Q. Suppose your younger brother, nine year old, did not read in English yet, so your mother decided to send him to Hakwon. But 3months later he ended up feeling that English was simply nightmare. Your mother was now anxious and worried about her son. Your mother asked for your help. How would you help your brother enjoy reading in English?
Reading skill and Reading interest
According to the question passage, my nine-year-old younger brother (literally) didn’t really enjoy reading. Now, I have a question; what makes you start reading and what keeps you reading? Interest in reading function increases ability of reading. If someone gets interested in reading continuously, his or her level of reading skill would go to upper level finding another pleasure in reading. It’s spiral development. Therefore, you would find the interactive relationship between one’s interest in reading and reading skill. It is undeniable fact that teachers’ setting reading atmosphere would encourage students to do that. In this sense, curriculum in the absence of interesting resources in Hakwon failed to raise his interest in English reading.
Reading in development stages
First, it’s an important task to figure out his characteristics in the developmental stage. In one theory about development of reading interest, children go through many stages according to their age. With respect of my brother, he is in the “fable” stage. In the stage, children usually start their own judging if the characters in the story are doing something wrong or not. They get out of self-oriented attitude and discriminate the difference between “me” and not “me.” They may enjoy reading stories such as myth and legend story.
Development of reading skill
Second, what can trigger him to make a reading habit? Interestingly, reading can be happened by interest and many factors such as contents in reading process turn to raise their reading interest. For the reading habit, teachers have to get learners motivated, let them know many kinds of specific reading skills, and help them make the reading habit by repetitious training.
On the basis of the relationship between reading skill and reading interest, I can say that Hakwon might not successfully lead my brother to the interesting world of reading English. Considering typical reading class in Hakwon, teachers might process the class like this; independent reading or reading aloud->finding out topic idea and main sentence->analysis the text grammatically->answering some detail questions. It definitely sounds bored.
What makes him read?
First, I recommend my mom to make my brother feel “language is alive.” This would help him a lot because reading will be a part of his life. For the strategy, my mother can make use of several methods. First one is store signs on the street. Actually, there are a bunch of English signs in Korea. Walking together through the street, mother can ask him for pronounce the sign loudly. Then, he starts guessing game about it. If it’s possible, enter the store together and check if his guessing is right. Sometimes the meaning of the name isn’t directly correlated to what the store is for. In this case, they can figure out the meaning from the dictionary and websites. The activity is also connected to diary activity. My younger brother can try his diary about what happened in the store he dropped by with his mother. Second way is cooking class. This is the powerful tool because it implies the principle of classic conditioning giving him both delicious reward and English reading sources together. Before start cooking, my younger brother chooses the food what he likes to eat and searches for appropriate recipes in the websites or cooking books (English versions). Normally recipes aren’t difficult to understand, however, some parts need subtle and careful understanding.
Phonics
Considering the curriculum in Hakwon, you may find that tutors in Hakwon usually make use of “Phonics” to develop children’s ability to recognize words. So, teachers should think of the essence of phonics. American uses Phonics for five- or six-year-old children to understand how they pronoun words and how they can spell them. Here is a big difference between American children and Korean children; in the age, American children have enough English skill to understand not only written but also spoken English. On the other hand, Korean young learners don’t. Therefore, the latter usually memorize the words in Phonics textbook without actual listening. Also, they are likely to get easily bored by de-contextualized word pieces. They would be look like a detective struggling with limited clues. In “Why Johnny Can't Read,” Rudulf Flesch pointed out that children educated by phonics course only memorize the phonetic differences, not the meaning.
However, it’s also true that phonics has strongly influenced in Korean children’s reading ability. According to a research, “Effect of Phonics-based English Classes on the 6th Graders' Reading Abilities”, which was conducted by Sul-bee Lee in Jeonju university of education, children who have been exposed to phonics in a certain duration performed well in reading section.
Alternatives to Phonics
Some scholars in English education recently suggested reading aloud in the story as an alternative to phonics. This type of phonics is so-called “mixed phonics.” This method doesn’t have totally opposite meaning of typical phonics because students would not only understand the meaning of words in the context but also learn how to sound them. Even so, in the case of my brother, mom should be cautious not to take appropriate text for him (e.g. short fairy tales that he would be interested in).
Another way to stimulate his ability to recognize vocabulary is related to real life-whole language approach; authentic materials such as cooking and making model robots. As language is alive, he would feel close to English, his foreign language, absorbing it as a part of his life. Suppose that mother teaches him how to make chocolate cookies. She can find the recipe for the cooking class in English version. Then, she would let him to find some verbs and nouns-usually in recipes verbs are present simple tense and nouns aren’t complicated ones. If he is interested in making model robots, my mom and brother can try it in the same way as cooking. The strategy lets him get words recognition training as well as satisfy one of his behavioral motivations, “manipulation.” The strategy would benefit my younger brother since his words recognition can develop in his own individualized learning setting.
Final alternative is phonics learning with visual and audio materials. The alternative doesn’t mean the interesting illustrations in existing phonics books and voice of American speakers pronouncing simple words. Rather, visual aids including context and audio ones recording chanting and short stories. My younger brother can put English name tags on some furniture in house to make a strong link between learning and real life.
Reference
1. 이슬비. “Effect of Phonics-based English Classes on the 6th Graders' Reading Abilities”. 2010. Jeonju University of Education.
2. Rudolf Flesch. “Why Johnny Can’t Read”. 1955
3. 전경홍. “The Effect of Phonics And Whole-Word Approach on Beginning Reading”. 2008. 관동대학교 교육대학원
