Morphology for Teaching Reading and Teaching a Second Language, Essay Example

Chapter 8 teaches how studies of morphology can contribute to reading instruction. While phonics can be used to instruct students how to sound out words, there are many words that cannot be learned through this practice. Therefore, it is essential to emphasize the importance of using sight words in reading instruction as well, as students need to memorize certain words to be able to pronounce them properly. An interesting method in teaching students how to read is discussed in this chapter as well. Structural analysis allows students to identify words by “looking for the little words inside the big words”.

While the chapter discusses the benefit of allowing students to memorize prefixes and suffixes of words in order to enhance their understanding, I believe that this process is occasionally ineffective. As a student who has been required to memorize vocabulary words for standardized exams, I believe that the occasional word has prefixes and suffixes that are misleading and doesn’t contribute to the understanding of word meaning. This is typically the case for larger words, and it is likely that if I was confused by this process, English learners would be confused by this process as well. Unfortunately, there are many exceptions to rules in the English language, and it would be the most beneficial to teach English learners in the simplest manner possible.

Occasionally structural analysis is useful for words however, but this should be taught with the understanding that it may not lead to the word meaning in every situation. For example, even though the word “antidisestablishmentarianism” is the longest word in the English language, it can be easily broken down into components and its meaning can be deciphered in this manner. For example, a student who studies word roots and affixes will know that “anti” means against, “dis” means away, it is possible that they will simply recognize “establish” or “establishment”, and they may be able to figure out the word’s meaning on this basis.

In order to figure out the meaning of words by using the structural analysis method, it is important to teach students the meaning of many word roots that they will be able to identify throughout their reading. The textbook discusses the specific example of learning the root word “port” so that students can learn words like “transport” and “portage”. In doing so, it is important to start off with words that occur the most frequently in the English language and are simplest to learn. Speakers of other languages, such as Spanish, French, and Italian may find this process easier because these languages share several roots with English to begin with. Therefore, this is a reasonable strategy for English learners whose native language is classified as a romance language.

Just as there are contrasting views as to how learning to word recognition should be taught, there are contrasting views as to how these vocabulary words should be introduced. “Teachers who take a word recognition view often preteach vocabulary that they think students may not know”, while “teachers who take a sociopsycholinguistic view recognize the importance of building background knowledge for reading, and they also engage students in extensive reading so that they can acquire word meanings as they encounter words in context”. The use of each method may provide different benefit to students, although it seems that sociopsycholinguistic view is more beneficial for students who have already established a background in the language. Therefore, this may be a better method to use to teach students who are native speakers of Romance languages.