To Bonnie and the List:
So how do you help your student? I would suggest providing strategies, not more decoding practice. This reminds me of Hannah Fingeret's research on middle-level readers who get stuck because they cannot move from text-based to knowledge-based reading. 

You say you know a student who "cannot make the jump quickly enough to academic language to understand the textbook material" Is that a decoding problem or something else? If he can decode the words, but often doesn't know what they mean in context, there can be many reasons for that:

--Some words have a different meaning in academic writing. For example, in the field of ethnographic research, words and phrases such as "key word," "informant" and "domain" have specific meanings that are somewhat different from their meanings in everyday life. 
--Then there are words that are fairly easy to decode and that I will not understand unless I have the background knowlegde needed: "etic" and "emic." 
--Then there are acronyms such as ERIC, NIFL, ADD,and ANOVA for which decoding is something of a dysfunctional strategy.
--Academic writing may be full of proper nouns that need to be decoded in a different way. If a reader is focusing on the pronunciation of "Fingeret," "Kwakiutl, and "Onore," they need to move from text-based to knowledge-based reading. On page 186 of THE ETHNOGRAPHIC INTERVIEW, I don't need to know how to pronounce "Kwakiutl." I just need to use the context clues to determine that this a group of people. I don't even need to know where they are from.  

It's especially important to review prior knowledge, increase my background knowledge, and build up a high tolerance for sometimes NOT understanding what the heck I am reading when I am reading a challenging academic text.  


>From Bruce Carmel





--- On Fri, 9/26/08, Bonnie Odiorne <bonniesophia at sbcglobal.net> wrote:


> From: Bonnie Odiorne <bonniesophia at sbcglobal.net>

> Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2556] Re: The "Decoding" of words, sentences, and paragraphs

> To: "The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List" <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>

> Date: Friday, September 26, 2008, 5:34 PM

> What you say works for most types of reading, but not

> academic--maybe even literary--reading,  where the ways the

> words connect are crucial, and an overall idea may not be

> sufficient. I have a Chinese student now under considerable

> stress because he cannot make the jump quickly enough to

> academic language to understand the textbook material, let

> alone the professor. Any tutoring he gets from me in reading

> strategies, finding the important concepts, and explaining

> the meaning of the words in paraphrase, giving the

> pronunciation in the hope that when his professor uses it he

> can understand it, doesn't really seem to help the

> fundamental problem: he needs more time to assimilate the

> language. As someone has said, depending on sight words,

> context clues et al. to "guess" the most likely

> meaning of a sentence or paragraph can only take one so far,

> and some of that misperception of connection, grammar and

> syntax can be crucial to meaning. But tell that to the

>  young man who's having nightmares, and is so tired he

> can barely stay awake.

> Bonnie Odiorne, Ph.D.

> Director, Writing Center, Adjunct Professor

> Post University, Waterbury, CT

> bonnisophia at sbcglobal.net

> 

> --- On Fri, 9/26/08, Steve Kaufmann

> <steve at thelinguist.com> wrote:

> 

> From: Steve Kaufmann <steve at thelinguist.com>

> Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2555] Re: The

> "Decoding" of words, sentences, and paragraphs

> To: bcarmel at rocketmail.com, "The Adult Literacy

> Professional Development Discussion List"

> <professionaldevelopment at nifl.gov>

> Date: Friday, September 26, 2008, 12:58 PM

> 

> 

> 

> I am not sure if this refers to native speakers learning to

> read their own language, or non-native speakers learning to

> read another language. If it is the latter, then I think it

> is normal for a learner to focus on decoding individual

> words. By decoding individual words, the learner gets some

> idea of the overall meaning, but still an unclear idea.

> There is nothing wrong with the overall meaning being

> unclear, and I believe it is important to convince the

> learner that this fuzziness of meaning is absolutely normal

> and OK. The language will only become clearer over time. In

> the meanwhile it is important to keep listening and reading

> and learning words. In my experience, the learner's time

> is best spent on acquiring more exposure to the language,

> rather than trying to fully understand what he or she is

> reading or listening to, or for that matter trying to

> produce the language with any accuracy.

> 

> I believe that insofar as immigrant language learners as

> concerned, greater benefit would be achieved if a large

> number of  immigrants were assigned a personal tutor with

> whom he or she met infrequently, either face to face, or by

> phone or computer. This language coach could then provide

> advice and encouragement and guidance. The present

> instruction-intensive format does not take advantage of the

> potential energies and learning efficiencies that would

> accrue from a more learner-centred approach. And if the

> learner is not interested in learning, chances are that he

> or she is not learning very much in class either.

> 

> Steve

> 

> On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 7:38 AM, Bruce C

> <bcarmel at rocketmail.com> wrote:

> 

> Hello List:

> I believe that decoding is an extremely important component

> of reading, but it is not the only component. Understanding

> conventions of print and different genres, using and having

> background knowledge, being able to relate text to self/text

> to the world/text to other texts, using context to inform

> decoding, and being able to make predictions are among the

> many other skills needed to be a good reader.

> 

> I did some in-depth interviews with beginning readers and

> found "decoding" was all they cared about.

> Comprehension was not the goal for them. Decoding was the

> goal. I believe many beginning readers would feel satisfied

> and successful if they accurately decoded each word of a

> text yet did not comprehend its meaning.

> 

> This is sadly reinforced by many teachers who teach as if

> they believe the same thing.

> 

> >From Bruce Carmel

> Turning Point

> Brooklyn NY

> 

> 

> 

> 

> 

> 

> 

> 

> 

> -- 

> Steve Kaufmann

> www.lingq.com

> 1-604-922-8514

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