Beverly Rodriguez

Dr. Z
ENG 487
6 April 2016
Homework #3
Teaching Decoding by Louisa Moats discusses what decoding is and the
importance of teaching it correctly. Decoding is learned in the early stages of a students school
years. In kindergarten, students learn to identify words by how they look or by content, such as
in books that have an image next to the word. These types of words do not teach these young
students to associate words with symbols and sounds. At this age, these students do not know
that words are composed of phonemes, but looking at word develops awareness of the alphabet.
In order to progress into reading, students must first understand that letters represent phonemes,
or the smallest meaningful unit in the parts of speech.
According to the article, the way you teach affects the development of a student's
decoding strategies. Students will not develop the habit of sounding out letters if they are not
instructed how to do so and not given enough practice. Instead, students will learn how to
identify words by how they look or in context in order to be able to pronounce unfamiliar words.
When a student learns to associate sound with a letter, they need plenty of practice to be able to,
later on, blend sounds to build words.
Students begin to decode with a limited set of phonemes, a few consonants and a
few vowels. After sufficient practice blending these familiar phonemes to create words, the rest
of the consonant and vowel phonemes will gradually be added to the students set of sounds. The
core idea of decoding is for students to be able to blend single sounds into words that can bring
meaning to the student.

When associations to patterns are sure, students should be able to decode

predictable syllables. When students know the structure of words and know the rules of
decoding, word identification becomes a linguistic skill instead of just memorization of words.
As a students skills in decoding progress, they begin to recognize larger units or chunks of
words, like word endings such as -ing, -ed. Students then begin to decode in syllables or
morphemes, and reading is executed in a more efficient manner. Students no longer have to
sound out words letter by letter.
After students achieve a proficient skill of decoding, reading fluency can then be
achieved through reading books. Students expand their vocabulary through reading level
appropriate books. Phoneme awareness, letter recognition, and concepts of print allow students
to learn the written alphabetic code. Knowledge of the alphabetic code and beginning elemental
units can lead to automatic word recognition. Fast and accurate word recognition allows for
reading fluency.
It is difficult for students to learn to just decode through letters alone because of
the way English was created. Many root languages contribute to the english language, such as
Latin, Greek, and German. Not all letter have the same phoneme pronunciation in the various
languages, and the pronunciation of the letters depends on what language the word derives from.
For instance the letters CH are pronounced differently in chain, chorus, and charade because
every word derives from a different language and the CH has three different phonemes. So
spelling and pronunciation of phonemes can differ from word to word making it difficult for
students to simply just decode words.
According to the article, teachers should teach speech to print. Students should
learn the sound system before the letters that represent the phonemes because it is more natural

and logical. Language evolved through speech first and then the writing system was created.
Learning in the conventional phonics manner of print-to-sound can leave gaps in phonemic
awareness and can create confusion and inefficiencies. Students only learn single letter
phonemes and two letter phonemes such as /ch/, /sh/, /th/, /oi/, and /ou/ can be obscured.
Conventional phonics also overlooks the fact that some letter names do not relate to the sound
the letter represents.
Teachers must teach explicitly and systematically. Phonemic elements must be
taught in a logical manner, from simple to complex. Predictable words should be taught first,
then less common words can be introduced. When teaching a lesson, a sound or spelling should
be spotlighted and be the lesson focus to let students create meaning of the sound or spelling.
The content discussed in this article does not mention learners of English as a
second language or generation 1.5 learners. A lot of the skills discussed are for students that are
only English learners so the English language would be the first thing that they learn and it
would come more naturally to them. When you consider English learners or gen 1.5 learners, you
must also consider what they also know about the second language. There are phonemes that
overlap and phonemes that do not exist in their first language. When teaching the English
alphabetic code, these learners might associate a letter with a different phoneme than English and
that can lead to the mispronunciation of words.
If these students are taught the same way as English only learners, there would be
some things that would benefit the EL students. For instance, making the lessons explicit and
systematic would also be a more efficient way of teaching. This would help the students pay
close attention to sounds and spelling. In many languages, words are spelled the way they sound,
but in English, words derive from different languages and the phonemes may be different than

the letters that represent them. If this is a difficult area for English only learners, English as a
second language learners will find it even more difficult; this is why I agree that having a lesson
focus be a sound or spelling would be a more efficient way to teach ELs the English spelling and
sound system.
Teaching a speech-to-print- method would be more difficult to execute on an EL
because they might have already been exposed to the alphabetic system of their own language.
Teaching an EL would then require to teach print-to-speech because the student would have to
know that the letter in English represents a certain phoneme in English that might not necessarily
be the same phoneme in their first language. For Gen 1.5 learners, I believe that the speech-toprint method would work because these learners have not been exposed to the alphabetic system
and it might be easier for them to learn the phonemes first and then associate those English
phonemes to the written language.
Another idea from the article that I also agree on is that every student will develop
rapid fluency if they are exposed to reading materials of their reading level. When students read,
they can practice their decoding skills and be exposed to new words. The problem with this
though for ELs is that, like I mentioned before, many languages spell the way the word is said.
This means that if an EL has not fully acquired the English phoneme knowledge, they might be
reading words with the wrong pronunciation. This problem can lead words to have the wrong
meaning and the student can not keep progressing in their skills of English literacy. Since this is
a problem a teacher can face with ELs, this would require more one on one time with the student
reading out loud.
Depending on the students grade level and background, learning a whole different
language can be more challenging because not all languages have the same alphabetical system.

This means that some students have to start from the foundational skills of English. I believe that
this is where they would have to learn how to decode the same way that a regular English learner
would learn, which is, learning phonemes, pairing phonemes to representational letter, to
blending phonemes together to form words, and then beling words to create sentences.
When teaching English to ELs that are fluent in their first language, it is important
to consider the grammatical structure of the first language. Regular English learners will only be
exposed to one grammatical system and it will eventually come natural to them, but for second
language ELs, creating sentences might be another challenge in addition to decoding.
Being able to teach regular English learners, Generation 1.5 learners, and second
language English learners separately sounds like it might be an easier task so that every student
gets the attention and guidance they need. The reality is that all three types of students might be
in one class and it can become difficult for a teacher to divide themselves up into all of the needs
of the students.. This is why I believe that strictly adhering to the tips of the decoding article
might be impossible to accomplish. A teacher affects the development of students decoding
strategies, that is why is important for a teacher to know the level of every student.