1.Since L1 reading will influence L2 reading when learners reach the so-called “language threshold” in L2, how do we know that learners have acquired the language proficiency which proves that they have passed the language threshold? When a learner doesn’t reach the “language threshold”, should we not to teach them some reading strategies which they may use in their future reading? 2.Socio-economic status plays an important role in the development of children literacy. In the United States, we may see a lot of programs set to provide children with poor socio-economic status to improve their opportunities to become literacy as early as possible. I am just wondering whether there is any program here in Taiwan to help those poor children to develop their literacy.
Does anyone know what the concept of flow is? I understand the 12 characteristics of flow, but still not clear what it is. Is it sort of like “fluency” or “a positive feeling of believing one can achieve something after evaluating whether the task interests you or not”?
Maybe we could discuss Alderson’s (1984) famous question: “Is second language reading a reading problem or a language problem?”
Are there any sociocultural factors here in Taiwan that might have a negative affect over local ESL/EFL student’s ability to read in English, or improve their English reading abilities?
Can the Interdependence Hypothesis be applied to the Taiwanese ESL/EFL learning environment?
According to Attribution Theory, a learner may attribute his or her failure to low ability; gradually, he or she may lose motivation to learning. What can a teacher do to help with this kind of learners?
When talking about the interaction between L1 and L2, lots of researches or theories say that the L1 reading skills transfer to L2, and this process helps L2 learners to build up L2 reading ability. However, if the learners don't have adequate reading skills in L1, can the transfer still be done?
Regarding L1-L2 transfer, vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor (p143). However, for adult learning, I’m thinking the GENRA might be another issue to take into consideration (Chinese/ English article have different structures in different genres, augmentations for example.)
Top 30% L1 reading-> L2 reading/ lower 70% L2 language proficiency -> L2 reading, the Language Threshold Hypothesis may have to do with vocab (p147), echoing those mentioned in p143. Similar implications are found in Lee and Schallert (1997).
Socioeconomic Status (SES)(p157) in my opinion still has to do with students’ literacy development, according to social context. Not necessary about their family, to some extent as White (1982) mentioned, but also partially to do with their daily social context/ value and belief, their friends, business partners, colleagues for example.
Personally I agree with the statement on p185 that intrinsic motivation is more important, making students independent learner and reader in control.
In the oriented process of developing a reader’s reading ability (p. 149) within a family unit, in school settings, in various classrooms, by interacting with specific teachers and students peers (p. 152), several factors relating linguistics are mentioned in the scheduled reading now and then, including metacognitive knowledge, metalinguistic awareness (p. 134, 136-137, 140, 149-151), phonological awareness (pp. 141-142, 144, 156-158, 161-162, 164) and other linguistics-concerned ones. The issue that both oral language skills (p. 156, 162) and vocabulary development (p. 157) have indirect impact on reading or long running reciprocal causal relationship (p. 156) is quite compelling. Lots of print exposure (p. 156) like the number of books at home, the amount of reading to the child, the manner of interaction around print, the number of rare words used at home and preschool, and the number of library visits (p. 157) play a very critical role in developing extensive reading ability. Regardless of socioeconomic status (SES, p 138, 156-158, 160, 163, 167), either from the wealthy or middle-class or working class families, parents are always responsible for helping their children with a sound word-exposed environment (p. 159), complete with qualified teacher support (p. 155) from schools. In a more open and easygoing manner, together with intentional reading (p. 150, 161, 164), school children from low-income families may still have a better chance to improve their linguistic development. Language transfer like cognates across two languages (pp. 131- 132), contrastive rhetoric (p. 139), decoding skills (p. 143), and other detailed idiomatic and metaphoric uses of language, discourse-organizing practices and principles (p. 131) in dual-language processing or crosslinguistic interactions (p. 129) further emphasize the increasing knowledge of using mental lexicon (p. 132) in various contexts. Motivation and explicit L2 reading (pp. 150151, 176, 181, 185, 187, 189, 191) are so highly correlated that we reading teachers (p. 192) who may not be equipped with specific linguistic knowledge (p. 150) need to put the suggested measures to promote our novice readers’ motivation (pp. 191-192). The concept of flow (pp. 180-181) among theories of motivation (pp. 176-179) can also be adopted to promote our readers’ motivation as well. After the careful reading within limited time constraints, several issues which might interest us potential researchers are summarized as below. Those prospective topics can be found on pages 134, 135, 136, 137, 139 (2), 141, 144, 146, 149 in Chapter 7, pages 153, 162, 165, 166, 167 in Chapter 8, and page 189 in Chapter 9. Among them, the question “Is second language reading a reading problem or a language problem?” which needs clarification may be a concluding summary after reading these chapters.
Grabe talks about “shared reading” on page 161. He said,” Shared reading can encourage practice in speaking for infants, modeling and teaching of vocabulary, and greater print knowledge. A key mediating factor is the emphasis on a child participatory role; children need to be active participants in shared book rading for it to have a positive impact.” What is the definition of shared reading? How to implement shared reading at home and in the classroom? Does that mean that parents read to their children and children listen to the story carefully? What is the participatory role that a child plays? On page 183, Grabe mentioned Structural Equation Model (SEM) in the following sentence ” Using a Structural Equation Model (SEM), Wang and Guthrie found that resulting motivation models were very consistent across both groups.” Acturally, Grabe mentioned SEM many times in the book, but I still could not understand the model. I went to attend ETA conference on November 14th, and listened to Grabe’s presentation on the topic of “Reading Research that Supports Effective Reading Instruction”. He mentioned “ Discourse structure graphic organizer” many times during the presentation. I wondered what “Discourse structure graphic organizer” is. Does it have any connection with Structural Equation Model (SEM)?
1.Since L1 reading will influence L2 reading when learners reach the so-called “language threshold” in L2, how do we know that learners have acquired the language proficiency which proves that they have passed the language threshold? When a learner doesn’t reach the “language threshold”, should we not to teach them some reading strategies which they may use in their future reading?
ReplyDelete2.Socio-economic status plays an important role in the development of children literacy. In the United States, we may see a lot of programs set to provide children with poor socio-economic status to improve their opportunities to become literacy as early as possible. I am just wondering whether there is any program here in Taiwan to help those poor children to develop their literacy.
Does anyone know what the concept of flow is? I understand the 12 characteristics of flow, but still not clear what it is. Is it sort of like “fluency” or “a positive feeling of believing one can achieve something after evaluating whether the task interests you or not”?
ReplyDeleteMaybe we could discuss Alderson’s (1984) famous question: “Is second language reading a reading problem or a language problem?”
ReplyDeleteAre there any sociocultural factors here in Taiwan that might have a negative affect over local ESL/EFL student’s ability to read in English, or improve their English reading abilities?
Can the Interdependence Hypothesis be applied to the Taiwanese ESL/EFL learning environment?
According to Attribution Theory, a learner may attribute his or her failure to low ability; gradually, he or she may lose motivation to learning. What can a teacher do to help with this kind of learners?
ReplyDeleteWhen talking about the interaction between L1 and L2, lots of researches or theories say that the L1 reading skills transfer to L2, and this process helps L2 learners to build up L2 reading ability. However, if the learners don't have adequate reading skills in L1, can the transfer still be done?
ReplyDeleteRegarding L1-L2 transfer, vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor (p143). However, for adult learning, I’m thinking the GENRA might be another issue to take into consideration (Chinese/ English article have different structures in different genres, augmentations for example.)
ReplyDeleteTop 30% L1 reading-> L2 reading/ lower 70% L2 language proficiency -> L2 reading, the Language Threshold Hypothesis may have to do with vocab (p147), echoing those mentioned in p143. Similar implications are found in Lee and Schallert (1997).
Socioeconomic Status (SES)(p157) in my opinion still has to do with students’ literacy development, according to social context. Not necessary about their family, to some extent as White (1982) mentioned, but also partially to do with their daily social context/ value and belief, their friends, business partners, colleagues for example.
Personally I agree with the statement on p185 that intrinsic motivation is more important, making students independent learner and reader in control.
In the oriented process of developing a reader’s reading ability (p. 149) within a family unit, in school settings, in various classrooms, by interacting with specific teachers and students peers (p. 152), several factors relating linguistics are mentioned in the scheduled reading now and then, including metacognitive knowledge, metalinguistic awareness (p. 134, 136-137, 140, 149-151), phonological awareness (pp. 141-142, 144, 156-158, 161-162, 164) and other linguistics-concerned ones. The issue that both oral language skills (p. 156, 162) and vocabulary development (p. 157) have indirect impact on reading or long running reciprocal causal relationship (p. 156) is quite compelling. Lots of print exposure (p. 156) like the number of books at home, the amount of reading to the child, the manner of interaction around print, the number of rare words used at home and preschool, and the number of library visits (p. 157) play a very critical role in developing extensive reading ability. Regardless of socioeconomic status (SES, p 138, 156-158, 160, 163, 167), either from the wealthy or middle-class or working class families, parents are always responsible for helping their children with a sound word-exposed environment (p. 159), complete with qualified teacher support (p. 155) from schools.
ReplyDeleteIn a more open and easygoing manner, together with intentional reading (p. 150, 161, 164), school children from low-income families may still have a better chance to improve their linguistic development. Language transfer like cognates across two languages (pp. 131- 132), contrastive rhetoric (p. 139), decoding skills (p. 143), and other detailed idiomatic and metaphoric uses of language, discourse-organizing practices and principles (p. 131) in dual-language processing or crosslinguistic interactions (p. 129) further emphasize the increasing knowledge of using mental lexicon (p. 132) in various contexts. Motivation and explicit L2 reading (pp. 150151, 176, 181, 185, 187, 189, 191) are so highly correlated that we reading teachers (p. 192) who may not be equipped with specific linguistic knowledge (p. 150) need to put the suggested measures to promote our novice readers’ motivation (pp. 191-192). The concept of flow (pp. 180-181) among theories of motivation (pp. 176-179) can also be adopted to promote our readers’ motivation as well.
After the careful reading within limited time constraints, several issues which might interest us potential researchers are summarized as below.
Those prospective topics can be found on pages 134, 135, 136, 137, 139 (2), 141, 144, 146, 149 in Chapter 7, pages 153, 162, 165, 166, 167 in Chapter 8, and page 189 in Chapter 9.
Among them, the question “Is second language reading a reading problem or a language problem?” which needs clarification may be a concluding summary after reading these chapters.
Grabe talks about “shared reading” on page 161. He said,” Shared reading can encourage practice in speaking for infants, modeling and teaching of vocabulary, and greater print knowledge. A key mediating factor is the emphasis on a child participatory role; children need to be active participants in shared book rading for it to have a positive impact.” What is the definition of shared reading? How to implement shared reading at home and in the classroom? Does that mean that parents read to their children and children listen to the story carefully? What is the participatory role that a child plays?
ReplyDeleteOn page 183, Grabe mentioned Structural Equation Model (SEM) in the following sentence ” Using a Structural Equation Model (SEM), Wang and Guthrie found that resulting motivation models were very consistent across both groups.” Acturally, Grabe mentioned SEM many times in the book, but I still could not understand the model. I went to attend ETA conference on November 14th, and listened to Grabe’s presentation on the topic of “Reading Research that Supports Effective Reading Instruction”. He mentioned “ Discourse structure graphic organizer” many times during the presentation. I wondered what “Discourse structure graphic organizer” is.
Does it have any connection with Structural Equation Model (SEM)?