A recent survey of Japanese children produced the depressing result that about half of children read books for “zero minutes” per day. That number of non-readers starts at about 30 percent for students in the first three years of elementary school. By high school, two-thirds of students do not read books at all.
This result is especially worrying because so much evidence exists that reading extensively strongly improves language development and academic results. Kids who read do better in almost everything.
MY has a class that fights against this trend. MY’s Tadoku lesson is an extensive reading class for young learners. In MY’s Tadoku classes, students spend 50 minutes weekly reading for pleasure books that they choose.
Why do I like Tadoku?
I trace one reason that I like Tadoku back to my experience in elementary school. My favorite class time (after P.E.) was the time that we called “Sustained Silent Reading.” It was a lot like Tadoku–we picked our own books and read on our own. There were no tests. There was one simple rule: read.
A Tadoku class for young English language learners is different from extensive reading for native speakers.
A Tadoku class for young English language learners is different from extensive reading for native speakers. English learners can read at varying levels of English, usually much lower than the levels of native speakers. Books have to be carefully graded to the appropriate levels of the students. However, the benefits of reading can be similar for native speakers and language learners alike.
Books offer excellent contexts for meaningful langauage. Reading builds vocabulary and grammar, turns people into better speakers and writers, builds general comprehension and understanding of the world, and develops learner autonomy. Children grow when they read. The huge gains in English ability, general knowledge, and confidence among our Tadoku students are many of the reasons why I like MY’s Tadoku class.
Tadoku students in profile
In this blog post, I am profiling two of MY’s Tadoku students, Reota and Mae. Reota is a junior high school student in second grade who has been in the Tadoku class at MY for about six years. Mae is an elementary school first-grader who joined the Tadoku class this year in May.
Reota chose to continue in the Tadoku class in junior high school because he enjoys reading in English. According to Reota, he does not read for pleasure much in Japanese, only in English. Reota enjoys the realism of the books that he reads in English. Reota’s favorite book series currently is the Atama-Ii books, which are long, choose-your-own-adventure novels.
After reading, Reota often gives a brief oral summary and book review to his teacher. It’s O.K. not to like a book. The goal is to share with others about our reading and explain why.
Over the years, Reota has read over 10,700 English books in the Tadoku class. Although he has lost count of precisely how many words he has read, this adds up to well over one million words in English. This huge input of English has improved Reota’s comprehension and turned him into a much stronger English speaker.
Mae is in our first-year elementary class. She is still in the process of learning simple phonics and combining single letters into short words. In Tadoku, she practices reading many letters and sounds that she has not studied yet. Mae uses audio recordings of the books to read along a second time after trying herself. After reading or between reading, she plays games using the books that she has read. Alongside her classmate, with a little support from her teacher, Mae challenges herself to read as much as possible every week.
Mae usually reads five or six new books every week. Doing this weekly for four months, she has read 61 books and over 3500 words. In comparison, Mae’s classmates in her regular Finding Out class just read their first book in English the same week that Mae finished her 61st book in Tadoku. What a huge boost to Mae’s vocabulary, grammar, and reading skills!
Mae enjoys the variety of books that Tadoku offers. She likes being able to choose her own reading material. While Mae likes some books and dislikes some others, she does not have any specific series or category of books that is her favorite. Mae also reads at home in Japanese on her own and with her mother. Every week she is building reading skills in two languages!
Opportunities and skills
Anyone can read for pleasure on their own, but it can be hard to make time for reading. Building a library of foreign language books at many levels at home can also be challenging and expensive. Public and school libraries may not have a wide variety of books in English. Students on their own often don’t know what levels of books to choose. Without a teacher, many students may struggle to develop reading-related skills on their own. MY’s Tadoku classes give students these opportunities.
Reota and Mae offer snapshots of the two ends of MY’s Tadoku program. MY’s Tadoku class offers students like Mae and Reota the chance to enjoy reading and build language skills and general knowledge about the world. These skills and knowledge will benefit them in school and as English speakers for many years to come.
Earlier this month, I attended David Paul’s one-day “Teaching English to Children” course in Tokyo. (David authored the Finding Out series that MY English School uses in our elementary-age classes. We have him scheduled to present at MY this year in October.) I attended David’s seminar previously in Sendai about six years ago. Attending a second time after several years was a good experience. Sometimes we need a refresher in the basics.
One point that David stresses in his seminar is that we should teach reading using phonics because phonics works. Phonics is proven. It’s tested. Phonics gets results. It gets better results than any other system. Kids of all backgrounds learn to read best when they start with well-taught phonics.
In the couple weeks following David’s seminar, two news items popped to my attention underscoring the point that phonics works:
For those unfamiliar with education in the United States, education is determined and administered at the state level. Federal funding sometimes coerces states into following certain national standards, but states are generally able to set their own curricular and teaching standards.
For decades, Mississippi’s educational system has been the butt of jokes. When I was a student in my home state of Idaho, Idaho’s educational achievement was middle-of-the-road, but our educational spending per student was 49th in the nation. The one state below us? Mississippi. “At least we’re not Mississippi” and “Thank God for Mississippi” were common refrains.
No longer!
Leaping 28 places in state rankings in less than a decade makes it hard to joke about Mississippi anymore. Using a similar approach, Louisiana and Alabama have made similar gains and were two of only three states to see gains in 4th-grade reading skills during the three years of the pandemic. Other states are taking notice of that success. Phonics works.
Only 60 percent of American kids are literate by 4th grade.
72 percent of teachers report using teaching methods for reading that have been debunked by science.
Only 25 percent of university teacher preparation programs adequately address five core components of reading instruction.
71 percent of teacher preparation programs give less than two hours of instruction about teaching reading to English language learners.
88 percent of programs provide no practice in teaching reading to English langauge learners.
58 percent of teacher preparation programs devote less than two hours of instruction to supporting struggling readers.
81 percent of programs provide no practice opportunities on teaching struggling readers.
In short, America is not effectively training teachers how to teach reading, and too many kids are not learning how to read.
The good news? With emphasis on the science of reading (with phonics as a core element), the United States could raise that 60 percent literacy rate to 90 percent within a few years.
Phonics is making gains. Mississippi set itself on a firm path a decade ago. Other states are doing the same and getting similar positive results. It’s simply a matter of will. Will states, schools, and teachers choose to teach using the proven method?
Academic and scientific fields have given themselves many black eyes in recent decades. The “whole-language” approach to reading is one example of this from education. Across many fields, however, science is flailing. “Science” as a term is frequently bandied in almost cult-like ways, aimed at discrediting anyone who disagrees. However, when 60 to 80 percent of published, peer-reviewed research is irreproducible, it throws up a question what it means to “follow the science.” People posturing rhetorically that they “follow the science” or “stand behind the science” are too often misrepresenting the science that they claim to stand behind. Consequently, trust in science and expertise is declining.
For me, the label “the science of” anything raises my suspicions. Is this posturing? Or is there real knowledge here to learn? When I hear “science of reading,” alarm bells ring. Given the mess created by whole language and balanced literacy approaches in the 1980s and 1990s, skepticism toward experts about reading is justified.
This said, reading has a science behind it. On the practical side, we have decades of experimentation in the classroom. On the neuroscience side, recent brain research has helped us understand the brain mechanics of reading. Reading and the teaching of reading are heavily researched, with clear answers about the best approach and practices for teachers and students. The NCTQ’s report neatly summarizes the five components of the science of reading:
Phonemic awareness:The ability to focus on and manipulate the individual phonemes in spoken words.
Why are children’s storybooks full of funny-sounding nonsense words? These are often books meant to be read by parents to children (not decoded by children themselves). Dr. Seuss’s ABC remains deeply burned in my mind:
Big G, little g, what begins with G? Goat and googoo goggles, G…g…G!
What are googoo goggles? Aren’t they just glasses? Why not use “glasses”? And the letter before that? What the deuce is a Fiffer-feffer-feff? Repetitive phonemes twist into words to produce utter nonsense.
The point is to build phonemic awareness. “Googoo goggles” plays with the phonemes, encouraging pre-literate children to do the same. Likewise, why are rhymes important to young children? Because kids learn to match sounds and change words by manipulating individual phonemes. Children may not be able to decode the letters written on the page yet, but the ability to play with sounds displays phonemic awareness.
Phonics:The relationship between the sound of spoken words and the individual letters or groups of letters representing those sounds in written words.
Phonics is the first stage of literacy, where written letters and words begin to form and match with spoken language. Phonics is not the end of reading. It is a tool for reading and a middle stage of reading. Decoding words using phonics offers nascent readers the best opportunity for matching what is written with the spoken vocabulary that they already know, in hope of then comprehending meaning. Phonics allows them to approximate pronunciation, opening the door to asking questions about vocabulary that they don’t know. Various context cueing, guessing, and other whole-language techniques simply fail to provide students the accuracy and speed of phonics decoding.
Fluency:The ability to read a text accurately and quickly while using phrasing and emphasis to make what is read sound like the spoken language.
Teachers and students often refer to fluency imprecisely with respect to reading. What people often mean by “fluency” is closer to comprehension or sometimes speed. It is remarkable how little attention fluency can receive in reading lessons.
I am often guilty of this. I have spent dozens of hours helping an individual student produce clear phrasing and emphasis of a written text for a speech competition. In regular lessons, however, do my students read like fast-paced robots? Too often, yes.
Written language is meant to capture the rhythm, flow, and expression of spoken language. If students don’t read with the correct phrasing and emphasis, they are not learning to read well.
Reading fluency deserves more attention in teaching.
Vocabulary:Knowledge about the meanings, uses, and pronunciation of words.
Reading is not a single skill or a collection of purely skills. Skills like decoding and phrasing are important components of reading. However, reading also requires content knowledge. This means learning vocabulary.
Comprehension:Constructing meaning that is reasonable and accurate by connecting what has been read to what the reader already knows.
Comprehension is our ultimate aim when reading. To comprehend, a reader needs the previous four components of reading, plus adequate understandings of grammar and context, plus the ability to reflect upon all this and connect it to the reader’s existing schema. Whew…that’s a lot wrapped up in one component.
What does this mean for EFL teaching?
I teach in Japan. The above reports are from America. Teaching in America is to native speakers or in an ESL environment. Teaching in Japan is in an EFL environment. Does the teaching context make a difference for reading and phonics?
Yes and no.
EFL is a different context for learning reading, especially in a country like Japan that does not share the same alphabet with English and where children typically get little English exposure outside lessons. In this respect, teaching phonics is even more critical.
Japanese children start with a different schema from native English speakers. Their existing phonemic awareness is of Japanese kana phonemes. English phonemes are not going to map well onto their existing schema. How are Japanese children supposed to play with sounds that they do not yet know? Teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension in this EFL context forces teachers to adapt from how teachers of native-English students teach. Regardless, the NCTQ’s five elements for reading programs still apply:
Japanese children need activities to develop English phonemic awareness.
They need phonics in order to match sounds to written letters and develop strong decoding skills quickly.
They need the accurate rhythm, emphasis, and phrasing that come with fluency.
Their vocabulary needs to grow steadily in breadth and depth.
Japanese children need the comprehension skills to make sense of texts and connect what they read to what they already know.
How we employ teaching techniques in EFL to achieve these goals may change. The target components of good reading instruction remain firm.
In my experience, sadly, most public education in Japan skips past phonemic awareness and phonics, or gives them cursory attention at most. Fluency instruction is similarly more miss than hit. The overbearing focus remains on vocabulary, grammar rules, and narrow comprehension of the current text in isolation. These shortcomings in public education offer opportunities for private language schools. Phonics and good reading instruction help students grow.
How does your school’s teacher training and reading time match with the NCTQ criteria for science-based reading instruction?
How about the TEFL certificates that teachers at your school have taken? Do those TEFL certificate programs teach science-based reading?
How do your students learn phonemic awareness? How well are they using phonics to bridge between sounds and written letters? What are you doing with students to develop their reading fluency? If you teach at a private language school in Japan, there is already heavy emphasis on vocabulary in public school–how do you deal with vocabulary? Are your students adept at comprehending passages to the level that they connect new ideas with what they already know?
These are a lot of questions to reflect on, which provide lots of opportunities to grow as schools and as teachers.
“3, 2, 1…GO!” yelled fellow MY teacher David. Our team, Blue Team, were on our feet to find the first clue in our Scavenger Hunt list. It was a gloomy Sunday morning, but neither the light drizzle nor the gray clouds were enough to dampen the mood of some 40 kids who joined MY English School’s 2023 Sports Day event for the Higashine and Tendo schools.
Events like Sports Day are more than just an opportunity for the kids to be out of the classroom, to run around, and to play games. Events double as venues for students to use meaningful, communicative English.
Here are some examples from Sports Day:
“Sticker, please.” Even before the games begin, students start using English during registration time. Teachers ask students to look for their names on the sticker sheet. Kinder-age kids practice useful classroom English such as “May I have my name sticker, please?” or simply just “Sticker, please.” Name stickers color-coded by team are also an opportunity to review colors. This part of the program alone already includes reading and speaking practice, plus some vocabulary review.
“What’s your name?” To get to know other team members, everyone asks, “What’s your name?” Follow-up questions include “How old are you?” and “Where do you live?” A warmup activity like stretching is a chance to review body parts and movements–“Touch your feet. Stretch your arms up.”
“Two steps backward. Throw.” At the same time as students test their throwing and catching skills–and most probably get wet from bursting balloons–the leader’s instructions (“Two steps backward.” “One big step backward.” “Throw!” “Catch!”) challenge students at listening and following directions in a water balloon toss game.
“What’s the secret message?” Our Scavenger Hunt offers more than just a treasure hunt activity for students. Kids practice listening to instructions like “Run” and “Walk.” They have to decipher new vocabulary and prepositions. Upon finding the clue, students practice what they have learned in the classroom–ask “What is it?” or “What number is it?” Older students get a chance to read the clue. “Go to the flag poles near the park sign.” Little by little, our clues fill in a secret message. Once the secret message is complete, it is a chance to use language to ask for something. In our case, it was “Candy, please!”
How about in your school? How do you do your Sports Day event? What activities outside the classroom provide opportunities for students to use meaningful and communicative English?
Let’s play a game! Can you imagine a shark? Can you vividly see the image in your head? Good! Can you imagine a doctor? Can you see the white coat and Stethoscope in your mind’s eye?
Excellent. Now, please try and imagine a “shark doctor”. “Huh, what’s that?” would be probably be most people’s first reaction. Is a shark doctor a shark that is a doctor, a doctor with shark-like features or something even more mysterious?
In a recent activity we combined animal/object cards with a profession card to create some fantastical combinations, some of which are displayed in the pictures below. The students were able to practice phonics in addition to multiple skills simultaneously while moving around the room, and pondering new interesting combinations in a fun manner.
Teachers talking together about teaching is one of the highest impact practices schools can use to boost student learning. We become better teachers when we reflect and share ideas. Since I started at MY, MY has annually set aside a number of days when we close all of our schools and gather for training. Over the years, we’ve experienced some fantastic, memorable sessions that I’ve learned from immensely and that have changed the way we teach at MY. But it’s easy to become insular if we’re always talking among ourselves, so, this year, we are branching out and inviting outside speakers to two of our training days.
Our first outside speaker this year, Lesley Ito, visited
MY this past weekend. Lesley is a school
owner in Nagoya and has been active in publishing and presenting around Japan
for many years. On Saturday afternoon,
she presented two sessions: Teaching Grammar to Children and Extensive Reading for Young Children.
I deeply enjoy conference sessions where the speaker is a
couple years ahead of me in identifying and working out a problem. In the first session, Lesley shared some of
her research into how children learn grammar and react to error
correction. MY’s students check their
own homework, after which teachers check, which has many good aspects. However, as we’ve become more and more
structured in this homework check system, I’ve begun noticing, especially this
year, a lot more stress among our youngest elementary students.
Usually students are smiling, energetic, excited to start
class, and having a lot of fun by the end of their first month of lessons. This year, many are, but I’ve also noticed many
young elementary students crying and showing other signs of stress after they
arrive for lessons, even a month or two into the year, which is abnormal. Lesley’s explanation of how younger kids
process grammar and error correction may help explain why this is, and it has
me thinking of ways we can do better for our stressed first-graders.
Hearing Lesley talk about kids’ ER didn’t give me a
similar “Aha!” moment, but it was gratifying.
MY’s extensive reading program is in its third year. There’s very little researched and written
about kids’ ER (and about kids’ ELT in general). While there are a few schools that can serve
as models, building a kids’ ER program mostly requires trial and error.
MY still has a lot of work to improve our ER program, but seeing the benefits of ER for kids in Lesley’s presentation was a strong reminder about why we created the class. We especially need to do more to sell ER to our students and parents—yes, reading for an hour without the teacher choosing the book, checking comprehension, or grading results is an excellent way to improve language! In the past two years and two months of ER classes, we’ve stumbled on a number of ideas and practices for how to do ER with kids, and it’s nice affirmation when another respected teacher like Lesley has independently arrived at similar conclusions and adopted many similar practices.
I’m already looking forward to our training weekend with Mike Griffin in October!
