Teach English in Xinjiang Xian Meihua Yuanqu Guanweihui [Xinhua County Coal Chemical Industry Park] - Yuncheng Shi

The process of learning a language starts at a very young age. Parents know that between birth and entry into a school, the growth of a child`s language learning abilities is astonishingly efficient. Children understand the written word through the association of sounds with a written symbol (through paper, card, wall, board etc.) and therefore, the related images of the action or object are linked with the appropriate combination of letters written. A conservative estimate of words learned by a child before entry into school is about 5000 words according to State University. Furthermore, they also acquire mastery of the intricacies of grammatical structure and social use. Reading storybooks to them maximizes the experience. Such offers the opportunity to hear new items of vocabulary within varied manners of speech. The same words are also used in a diverse array of grammatical constructions, thereby giving them hints on their proper usage. Book reading requires participants to be active and engage in responsive interactions about the meaning of words. Children, being naturally drawn to story books, would find it an ample opportunity to exercise their vocabulary with an adult, which yields more varied vocabulary and diverse structures of sentences. This is called dialogic reading. It permits the adult to follow a child’s interest and engage in conversation. For a learning teenager or adult, reading is an opportunity to search for the meaning of new words they discover on printed materials using a translator or a dictionary. Although children learn the most basic, common and well-structured way of communicating, an older person might read materials that will show them a more varied or subtle construction of words such as expressions or even jargon. In my teenage years I’ve read comic books and novels that showed me American, British and French expressions and idioms, which if not explained to me by friends or family, I would not have understood the meaning. Furthermore, in those days, the internet was not as developed as it is today, so I would probably not have easily found an explanation. Let’s not forget that reading exposes a learner to written words which gives immediate visibility to the word`s correct spelling of the target language. This is important because the more repetition is used, the more he or she memorizes the correct way the words are written. The same goes for grammar, the more the structures are repeated, the more the correct way of constructing sentences are remembered, in relation to what is trying to be conveyed. An avid reader will increase the speed at which they are able to memorize how words are spelt and grammatical structures are formatted. For some it will even have the same affect without any prior knowledge of grammar. Reading also gives indications as to a language’s cultural background. Most materials are written by authors of a certain culture, thereby naturally conveying a certain context to do with knowledge and habits in their culture. Those indications will be felt, recognized and remembered by the reader. Of course, the act of reading requires that a person has a working knowledge of the rules of pronunciation in regards to letters, and a prerequisite knowledge of the vocabulary (at least enough to understand rudimentary sentences). Once those are acquired, reading will exercise the person’s cognitive, comprehensive and metacognitive ability. As such, the readers have the ability to guess the meanings of new word item as they read (stated by Hedge in 1985). In my younger years, I have read many English science fiction novels that used very complex wording. English was not my mother tongue, but my own metacognitive abilities permitted me to guess appropriately as to the meanings of much of the lexicon simply through comprehending the context. This act further influences language acquisition. Not only does it help the learner guess the meaning of new words, but the impact of such capabilities is greater on the language learner, and he or she is able to remember the new items far better than simply searching the word’s meaning through a dictionary. The reason for this is because of the exposure to the language in a natural, less structured and unpressured way; reading for pleasure and feeling a sense of self-accomplishment. Background knowledge further helps in this process. One major influence of reading is that it also has the positive effect of developing a learner’s speaking skills. As they read materials with dialogue (such as dramas, plays, comics, etc.) the learner is exposed to a multitude of sentences with intonations, stresses and pitches combined with social behaviors. The punctuation, if explained well, gives them an indication to “hear” their thoughts the way the sentences should be spoken, and also gives them a chance inside or outside a classroom to practice speech and social behaviors. It is the authentic text created by native speakers of the target language in pursuit of communicative outcomes (Little, Devitt, & Singleton, 1989). Taking into account that reading expands a person’s vocabulary and comprehension, it thus broadens a person’s speaking skills. “The more reading you will do, the more you will increase your exposure to vocabulary that doesn’t usually make its way into the spoken language” (Cunningham, 1998). The process of reading is paramount to a person’s acquisition of a language. “Where there is little reading there will be little language learning. … the student who wants to learn English will have to read himself into a knowledge of it unless he can move into an English environment.” (Bright and McGregor, 1970, p.52). It is through reading that a language learner finds the most vocabulary and varieties of a language, thereby expanding and mastering their cognitive and comprehensive skills, as well as their speech and social interaction skills, and the cultural background knowledge of the target language.