, it represents the concept of
food. This is referred to as environmental print reading. Additionally, the child may only
recognize the word McDonald once associated with the golden arches but not without that
context. Perfetti (1984) states that only a reader with skilled decoding processes can be expected
to have skilled comprehension processes. To understand text, a child must first read the words
accurately. Decoding requires translating print into spoken words and includes knowledge of
sound letter correspondences and structural analysis (syllables, word roots, suffixes and
prefixes). Good readers decode with ease, however poor decoding is a common trait of poor
readers.
Carol Chomsky (1972) strongly supported the connection between linguistic knowledge and the
acquisition of written language for those who acquire reading easily. To her, a child enters
school with a great deal of knowledge about language and can be actively involved in the process
of learning to read. The more a child is exposed to the interaction of sound and letters, the more
the child is likely to become a proficient user of the language- both oral and written. The
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 11
common practice of parents speaking and reading to their unborn baby in-utero appears to have
relevance here.
Everything a child knows about the oral language contributes to the development of the written
language and access to all the processes needed for comprehension. This can be clearly seen with
students within the secondary school system in which they write in the same manner in which
they speak. The advent of social media content such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter has
added more problems with students writing proper and coherent reports.
Understanding meaning from the written text is crucial to effective reading comprehension.
Reading comprehension is the foundation to future academic learning in all subject areas;
enhanced vocabulary makes children confident in speaking and writing. For instance, students
within science class who have a wide vocabulary tend to write better laboratory reports than
students who have limited vocabulary. Like most skills, reading comprehension develops in
phases which are associated with elements which include phonemes, morphemes, syntax and
semantics. It is an active process that requires intentional thinking during which meaning is
Lexical knowledge refers to the knowledge which enables a child to recognize and pronounce
familiar, irregular words. This is developed throughout a readers life. The development of
lexical knowledge is most visible in children. Young readers start off as sight readers and when
the child recognises the limitations of memorizing whole words and shapes and starts
deciphering words. Eventually through experience with the words and feedback from teachers ,
Explicit instruction in multiple areas of linguistic development can propel childrens acquisition
reading is a multifaceted skill and is gradually acquired over years of instruction and practice.
Skilled reading is the fluent execution and coordination of word recognition and text
Increasingly strategic
LANGUAGE EXPRESSION
SKILLED READING
WORD RECOGNITION
Reading and writing are similar processed of composing meaning; practice with one contributes
to the success of the other. Within my context, I have had to employ simple activities such as
word sleuths, crossword puzzles, spelling quizzes and flash card games to increase students
science vocabulary. The aim is to increase their vocabulary skills so as to produce better
laboratory reports and essays. Effective planning by teachers ensures that reading, writing,
comprehension, composition and spelling lessons are linked. Writing is an effective way for
learners to demonstrate comprehension and give an option to show understanding of text. It is the
belief that instruction and support should be provided by the teacher. As teachers, there should
not be any assumptions about the students language comprehension skills in our classes. It
should be known that children in our classes do not necessarily come from similar linguistic
environments and may not have equal language development. It is also essential that the
classroom be a linguistically rich environment, for instance by means of charts, word games and
use of videos.
Professional development programmes for teachers can be used to strengthen teachers skills and
strategies in giving quality feedback- positive, encouraging and diagnostic. This can equip
comprehension within the classroom can incorporate teacher directed questions, student self
questioning, use of semantic organizers (graphic organizers) and student summarization of texts.
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 14
References
http://www.education.com/reference/article/syntax-semantics/
University.
Reading Comprehension Skill. Society for Research in Child Development, Volume 47 (No.1),
252-258.
McCutchen, D., Stull, S., Herrera, B., Lotas, S,. Evans, S. (2014). Putting Words to Work:
Perfetti, C., Landi, N., Oakhill, J. (2004). The Acquisition of Reading Comprehension Skills.
227-247.
READING COMPREHENSION AND WRITING 15
The Unfolding of Carol Chomsky: How insights into Childs language changed the development
of the Written Language. (2016).
Available via: https://ase.tufts.edu/crlr/documents/2009WolfGottwald.pdf