DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 427 546 FL 025 742

TITLE Literacy Across Cultures: Newsletter of the JALT ForeignLanguage Literacy N-SIG, 1998.

INSTITUTION Japan Association for Language Teaching, Tokyo.ISSN ISSN-1344-204XPUB DATE 1998-00-00NOTE 53p.; For 1997 issues of this newsletter, see FL 024 935.PUB TYPE Collected Works Serials (022)JOURNAL CIT Literacy Across Cultures; v2 n1-2 Feb-Sep 1998EDRS PRICE MF01/PC03 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS Classroom Techniques; Foreign Countries; Grammar; Listening

Skills; *Literacy Education; *Phonemics; Phonics; Phonology;Reading Skills; Rhetoric; Second Language Learning; TeachingMethods; World Wide Web

IDENTIFIERS Japan; Japanese People; *Phonemic Awareness

ABSTRACTThis document consists of the two issues published during

1998 of the newsletter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (JALT)national special interest group (N-SIG) on foreign language literacy. Majorarticles in these issues are: "Academic Protocol and Targeted Rhetoric"(Denise D. Brown); "Key Concepts in FL Literacy: Phonemic Awareness" (CharlesJannuzi); "Grammar, Reading, and Listening Skills among Japanese Students ofEnglish: A Comparison of Respective Abilities" (Bern Mulvey); "LiteracyLinks: Phonology, Phonetics, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics" (Jannuzi);"Specialty Booksellers on the WWW" (Jannuzi); and presentations from the 1997JALT meeting, including: "FL Literacy: Meeting Needs and Realities in Japan"(panel discussion) (Andy Barfield, David Dycus, Barry Mateer, Elin Melchior);"Phonemic Awareness: Is It Really Language Specific?" (Brett Reynolds); "AKey Concept Revisited: Phonemic Awareness" (Jannuzi); "The Internet TESLJournal" (Dycus); and "Report on the Robert Kaplan Workshop" (Brown). Bookand materials reviews are included in each issue. (MSE)

***************************************** ***** *********************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made *

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February, 1998 Volume 2, Number 1

Academic Protocol and Targeted Rhetoric

Key Concepts in FL Literacy: PhonemicAwareness

Grammar, Reading, and Listening Skills AmongJapanese Students of English: A Comparison of

Respective Abilities

Literacy Links: Phonology, Phonetics, PhonemicAwareness and Phonics

Specialty Booksellers on the WWW

Links to Literacy

1N4

insightsfs tit&ft...\n

Our Statement of Purpose

Literacy in one's first language (LI) has become essential for virtually anyone wishing tofunction in most of the modern world. At the same time, growing contact between the world'speople has increased the need for foreign language learning and has highlighted the need for agreater understanding of the aspects, processes, development and implications of FL literacy(FLL). The Foreign Language Literacy National Special Interest Group (FLL N-SIG) (presently

a provisional special interest group under the auspices of the Japan Association for LanguageTeaching) seeks to network people, ideas, theory, practice and experiences that can help lead toa better understanding of FLL. In doing so, we aim to move beyond idealized constructs of theL2 and FL learner, and to make clear the differences between LI, L2 and FL literacy practices,

processes and theoretical models.To do this, we seek to encourage locally relevant research into foreign language literacy in

Japan and to map out commonalities and differences between features of foreign language literacyin Japan and in other countries. The FLL N-SIG also aims to foster and network study groupsand local grassroots linkups with teachers in other countries in order to learn about their situationsand needs, and to create greater understanding and mutual cooperation between teachers in

different countries and situations.

In this IssueFeature Articles1 Academic Protocol and Targeted Rhetoric

by Denise D. Brown7 Key Concepts in FL Literacy: Phonemic Awareness

by Charles Jannuzi

Insights13 Grammar, Reading, and Listening Skills among Japanese Students

of English: A Comparison of Respective Abilitiesby Bern Mulvey

Links to Literacy14 Literacy Links: Phonology, Phonetics, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

by Charles Jannuzi16 Specialty Booksellers on the WWW

by Charles Jannuzi

It is Written...20 Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom

Information21 Membership information21 Publication guidelines22 Officers and contact information

Academic Protocol and TargetedRhetoric

Denise D. BrownUniversity of Library and Information ScienceTsukuba, Japan

Both literacy and rhetoric are, by theirvery nature, culture-specific institu-tions. Both are bound by the con-

ventions and expectations ofa particularspeech community and a particular socialcode. Patterns of discourse have little univer-sal value away from their immediate socialsystems. The acquisition of linguistic mecha-nisms is one thing, putting these mechanismsto use with the intimate knowledge of aninsider is another. Thus in a very real sense,literacy and rhetoric are artificial constructs.They exist solely within the communal mindof a group of people and have merit solelybecause of collective procedure. Yet it is oneof those human vagaries that academic proto-col within a community is generally believedto be a universal truth, often without anycomparative scrutiny whatsoever. In thispaper I will discuss the nature of academicprotocol, the linguistic conventions that de-fine literacy in a speech community, and aprocedure for teaching Anglo (i.e., English)rhetorical style.

Definitions of termsAcademic protocol can be taken to mean

the rules and constraints that are operative onthe written products of the educated circlesof a linguistic fellowship. Targeted rhetoricis the practice whereby literacy in an L2 issystematically developed for the expresspurpose of efficacy amongst the members ofan alien fellowship (the target community). Inorder to be perceived as efficacious in anacquired language, one must satisfy the de-mands and expectations of the LI speakers in

February, 1998

that community. I will define an Anglo speechcommunity as the variety of English spoken inthe home country (England), together with allof the varieties spoken in the former Britishempire, colonial powers, commonwealthnations, and British-mandated territories oftoday (i.e., the varieties of English spoken inAmerica, Australia, Canada, New Zealand,South Africa, certain other African states,India, etc.). Note that I am using the termAnglo in its purely linguistic sense here, as aderivative of OE Anglisc (English).

Literacy in Anglo speechcommunities

First of all, it is necessary to consider whatliteracy and rhetoric are. We might say thatliteracy is the ability to utilise one's LI profi-ciently enough to be able to read and writereasonably sophisticated texts; and that rheto-ric is the ability to manipulate the lexis andsyntax and stylistic devices ofa linguistic codein order to be optimally received in that code.However, such a distinction is to draw asomewhat artificial divide between the twoskills, so that I will use assume 'literacy' tosubsume 'rhetoric'.

When considering literacy, one generallythinks of academic or scientific or journalisticwriting rather than creative writing (as thelatter allows a manipulation of form which theformer do not). We have observed that theconcept of literacy (and, by extension, rheto-ric) is manifestly dependent upon its generat-ing culture. Therefore, it follows that wemust consider literacy only within the parame-ters of a specific cultural matrix. It happens

1

that Anglo literacy is broadly characterised bylinearity. Whilst linearity in English writtendiscourse is not an all-encompassing feature,and many English texts do in fact exhibit vari-ant styles of organisation (cf. Braddock,1974), it is nevertheless a feature that mostAnglo speakers will recognise and implicitlyadopt. One of many examples of linearity oftext is the structural demand for a clear Intro-duction, Development, andConclusion, logically progressing from thetop to the bottom of a document in a verticalmanner. This passion for linearity may haveits origins in the Anglo-Saxon lineage of Eng-lish (i.e., in the Northern European tribes ofAngles and Saxons who invaded England inthe 5th and 6th centuries A. D.). Certainly thenative Celtic tongues of the English Isle (i.e.,Scots Gaelic, Irish, Manx, Welsh, Cornish,and Breton of todaythe languages thatwere pushed out to the 'fringe' of England)exhibit a natural lyricism and structural fluid-ity that Anglo-Saxon English must labour toachieve. And it is true that the majority ofWestern nations which are not Anglo inorigin, e.g., France, Germany, Russia, andSpain, to list only a few, are patently lesslinear in their academic writing styles. Thesecultures exhibit a high tolerance for thecircuitousness, digressions, and parentheticalsub-structures that academic protocol in Eng-lish so rigorously denies. It seems then, thatlinearity is not so much a feature of the West-ern world as a feature of the Anglo world, apoint which needs to be stressed frequently inthe L2 classroom.

When teaching targeted rhetoric, one mustmake clear that one is teaching the conven-tions of a nominated L2 community (e.g.,English), which may or may not be intrinsi-cally valuable. Rhetorical conventions differwidely and each is as licit and effective in itsown environment as the other. In Japaneseliteracy, for example, it is assumed that thereader is able to interpret the 'white' or'empty' spaces between the lines (i.e., thatwhich is unsaid), so that author and readerenter into a kind of collusion (S. Mushakoji,personal communication). If both parties

understand the parameters of this protocol(i.e., that implicit messages are more impor-tant that explicit ones), then this rhetoricalstyle is quite potent. Furthermore, it must besaid that, due to the pervasiveness of Anglowriting in the Western hemisphere (ingovernment, in the media, in academia, inlegal documentation, in scientific and medicaljournals, in computing literature, etc.), rhetori-cal style which features linearity may be heldin false preference to a host of other, equallylegitimate academic protocols.

Literacy cross-culturallyIf we consider literacy dispassionately then,

it soon becomes clear that we must be ever-vigilant against preconceived conviction andprejudice when it comes to matters of aca-demic protocol. Kaplan (1966), in acontroversial and much-quoted paper,graphically depicted various modes of dis-course structure according to what hebelieved was the exhibited pattern of textualdevelopment. These are repeated in Figure 1.

English Semitic

Oriental Romance

Russian

Figure I. Graphic representations of variousmodes of discourse structure.'

Adapted from "Cultural thought patterns ininter-cultural education" by R.B. Kaplan, 1966,Language Learning 16 , p.15. Utilised withpermission of R.B. Kaplan and Language Learning.

2 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

The 'Romance' diagram for the Romanic(i.e., Latin) structures of, for example,France, Italy, Rumania, and Spain is not sodifferent to the ones drawn for Russia andGermany, as Figure 2 shows.

Romance Russian

Figure 2. Graphic representations of certainIndo-European discourse structures (cf.Loveday, 1982 for the German).

Notice that all three diagrams in Figure 2(representing a goodly portion of the 'West-ern' world) are hardly linear, suggesting thatweaving, wavering, ambivalence, and lack ofclear progression are unremarkable patternsof discourse organisation in these nations.This is especially noteworthy in that it contra-dicts any preexistent notions that 'Europeans'are of a single 'textual' frame of mind. And itis an excellent counterargument to the claimthat 'linear' is the superior or preferred stylefor academic writing. However, I invite thereader to judge whether European textsmatch the diagrams listed above, noting thatKaplan has been censured over the years forhis claims. Still, I will endorse him conceptu-ally, and venture to say that whilst graphicalrevision might be in order, the principalnotion holds (i.e., that cultures differ consid-erably in their modes of constructing text).

Asiatic 'circular' style ofliteracy

The 'Oriental' style of Figure 1 supposedlycharacterises an East Asian rhetorical pattern.In this rhetorical mode, the writer avoids adirect delineation of thesis (i.e., statement of

topic) in the opening sections of text. Thethesis may be mentioned towards the middleof the text, towards the end, or indeed perhapsnever clearly at all. It is left to the reader toassemble the main thrust of the argument,based upon the clues in the text. Kaplan(1966) calls such a style an 'approach by indi-rection'. Discourse development follows apattern of 'turning and turning in a wideninggyre'. The loops revolve around the topic andview it from a variety of positions, but neveraddress it directly. "Things are developed interms of what they are not, rather than interms of what they are" (Kaplan, op. cit).Loveday (1982) refers to this type ofdiscourse as the 'dot-type' presentation of oneitem after the other, in a highly anecdotal orepisodic manner, without ever actually statinga conclusion. And Fliegel (1987) refers to itas 'emblematic mode', one which presents avariety of generic outcomes rather than a sin-gle chosen position. The overriding principlefor all of these discourse structures is that thereader must extrapolate a position from seem-ingly unrelated facts or situations. But as Ihave already suggested, the obscure textualclues may in fact be very obviously related tomembers sharing the same LI code. This isperhaps a correlate of the goal of thediscourse. Leki (1991) notes that rhetoric inthe Asiatic tradition has an historical purposeof announcing truth rather than proving it, sothat the speaker/writer arranges the proposi-tions of the announcement in such a way thatreferences to a communal, traditional wisdominvite easy and harmonious agreement. Rhet-oric in the Western tradition, quite conversely,has an object of convincing peers of some(originally political) position, andconsequently places much prominence on thespeaker/writer's ability to reason and to mar-shal evidence. In summary then, we mightdescribe the 'Oriental' mode of text develop-ment as deferential, anecdotal, and circuitous,one which seeks to address an issue by de-scribing the surrounding terrain. It empha-sises group collectivity, the elicitation of con-sent, and the avoidance of direct conflict (cf.Fliegel, op. cit.).

February, 19983

Problem areas for literacy inEnglish

Although controvertible (cf. Braddock,1974; Hinds, 1983; Mohan and Lo, 1985;Sa'adeddin, 1989; Leki, 1991), Kaplan's1960s diagrams can be utilised as a spring-board with which to view rhetorical patternsdiscriminately. We may disagree with termssuch as 'Oriental' (a marked 'American' term,incidentally, since the Orient traditionally sub-sumes the Near, Middle, and Far East), andwe may dispute his 'circular' representation inFigure 1. Yet Kaplan was among the first toidentify the wide divergency in rhetorical ori-entations, and his work is seminal in the fieldof cross-cultural literacy. He was, in fact,rather cautious about his original claims,emphasising that they were exploratory andtentative.

So then, we have seen that linearity is atleast a prima facie requirement of Anglorhetorical patterning. Therefore, it must beexplicitly taught and compared with the L2speaker's native conventions (where possi-ble). Other problem areas are the students'habitual lack of signalling devices (e.g.,opening the discourse, introducing a newpoint, sequencing, illustration, qualification,generalising, summarising, concluding, etc.),improper layout of a document (formatting),choice of textual strategy (e.g., chronological;areal; ranking; comparison and contrast;cause and effect, discussion, etc.), syntacticerror (e.g., tense and aspect; modality; voice;relative clauses; reference), and violation ofacademic protocol in the target language. Ilist below a few of the key problem areas Ihave identified in the teaching of literacy inEnglish:

(i) proper presentation format(formatting)

(ii) linearity vs. circuity (structure)(iii) use of semantic markers (signalling)(iv) developmental style (style)(v) syntactic error (syntax)(vi) violation of academic protocol

(protocol)

Number (i) is a rather boring but seeminglyneglected domain concerned with presentinga document properly in English. Therefore, I

usually address this point first when teachingAnglo protocol. It concerns such matters asrecording one's personal details on a docu-ment (name, title, class/organisation), assign-ing a suitable title to the text, using standardmargin settings (i.e., one inch or 2.54 cm),positioning the text on the page, employingsection headings and subheadings, ensuringthat the text is of a suitable length, and anyother matters concerning the physical form ofthe document (paper size, binding, extrainclusions such as a table of contents, list ofreferences, appendices, etc. where necessary).

Number (v) will be discussed in the nextsection. However, it might be appropriate tomention here that if syntactic or rhetoricaldeficiencies exist in the source code (i.e., theLI), then these tendencies will predictablycarry into the L2 code. That is to say, if anL2 writer exhibits syntactic error or poordevelopment in the target code, it may wellbe due not so much to Ll rhetorical interfer-ence as to the reality that the same blunderswould be committed in the native language(cf. Mohan and Lo, 1985).

Procedure for teachingrhetorical literacy in English

For East Asian students, I generally drawthe following two illustrations (Figure 3) onthe blackboard, and invite their assent or dis-sent, according to their perceptions of theirown language code.

Anglo

Figure 3. Linearity vs. 'circuity': (cf.Kaplan, 1966)

Whatever the outcome, their awareness ofvariant rhetorical patterning has beensecured, and this in itself is a significant

4 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

advantage as they approach the acquisition ofL2 literacy. It is then necessary to givedetailed instruction on the components oflinearity in English. Whilst I accept that lin-earity is a concept that may in fact be in needof critical revision, I will nevertheless repeathere the broadly defining outline of Anglodiscourse structure which I present to stu-dents. Unsurprisingly, these can be dividedinto (a) the textual: Introduction (statement ofthesis), Development (expansion of thesis,usually with supporting arguments), andConclusion (summation or synthesis of the-sis); and (b) the sentential: phrasal andclausal linearity, such as the characteristicword order of the L2 (e.g., SVO, SOV, VSO,etc.); coherence within nominal and verbalconstituents; and proper anaphoric,cataphoric, and exophoric reference within oracross clauses. Concerning structure in gen-eral, I have found that an exposition of struc-tural linearity at the textual level helps learn-ers to perceive its presence at the sententiallevel. That is to say, a cultivated appreciationof vertical linear structure at the macro levelof text can facilitate a gradual appreciation ofhorizontal linear structure at the micro levelof sentence. (For example, the perception ofthe overall linear pattern of SVO in Englishlinguistic structure; the perception of the lin-ear modification of a head element basedupon the position of modifiers in the L2; theperception of the linear anaphoric reference ofpronouns and relative clauses to nominalheads).

What is important is that the L2 learnerappreciate the necessity for linearity in Eng-lish, whether or not he or she believes it to bean attractive rhetorical quality. Understand-ing precisely what mechanisms need to beacquired is part of the adult learning process.While this may be a rationalist viewpoint, it isI think, defensible, given that textual organisa-tion procedure is so little taught in either theLl or L2 of many speakers. It might be use-ful to imagine the Anglo learner ofJapanesewho, having been accustomed to a lifetime oflinearity and explicitness in his or her Ll, sud-denly finds that s/he must skirt the issue, deli-

cately suggest rather than labour a point, andgive much more credit to the reader than iscustomary in the native rhetorical mode. Intargeted rhetoric pedagogy, the goal is alwaysthe perception of literacy in the L2.

Following on from the last section, belowis a list of procedural steps which I havefound to be useful when introducing the aca-demic protocol for Anglo literacy:

A. General Skills

(i ) formatting: proper presentation format(ii) structure: linearity vs. circuity(iii) signalling: use of semantic markers

B. Pointed Skills

(iv) style: representative text development(a) chronological (points arranged

according to their temporalsequence)

(b) areal (points arranged according to acategorical area)

(c) ranking (points arranged accordingto their order of importance)

(d) comparison and contrast (pointsarranged according to theirsimilarities and dissimilarities)

(e) cause and effect (points arrangedaccording to a causal relationshipbetween x and y)

(t) discussion (points arranged accord-ing to a combinative utilisation of(a) (e) )

(v) syntax: syntactic strategies(a) tense and aspect (Past vs. Non-Past

tense in English; Simple,Progressive, Perfective aspects)

(b) modality (epistemic, deontic)(c) voice (active vs. passive)(d) relative clauses (restrictive vs. non-

restrictive)(e) reference (anaphoric, exophoric,

cataphoric)

(vi) protocol: adherence to L2 protocol

February, 19985

9

Note that number (v) is not necessarily to betaught per se; it is rather an inventory ofessential linguistic mechanisms which can besuccessfully employed by the L2 learner, if thelevel of general proficiency is such that s/hewould appreciate a pointed analysis and dem-onstration of use in the development of a text.

ConclusionAcademic convention, both spoken and

written, is a culture-specific construct. Mostprotocols are 'top-down', in that they dependon what the speaker psychologically brings tothe written discourse (cf. Jannuzi 1997).They are therefore culturally introspective,and by extension, universally inefficient.However, I hope that the above discussionconvincingly conveys that the protocol of thetarget code (i.e., the requisite principles andexpectations of the L2 rhetoric) can be ac-quired through systematic and explicit instruc-tion in cross-cultural modes of literacy. I

stress 'systematic' here because rhetoric isoften haphazardly and uncomprehensivelytaught, if at all.

Finally, it is of paramount concern forwriter and reader alike to suspend linguisticjudgements when viewing text. This is sonatural an inclination that few of us can resistthis pitfall. However, to do so is to focus onform rather than on substance; on the packag-ing rather than on the gist of the text. Butbecause so much depends on the use of prop-er protocol in a linguistic code, it happenstime and again that quite worthy texts aresummarily dismissed by the uninformed, withthe typical comment that the writer 'doesn'tknow how to write'. In my own experience, Iknow that when I am asked to correct thewritten texts of Japanese colleagues, thevarious lexical and syntactic errors alwaysseem trivial in comparison to a violation ofthe anticipated protocol (i.e., lack of linearity,no clear statement of thesis, no apparentintroduction, no supporting arguments, nosummation or synthesis: not articulating thecontrolling idea, not getting to the point, notexpanding or defending the point, not return-ing to or exploiting the idea). Indeed I often

wonder how our 'aggressive' Occidental dis-course is received by the Oriental readership.Consequently, it behoves us all as educatorsto be as open and neutral as possible whenapproaching a complex task like targetedrhetoric.

ReferencesBraddock, R. (1974). The frequency and placement

of topic sentences in expository prose. Researchin the Teaching of English, 8, 287-302.

Fliegel, D. (1987, June16 ). Immigrant professionalsmust speak American. The Boston Globe.

Hinds, J. (1983). Contrastive rhctoric: Japanese andEnglish. Text, 3 (2), 183-196.

Jannuzi, C. (1997). Key concepts in FL literacy:Schema thcory. Literacy Across Cultures, 1 (2),10-15.

Kaplan, R. B. (1966). Cultural thought patterns ininter-cultural education. Language Learning, 16(1 and 2), 1-20.

Kaplan, R B. (1967). Contrastive rhetoric and theteaching of composition. TESOL Quarterly 2 (1),10-16.

Kaplan, R. B. (1978). Contrastive rhetoric: somehypotheses. ITL (39-40), 61-72.

Kaplan, R. B. (1983). Contrastive rhetorics: Someimplications for the writing process. In A. Freed-man, I. Pringle, and J. Yalden (eds.), Learning tostrite: First language/Second language, London,Longman, 139-161.

Leki, I. (1991). Twenty-five years of contrastiverhetoric: text analysis and writing pedagogics.TESOL Quarterly, 25 (1), 123-143.

Loveday, L. (1982). The Sociolinguistics of learningand using a non-native Language. Oxford:Pergamon Press.

Mushakoji, S. (1997). Associate Professor, Facultyof Knowledge Science, University of Library andInformation Science, Tsukuba-shi, Japan.

Mohan, B. A., and Lo, W. A-Y. (1985). Academicwriting and Chinese students: transfer and devel-opmental factors. TESOL Quarterly, 19 (3),515-534.

Sa'adeddin, M. A. (1989). Text development andArabic-English negative interference. AppliedLinguistics 10 (1), 36-51.

01010.0.0..

Dr. Denise Douglas-Brown can be contactedat Foreign Language Centre, University ofLibrary and Information Science (ULIS),1-2 Kasuga, Tsukuba 305, JAPAN, and bye-mail at <ddbrown@ulis.ac.jp>.

6 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1l)

Key Concepts in FL Literacy:Phonemic AwarenessCharles JannuziFukui University, Japan<jannuzi@ThePentagon.com>

In this third key concept article for LAC, Iwill look more closely at a term that isbeing discussed a lot in the literacy field:

phonemic awareness. The perceived impor-tance of this concept, in part, seems to arisebecause linguistic and psycholinguisticinsights have long been a concern in literacyresearch and pedagogy. Linguistic insights,too, have played a significant role in ELT andTESOL, such as the prestigious, usuallyuniversity-based areas of research and intel-lectual endeavor known as Applied Linguis-tics (AL) and Second Language Acquisition(SLA). However, phonemic awarenessboth the term and the concepts it mightdenotedoes not seem to be covered verydeeply in the discourses of AL and SLA.

The state of the art: SLAI consulted Ellis's (1994) monumental

work on SLA, The Study of SecondLanguage Acquisition, only to find that forthe purposes of this key concept article, theterm does not exist in the sort of SLAresearch and analysis that so often guidestheory and practice in ELT/TESOL. We seethis in actual workaday ELT/TESOL whenboth academics (such as teacher trainers) andclassroom teachers dismiss phonology as"pronunciation practice", the main purpose ofwhich is trivially to reduce or "fix" accents.Or they prioritize it out of existence, leavingit off already crowded syllabuses. The closestconceptualization of something that approa-ches the term "phonemic awareness" that Icould find in the SLA literature is Ard (1989),who argues for a constructivist approach inaccounting for L2 interlanguage phonology.

He writes:A truly explanatory theory or model of thephonological competence of second lan-guage learners must provide an explana-tion of how learners could construct thephonological representation used in theirpronunciations....In particular, the types ofrepresentations posited for competentnative speakers could not be assumed to beavailable to second language learners.(p. 257)

Ard's argument does usefully point out thatwe should not presume L2 learners to be likenative speakers in terms of underlyingcompetence. Unfortunately, it does not gointo any great detail about what implicationsL2 learners' psycholinguistic construction ofthe L2 phonology (such as it isincomplete,negatively influenced by Ll, etc.) might havefor auditory and bottom-up language process-ing, phonemic awareness, and listening andreading L2 texts/discourse for meaning.

The state of the art:Literacy

A more complete if somewhat tautologicalworking definition of phonemic awarenesscomes to us from the field of literacy.According to Williams (1995), it is "theawareness of sounds (phonemes) that makeup spoken words" (p. 185). How might thesituation be different with beginning levelESL and EFL students? Williams (1995)contends that "such awareness does notappear when young children learn to talk; theability is not necessary for speaking andunderstanding spoken language. However,phonemic awareness is important to learning

February, 19987

ii

to read [alphabetic written languages]" (p.185).In other words, phonemic awareness is notthe intuitive, fluent phonological competencethat normally results from acquiring a nativelanguage, a competence which underlies, inpart, the ability to make meaning (decode andencode) in that language. It is , however, anadditional knowledge that overlays such com-petence, a verifiable insight that one's nativeor non-native language can be broken downinto sounds and sound combinations in orderto relate them to the letters and letter combi-nations of the written language (provided thatthe writing system at least partly functionsphonemically, as it does in English).

But L2 learners aredifferent

One obvious problem for beginning levelESL and EFL learners is that they are notgoing to have acquired a native speaker'scompetence in English phonology. Thisinterlanguage phenomenon is most clearlyobservable and predictable when the phonol-ogy of the student's LI is markedly differentfrom English. A good example is Japanese,because it has such a different speech rhythm,a much smaller set of sound contrasts (Eng-lish 44, Japanese 21), and much simpler pos-sibilities for syllable structure than English, alanguage to which it is as unrelated as alanguage can be. Yet even some Indo-European languages in the Romance branchof the family present the same sort of cross-linguistic problems in phonology (and inter-estingly enough, the speech rhythm andsmaller set of sounds of spoken Japanese areoverall closer to Italian or Spanish than eitherof these two are to English).

Since beginning level ESL and EFLstudents are not going to have an internalizednative speaker competence with Englishphonology, their development must take adifferent path. This makes their ESL or EFLlanguage and literacy development somewhatanalogous to the learning disabledat leastin the senses that their development will notfollow the fairly smooth path of the majorityof native speakers and may require highly

individualized, linguistically enlightenedapproaches to instruction and remediation.

Non-native language and literacy studentsmust: (1) learn and/or acquire an adequateinterlanguage phonology that compensatesfor the lack of native competence and thenlearn and/or acquire the phonemic awarenessthat is considered a necessary step in learningto read English or (2) learn and/or acquire anadequate interlanguage phonology while atthe same time learning and/or acquiring thephonemic awareness necessary to read English.

Indeed, it could be logically concluded thateffective phonemic awareness training can notprecede the development of a sufficient, inter-nalized interlanguage phonology, though itmight be hoped that training and practice inboth could prove mutually reinforcing (e.g.with a well thought out approach for adaptingphonics to ESL/EFL). What seems to bemost regrettable and confusing is the waywritten texts are often forced on absolutebeginning level ESL/EFL students (such as injunior high schools here in Japan), with littleor no attention given to their learner needs in(1) interlanguage phonology development,(2) phonemic awareness, or (3) phonic skills.

Some basic distinctions forteachers to keep in mind

The following is a sort of glossary of keyterms that teachers should be clear on if theywant to try incorporating phonological andphonemic awareness training into their ESL/EFL and non-native literacy classrooms.

Phonemics vs. phoneticsThese two terms are often confused, yet

there is an important underlying distinctionthat pertains to this discussion. In order for aperson to understand and be understood in alanguage, they will, among other things, haveconstructed and internalized a sufficient set ofdistinct sound features. These featuresdelimit the way we can make meaning withsounds in a given language. It is our phone-mic competence, in part, with these soundsthat allows us to perceive, produce, and pat-

8Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

4 I-)

tern them categorically in order to process alanguage, encode and decode it, make mean-ing in and communicate with it.

Spoken English across major dialects andas spoken for international communicationshas about 40 distinct sound segments calledphonemes. We can become more consciousof these phonemes by using minimal pairs(i.e., they differ in pronunciation by only onesound) to deduce their existence. In English,the minimal pair, 'lip' and 'rip', are two dif-ferent words with different meanings. So, wecan infer that the /1/ sound is a different pho-neme than the Id sound. But to speakers ofJapanese, the distinction is not so categori-cally clear; in both perception and produc-tion, they tend to confuse an English /1/ withan English Id because to them both soundsseem equally similar, to their one nativesound, a tapped (and possibly rolled) /r/ simi-lar to the /r/s of Italian or Russian. English'srelatively large sound inventory leads to manyother analogous problems for Japanese learn-ers of English.

For the purposes of non-native LL andliteracy, phonemic ability as it has been dis-cussed above is not the only concern. Sincethe sounds that give substance to humanlanguages are more than a linguist's abstrac-tion, non-native students must develop aphonetic talent, too. This could be arguedjust for the reason that there are many othersounds humanly possible outside the set ofphonemes of one's native language, a basicmetalinguistic understanding that could help-fully precede trying to learn a second orforeign language. What's more, any nativelanguage as it is actually realized in communi-cation involves more different sounds (calledallophones) than the set of phonemes describedby linguists. Phonetics is about how allsounds, so long as humans are capable ofmaking them with their vocal tracts, are phys-ically produced and received in acousticspace.

As native speakers we tend to limit cate-gorically how we perceive and monitor theproduction of sounds in order to decode andencode messages and make meaning in a

given language; but, outside of our heads andbrains and the linguistic intelligence weconstantly project from the top-down,sounds in the external world are still justsounds, noises, disturbances. We think thatthe stressed, aspirated (with a puff of air) /p/sound we hear at the beginning of the Englishword 'pot' is the same sound as the unaspir-ated /p/ (or possibly a glottal stop) at theend of the word 'top'. Phonemically speak-ing, it is, as we force both sounds into thesame /p/ category. This categorization is nodoubt reinforced by the phonemic aspects ofwritten English, which does not distinguishbetween the phonetically different /p/ sounds,spelling them both <p>.

Phonetically speaking the word final /p/ isnot the same as the initial one, because allsounds are in actuality both uniquely realizedand predictably affected by the sounds thatprecede and proceed them in the stream ofspeech. However scientifically interestingsuch variations and effects are, if we attendedonly to them, we would never make sense ofutterances as meaning something. We alsoneed to remember, however, that beginningESL/EFL learners will not be able to catego-rize the sounds phonemically with anywherenear the selective efficiency of a nativespeaker; therefore, phonetic variations,because they complicate and distract, helpturn the stream of sounds into even more ofan acoustic blur for the beginning FL learner.

Phonology = phonemics +phonetics

Some linguists might use the term "phonol-ogy" to encompass both "phonemics" (thedistinct sounds of a given language or thestudy of them) and "phonetics" (all speechsounds, including the actual realizations andvariants of phonemes, or the study of them).I think that, for the purpose of non-nativeEnglish literacy, it is a useful grouping tomake. When earlier I wrote that our studentsmust acquire and/or learn a sufficient, inter-nalized interlanguage phonology as well asphonemic awareness, my use of the term"phonology" was meant to entail both the

February, 1998 9

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phonemic and phonetic aspects to learningspoken English as a SL or FL.

Phonological vs. phonemicawareness

In ESL/EFL literacy, this is an additional butimportant distinction we could make. As Ihave written above, beginning level ESUEFLstudents have to acquire and/or learn a suffi-cient, internalized phonology that allows themto listen to and speak English for comprehen-sion and making meaning. The need for phone-mic awareness arises when it is time for thestudents to start to relate their interlanguagephonology to alphabetically written English.A better term for this step in learner develop-ment, however, might be phonologicalawareness (thus subsuming phonemic aware-ness). This would be a more complete sort ofmetalinguistic consciousnessa developed setof insights about both the phonemic and rele-vant phonetic aspects of English useful to helpin relating the spoken language to the writtenone. These types of conscious, metalinguisticabilities might also help in the learning and/oracquisition of the second or foreign language.

It should be noted, however, that taking anexplicit, metalinguistic analysis to the level ofthe phoneme is not necessarily a notion that iseasy to grasp, no matter how well developeda learner's interlanguage phonology might be.Indeed, it is hardly intuitive for native speak-ers of English. I would guess that if youasked most literate native speakers of Englishwhat the distinct sounds of English are theywould start by saying the 'ABCs'. There isan intuitive analysis going on here, but onlyto the level of the syllable: except for the pro-nunciation of the letter <W> (which is threesyllables) , the names of the letters of the Eng-lish alphabet are syllables that almost invariablycontain a target sound of English. An examina-tion ofJapanese literacy also reveals that thenative literate person's intuitive level of analysisstops at the syllable: the Japanese do not saytheir 'ABCs', but rather their kana, which aresymbols by and large standing for all of thepossible syllables of spoken Japanese.

Whether we call it phonological or phone-

mic awareness, in the form most basic to non-native English literacy, it entails bcing able todistinguish single and combined sounds oc-curring initially from the rest of the syllablesand words that follow. Take for example theone-syllable word "cat", which joins threephonemes of English (/k/ + ke/ + /V) into oneunit of meaning. Someone who is phonemi-cally aware at a minimal level can abstract theinitial consonant (or onset) /k/ sound from therest of the syllable and word (the rime, i.e. thevowel ka/ plus consonant sound It/).

Unlike Japanese, for example, English canhave fairly complex consonant clusters at thebeginning of words, too. A student who isphonemically aware to a sufficient degree willbe able to separate the initial cluster or onset/str/ from the rime /aip/ in the word "stripe".If presented orally, such words and theirpartial segmentation into onset and rime canbe used to test and teach phonemic aware-ness. If done in written form without an oralpresentation, however, they require an addi-tional set of abilities: decoding (or wordattack or phonic) skills.

Phonological or phonemicawareness + phonics skills =beginning reading

Phonic/word attack/decoding skills takephonemic awareness one step further into therealm of the written language. They requirethat the learner have (1) a sufficiently large,internalized, mentally constructed interlan-guage phonology of English, (2) a phonologi-cal or phonemic awareness that distinctsounds can be abstracted from larger sylla-bles, words, and the flow ofspeech sounds,and (3) the skill to apply these abilities andinsights to the alphabetic code of actualwritten English in order to read and write formaking meaning and communication.

Native writing systems (ours vs.theirs)

Although it is a given in TESL and TEFLthat our students' spoken native languages are

10Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

1 Li

going to have an effect on their abilities withEnglish (e,g., interference or negative transferin phonology, grammar, vocabulary use,etc.), it is striking how little consideration isgiven to the importance ofnative writing sys-tems, especially since we so often take (andoften take wrongly) as a given a sort of uni-versal literacy that is supposed to result frombeing a native speaker of a language. Asteachers we presuppose in our students anorientation to the written text as a useful lan-guage learning tool: how many teachers tryto teach a SL/FL without written texts?

In Japan our students are typically wellalong in developing adult-level literacy inJapanese by the time EFL is introduced as ajunior high school subject. One problem isthat the sort ofmetalinguistic awareness thatarises from learning to read and write Japa-nese as a native language and prestige dialectmight be inadequate and even misleading forbeginning level EFL literacy. This character-ization could be extended to non-nativeteachers as well as students.

Alphabetic writing systems:phonemic vs. phonetic vs.mixed

Languages written alphabetically usuallyfall into these three categories: phonemic,phonetic, and mixed. Written Finnish andSpanish are often cited as examples of writtennatural languages that are highly phonemic;that is, one distinct unit of sound (a phoneme)is conventionally represented with one dis-tinct unit of the writing system (a grapheme).A one-phoneme-to-one-grapheme unity pre-vails in a writing system that is phonemic.

Although not usually, for certain purposes,Japanese can be written alphabetically using asystem called romaji (meaning roman letters).At least one officially approved form ofromaji is quite phonemic and was actuallyproposed during both the Meiji Era and thepostwar Occupation to be a replacement forthe complex written Japanese that has evolv-ed and is used today (written Japanese is amix of logographic and syllabic characters).Another form of romaji exists for pedagogical

February, 1998

purposes and is quite well known to JSL/JFLstudents. It has been designed to be somewhatmore phonetic because phonetic representationsare helpful to SL/FL students, but not com-pletely so, as it misses the major allophones(predictable variations ofa phoneme) of aproblem sound in JSL/JFL, the so-calledsyllabic /N/.

There is no denying that written English isan alphabetic system. It just can not be de-scribed as purely phonetic or phonemic, andactually gives a rather elusive twist to themeaning of the category "mixed." It is mixedin the sense that it has evolved into a balanceof both phonemic and morpho- or logopho-nemic elements for setting down into thewriting the spoken language. This has impor-tant implications for how we actually are ableto read written English. As Sampson (1985)states:

Anyone who succeeds in becoming a skill-ed user of written English must eventuallylearn to use both look-and-say' (orlogographic) and 'phonic' strategies inboth processing modes, reading and writ-ing. The phonic strategy must be used inreading when one encounters a newword....On the other hand, a familiar wordwith a thoroughly irregular spelling mustbe handled logographically even by thewriter: no-one could spell knight correctlyby 'sounding out' the word and convertingphonemes to graphemes....-Parenthetically,even a 'phonic' reading strategy, when it isused, need not necessarily involve uncon-scious resort to a fixed, algorithmic set ofrules...for converting letter-sequences tosound-sequences. An alternative viewholds that an unfamiliar word is read byconstructing analogies between its spellingand that of familiar words which can beread logographically, and guessing at thepronunciation of the new word by refer-ence to the known pronunciations of thefamiliar words. (p. 209)

1 1

Conclusion: Not so fastIn native language literacy, some theorists,

researchers, and educators have re-examinedthe possible importance of phonemic aware-ness and have come to this conclusion:phonemic awareness is a necessary skill inbecoming literate. Some more enthusiasticadvocates have even gone so far as to draw acausal connection: adequate phonemicawareness causally underlies the jump tobeginning literacy. My reading of the litera-ture, unfortunately, does not allow me tosupport a casual connection. The phonemicawareness that has been measured byresearchers and observed by classroomteachers may be epiphenomenal, in whichcase it may not causally underlie readingdevelopment in English, but rather occuralong with it. True, it might also be a neces-sary pre-condition for successful readingdevelopment, but one of many and thereforenot in itself sufficient.

Also, as with so many other things wemight isolate to teach explicitly and deduc-tivelye.g., grammar, vocabulary, studyskills, and so onthere is the question ofwhether or not such instruction leads toeffective learning for the majority of ourstudents. If phonemic awareness training isto be a part of non-native literacy, just whatare the instructional technologies and strate-gies that will allow us to present it to ourstudents as something they can learn, assimi-late, and apply in novel situations? Are eitherphonics or whole language approaches, whichhave been largely developed for middle classnative speakers of English's prestige dialects,

adequate for systematically addressing ourstudents' needs? One thing is certain: Thereis plenty for us to explore and exchange ideasabout in our reading and professional devel-opment, our classroom research, and ourteaching.

ReferencesArd, J. (1989). A constructivist perspective on non-

native phonology. In S.M. Gass and J. Schacter(Eds.), Linguistic perspectives on secondlanguage acquisition (pp. 243-259). Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Ellis, R (1994). The study of second languageacquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sampson, G. (1985). Writing systems. Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press.

Williams, J. (1995). Phonemic Awareness. In T.L.Harris and R.E. HOdges (Eds.), The literacydictionary: The vocabulary of reading andwriting (pp. 185-6). Newark, DE: InternationalReading Association.

Recommended ReadingAdams, M.J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking

and learning about print. Champaign, IL:Center for the Study of Reading, The ReadingResearch and Education Center, University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Truch, S. (1991). The missing parts of wholelanguage. Calgary, Alberta: FoothillsEducational Materials.

.0111111106..

Charles Jannuzi can be contacted at FukuiUniversity College of Education, Bunkyo3-9-1, Fukui 910, JAPAN, and by Email at<janinizi@edu00.f-edu. fiikui-u.aajp> or<jannuzi@ThePentagon.com>.

ErrataIn the article, "Key Concepts in FL Literacy: Schema Theory" by Charles Jannuzi (Literacy Across CulturesVol. 1, Nd. 2, September 1997, pp. 7-12), it was stated that a "script" for ordering a meal at a rcstaurant was atype of culturally specific content schema (p. 8). Such a script is actually an example of a culturally specificformal schema.

Also, in the article "Guessing Word Meaning from Contcxt: Should We Encourage It?" by David Dycus(Literacy Across Cultures Vol. 1, No. 2, September 1997, pp. 1-6), the full reference for "Barnett, 1988 " wasomitted, and the year of publication cited in the article was incorrect. The full reference is: Barnett, M.(1989). More than meets the eye. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall Regents. Finally, in the same article,references to articles by both J. Coady and B. Laufer in the bookSecond language vocabulary acquisitionincorrectly give the year of publication as 1996. The correct year is 1997. The respective authors and theeditor apologize for these errors.

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Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

insightsOpinions and perspectives

LGrammar, Reading, and Listening Skills Among JapaneseStudents of English: A Comparison of Respective AbilitiesBern MulveyFukui University

Are the reading and grammar skills ofJapa-nese students of English really that much

better than their admittedly poor listening andspeaking skills? Judging from comments madein journals and on academic list serves (see, forinstance, Shimaoka & Yamashiro, 1990), manyJapanese and many foreign academics living inJapan seem in agreement that this is indeed thecase, but on what hard data is this commonlyheard conclusion based?

I decided to look into this question whileworking as the Academic Supervisor for theESL school affiliated to the University ofRedlands between 1990 and 1993. School pol-icy dictated that non-matriculated internationalstudents receive an institutional (i.e. non-official,yet conducted as if it were official) TOEFL ex-amination every 10 weeks as a means of judgingtheir progress toward matriculation, with eachtest being taken from a large library of old (atleast 8+ year old) TOEFL examinations. Whilethe possibility of individual students repeating anexam they had taken eight years prior in theirown country did exist, it was felt that eight yearswas a sufficiently long time period to preventmost occurrences of this. Also, as the averageage of most of the Japanese students was 21years old, the possibility of repetition was practi-cally eliminated for the Japanese student popula-tion, none of whom would have taken an offi-cial TOEFL examination at the age of 13). Fi-nally, due to the large number of tests on file, itwas possible to ensure that no student receivedthe same institutional TOEFL during my staythere, something true even with those studentswho had failed to matriculate into the regularuniversity after 3 years.

A total of 183 Japanese students studied atthe ESL school for various periods during thetime of this study, taking 824 tests in all.

February, 1998

Their average scores are as follows:

Listening Grammar Reading49 I 46 I 40 I

The average overall TOEFL score received byJapanese students for this period was 450. Theresults of scores received by newly arrivedJapanese taking their first institutional exam(163 of the total) were slightly different:

Listening Grammar ReadingI43 I 44 I 34 I

The average overall TOEFL score received bythis group was 403.

As the above two tables illustrate, readingability actually tests as the students' weakestskill, with grammar and listening ability testingalmost equally.

Of course, an important question that needsto be asked is what exactly is proved by suchscore discrepanciesi.e. what do results fromdiagnostic tests such as the TOEFL reallymean? While both TOEFL and TOEIC regu-larly conduct validity analysis (Macgregor,1997, p. 31), the fact that an exam accuratelytests the skills it is supposed to is only the firststep to answering the question of what exactly ascore of, say, 410 tells us about someone's abil-ity to perform in a particular skill area. Still, theabove findings, combined with similar conclu-sions reached in research conducted by Kitaoand Miyamoto (1982), Kitao and Yoshida(1985), and Saeki (1992) and Nishijima(1995), seem to suggest that the prevailingview of Japanese English learners being"good at grammar, reading, and writing, butbad at listening and speaking" needs to be more

1 '1

critically examined. And if further studies resultin fmdings similar to those mentioned above, itwould seem that the current methods of teachinggrammar and reading in Japanconsidered inthemselves comparatively successfulneed tobe further examined as well. At the very least,given that the average TOEFL Reading Sectionscore of 183 college-age Japanese languagelearnerssome of whom had spent upwards oftwo years in America working to improve theirEnglishwas only 400, the oft-heard truism ofJapanese over-all competency in English readingseems in need of serious re-consideration.

ReferencesKitao, K., & Miyamoto, H. (1982). Daigakusci no

Eigo DokkairyokuChosa ni Yoru Kosatsu

[Japanese College Studcnts' Reading AbilityAStudy Bascd on Testing]. Doshisha Studies inEnglish, 32, 118-147.

Kitao, K., & Yoshida, S. (1985). Daigakusci noEigo Dokkairyoku to Sono "Spced" no Kenkyu [AStudy of College Students' English Reading Com-prehcnsion and Speed]. Chubu Chiku EigoKyoiku Gakkai Kiyo, 14, 28-34.

Nishijima, H. (1992). Nihonjin Eigo no Jakuten waNani ka? Eigo Kyoiku, 44, 28-30.

MacGregor, L. (1997). Thc Eiken Test: An Investi-gation. JALT Journal,19 (1), 24-42.

Sacki, T. 1992. Kagakutekina Gaikokugo Gakushuu-hou. Tokyo: Koudansha.

Shimaoka, T. & Yashiro, K. (1990). Team Teachingin English Classrooms: An Intercultural Ap-proach. Tokyo: Kairudo.

Contact information on page 22.

Links to Literacy

Literacy Links: Phonology, Phonetics, PhonemicAwareness and Phonics

Charles Jannuzi<jannuzi@ThePentagon.corn>

As the Key Concept article in this issue isabout phonemic awareness and related

terms, I thought it would be worthwhile toput together a set of WWW links that wouldbe useful for LAC readers in their professionalreading on this topic. True, the WWW is nowcluttered with commercialism, but it is alsooffers an unprecedented abundance of realcontent, much of it free of charge. For thisset of links, I asked myself, could I use theWWW as a virtual library? In retrospect, Ithink I accomplished more than I ever couldat an actual library. Here are the results:

Yahoo.com<http://www.yahoo.com/>

I find Yahoo consistently to be the best placeto start a search. The full URL for thesection on language acquisition is <http://www.yahoo.com/Social_SciencelLinguistics_and_Human_Languages/

Language_Acquisition>. To get straightto things to read on phonemic awareness,try <http://av.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=phonemic&hc=08,hs=2>.

ERIC Digests<http:llwww.ed.govldatabases/ERIC_Digests/indexi>

There are many ways to ERIC Digests aboutliteracy, bilingualism,.ESL/ EFL, language,applied linguistics, and the like. The aboveaddress is the fastest way in that I have found.To do a search, try <http://www.ed. gov/Searchleric.html>. Rick Reynolds <InterPro@al.mbn.or.jp>, the ELTASIA-L listowner,reports ERIC digests bibliographies aboutphonics at <http://www. indiana. edu/-eric_redieo/digests/d93bib.html>, andone on phonological awareness at <http://www.indiana.edu/-eric_reclieo/digests/d119bib.html>.

14 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

is

Here is an example of an ERIC Digest Iwas able to find at <http://www.ed.gov/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed372375.html>:

ED372375 94 Phonics in Whole LanguageClassroom. ERIC Digest. Author:Weaver, Constance.

Summer Institute of Linguistics<http:llwww.sn.org/>

This site is a great place on the WWW tostart learning about linguistics and expandingyour language awareness. It also offers freeIPA fonts for your Win or Mac computers. Ifinterested, go to <http:fiwww.sil.org/ com-puting/ fonts/ipareadme.html>. Also atS1L, there is a large set of informative articlesat <hftp:// www. sil.org/lingualinks/library/>. To narrow your search down toliteracy-related articles, try <http:// www.sil.org/lingualinks/library/ literacy>.

Reading Online<http://www.readingonline.org/>

This is the online publication of the Interna-tional Reading Association <http://www.ira.org>. You can read the IRA's positionstatement on "Phonemic Awareness and theTeaching of Reading" and participate in anonline discussion at <http://www.readingonline.org/critical/phonemic/draft.html>.

Brett Reynolds/Sakuragaoka Jr.& Sr. High School <http://eslsv001. esisakuragaoka.ac.jp/teachers/BR/papers/>

Brett Reynolds <brett.reynolds@esIsvO0I .

esl.sakuragaoka.acjp> has written and puttogether quite a few papers about teachingand testing phonemic awareness and imple-menting phonics for EFL in Japan at thesecondary level. If you (1) are an ALT on theJET Programme, (2) teach Asian students atthe secondary level, or (3) are just interested

February, 1998

in the topics, there are plenty of ideas to read,think about, and try out at this WWW address.

Individual articles availableon the WWW

Searching the WWW can often lead to inter-esting documents in somewhat unexpectedplaces. Here are the URLs of a few sites con-taining articles related to phonics, phonologyand phonetics, along with the titles available.

Fathermag.com<http://www.kidsource.com/kidsource/content2/phoemic.p.k12.4.html>`Phonemic Awareness: An Important EarlyStep in Learning to Read" by RogerSensenbaug.

<http://www.cet.fsu.edu/tree/articlel .html>"Phonemic Awareness Training: Application ofPrinciples of Direct Instruction" by J.E. Spector.

<http://www.clas.ufl.edulusers/rscholes/psa.htm>"The Case Against Phonemic Awareness" byRobert J. Scholes.

Links for exploringphonology, phonetics, andpronunciation

If the sites above are still not enough for you,or don't quite have what you are looking for,here are a few more worth considering.

American Spoken English<http://www.americanspokenenglish.com/>

This site is a commercial site, but one sellingwell thought-out materials for learners andteachers of English at very reasonable prices.

1 5

Studying Phonetics on the Net<http://weber.u.washington.edu/dillon/PhonResources.html>

This is a truly great site to visit to study manyaspects of human speech. One interestingfeature completely explains how to translateIPA conventions into ASCII for e-maildiscussion lists. The sound files of Americanand British vowels and consonant phones ofEnglish worked well on my Acer multi-media notebook with Windows 95 Plusinstalled. To download sound files go to<http:// weber.u.washington.edu/-dillon/newstart. html> and <http://weber.u.washington.edu/-dillon/consframe2.html>.

Finally, here are a few more sites definitelyworth visiting. While there are no site de-scriptions, the names are fairly descriptive andshould give you a reasonable indication ofwhat you will find when you visit.

(Johann Wolfgang GoetheUniversitat Frankfurt, Institut furPhonetik) OnlineBibliography:Phonetics/ SpeechTechnology<http://www.uni-frankfurt.de/ifb/bib engl.html>

John Higgins' Minimal Pairs forEnglish<http://www.stir.ac.uklepd/celt/staff/higdox/wordlist/index.htm>

The International PhoneticAssociation (IPA)<http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/IPA/ipa.html>

Charles Jannuzi can be contacted at FukuiUniversity College of Education, Bunkyo3-9-1, Fukui 910, JAPAN, and by e-mail at<jannuzi@edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.acjp>.

Editor's note: The following article is the second in a series onbooksellers on the World Wide Web, the first appearing in the previousissue of Literacy Across Cultures (September, 1997, Vol. 1, No. 2). Theopinions, are the author's alone and do 1101 necessarily represent thoseof the Foreign Language Literacy N-SIG or of Literacy Across Cultures,and no endorsement of any site or company is implied.

Booksellers on the WWW: Specialty SellersCharles Jannuzi

<jammzi@ThePentagon.corn>

First a couple of notes about generalbooksellers, which were covered in the

last LAC. I found another U.K.-based book-seller that offers a complete WWW service.They are called the Internet Bookshop anddescribe themselves "as Europe's largest on-line" store. When searching for a title inEnglish, it's a good idea to inquire also with

16

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booksellers in the U.K. because almost twiceas many different titles are published annuallythere than in the U.S.A. So another completebookseller on the WWW to check out is at<http://www. bookshop.co.uk/>.

Also, if you are not really into web-browsingand web-shopping, you can always e-mail

bteracy Across Cultures Vol.2 No. I

The Goodbook Guide of the U.K., who canbe contacted electronically at this address:<enquiries@good-book-guide.co.lik>

LAC reader Teresa Moraes Vaz in Portu-gal reports that the Goodbook Guide hasgiven her the best service and cheapest ship-ping rates to Continental Europe so far. Bythe way, the Goodbook Guide publishes amonthly magazine reviewing many currenttitles, and if you visit their homepage you canorder a trial subscription. Their homepage,which is not set up for complete retail ser-vice, is found at <http://www.good-book-guide.com/. You can, however, do titleinquiries from a form found at the webpage.They also sell CD ROMs and videos (but ifyou live in North America or Japan, remem-ber that the U.K. uses the PAL standard forvideo).

Next, on to the specialty booksellers. Iselected these because I thought they wouldbe of special interest to FL and literacy edu-cators.

Specialty WWW Booksellers

Keltic Bookshop<http://www.keltic.co.uld>Specialty: ELT/EFL titles

Surely one of the first stops for anyonewanting to buy titles in ELT. If they don'thave it listed, they will get it if you inquire,and that includes books that teachers mightwant to get but that are outside of ELT.Their complete catalogue is available via asearch page, but you can also order printcopies from them. The annual paper versionis quite a nice guide to what is in print inBritish ELT. I searched for a sample title,The Lexical Approach by Michael Lewis andwas given a price of 13.50 GBP, plus S & Hto wherever I was going to have it sent. Let'suse that as a basis for comparison at otherELT/ESL/EFL booksellers. The site is not yetset up for secure, encrypted orders withadvanced browsers, but you can set up anaccount with Keltic so that you do not haveto send out your credit card information.

Alternatively, you could print up the orderingform from the browser and fax it to them. Ihave been informed that the site will soonadd secure ordering.

Delta Systems<http://www.delta-systems.coml>Specialty: ESL/EFL and ForeignLanguage Teaching/Learning titles

I had ordered from this U.S. company beforeusing their mail-order catalogues, but it tookawhile to find them on the Web. It seemsthere are quite a few enterprises in softwarethat use the name, 'Delta Systems". Theaddress above gets you to the Delta Systemsthat specializes in ESL/EFL and FLT books.They have two large catalogues (ESL/EFLand FLT) that you can search through a data-base or that you can browse just as youwould the paper versions. Like Keltic, the siteis not yet set up for secure ordering usingencryption. I suggest you fax your creditcard information when placing an order. Thesample ELT title, The Lexical Approach, wasoffered at 28.95 USD, making it quite a bitmore expensive than the Keltic price. Obvi-ously, though, the S&H will vary dependingon where you live, and the sample title is aU.K. one. Maybe Delta will have betterprices for books published in the U.S.A.

Multilingual Books and Tapes<http://www.esl.net/mbti>Specialty: ESL and FLT/FLL titles

I found this U.S.-based company'ssiteworth listing not just for its selection of mate-rials and software in ESL, but also for itswonderful variety of language teaching andlearning courses in many, many different lan-guages. If you want to learn such varied lan-guages as Albanian, Kurdish, Lakota Sioux,Passamaquoddy, or Zulu, here would be agreat place to find study materials. You cansearch their database and make secure orders.This is a great site for the English speaker whowants to teach and/or learn languages.

February, 199817)

World of Reading<http://www.wor.com/>Specialty: ESL and FLT/FLL titles

World of Reading offers a variety ofbooks, audio tapes, videos and software forboth ESL and a large number of foreign lan-guages, and complements the MultilingualBooks and Tapes site described above.Secure ordering is available for those usingan advanced version of Netscape Navigator.

A+ Books for Educators<http://www.aplusbooks.com/>Specialty: Professional books foreducators, including literacy and ESL/bilingual

I found a lot of interesting titles that over-lap with my concerns as an EFL teacher butwhich are not typically found in the ELTmainstream. A good site to visit if you arelooking to expand your professional readinghabits into other areas of education besidesELT. There is an order form, but it is notsecure, so it is better to submit the credit cardinformation via fax or phone.

Academic Therapy Publications<http://www.atpub.com/>Specialty: Special education, learningdisabilities, assessment (including L2learners), low level-high interest readingmaterial

This being a firm with two lines of prod-ucts and a clear sense of purpose, I will quotetheir own homepage:

Established in 1965, Academic TherapyPublications was one of the first publishersto meet the needs of teachers, parents, andstudents in the field of special educationand learning disabilities. Over the years, thecompany has extended the range of assess-ments and supplementary educational mate-

rials to include publications that can beused by regular classroom teachers,special education teachers, parents, educa-tional therapists, ESL teachers, andspecialists in all fields working with per-sons with reading, learning, and communi-cation disabilities. Attention is focused onthe inefficient learner who, although intel-lectually capable, is unable to achieveacademically by traditional methods.

There is a lot here for ESL, EFL, bilingualand literacy people to explore. Although thissite is not set up for ordering, you can browsetheir two catalogues here and order the hard-copy versions at this e-mail address: <atpub@aol. corn>.

Brookline Books<http://people.delphi.com/brooklinebks/index.html>Specialty: Disabilities, specialeducation, literacy, language teaching,professional development, personalimprovement

This site allows you to segue nicely fromATP. The variety of titles described is toobroad to summarize here. It is another sitethat will definitely help you to expand yourprofessional and personal reading habits.They are an Amazon.corn associate, so youcan order books listed at their site throughAmazon <http://www.amazon.com>. Ofcourse, Amazon orders are secure. You canalso contact Brookline's sales people bye-mail at <BROOKLINEBKS@delphi. com>.That is how I placed my order for books andsoftware on the qualitative and quantitativeassessment of text difficulty.

Learning Links<http://home.navisoft.com/learninglinks/index.htm>Specialty: literacy, literature, materialsfor literature-based reading programs

18 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

2

While ELT/EFL publishers do offer grad-ed readers and materials to support teachingwith them, another approach might be toadapt materials for native and ESL literacytoEFL. Learning Links has a lot to offeralong these lines. You can sample their cata-logue and order a hardcopy by e-mail at<sharon walsh@wcj.com>.

Social Studies School Service<httplisocialstudies.coml>Specialty: Educational materials of alltypes and content areas, includingcomposition, multicultural studies, andglobal issues

This company doesn't specialize in mater-ials for ESL/EFL/ELT, but if you want to trycontent approaches or teach Americanculture its catalogues contain a number ofpotentially useful titles (books, videos, CDROMs, etc.). The site is not set up for web-based sales, but there is an order form for

their many different mail order catalogues.You can e-mail them at <access@socialstudies.coin>.

Sasuga Japanese Bookstore<http://world.std.comisasugaI>Specialty: Anything related to Japan(books, language learning materials,bilingual software)

I have included this site to round out thislist of ten. And why not a site that specializesin things related to Japan, its culture andlanguage? You can place an order at thewebsite, but it is not secure so better to sendthe card data in a fax (they say that ifyouplace the order at the site they will call youback to get the card info). You can alsocontact them and order by e-mail: sasngarci)worldstdcorn>.

Happy travels and shopping on the WorldWide Web!

Would you like to receive the e-mail version ofLiteracy Across Cultures?

If you or someone you know would like a copy, contact Charles Jannuzi<jannuzi@eduOafiedu.fukui-u. ac.jp> with a short message explaining that you wantto subscribe. Please remember to write "subscribe LAC" in the subject header.

We've moved our WWW site! Point your browser to<http://www.aasa.acjpi--dedycus>

Issues of Literacy Across Cultures can be seen at our web site, so please visitregularly. We appreciate any reports about bugs, problems with browsers, andso on. We don't want the site to be limited to an archive for Literacy AcrossCultures, so we appreciate contributions and content of all types. For moreinformation contact David Dycus <dcdycus@asu.aasa.ac.jp>or Charles Jannuzi<jannuzi@edu001-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp>.

February, 1998

4 )

19

WBook and Article Reviews

Extensive Reading in the Second Language Classroom. Richard Day and Julian Bamford.Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp.xv +238. ISBN 0-521-56829-3 (softcover).

Having learners read extensively on their own,at their own level and for their own pleasureis certainly an attractive idea. But when facedwith the problems of actually establishing andadministering an extensive reading program,many teachers opt for the traditional textbook-based reading class. This is a regrettable mis-take, according to Richard Day and JulianBamford in Intensive Reading in the SecondLanguage Classroom. They argue persuasivelythat the benefits of extensive reading outweighany perceived drawbacks, and show how a pro-gram can be implemented almost anywhere.

The book is divided into three sections.The first, THE DIMENSIONS OF EXTEN-SIVE READING, containing five chapters,deals with the theoretical justifications forextensive reading. It begins with a short in-troduction to extensive reading, followed by abrief but informative discussion of reading asa cognitive process and how extensive readingcontributes to the development of readingability. Next, the authors consider attitudeand motivation in second language reading,showing how both are positively influenced byextensive reading. The fourth chapter offersfurther support by presenting results of re-search specifically done on extensive readingprograms. The section ends with a shortchapter on integrating extensive reading intothe second language curriculum.

The second section, MATERIALS FOREXTENSIVE READING: ISSUES INDEVELOPMENT, offers a defense of thecornerstone of virtually every extensive read-ing program: the graded reader. Graded read-ers have been attacked because they violatethe Communicative Language Teaching(CLT) approach's insistence on the superiority

of authentic reading materials. The authorsstrongly challenge "the cult of authenticity,"pointing out the difficulties in clearly definingwhat "authentic" and "simplified" actuallymean. They argue that because graded readerscommunicate with their intended audience ac-cording to the writer's purpose, they are them-selves an authentic genre, one which Day andBamford term language learner literature.

The authors devote the eight chapters of thefinal section to the process of setting up a pro-gram. One can find advice on and answers tovirtually any conceivable problem or questionregarding curriculum, selecting and acquiringa suitably diverse collection of reading materials,and administering and assessing a program .

There are also useful suggestions on how toconvince skeptical students, parents, andadministrators of the benefits of an extensivereading program. Day and Bamford also giveexamples of successful programs in radicallydifferent situations, from well-equippedlibraries and classrooms in Japan to smallschools without libraries in central Africa.

The book ends with a useful appendix of600 of the best language learner literaturebooks (in English) based on the EdinburghProject on Extensive Reading (EPER) data-base. Book listings include title, author,genre, region, the gender to which the bookwill likely appeal, and publisher and series.

Extensive Reading in the SecondLanguage Classroom is clearly written andorganized, and non-native English speakersshould find it accessible. It is a practical bookthat all teachers can benefit from reading.

Reviewed by David DycusAichi Shukutoku University

20 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

PjfA

Are you a JALT member?Then join us!

The Foreign Language Literacy NationalSpecial Interest Group is growing fast, andwith your help we can soon have the 50members we need to be fully recognized byJALT. If you are a JALT member and havean interest in some facet of reading, writingand/or literacy, please join us!

JALT members can join the FLL N-SIGby sending Yl500 to the JALT Central Of-fice using the postal money transfer (yubinfilrikae) form included in issues of The Lan-guage Teacher. On the line labeled "Other",write "FLL N-SIG (forming)." There is noneed to renew your membership each yearuntil we reach 50 members and become fullyrecognized, so why not join today?

Not a JALT member? There isstill a place for you!

Only JALT members can become members ofthe FLL N-SIG. However, at present, non-members in any country can receive copies ofour publication, Literacy Across Cultures, andare encouraged to contribute articles, reviews,and perspective pieces to it. In addition, weare sending this newsletter out in an e-mailversion, which you can receive by contactingCharles Jannuzi at <jannuzi@ edu00.f-edu.fukui-u.aajp> . For information on obtaininga printed version, contact David Dycus bye-mail at <dcdycus@ asu.aasa.ac.jp> or<dcdycus@japan-net.or.jp> or at the addressin the "Officers and Contact Information"section on page 22.

Call for Submissions

Literacy Across Cultures, a publication ofJALTs Foreign Language Literacy N-SIG,welcomes submissions, in English or Japa-nese, on topics related to reading and writingand their social product, literacy. We inviteany interested person to submit:

articles (around 1000-3000 words, notheavily referenced)perspective/opinion piecesbook reviewsannotated bibliographiesshort summaries/reviews of journalarticlesresponses to LAC articlesdescriptions/reviews of literacy-relatedWorld Wide Web sitesclassroom and teaching tips

for upcoming issues. In addition, we welcome

annotated bibliographies and other collectionsof information on topics related to literacy,both for LAC and for our WWW site.

Literacy Across Cultures is published threetimes a year, in February, June, and Septem-ber. Submissions for a given issue must bereceived by the 10th ofJanuary, May, and Au-gust respectively. We encourage relevantsubmissions that may not fit into any of thecategories above.

Submissions can be made in the followingways:1) As attachments to an e-mail message tothe editor. The text should be provided twice,once in a Text file (.TXT) format and once ina Rich Text Format (.RTF). The e-mail mes-sage should include a message to the editorexplaining the content of the submission and ashort personal biography to accompany thesubmission if accepted. The message should

February, 199821

include information about what computer OSwas used (Mac or IBM) and what word pro-cessor was used, including the version numberof that software. If possible, an additionalversion saved in a Word Perfect format (ver.5.2 to 7.0) is appreciated. It should be sent toDavid Dycus, the LAC editor, at <dcdycus@asu.aasa.ac.jp>, with a copy (CC) sent to<dcdycus@japan-net.or.jp>.

2) On a 1.44 mb floppy disk accompanied bya printed version of the submission. Th9 texton the floppy disk must be provided in 2 for-mats, once in a Text file (.TXT) format andonce in a Rich Text Format (.RTF). If pos-sible, a version saved in a Word Perfect for-mat (version 5.2 to 7.0) is appreciated. Ashort personal biography should accompanythe submission. (See the address below.)

3) If the author does not have access to acomputer, two typed, double-spaced copies of

the text and any accompanying tables, graph-ics, etc. can be sent. (See the address below.)

If the document includes graphics, tables,drawings, etc., they should ideally be save asseparate files on the floppy disk or sent asseparate as attachments to the e-mailmessage, using one of the following formats:.JPG, .BMP, .G1F, .PCX, or .WPG.

Typed/printed submissions should be sent to:

David DycusAichi Shukutoku University9 Katahira, Nagakute, Nagakute-cho,Aichi-gun, Aichi-ken 480-11 JAPAN.

Anyone with questions can contact DavidDycus at the addresses above, or by FAX at0568-85-2560 (outside of Japan, that is81-568-85-2560).

Foreign Language Literacy N-SIG Officers and Contact Information

Charles JannuziJoint Co-ordinator in Charge of Global Networking

Fukui University College of Education,

Bunkyo 3-9-1, Fukui 910, JAPAN<jannuzi@edu001.-edu.fiikui-u.ac.jp>

David DycusJoint Co-ordinator and Literacy Across Cultures Editor

The Department of Studies of Contemporary SocietyAichi Shukutoku University, 9 Katahira, Nagakute, Nagakute-cho,Aichi-gun, Aichi-ken 480-11, JAPAN<dcdycus@asu.aasa.ac.jp> or <dcdycus@japan-net.orjp>

Bern MulveyJoint Co-ordinator in Charge of Membership

Fukui University College of Education,Bunkyo 3-9-1, Fukui 910, JAPAN<mulvey@edu00f-edufilkui-u.ac.jp>

22 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.1

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iteracycross

ultures

ISSN 1344-204X

415C1L9 5-9-f/4September, 1998 Volume 2, Number 2

Presentations from the JALT 97 FL LiteracyN-SIG Roundtable

Phonemic Awareness: Is It Really LanguageSpecific?

A Key Concept Revisited: PhonemicAwareness

Links to Literacy:The Internet TESL Journal

Contents

Literacy Across Cultures, Vol. 2, No. 2September, 1998

Special Feature: Presentations from the JALT 97 FL LiteracyN-SIG Roundtable

3 FL Literacy: Meeting Needs and Realities in JapanAndy Barfield David Dycus, Barty Mateer, and Elin MelchiorModerators: Charles Jannuzi and Bern Mulvey

Articles

9 Phonemic Awareness: Is It Really Language Specific?by Brett Reynolds

14 A Key Concept Revisited: Phonemic Awarenessby Charles Jannuzi

Links to Literacy

20 The Internet TESL Journalby David Dycus

FLL N-SIG News

24 Report on the Robert Kaplan Workshopby Denise Douglas Brown

It is Written...

25 Announcing our new reviews editor

Departments

25 Membership information26 Publication guidelines

28

Statement of Purpose

Literacy in one's first language (L I) has become essential for virtually anyone wishing tofunction in most of the modern world. At the same time, growing contact between the world'speople has increased the need for foreign language learning and has highlighted the need for agreater understanding of the aspects, processes, development and implications of FL literacy(FLL). The Foreign Language Literacy National Special Interest Group (FLL N-SIG) (presentlya provisional special interest group under the auspices of the Japan Association for LanguageTeaching) seeks to network people, ideas, theory, practice and experiences that can help lead toa better understanding of FLL. In doing so, we aim to move beyond idealized constructs of theL2 and FL learner, and to make clear the differences between LI, L2 and FL literacy practices,processes and theoretical models.

To do this, we seek to encourage locally relevant research into foreign language literacy inJapan and to map out commonalities and differences between features of foreign language literacyin Japan and in other countries. The FLL N-SIG also aims to foster and network study groupsand local grassroots linkups with teachers in other countries in order to learn about theirsituations and needs, and to create greater understanding and mutual cooperation betweenteachers in different countries and situations.

Foreign Language Literacy N-SIG Officers andContact Information

Charles JannuziJoint Co-ordinator in Charge of Global Networking

Fukui University College of Education, Bunkyo 3-9-1, Fukui 910-8507, JAPAN<jannuzi@eduOLf-edu.fukui-u.acfp>

David DycusJoint Co-ordinator and Literacy Across Cultures Editor

The Department of Studies of Contemporary Society, Aichi Shukutoku University9 Katahira, Nagakute, Nagakute-cho, Aichi-gun, Aichi-ken 480-11, JAPAN<dcdycus@ctsu.aasa.ac.jp> or <dcdycus@japan-net.or.jp>

Bern MulveyJoint Co-ordinator in Charge of Membership

Fukui University College of Education, Bunkyo 3-9-1, Fukui 910-8507, JAPAN<mulvey@edu0 .f-edu.fukui-u.ac.jp>

Denise Douglas Brown.Joint Co-ordinator in Charge of Programs

Foreign Language Centre, University of Library and Information Science (ULIS),1-2 Kasuga, Tsukuba 305, JAPAN<ddbrown@ttlis.ac.jp>

2 2.9 Literacy Across Cultures Vol. 2 No. 2

FL Literacy: Meeting Needs andRealities in Japan

Presentations from the JALT 97 Foreign Language LiteracyN-SIG Roundtable

Speakers: Andy Barfield, David Dycus, Barry Mateer, andElin MelchiorModerators: Charles Jannuzi and Bern Mulvey

IntroductionCharles Jannuzi and Bern Mulvey,Fukui University

What is the modern concept of literacy?Does it involve more than the traditional skillsof reading and writing? If literacy is a social,communicative skill, what is its application tousing and learning a FL? On 12 October,1997, at the annual JALT conference, theFL Literacy N-SIG conducted a roundtableand addressed such questions. As is evidentfrom this report from that roundtable, theanswers can be found in actual classroompractice that is informed by theory. The fol-lowing is a report that reflects much of thecontent and discussion of that roundtable.First, David Dycus gives a succinct but infor-mative overview of what joins and separatesL 1 and L2 literacies. Next, Andy Barfielddetails the results of classroom research abouttypes of reading and the difficulties that Japa-nese EFL students at the university level re-port. Then Barry Mateer describes an ambi-tious, holistic, reader response approach thatuses graded readers to foster student- andlearning-centered activities, such as journalsand discussions. Finally, Elin Melchiorinforms us of some fundamental uses of com-puters and the Internet to support reading,writing, and L2 literacy: a source for infor-mative but readable texts; a means of writingdevelopment through e-mail exchange; and asa time-saving tool to manipulate texts and

September 1998

write practice and comprehension exercises.

FL Literacy: How is itDifferent from Ll Literacy?David Dycus, Aichi ShukutokuUniversity

Research and practice in EFL/ESL readingand writing have long been guided by what"goo& L 1 readers and writers do. However,there is evidence that because of psycho-linguistic and cultural factors, lower-levelFL/SL readers often approach reading differ-ently. I would like to consider some examplesof these differences, especially as they relateto adult Japanese readers of English, usingexamples from different levels of the "bottom-up/top-down" continuum of language pro-cessing and reading strategies commonlyaccepted in EFL today.

OrthographyFor Japanese learners of EFL, differences

at "the bottom" begin the moment the eyemeets the written symbol. The Japanesewriting system involves both a logographicsystem, kanji, and a syllabic system, kana(which includes hiragana and katakana). Ina logography like kanji, the basic graphic unitrepresents both sound and meaning, and wordmeaning is often directly accessible withoutphonological recoding, the conversion ofsymbol to sound. Conversely, phonological

30 3

recoding is essential to access word meaningin syllabic systems like hiragana andkatakana (Koda, 1987; 1997). The Englishorthographic system lies between these ex-tremes; while one can get to meaning withoutphonological recoding, it is still often neces-sary. According to Koda (1997), researchshows that different L 1 orthographic proper-ties produce qualitatively different word pro-cessing and recognition procedures, which inturn affect L2 reading through transfer. Fur-thermore, difficulties in L2 orthographic pro-cessing lead to word misidentification, whichnegatively affects one's ability to guess themeaning of unknown words from context (seebelow). Koda concludes that the more or-thographies resemble each other the easierthey are to process, and argues for explicitinstruction in L2 orthographic properties andprocessing strategies. Considering the funda-mental differences between Japanese andEnglish orthographies, these findings indicatethe need for more emphasis on phonics in-struction and other low-level processing strat-egies when teaching reading.

Guessing word meaning fromcontext

Next I'd like to discuss a higher-levelstrategy, guessing word meaning from con-text. Studies of advanced FL/SL readers con-sistently show that, like good L 1 readers, theylearn words through incidental exposure, of-ten use context to successfully guess wordmeanings, and use multiple strategies to dealwith unknown words and other reading diffi-culties (Laufer, 1997). But beginning andintermediate level FL/SL readers often displayvery different characteristics. They relyheavily on words as landmarks of meaning,less on background knowledge and virtuallyignore syntax. In general, they don't seem totransfer good L 1 reading strategies to L2reading, and they often fail at using contextto guess word meanings (Barnett, 1989;Laufer, 1997) . A common explanation isthat "poor" FL/SL readers don't make use ofgood reading strategies even though they areaware of them.

4

However, Laufer (1997) presents evidenceshowing that the size of the reader's activevocabulary is the key, with a threshold vocab-ulary of about 5000 lexical items needed be-fore Ll reading strategies like guessing fromcontext can be effectively transferred to L2reading. From this perspective, we should beplacing less emphasis on having lower-levelFL/SL readers guess from context in order tolearn new words and more on direct vocabu-lary instruction (Dycus, 1997).

Rhetorical organizationstrategies

At "the top" of the strategies/processingladder, in the realm of formal schemata, weencounter cultural differences in rhetoricalorganization. Most common Japanese rhetor-ical organization strategies violate the "rules"of the linear organizational style of English.The kishoutenketsu strategy allows the writerto add topics and a conclusion unrelated tothe introductory topic and discussion. In thetempura (inductive) strategy, facts, examplesand other support are presented throughoutthe beginning and middle of the text, but thecontrolling idea is not introduced until theend. Finally, the return to baseline themerhetorical approach allows the writer to ini-tially introduce an opinion which is repeatedthroughout but never explained or defended,although seemingly unrelated topics may bediscussed at length (Mulvey, 1997). The fun-damental differences in the "logical" develop-ment of English and Japanese rhetorical orga-nization pose a challenge to our students, andcontrastive study of such differences is clearlywarranted in our reading and writing classes.

ConclusionThe differences discussed here are just the

tip of the iceberg. As far as reading strategiesare concerned, we see that bottom-up pro-cesses are more important than is often as-sumed (Paran, 1996). On the other hand, theinfluence of top-down, culturally determinedfactors like rhetorical strategies on readers'and writers' expectations and strategies isconsiderable. Effective approaches to FL/SL

Literacy Across Cultures Vol. 2 No. 2

reading instruction must take these factorsinto account, as well as the fact that becominga good FL/SL reader and writer involves notonly learning language, but also learning tothink in new ways, which is seldom easy.

Learner Constructions ofForeign Language LiteracyAndrew Barfield, Foreign LanguageCenter, University of Tsukuba, Japan

To understand better what first-year non-English majors find difficult in reading Eng-lish, Andy Barfield collected self-reports froman Art and Design reading class over thecourse of one academic year. In his presenta-tion, he sought to give answers to these re-current 'teacher' questions:

What do learners report as difficult whenreading graded stories?What do learners report as difficult whenreading newspaper articles and teenagecontent-based materials?What do learners report as difficult whenreading expository prose and academictext?Because of the difficulties encountered in

categorizing the student self-reports and ofthe lack of any objective measurement, theabove results must be treated with caution. Ingeneral, the inquiry's main benefit was one ofsensitization for both the students and theteacher to the foreign language reading pro-cess. Somenot unexpectedgeneral con-trasts can nevertheless be briefly mentioned.First, reading graded texts fluently does notrequire students to activate backgroundknowledge nor deal with complex sentences,whereas reading academic text does. Second,vocabulary inferencing skills seem to take onmuch greater importance as text difficultyincreases. Asking my students to articulatetheir reading processes has helped both mystudents to become reflective about their ownreading and me to organize better what I doto help them.

September 1998

Editor's note: A full-length article by AndyBarfield on this topic will be presented in anupcoming issue of LAC

A Reader Response Ap-proach to Junior High OralCommunication ClassesBany Mateer, Nihon University'sBuzan Junior High School, Japan

In the May 1997 issue of JALT's The Lan-guage Teacher, an article by Paul Nation(1997) referred to research showing the im-portance of extensive reading:

Huang and van Naerssen (1987) foundthat reading outside class was the mostsignificant predictor of oral communica-tive ability. Green and Oxford (1995), ina study of the effect of learning strategieson language proficiency, found that read-ing for pleasure was most strongly relatedto proficiency to proficiency. Gradmanand Hanania (1991) found that out ofclass reading was the most important di-rect contributor to TOEFL test perfor-mance. (cited in Nation, 1997, p. 15)

These studies clearly indicate that extensivereading can be a major factor in learning an-other language.

Beginning with second year junior highOral Communication classes, we use gradedreaders as the springboard for communicationactivities in class. The main objective is forstudents to become comfortable in readinggraded readers by becoming more aware oflanguage form, meaning, and use. Studentsrecord in journals questions that arise as theycompare and contrast what they have learned'about' English in teacher-centered textbookclasses with what they encounter when read-ing independently. Then, in the classroom,students bring up their recorded observationsand questions for discussion.

Joumaling as HomeworkAfter a period of introduction and support

32 5

in the "how-to's" ofjournaling, the studentsare expected to read independently at homeand do the following as homework:

Read the assigned number of pages in thegraded reader and attempt to comprehendnot only individual words but also wholephrases; comprehend not only individualsentences, but also sentences in relation tosurrounding sentences, not translatewords, but translate situations throughparaphrase.

The journaling of questions involves thefollowing steps.

1. Write down the complete sentence whichtriggered a question while reading.2. Underline the part of the sentence that isthe focus of the question ( which allows oth-ers to see how a person is going about'chunking' the language ).3. Write the meaning of the sentence as it isnow understood, and/or write down the situa-tion/context within the story in which thissentence occurred.4. Pose a problem / question. This can beeither a language question ( about the wayEnglish is used ) or a story question ( aboutthe content/context of the story ).5. Write down a possible response to theproblem posed.

Introductory WorksheetsAs an introductory step before students

are expected to do journaling on their own,examples of journaling are presented onworksheets. Frame sentences modeling thelanguage of posing problems are thus pre-sented to students in context. Also possibleresponses to the posed problems are listedfrom which learners can choose, not having tocreate their own answers. Though studentsare not required to pose problems or solutionsat this step, the activity still requires mentalactivities fundamental to comprehension: rais-ing questions, making inferences, forminghypotheses, predicting, and evoking images.In figure I is an example of a worksheet pre-

pared for Alissa, a starter level graded readerfrom Heinemann..

ConclusionNot only are second year junior high stu-

dents capable of working within this ap-proach, many of them embrace the chance toengage with the language and its various as-pects of form, meaning and use, allowing thestudents to show a level of awareness, insightand curiosity that more traditional lessons donot so easily encourage.

Using Computers to AttainFL LiteracyElin Melchior, Komaki English Teach-Mg Center, Japan

Computers have not revolutionized theteaching of literacy; they do not offer any newmiraculous techniques. Instead CALL makeswhat teachers have been doing all along mucheasier. Some techniques and projects thatmany gave up on because they were too time-consuming and labor-intensive are now notonly feasible but easy to undertake with theaid of computers. Computers can help teach-ers find reading texts, provide real Englishcontexts, and greatly facilitate mechanicalreading exercises.

Tailored TextsTailoring reading texts to students is of

vital importance. I realized how serious thisproblem is while I was talking to a junior highschool English teacher last year. She said, "Iunderstand how to teach listening and speak-ing, but since reading and writing aren't com-municative, I don't know how I should teachthese subjects." I understand exactly howshe came to this faulty conclusion becausethere is very little reading in textbooks whichcommunicates anything students want toknow. As someone with a profound love ofreading, I find this very sad.

Teachers can, of course, find readingtexts off-fine, but this is not always easy to doin Japan. I constantly use the internet to sup-plement my courses. Teaching current events

6 Literacy Across Cultures Vol. 2 No. 2

33

classes, I often find holes in The DailyYomiuri's coverage of the news while News-week is too difficult and a little late. On theInternet I can find easier texts almost immedi-ately after an eventthe Washington Postpage often yields good results. When I taughtthe movie Rain Man, I found information onautism at the National Association for Au-tism's home page. These searches generallytake me less time than it used to take me towalk to the library when I taught in the U.S.It also gives me great pleasure to encouragestudent reading by supplying them with arti-cles in English about their special interestswhether they be River Phoenix, NatnieAmuro, or Area 51.

Writing Exchanges via E-mailWriting exchanges are another wonderful

technique which can now be conducted in atimely fashion through e-mail. Writing some-thing and sending it to someone else to readgives students a sense of consequence thatthey do not usually feel when only the teacherreads their writing. More formal exchanges ofopinions and other types of information aswell as simple getting-to-know-you lettersmake e-mail projects appropriate for all levelsof students. I have noticed that when readingpieces of writing which have been exchangedwith other students, my students automati-cally follow many reading strategies (such asskimming) which do not seem to come natu-rally during textbook reading.

Mechanically Manipulating TextMechanical reading exercises, such as

scrambled paragraphs, timed reading, andpaced reading, can be done very easily on thecomputer. I think paced reading is a wonder-ful thing and I have seen people teach it with-out the computerbut it so easy to do on thecomputer and so difficult without. A goodCALL reading program will allow the teacherto scan and import (input) texts, and will alsooffer a dictionary (so students can click onunknown words and get a definition), dozeexercises, scrambled sentences and para-graphs, timed and paced reading, hidden text,

September 1998

a scoring mechanism and a way to print re-sults and problem areas.

ConclusionAs I said at the beginning none of these

activities are revolutionary, many teachershave been using them all along; however, thecomputer helps teachers utilize them quicklyand efficiently allowing more time to devoteto other aspects of teaching.

ConclusionBern Mulvey and Charles Jannuzi,Fukui University, Japan

We think the most important result of theroundtable was the exploring and re-definingof the term "FL Literacy." As a newer N-SIG in JALT, it is essential that we continueto delineate who and what we are with re-spect to other groups both within and outsideof JALT, and that we continue to stake out aplace for ourselves that is neither too narrowto be exclusionary or too broad as to bemeaningless. As the presentations and theirreports made clear, by "FL literacy," we arenot referring just to traditional conceptions ofbeing literate but also to the broader ramifica-tions of what becoming literate in a foreignlanguage entails: that is, the special culturaland cross-linguistic challenges that monolin-gual native speakers never have to face.

In this increasingly electronic and interna-tional age, when so much conversation hasbeen removed from the oral arena and placedsquarely into our e-mail program's in-box,one's ability to both read and understand thatelectronic correspondence has become criti-cal. Are our FL students prepared for this?How ready are we as teachers to help preparethem? It is these issues we have tried to bringup and illuminate in some of their myriadaspects through this roundtable.

ReferencesBarnett, M. (1989). More than meets the eye: For-

eign language reading theory and practice.Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall Regents.

Dycus, D. (1997). Guessing word meaning from

34 7

context: Should we encourage it? Literacy AcrossCultures, 1(2), 1-6.

&adman, R, & Hanania, E. (1991). Languagelearning background factors and ESL proficiency.Modern Language Journal, 75(1), 39-51.

Green, J.M., & Oxford, R. (1995). A closer look atlearning strategies, L2 proficiency and gender.TESOL Quarterly, 29(2), 261-297.

Huang, X., & van Naerssen, M. (1987). Learningstrategies for oral communication. Applied Lin-guistics, 8(3), 287-307.

Koda, K. (1987). Cognitive strategy transfer in sec-ond language reading. In J. Devine, et al. (Eds.),Research in reading English as a second lan-guage (pp. 125-144). Washington, D.C.:TESOL.

Koda, K. (1997). Orthographic knowledge in L2

8

lexical processing: A cross-linguistic perspective.In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second languagevocabulary acquisition (pp. 35-52). Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Laufer, B. (1997). The lexical plight in second lan-guage reading. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.),Second language vocabulary acquisition (pp. 20-34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mulvey, B. (1997). Japanese and English rhetoricalstrategies: A contrastive analysis [English ab-stract]. Literacy Across Cultures, 1(2), 13-23.

Nation, P. (1997). The language learning benefits ofextensive reading. The Language Teacher, 21(5),13-16.

Paran, A. (1996). Reading in EFL: Facts and fic-tions. ELT Journal, 50 (1), 25-34.

Figure 1 A Sample Worksheet for the Heinemann Graded Reader, Alissa.

1. Her father calls to her.Does "calls to her" mean "calls her name"?(Does mean ?)

2. She reads all day.Instead of "all day" is "every day" also okay?(Instead of is okay?)

3. There isn't any work here in the village?How are "work" and "job" different?( How are and different?)

4. They drive to a house.Is Alissa driving the car?How do you translate " drive "?

5. Alissa goes into the room. The room is small and dark ( Please rewrite this sentence)Alissa a room.

6. Here face is hot and red?Does that mean ((Does that mean ?)

7. Alissa is angry ( ) and afraid ( ).8. ( so she cries every night ( )

( she is angry ) ( with her father ) ( of the man ) ( she is unhappy ) ( in her room )

35 Literacy Across Cultures Vol. 2 No. 2

Phonemic Awareness: Is It Language!Specific?

Brett ReynoldsSakuragaoka Girls' Jr. & Sr. High SchoolJapan

The question of whether phonologicalawareness is language specific or notis a crucial one if one is to make in-

formed decisions about teaching it. In thefirst language (L1) reading acquisition litera-ture, the general consensus is to teach it earlyand explicitly (Adams, 1990). But.whetherwe can transfer this directly to second lan-guage (L2) instruction is not clear. In the lastissue of LAC, Jannuzi (1998) suggested thatEFL students

"must: (1) learn and / or acquire an ade-quate interlanguage phonology that com-pensates for the lack of native competenceand THEN learn and/or acquire the phone-mic awareness... Indeed, it could be logi-cally concluded that effective phonemicawareness training can not precede thedevelopment of a sufficient, internalizedinterlanguage phonology" (p. 8).

This paper will argue a different view; thatonce one has acquired a given level of phono-logical awareness in one language, it is possi-ble to transfer that understanding to any otherlanguages.

Phonological awareness is generally con-sidered to be a unitary construct which ap-pears to be made up of a hierarchy of differ-ent sized phonological units (Gough, Larson,& Yopp, 1996). It is generally agreed to sub-sume syllabic awareness, sub-syllabic aware-ness (onset and rime9, and segmental (phone-mic) awareness. As phonemic awarenessseems to be the most crucial for learning toread English, it will be the main focus of thispaper. Taking the definition offered by

September 1998 36

Jannuzi (1998), phonemic awareness is "averifiable insight that one's native or non-native language can be broken down intosounds and sound combinations" [originalemphasis] (p. 8).

The importance of phonemic awarenesshas become almost axiomatic in the literatureon Ll reading acquisition and dyslexia (for anoverview, see Adams, 1990). Bryant andGoswami have said, "the discovery of astrong relationship between children's phono-logical awareness and their progress in learn-ing to read is one of the great successes ofmodern psychology" (1987, p. 439), Thisinsight is seen as fundamental to grasping thealphabetic principle. On the other hand, pho-nemic awareness is rarely mentioned in theTEFL and SLA literature. Despite this, theidea that phonologynot just good pronun-ciationis important for foreign languages isnot a new one. Carroll and Sapon (1959)included a number of measures of phonologyin their modern language aptitude test.Among these are some tests of ability to de-code written texts. More recently, research-ers have begun to consider the role of phonol-ogy in L2 learning of vocabulary (N. Ellis,1996), L2 reading, (Harrington, & Sawyer,1992), and L2 learning disabilities (Sparks,Ganschow and their colleagues, 1992; 1993;1997).

Unfortunately, the majority of the researchon phonemic awareness has been done withchildren learning to read English as their LI .There is also a smaller body of research deal-ing with children learning to read otherlanguages as their L 1 (e.g. Mann 1986;Lundberg, Frost, and Peterson, 1988). There

9

are, however, only a few studies dealing spe-cifically with phonemic awareness in the L2(e.g. Allan, 1997). Given that phonologyvaries from language to language, more suchstudies are definitely needed. The lack ofsuch information leaves us with the questionof whether phonological awareness is lan-guage specific or not.

Does phonemic awarenessinclude phonemicdiscrimination?

Jannuzi (1998; also see Byrne & Field-ing-Barnsley 1991) seems to argue that pho-nemic awareness is language specific. Heproposes that EFL learners can not receiveeffective phonemic awareness training untilthey have an adequate interlanguage phonol-ogy. Unfortunately, no elaboration of "ade-quate" is offered, although the concept seemsto minimally include the ability to distinguishbetween sounds like Id and /1/ and go beyondthe phonology that learners bring with themto the study of a new language. Yet there isanother view that as long as one is able tounderstand that such phonemes exist, and thatwords and syllables contain them, the ques-tion of exactly what phonemes they are isextraneous to phonemic awareness as an es-sential component of alphabetic literacy. Ifthis is the case, then phonemic awarenesswould be language independent.

Ganschow, Sparks and colleagues (1992)state that their

"use of the term phonology does not referprimarily to ones (sic) ability to pronouncewords either in the native or foreign lan-guage. It may include pronunciation butrefers specifically to ones (sic) ability tolearn sound (phoneme)/symbol (grapheme)correspondences, discriminate betweensounds, and make explicit reports aboutsound segments in words. This later skill,(is) known as phonemic awareness" (pp.57-58).

Thus, they clearly distinguish between phon-

10

37

emic awareness and phonemic discrimination,both of which they lump together under termphonology. Evidence that phonemic aware-ness can develop with an inadequate phonol-ogy comes from people who have been pro-foundly deaf from birth. Despite this obsta-cle, "the young deaf child often developsmetalinguistic, phonological awareness on anunderdeveloped phonological system"(Campbell & Burden, 1995).

The idea that phonemic discrimination is aseparate construct from phonemic awarenessis further supported by a number of studies(Yopp, 1988; Stanovich, Cunningham, &Cramer, 1984; Gough, Larson, & Yopp,1996). In one of these, Yopp administered anumber of different phonemic awarenesstests, including an auditory discrimination test(Wepman, 1973), a phoneme blending test(Roswell-Chall, 1959), a phoneme countingtest (I. Liberman et al., 1974), two phonemedeletion tests (Bruce, 1964; Rosner, 1975), arhyming test (Yopp, 1988), two phonemesegmentation tests (Goldstein, 1974; Yopp-Singer, 1984), a sound isolation test (Yopp,1988), and a number of others. The results ofthe tests were all significantly intercorrelatedexcept Wepman's auditory discrimination test,which had a low positive correlation. Similarresults in the other studies mentioned aboveindicate that phoneme discrimination seems tobe related to, but separate from, phonologicalawareness.

Another reason to doubt that phonemicdiscrimination is a prerequisite for phonemicawareness is the modular nature of the phone-mic identification process. Alvin Liberman(1995) argues convincingly that there is aphonemic identification module. Two centralcharacteristics of modular systems is that theyare informationally encapsulated and autono-mous (Fodor, 1983, p. 37). This would indi-cate processes which are beyond the con-scious control of the individual. Yet, meta-linguistic concepts are, by definition, ideas ofwhich the individual can conceive and deliber-ate. While knowledge of a language's pho-nemes is linguistic knowledge, phonemicawareness is metalinguistic in nature.Metalinguistic knowledge is largely transfer-

Literacy Across Cultures Vol. 2 No. 2

able to any new language. For example, theawareness that there are parts of speech(nouns, verbs, etc.) in one's L I can assist inlearning L2, in that it helps the student knowwhat to look for. The knowledge that onecan employ humor and sarcasm, or representspeech in print are all forms of metalinguisticknowledge that one can easily apply to anyother language, regardless of one's ability toperform the tasks.

Thus, it seems highly unlikely that an ade-quate interlanguage phonology must be devel-oped before phonemic awareness training canbegin. In fact, even those with severely lim-ited phonology, may benefit from phonemicawareness training. If phonemic awarenesscan exist without an "adequate" L2 phonol-ogy, there is no reason to believe that it islanguage specific.

When to teachHaving concluded that one need not wait

for an adequate interlanguage phonology toemerge, the question then becomes when toteach phonemic awareness, In the Ll readingacquisition literature, there seems to be broadageement that it needs to be taught as soonas possible (Adams, 1990). Similarly,Ganschow, Sparks, and colleagues (1992)suggest that improving students' L I phono-logical awareness before L2 instruction be-gins, and teaching L2 phonological awarenessearly in L2 instruction are both useful inter-ventions for students who exhibit phonologi-cal difficulties.

A number of large scale longitudinal stud-ies indicate that phonological awareness isteachable in one's L I, and is teachable at veryyoung ageseven before students begin toread (Blachman, 1994; Lundberg, Frost, &Peterson, 1988). The same studies show sig-nificant positive effects of such training onlater reading ability. In an L2 study, Reynolds(in preparation) has found that teaching Eng-lish letter-sound correspondences to first andsecond year Japanese junior high school stu-dents resulted in significant improvements inphonological, and specifically phonemic,awareness. The students scored higher on atest of phonological awareness (Reynolds,

1997) than high school students with fourmore years of English instruction. Thus, itappears that both early L 1 and L2 instructionare likely to result in improvements in phono-logical awareness.

How to teachUsing minimal pairs to improve phonemic

awareness is likely to prove unproductive.Illiterates easily distinguish minimal pairs intheir Ll, yet show no phonemic awareness(Adams, 1990; Morais, Cary, Alegria, &Bertelson, 1979). There are, however, anumber of easy, enjoyable ways to teach it toJapanese students in either their LI or L2.

One way is by using concrete representa-tions of the individual phonemes. This can bedone by having students put down a tile orother marker for each sound they hear in aword.

t A., = /usagisan/ = 8 sounds (phon-emes) = 8 tiles

speed = /spid/ = 4 sounds (phonemes) = 4tiles

Exploiting the layout of the kana chart withrows organized by vowel and columns orga-nized mainly by consonant, can also be en-lightening to students. Coloring the kana halfone colour for consonant sounds and halfanother colour for vowel sounds is even moreclear, especially for younger children (e.g.coloured Fidel kana charts, Gattegno, 1972).Using romaji (Roman letters) can also be auseful way of showing that (/ka/) is made upof two sounds /k/ and /a/. These are goodways to overcome the fact that Japanese has apredominantly logographic and syllabic or-thography, not an alphabetic one.

These techniques should be supplementedby training students to isolate, segment, andcombine phonemes. Teaching alliteration andrhyme is a good way to start. Sesame Streettype blending activities are also ideal.

Ssss...Aaaa... Nnn..., SssAaaNnn, SAN!

C AT, C...AT, C..AT, CAT!

September 1998 11

3 8

Reynolds (to appear) presents a wide varietyof short, interesting activities that can be donewith beginning students.

CaveatsWhile phonological awareness seems to be

largely language independent, there are a fewtraps to be aware of. These points are mainlyof interest for teachers and researchers, asthey concern the testing of phonologicalawareness. Because of its regular V or CVsyllables and its writing system, Japanese isnot a good language in which to assess pho-nemic awareness. However, if one is testingJapanese speakers using English words, thefollowing points need to be kept in mind.

Diphthongs and affiicatesWhat is considered to be a diphthong in

one language, may be viewed as two separatevowels in another. The /ai/ in the English"high" is a diphthong, while in Japanese, thelail in hai considered to be two distinct vow-els. Similarly, an affricate in one languagemay be two independent consonants in an-other (consider the English consonant cluster/ts/ in "cats" and the Japanese affricate /ts/ intsunami). This is largely a matter of semanticsand linguistic bias. Thus, while learners whoidentify only three sounds in "cats" or fullyfour in "cheese" should be disabused of thisidea, they clearly understand the importantconcept and should be considered to haveanswered a question of this nature correctly.

SyllablesEven within the English L 1 community, thereis often disagreement over where syllableboundaries lie, and occasionally even abouthow many how many syllables a word con-tains (beer vs. bi/yer; dic/tion/e/ry vs.dic/tion/ry). Thus, the definition of a syllableis slippery, and often cultural. Teachersshould keep this in mind, both when teachingand testing syllabic awareness.

ConclusionPhonological awareness seems to be lan-

guage independent. Once it has been ac-

123 9

quired, it is likely transferable to any newlanguages learned. This is not to say thatlanguage specific phonology, including pho-neme discrimination is not important, simplythat it is not part of the construct known asphonological awareness and may not be cm-cial for understanding the alphabetic principle.Furthermore, it seems that, for students wholack phonological awareness, there is no needto delay teaching it. In fact, there is a strongfeeling that it should be taught as soon aspossible. Lastly, in assessing and teachingstudents, teachers and researchers need toremember that some language specific aspectsof phonology may still be relevant consider-ations.

ReferencesAdams, M. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and

learning about print. Cambridge, MA: MITPress.Allan, M. (1997). Phonological awareness of youngEFL learners: Can Mother Goose teach sounds?Temple University Japan, Working Papers inApplied Linguistics, 10, 91-103.Blachman, B.A. (1994). What have we learned from

longitudinal studies of phonological processingand reading, and some unanswered questions. Aresponse to Torgeson, Wagner, and Rashotte.Journal of Learning Disabilities, 27, 287-291.

Bruce, D. (1964). An analysis of word sounds byyoung children. British Journal of EducationalPsychology, 34, 158-170.

Bryant, P. & Goswami, U. (1987). Beyondgrapheme-phoneme correspondence. Cahier dePsychologie Cognitive, 7, 439-443.

Byrne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1991).Evaluation of a program to teach phonemic aware-ness to young children. Journal of EducationalPsychology, 83, 451-455.

Campbell, R, & Burden, V. (1995). Pre-lingualdeafness and literacy: A new look at old ideas. InB. deGelder and J. Morais (Eds.), Speech andreading (pp. 317-337). Hove: Erlbaum (UK) Tay-lor & Francis.

Carroll, J. & Sapon, S. (1959). Modern languageaptitude test MAP manual. San Antonio, TX:Psychological Corp.

Ellis, N. (1996). Sequencing in SLA: Phonologicalmemory, chunking, and points of order. Studies inSecond Language Acquisition, 18, 91-126.

Fodor, J. (1983). The modularity of mind. Cambridge,MA: MIT Press.

Ganschow, L., Sparks, R., Javorsky, J., & Patton, J.(1992). Factors relating to learning a foreign lan-guage among high- and low-risk high school stu-

Literacy Across Cultures Vol. 2 No. 2

dents and students with learning disabilities. Ap-plied Language Learning, 3, 37-63.

Gattegno, C. (1972). Teaching Foreign Languages inSchools: The Silent Way., 2d ed. New York: Edu-cational Solutions.

Goldstein, D. (1974). Learning to read anddevelopmental changes in covert speech and inword analysis and synthesis skill (Doctoral disser-tation; University of Connecticut). DissertationAbstracts International, 35, 1B-606B. (UniversityMicrofilms No. 67-4246)

Gough, P., Larson, K., & Yopp, H. (1996). Thestructure of phonemic awareness. Available onlineat http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/klarson/recife.html.

Harrington, M., & Sawyer, M. (1992). L2 workingmemory capacity and L2 reading skill. Studies inSecond Language Acquisition, 14, 25-38.

Jannuzi, C. (1998). Key concepts in FL literacy:Phonemic awareness. Literacy Across Cultures,Al), 7-12.

Liberman, A. (1995). The relation of speech toreading and writing. In B. deGelder and J. Morais(Eds.), Speech and reading (pp. 17-31). Hove:Erlbaum (UK) Taylor & Francis.

Liberman, I., Shankweiler, D., Fischer, F., & Carter,B. (1974). Explicit syllable and phoneme segmen-tation in the young child. Journal of ExperimentalChild Psychology, 18, 201-212.

Lundberg, I. Frost, J, & Peterson, 0. (1988). Effectsof an extensive program for stimulating phonolog-ical awareness in preschool children. ReadingResearch Quarterly, 23, 263-284.

Mann, V. A. (1986). Phonological awareness: Therole of reading experience. Cognition, 24, 5-92.

Morais, J., Cary, L., Alegria, J., & Bertelson, P.(1979). Does awareness of speech as a sequence ofphones arise spontaneously? Cognition, 7,323-331.

Morais, J., (1993). Phonemic awareness, languageand literacy. In R. M. Joshi & C. K. Leong (Eds.),Reading disabilities: Diagnosis and componentprocesses. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reynolds, B. (1997). A test of phonologicalawareness for Japanese EFL students. Availableonline at http://eslsv001.esl.sakuragaoka.ac.jp/teachers/BR/papers/PhonemicTest.html

Reynolds, B. (to appear). Promoting phonologicalawareness in Japanese high school students. TheSchool House: The newsletter ofJALT's jr. & sr.high school N-S1G.

Rosner, J. (1975). Helping children overcomelearning difficulties. New York: Walker and Com-Pany.

Roswell-Chall Auditory Blending Test. (1959). NewYork: Essay Press.

Sparks, R., Ganschow, L. (1993). Searching for thecognitive locus of foreign language learning diffi-

September 1998 4 0

culties: Linking first and second language learn-ing. The Modern Language Journal, 77, 289-302.

Sparks, R., Ganschow, L., et. al (1997). Predictionof foreign language proficiency. Journal of Educa-tional Psychology, 89, 549-561.

Stanovich, K. E., Cunningham, A. E., & Cramer, B.R. (1984). Assessing phonological awareness inkindergarten children: Issues of task comparabil-ity. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology,38, 175-190.

Wepman, J. (1973). Auditory discrimination(Revised ed). Chicago, IL: Language ResearchAssociates.

Yopp, H. (1988). The validity and reliability ofphonemic awareness tests. Reading ResearchQuarterly, 23, 160-177.

Yopp, H., & Singer, H. (1984). Are metacognitiveand metalinguistic abilities necessary for begin-ning reading instruction? In J. Niles & L. Harris(Eds.), Changing perspectives in research in read-ing/ language processing and instruction.Thirty-third yearbook of the National ReadingConference (pp. 110-116). Rochester, NY: Na-tional Reading Conference.

' This spelling is conventionally used in readingliterature when referring to the phonological unit.Thus, a rhyme for bat is cat, but its rime is /gt/.

Brett Reynolds can be contacted atSakuragaoka Girls' Jr/Sr High School, Tokyo,Japan and by e-mail at <patch@twics.com>.Readers are also invited to visit his homepageat http:lleslsv001.esl.sakuragaoka.acjp/teachers/BR/

vossessem

Visit the Foreign LanguageLiteracy N-SIG's WWW site at

<http:llwww.aasa.ac.jp/-11cdycus>

for on-line versions of priorissues of Literacy Across

Cultures. Visitors, suggestionsand submissions always

welcome.

13

A Key Concept Revisited: PhonemicAwareness

Charles JannuziFukui University, Japan<jannuzi@ThePentagon.com>

0 ne of my motives in writing the KeyConcept article on phonemic aware-ness in the February, 1998 issue of

Literacy Across Cultures (Jannuii, 1998, pp.7-12) was to point out just how neglectedsuch important issues often are in mainstreamapplied linguistics (AL), second languageacquisition (SLA) studies, and theoretical,university-based ELT. (AL and SLA are thetwo prestige fields of academic inquiry mostsaid to underlie ELT theoretically and provideits empirical research base; they are almostalways university-based.) By discussing whatwas mostly a concept from the discourse ofnative literacy, I hoped to raise consciousnessand foster reflective debate in the discourse ofELT.

I am glad Brett Reynolds took exceptionenough with my piece to provide us with hisown thought-provoking contribution aboutthe topic. I also realize that it is true of muchwriting in academic ELT and education thatone is often cited in someone else's paper onlyso that the citing author can disagree with orat least complicate the work cited. We oftenseek to affirm the validity of our own viewsthrough the selective interpretation, negation,invalidation, and forced revision of the viewsof others. Still, I must admit that my first arti-cle, being preliminary, was sometimes tenta-tive and even sketchy in its synthesis, and alsothat I sometimes struggled for clarity in myattempts to reconcile literacy and ELT con-ceptions of things. Therefore, I welcomeReynolds' criticisms and corrections.

I DO think that if a reader reviews my pre-vious article on phonemic awareness, theywill be struck more by the amount of agree-ment than disagreement that holds across my

article and Reynolds'. Although from read-ing Reynolds it would be easy to concludethat we are at odds over some importantissues, I welcome this opportunity to revisitand expand on the concept of phonemicawareness.

If I have read Reynolds' paper with com-prehension, it seems to me that there arethree points which we need to come to anagreement on or agree to disagree:

(1) Is phonological and/or phonemic aware-ness language specific?(2) Are phonemic awareness and phonemicdiscrimination separate constructs, and evenif separate, are they related?(3) In FL and SL contexts, is the L2 pho-nology best taught before, along with, orafter phonological and/or phonemic aware-ness?

Issue 1: Is phonologicaland/or phonemicawareness languagespecific?

Semantically and logically, a phonologyand its phonemics are always language spe-cific. The phonology of English is not thephonology of Japanese; none of the pho-nemes of English are the same as the pho-nemes of Japanese (though phoneticallyspeaking some are similar).

Also, a distinction is made between nor-mal language processing and a meta-linguis-tic ability to manipulate the language for,among others, the purposes of reading andwriting it. Normal language processing isthe expected outcome of acquiring a native

14 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.241

language. Meta linguistic skills for the pur-poses of reading and writing are a prerequisitefor and/or a product of successful literacylearning and/or acquisition and probably insome way (causally or epiphenomenally) un-derlie beginning reading. Possibly, they canbe taught for effective pre-reading and reme-dial reading instruction. Analogous meta-linguistic skills may well be the key to learn-ing a second or foreign language because (1)teaching of them relies heavily on writtentexts and (2) second or foreign languages arenot naturally acquired, but rather taught andlearned.

When this overlayering of skills proceedssmoothly from native language developmentto native language literacy, the twonaturallanguage ability and an ability to manipulateand think about it in a metacognitive wayseem to fit together so completely and natu-rally that, at a popular, folkloric level, theyare taken to be one in the same: An abilitywith the native language is the ability to read,write, and analyze the standard written dia-lect. Mispellings are thought to reveal stupid-ity or laimess. Native language arts or uni-versity English Composition are called "lan-guage study." Or so many of the popular be-liefs go. Even in some of the literature onliteracy, models of language processing in-clude phonological awareness, phonemicawareness, and other metalinguistic abilities.

Normal language processing is said tocharacterize native language ability; just hownormal or different second or foreign lan-guage processing might be is a matter ofmuch psycholinguistic debate. Certainly, nor-mal native language processing, metalinguisticmanipulation of it, and L2 language process-ing all tax on-line working memory. A lackof working memoryperhaps a neurologicalphenomenonmight help account for whysome native speakers of one language do not(1) learn literacy in the native language (oftena standard written dialect that can be quite abit different from the native spoken form)and/or (2) gain competence or fluency of anysort in L2.

Success in transferring a metalinguisticability at manipulating a native language to

September 1998

L2 learning necessarily depends logicallyenough on success at learning the L2. Howcan one metalinguistically manipulate a lan-guage one does not have? Also, it is still anunknown whether in learning an L2 success-fully, a new set of metalinguistic skills devel-ops independently, or transfers from the abil-ity to manipulate the native language, or amix of both. (I think seriously that the ideaof a mix of both is closest to reality, and thepoint strikes home when I reflect on my suc-cesses and failures at learning Japanese andbecoming literate in it.)

In the case of Japanese learners of EFL(who typically start English study as 7thgraders in middle or junior high school), anumber of scenarios are possible and worthconsiderable reflection. First, when Japanesestudents learn to read and write their nativelanguage in a roman alphabet in the fifthgrade of elementary school, is a specific typeof phonological or phonemic awarenesstraining necessary? Second, do these stu-dents come to have phonological or phone-mic awareness as a consequence from learn-ing to use a roman alphabet to representtheir native Japanese? Third, if no specificphonological or phonemic training is neces-sary, is it because they are already "aware"as a result of some other input or stimulussuch as becoming literate in Japanese as it isusually written (with a mix of logograms,syllabaries, and some roman alphabet)?Fourth, if Japanese students are "aware"enough to read and write Japanese using aroman alphabet, do they transfer the skill tolearning EFL at the junior high level? If not,why not? Because the awareness necessaryfor reading a relatively straightforward pho-nemic script (such as Japanese in a romanalphabet) does not easily transfer to readingand manipulating written English ? (WrittenEnglish uses a mixed alphabetic writing sys-tem with phonetic, phonemic, morphopho-nemic, morphemic, logographic, and evenfederal elements.) Or is it because, if not inan abstract sense at least from a pragmaticperspective, being metalinguistically awareof English phonology and phonemics andcapable of manipulating them for reading and

4 2 15

writing requires also learning some of whatone is supposed to be aware of?

Issue 2: Are phonemicawareness and phonemicdiscrimination separateconstructs, and even ifseparate, are they related?

Reynolds takes me to task for somehowconfusing the two constructs. First, let meemphasize, if both are research constructs,they may or may not accurately reflect psy-chological and psycholinguistic reality in thecognition and metacognition of real people.Second, all of the research Reynolds citesmerely shows that as reseatch constructs,phonemic discrimination is not a good mea-sure of the other types of phonologicalawareness measured by researchers. Sowhat? I never argued that they were not sepa-rate constructs. That does not mean that theyare in reality totally unrelated or that phone-mic discrimination as a part of either pho-nological processing or phonological aware-ness is not important for learning a FL andlearning to read and write it. Phonologicaldiscrimination, in a FL, may reflect a phono-logical processing ability, it may reflect a typeof phonological awareness, or some of both.

When I stated that we can use minimal pairwords to become more conscious of pho-nemes, I never said "aware" of them for thepurposes of segmenting words into soundsand the like. I was only pointing out that wecan isolate phonemes without recourse to aspecial alphabet (e.g. WA) by using minimalpair words. The conventional writing systemof English uses 26 letters in various, overlap-ping combinations, major and minor patterns,and phonograms to represent over 40 soundsand so is therefore inadequate for using onesymbol to write one sound. For example, thewords "watch" and "watt" are a minimal pair,different only in their final consonant sound,though it would be difficult to explain thisfrom the spelling conventions.

Moreover, we can, both in theory andpractice, usefully posit a relationship between

16

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the two concepts that Reynolds wants toseparate, both for research and pedagogicalpurposes. Morais (1991) is quite clearabout that relationship: problems in auditorydiscrimination amongst native speakers leadto difficulties in the phonemic and/or pho-netic segmentation of speech, which leads toproblems in phonological recoding for thepurposes of reading comprehension. Suchauditory discrimination and coding problemsare viscerally well known to anyone who hasever tried to learn and communicate in a FL.The major deficiency in recent communica-tive ELT is that they seem most often to betreated as minor problems for articulationpractice and accent reduction, if treated atall.

Also, the model from L2 learning researchthat Reynolds cites in support of the ideathat phonemic discrimination and phonemicawareness are distinct and mostly unrelated(because for Reynolds the former is lan-guage specific and the latter is supposed tobe a cross-linguistic universal?) would seemmore to contradict Reynolds, not me, be-cause for Ganschow, Sparks, Javorsky, andPatton (1992, cited in Reynolds, 1998) theterm "phonology" as a unified construct en-compasses and links both phonemic discrimi-nation and segmentation skills. It is perhapsdoubly ironic because (1) I disagree withGanschow, Sparks, et al. (1992) on what"phonology" is, unless their purpose was tocome up with a special use of the term forthe purpose of a model of non- native lan-guage reading, and (2) it is confusing to usea source one disagrees with essentially todisagree with someone else who used thesource first to disagree with you!

Clearly, the research, as inconclusive,incomplete, and open to multiple interpret-ations as it is, does not disprove a possiblelink, and this includes, by extension, EFLlearners. Standardized tests, diagnostictools, and research constructs that attempt todeal with and measure phonological proces-sing (as a part of a more general languageprocessing ability) for the purposes of read-ing and listening comprehension include dis-crimination tasks, and difficulties with such

Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.2

tasks have been correlated with reading andlanguage processing difficulties in many na-tive speakers (Truch, 1991, P. 54).

Discrimination of phonemes may not corre-late strongly with other types of phonemicawareness for the purpose of measuring thelatteri.e. discrimination as constructed byresearchers is not a refined measure of othertypes of awareness as constructed by re-searchersbut that does not mean real auraldiscrimination is not a phonological aware-ness skill or that it is unimportant or unrelatedto success at reading or listening in a foreignlanguage. Indeed, Truch (1991) recommendsa particular diagnostic and remedial readingprogram (and one that might have importantimplications for EFL reading and is, to a cer-tain extent, already being used for ESL pur-poses in North America) that is centered ondevelopment of auditory discrimination skills,a program called the Auditory Discriminationin Depth (ADD) Program (pp. 68-81).

Issue 3: In FL and SLcontexts, is the L2phonology best taughtbefore, along with, or afterphonological and/orphonemic awareness?

Reynolds says that our disagreementsand/or misunderstandings lead us to importantdifferences over recommended instructionalstrategies. But in my original piece I offereda model whereby instruction of interlanguagephonology development, phonological aware-ness of it (and its phonemic awarenesssubcomponent), and phonics skills can pro-ceed apace. In the case of EFL in Japan,phonological awareness (e.g. phonemic orphonetic segmentation skills) might be han-dled when students learn the roman alphabetfor their native language. Or it might natu-rally result from learning to read and writeregular written Japanese (which, as I've al-ready stated, does include some roman let-ters). In either case, such awareness doesnot have to be addressed in the EFL class,except to confirm its existence. Or its lack

September 1998

if it does not exist or is not evinced by theEFL learners, then, just as I wrote in theoriginal piece, phonology, metalinguisticphonological awareness, and phonics skillswill all need to be addressed at the beginninglevel.

Moreover, I fail to see the conflictbetween my model as stated in the firstpaperwith its call for teaching in EFL thataddresses (1) interlanguage phonology de-velopment, (2) phonological awareness, and(3) phonics skills togetherand Reynolds'finding "that teaching English letter-soundcorrespondences to first and second yearJapanese junior high school students resultedin significant improvements in phonological,and specifically phonemic, awareness (un-published data, cited in Reynolds, 1998, p.3)".

Reynolds feels I have fudged on just whatis sufficient in the phonological part of thisgeneral language/interlanguage ability. Iassert that for my Japanese EFL students itlies somewhere in between, on the one hand,(1) mentally (mis)representing the soundsystem of English and its written analog withthe relatively simple, open vowel and conso-nant-vowel syllables of Japanese and, on theother, (2) being able to perform with andmanipulate the sound system as a normalnative, fluently literate speaker of Englishwould. Almost none of my students haveever gotten anywhere close to the latter partof this spectrum; but since English phon-ology and phonetics have been so neglectedon modern syllabuses, it is hard to say justwhat is in the realm of the possible.

I am struck by an incident that illustratesthis point that occurred today, just beforerevising this paper, in a university EFL com-position class of English and Education ma-jors. Some students could not understandmy explanations of who Martin Luther Kingwas. Finally, after telling them all about thisgreat man and being met with only perplexedlooks, I pronounced his name as it would bein Japanese: KI-N-GU (two or three sylla-bles, depending on your definition of a sylla-ble; three beats of Japanese speech rhythm;four Japanese sounds, none of them English

4417

ones ). "Ahhh. Kingu-sensei!" came thechorus of comprehension ('sensei' is a Japa-nese title for teacher, leader, respected one).

ConclusionDespite all that our two pieces share and

complement each other on, Reynolds and I, itwould seem, have disagreed on three issues:

(1) Is phonological and/or phonemic aware-ness language specific?(2) Are phonemic awareness and phonemicdiscrimination separate constructs, and even ifseparate, are they related?(3) In FL and SL contexts, is the L2 phon-ology best taught before, along with, or afterphonological and/or phonemic awareness?

On issue one, I find it hard to come to anagreement with Reynolds, mostly on logicaland semantic grounds. I fail to see howsomeone can be fully phonologically awareand able to manipulate a sound system onehas not sufficiently acquired and/or learned.Certainly, some metalinguistic skills maytransfer across all languages, but not nearly allof the ones measured and isolated and said tounderlie the learning of and literacy in the L2.

Some lines of research are now pursuingmetalinguistic abilities in syntactic awarenessas being relevant to reading ability. FollowingReynolds' reasoning, I would like to knowhow EFL students are going to be aware of,for example, grammaticality or word orderviolations (two measures of metalinguisticsyntactical awareness), if they know little orno English syntax. I think the same holds forphonology (which includes phonemics andphonetics). How can one metalinguisticallyreflect on and fluently manipulate a languageone does not process, at any levelphonetic/phonemic/phonological, morphological, syn-tactical, semantic, or pragmatic?

On issue two, 1 think I have resolved or atleast clarified our disagreement: I never ar-gued that the many types of phonemic aware-ness measured by researchers and phonemicdiscrimination are the same thing or that theyare refined measures of each other. The fact

that phonemic discrimination is a separateconstruct does not, however, mean that it iscompletely unrelated to the others or that itisas either part of a larger phonologicalprocessing skill or as a metalinguistic aware-ness skillunimportant to L2 language de-velopment and reading and listening compre-hension.

With issue three, it seems misleading tome that Reynolds should criticize my call foraddressing three separate but interrelatedcomponentsinterlanguage phonologicaldevelopment, metalinguistic awareness of it,and phonics skillsand then proceed to de-scribe a recommended procedure which is inagreement with it.

My understanding of the abundant litera-ture on metalinguistic skills for the purposeof native language literacy is that there is noclear consensus on such terms as phonemicand phonological awareness. With mostpeople, a native language can be said to benaturally acquired. Literacy, however muchit is conflated at a popular level with lan-guage ability, is not a "natural" process,though there are very important linguisticelements to it. This would seem to help ac-count for why metalinguistic and meta-cognitive skills underlie learning, gainingmastery of and using literacy skills for com-municating with a written language.

Learning a foreign or second languagealso is not a very natural thing to do (as mystudents remind me constantly); in this wayanalogies to literacy learning may be verystrong. It might be the case that the sort ofmetalinguistic and metacognitive skills andabilities that Reynolds and I have arguedabout and attempted to clarify are the key tolearning and mastering a foreign languageto an extent not yet acknowledged or under-stood in the fields of SLA, AL, and main-stream TESOL/ELT. Certainly, the parallelsare easy to state: native literacy often re-quires learning a written (often quite diver-gent) dialect of the native language; SL/FLinstruction is based quite extensively on writ-ten texts. However much Reynolds and Imay have disagreed on some issues, there is

18 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.2

4 5

obviously much that needs to be explored inall of our research and teaching concerningthe connections that hold across literacy, L2learning, and metalinguistic skills develop-ment.

ReferencesGanschow, L., Sparks, R, Javorsky, J., & Patton, J.

(1992). Factors relating to learning a foreignlanguage among high- and low-risk high schoolstudents and students with learning disabilities.Applied Language Learning, 3, 37-63.

Jannuzi, C. (1998). Key concepts in FL literacy:Phonemic awareness. Literacy Across Cultures,2(1), 7-12.

Reynolds, B. (1998). Phonological awareness: Is itlanguage specific? Literacy Across Cultures, 2(2),6-10.

Morais, J. (1991). Phonological awareness: Abridge between language and literacy. In D. Saw-yer and B. Fox (Eds.), Phonological awarenessin reading: The evolution of current perspectives(pp. 31-71). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Truch, S. (1991). The missing parts of whole lan-guage. Calgary, Alberta: Foothills EducationalMaterials.

Charles Jannuzi can be contacted at FukuiUniversity College of Education, Bunkyo3-9-1, Fukui 910, JAPAN, and by Email at<jannuzi@eduOl.f-edu. fukui-u.acjp> or<jannuzi@ThePentagon.corn>.

Join Us During JALT 98 at Sonic City.Friday, November 20th to Monday, November 23'

Sonic City, Omiya, Saitama, Japan

As a forming group, the main business of the FLL N-SIG is attracting people interested inissues about reading, writing, and FL liter-acy. As a kind of self-introduction, the For-eign Language Literacy NSIG will use itsAnnual General Meeting (AGM) time slotto moderate an open discussion on "Read-ing and Writing Pedagogy: What Worksand What Doesn't With Japanese Students."Bring your ideas and questions, meet others

who share your interests, and share your experiences with us tell us what works for you!

What: Open discussion on readingand writing pedagogy

When: 6:30-7:15, Sunday, Nov. 22"Where: Sonic City, Room 805

And while you're at it..SIGN UP FOR THE FL LITERACY N-SIG MEMBERSHIP CONTEST!!!!

Current FL Literacy N-SIG members, JALT members who join the FLL N-SIG at JALT 98,

PrizesFirst prize for PC owners Readability 2000 software for PCsFirst prize for MAC owners Readability 2000 for MACs.Second Prize One copy ofExtensive Reading in the Second

Language Classroom by Richard Day and Julian BamfordThird Prizes (2) Reimbursement of the 1c1 500 N-SIG

membership fee for two winners.

our AGM meeting, Sunday, Nov. 22"'Ibetween 6:30 and 7:15 p.m

September 1998. 4 6

and conferencegoers who join bothJALT and our N-SIG can register forour membershipcontest. Stop by theN-SIG's table(Room 403) atJALT 98 and regis-ter. The drawingwill be held during

. in Room 805.

19

Links to Literacy

The Internet TESL Journal<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/-itesly>

by David Dycus<dcdycus@japan-net.or.jp> or <dcdycus@asu.aasa.ac.jp>

The Internet TESL Journal (ITESLJ) is acombination monthly WWW publication

and TESL/TEFL teaching materials site. Online since 1996, it has accumulated a growingarchive of research articles, position papers,teaching tips and activities, quizzes, and alarge collection of links to TESL/TEFL sites,and constantly presents new material in itsmonthly journal. It is open to all contributorsand contains a refreshingly wide variety ofmaterials from teachers around the world,ranging from statistic-filled research papers toshort grammar and vocabulary quizzes.

The people who maintain the site havewisely chosen to abide by the "KISS" princi-ple, presenting material in basic HTML.Those with slow modems and older comput-ers and will appreciate the focus on contentover flashy presentation. Visitors wantingthose eye-catching but big, memory-hungrymultimedia productions will have to go else-where, but can do so easily by following theextensive list of links. There is something foreveryone at this site, with more coming all thetime because the site actively solicits contri-butions from its readers.

Below are descriptions of articles and ma-terials dealing with reading and/or writinginstruction that may be of interest to LiteracyAcross Cultures readers. They are roughlyorganized by content and then listed chrono-logically.

Research ArticlesTeaching Japanese-English Bilingual Chil-dren to Read English at HomeCraig Smith (December 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/--iteslj/Ai-ticles/Smith-Bilingual.html>

20 4 7

This is a position paper on how to besthelp bilingual children become biliterate aswell. The writer presents relevant research(in bilingualism, reading instruction, and thephonics vs. whole language debate), butdraws more heavily the experiences of chil-dren learning to be bilingual, presented inthree case studies of children he tutored. Heconcludes that parents should depend less onthe "expert" advice of literacy gurus andmore on the same family policies and prac-tices which led their children to be bilingual.

Gender Differences in Taiwan BusinessWriting ErrorsJudy F. Chen (October 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/--iteslj/Articles/Chen-GenderDifil>

This article reports the results of acomputer-based study of the writing of maleand female students in Taiwan. It first dis-cusses how computers can be integrated intowriting classes so that teachers can gthn abetter understanding of students' abilities andprogress. Next, it presents results of a study(made possible by the use of computer-basedwriting instruction) of gender differences instudent writing errors, which indicates thatfemale students consistently make fewererrors, and show more improvement overtime, than their male classmates.

Chicken Meets on Rise: Meaning in De-cline Lexical Havoc in L2Yvonne Stapp (April 1997)<http : //www. aitech. ac.jp/-iteslyArticles/Stapp-Bloopers. html>

This article presents examples of learnererrors caused by lexical confusions, directtranslations, similar-sounding words, and

Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.2

phonological problems. It is informative buthighly entertaining as well because the exam-ples of learners' mistakes demonstrate howseemingly small errors can have a devastatingeffect on meaning.

A Product-Focused Approach to TextSummarisationEsther Uso Juan and Juan Carlos PalmerSilveira (January 1998)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/iteslj/Articles/Juan-TextSummary.html>

In this study of summary writing, an inter-mediate and advanced group of Spanish stu-dents of English were asked to read a shortpassage and to write summaries of it. Theintermediate level had a set of summary-writ-ing instructions that were explained by theteacher before starting the task, while GroupB did not receive any guidance. The research-ers observed that L2 proficiency strongly af-fected the summarising task; the advancedgroup did well despite knowing little aboutsummary writing. They also found that thelower proficiency group clearly benefittedfrom having guidelines on summary writing.

Gender Differences in E-mailCommunicationPaolo Rossetti (July 1998)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/-.iteslj/Articles/Rossetti-GenderDif html>

The implications of gender differences onlanguage use are explored in this article,based on a total of 100 randomly selectede-mail discussion group messages written ona wide range of topics. It begins with a dis-cussion of general issues in language and gen-der and of gender in e-mail communication,followed by a study of e-mail samples ana-lyzed based on Herring's (1994) aggressive/male, supportive/female dichotomy. The re-sults show a clear gender difference in stylesin e-mail messages, with males "more proneto write in an aggressive, competitive style,while women tend to be far more supportivein their writing."

Lesson Plans, Activities, andTeaching Techniques

September 1998

Vocabulary Teaching Using Student-Written DialoguesAlice Dana Delaney Walker (Vol. 1, No. 2,December 1995)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/ites1j/Techniques/Walker-StudentDialogs.html>

An easy to use teaching technique forusing student-generated dialogues as a wayof reviewing vocabulary is presented here.

CNN Interactive: Reading, Discussingand WritingAmy Ogasawara (December 1995)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/iteslj/Lessons/Ogasawara-CNN.html>

A sample lesson plan for teaching collegefreshmen (TOFEL scores from 425 to 475)using CNN Interactive(http://www.cnn.com) and e-mail, with an eye to increasingawareness of issues in world news, as well asdeveloping critical reading ability and theability to write critical reactions.

A Peer Review Activity for EssayOrganizationBob Gibson (March 1996)<http://www. aitech. ac. jp/--ites1j/Techniques/Gibson-PeerReview.html>

This article offers a variation on peer re-view of essays that, by maintaining the ano-nymity of both the writer and reviewer, re-duces the tension peer review can involve.The activity focuses students' attention onthe value of well-written topic sentences atthe paragraph or on thesis statements at theessay level.

Teaching the English NewspaperEffectivelyKenji Kitao (March 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/--iteslj/Lessons/Kitao-Newspaper.html>

After establishing the importance of Eng-lish newspaper articles for students, the au-thor presents ways to teach learners to rec-ognize the way newspapers and articles inthem are organized, and offers suggestionsfor helping readers understand the writer'sobjective and for critical reading. It includesa sample worksheet.

48 21

How to Read Nonfictional English TextsFaster and More Effectively: A 'StandardReading Exercise' for ESL-StudentsHehnut Stiefenhoumlfer (June 1996)

<http://www.aitech.acjpk-iteslj/Techniques/Stiefenhoefer-FastReading.html>

This article presents a set of tasks and ex-ercises for a single reading assignment, de-signed to take intermediate and advancedreaders through the entire gamut of top-downand bottom-up reading strategies when read-ing nonfiction texts. The emphasis is on help-ing readers reflect on their "cognitive effortsin problem-solving" to improve their generalreading ability and to develop problem-solv-ing skills in general.

Reading and Writing throughNeuro-Linguistic ProgrammingTom Maguire (June 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/iteslj1rechniques/Maguire-NLP . html>

Suggestions for reading and writing activi-ties to encourage student creativity using vi-sualization and guided imagery are presentedin this article.

Global Warming: A Cause and EffectWriting LessonAmy Ogasawara (November 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jpk-iteslyindexPrev96.html>

This is a lesson plan to practice cause andeffect writing skills, using environmental top-ics as an example, in which students are givenseveral articles about global warming andnote-taking worksheet to help them identifykey points and all causes and effects in thearticles. The notes are then used for writingcause and effect essays on the topic.

The Love Clinic: Using Advice Columns inthe ClassroomRichard Humphries (February 1997)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/--iteslj/Lessons/Humphries-LoveCfinic.html>

This is a combination reading, discussionand role-playing activity designed around

newspaper advice columns. It includes aclear description of how to carry out theactivity, and suggestions for raising culturalawareness through the materials chosen andthe discussions and role plays based on them.

Is the Movie the Same as the Book?Donna Hurst Tatsuki (February 1997)<http://www.aitech.ac.jpt-iteslj/Lessons/Tatsuki-Movie.html>

This activity describes how to preparelessons comparing passages in a book andcorresponding scenes in a movie based onthem. It encourages close reading of a textand critical examination of both the text andthe movie scene, and provides the basis forfurther individual or group projects.

Student Created Crossword PuzzleExerciseGreg Goodmacher (December 1997)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/iteslj/Lessons/Goodmacher-Crosswords/>

As the title indicates, this article containstips on how to help students review vocabu-lary by making their own crossword puzzles.It includes a grid which can be used as atemplate for making crossword puzzles.

Computers, E-mail, and theInternetSecret Partner Journals for Motivation,Fluency and FunTimothy Stewart (July 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/--iteslj/Techniques/Stewart-SecretJoumals.html>

This is a variation on student journalingthat has students write to many differentpeople while remthning anonymous.

Getting Your Class ConnectedDennis E. Wilkinson (September 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/--iteslj/Techniques/Wilkinson-Connected.html#ENC>

The short selection found here offersideas on using e-mail and elementary HTMLfor teaching, links, and suggestions for en-couraging learners.

22 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.24 9

Marking Student Work on the ComputerMartin Holmes (September 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/-iteslyArticles/Holmes-ComputerMarking/index.htm>

This article describes how student paperscan be marked using MS Word 7 or WordPerfect 6.1 using macros and templates de-signed by the author, and discusses advan-tages and disadvantages of this method. Thearticle includes links which the reader can useto download the macros and templates.

Using Microsoft Word to GenerateComputerized TestsFrank Tuzi (November 1997)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/-iteslj/Articles/Tuzi-Testsf>

After acknowledging the benefits ofcomputer-based testing but also pointing outsome of the drawbacks of using internet-based tests, the author shows how macrosand forms in the MS Word environment canbe used for creating and using computerizedpractice and testing materials that can be usedoffline. Instructions and examples are clear,and, while there is certainly a learning curveinvolved, anyone using them should be able towrite their own computerized tests in a rela-tively short time

E-mail Activities in the ESL Writing ClassRon Belisle (December 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/-4tes1j/Articles/Belisle-Email.html>

In this collection of e-mail activities, theauthor discusses the numerous advantagesthat using e-mail has for language learnersand their teachers, followed by suggestions/instructions for different e-mail assignmentsand activities.

Report on a Penpal Project, and Tips forPenpal-Project SuccessVera Mello (January 1998)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/---iteslj/Techniques/Mello-Penpal.html>

A Brazilian English teacher's experiences insetting up and administering an e-mail pen palproject are described in this article.

September 1998

Thriving on Screen: Web-Authoring forL2 InstructionJack Kimball (February 1998)<http://www.aitech.ac.jpkites1j/Articles/Kimball-WebAuthoring.html>

The great potential that the WWW offers,and how teachers and students can benefitfrom it and, in turn, further increase its po-tential engaging in their own web-authoring,are discussed in this article. Links are in-cluded.

Let the E-mail Software Do the Work:Time Saving Features for the WritingTeacherRon Belisle (April 1998)<http : //www. aitech.ac. j pi-iteslj/Techniques/Belisle-Emailt>

This article explains how to obtain, install,and set up the free e-mail program, EudoraLight, to make use of its time saving featuresas part of an e-mthl based writing program.

Activities for Using Junk Email in theESL/EFL ClassroomMichael Ivy (May 1998)<http://www.aitech. ac. jpkites1j/Techniques/Ivy-JunkMail/>

Turning junk e-mail into language trea-sure can be done by using the suggestionsand the six activities described in this article.

Jigsaw and Cloze ActivitiesMaking Jigsaw Activities UsingNewspaper Articles

David Dycus (February 1996)<http : //www. aitech. ac. jp/-ites1j/Techniques/Dycus-Jigsaw. html>

This article describes how newspaper arti-cles can easily be turned into jigsaw readingactivities that involve listening and speakingas well as reading.

Graffiti for ESL ReadersBrent Buhler (September 1996)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/'-iteslj/Techniques/Buhler-ContentBased.html>

This teaching technique article presents atype of jigsaw reading activity in which small

50 23

sections of larger articles are copied onto 11by 17 one-colunm pages and taped to thewalls. Students, who can start anywhere inthe article, develop dialog among themselvesand with the text as they work through it.

Less Is More: Summary Writing andSentence Structure in the Advanced ESLClassroomGeorge L. Greaney (September 1997)<http://www.aitech.ac.jpk-itesli/Techniques/Greaney-Writing.html>

The activity here is designed to encourageadvanced students who habitually write short,simple sentences to use more complex sen-tence structure spontaneously in their writing.It involves each student in summariimg ashort passage and then challenges the class toreduce the summaries into a single, compre-hensive sentence.

FLL N-SIG News

A Fun Reading Comprehension ActivityMehmet Ali Akgtin (October 1997)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/--ites1j/Lessons/Akgun-ReadingComp.html>

This short article describes a reading ac-tivity which offers an interesting variation onthe average doze exercise. A text is typed ina thin column, leaving a large margin on bothsides. Students cut a line through the columnof text so that the last one or two words arecut off and then must work to reconstructthe text by supplying the missing words.

Read Aloud and Spot the DifferencesGreg Goodmacher (November 1997)<http://www.aitech.ac.jp/iteslj/Lessons/Goodmacher-ReadAloud.html>

In this activity, students are given slightlydifferent texts which they read aloud to eachother and tly to find the differences.

Report on the Robert Kaplan Workshopby Denise Douglas-Brown

On Saturday 6th June, Professor RobertB. Kaplan gave a 3-hour workshop on

contrastive rhetoric at the University of Li-brary and Information Science, Tsukuba. Theworkshop was jointly hosted by the FL Liter-acy N-SIG of JALT and the Ibaraki chapterof JALT. Dr. Kaplan is a distinguished rheto-rician who is noted for his many contributionsto the field of contrastive rhetoric.

'Contrastive rhetoric' may be said to be thecomparison of literacy standards across cul-tures. Dr. Kaplan's work has been evolvingsince the mid-1960s in the form of numerousarticles, and has culminated in the publicationof his recent book The Theory and Practiceof Writing (W . (3rabe and R.B. Kaplan,Longman, 1996). During the workshop, Pro-fessor Kaplan addressed diverse themes suchas the purpose of writing (i.e. to convey infor-

24 51

mation by 'telling' or by 'transforming'knowledge); the focus of writing (i.e. thestructure and style of a text rather than the'grammar' of a text); the rationality of writing(i.e., that 'logic' is culturally-coded); and theco-construction of texts (i.e., that 'meaning'is 'negotiated' between writer and reader).His comprehensive message was that a na-tion's 'literacy' can never be considered inisolation; it is the product of culture andhistory and tradition, and hence directly mir-rors the values of a particular speech com-munity. With this insight, we can perhaps allbe better teachers of cross-cultural writing(i.e., how to write in 'English' or 'Japanese'or 'other' rhetorical styles, depending on thetarget audience). All in all, it was a veryengaging and informative presentation.

Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.2

Book and Teaching Material Reviews

Announcing Our New Reviews Editor

Beginning in Fall 1998, Bern Mulvey willbecome editor of Literacy Across Culturesbook and teaching material review section.We are looking for reviews of any booksrelated to literacy issues in and out of theclassroom, and especially books and text-books and/or teaching materials with aconnection to teaching L2 reading and/orwriting skills. Both members and non-members of the Foreign Language LiteracyN-SIG are welcome to contribute reviews.Anyone interested in becoming a contributor

The Foreign Language Literacy NationalSpecial Interest Group continues to grow,and with your help we can soon have the 50members we need to be fully recognized byJALT. If you are a JALT member and havean interest in some facet of reading, writingand/or literacy, please join us!

JALT members can join the FLL N-SIGby sending ¥1500 to the JALT Central Of-fice using the postal money transfer (yubinfurikae) form included in issues of The Lan-guage Teacher. On the line labeled "N-SIGs", write "FLL N-SIG (forming)." Thereis no need to renew your membership eachyear until we reach 50 or more members, soplease consider joining today.

September 1998

to this section should contact the new editorprivately at the address listed below for moreinformation.

Bern MulveyAssistant Professor, LiteratureFukui UniversityBunkyo 3-chome 9-1Fukui 910-0017, JAPANFax: 0776-27-8521E-mail: mulvey@eduOl.f-edufulcui-u.ac.jp

Only JALT members can become members ofthe FLL N-SIG. However, this does not meanthat you cannot contribute to our activities. Atpresent, non-members in any country can re-ceive copies of our publication, LiteracyAcross Cultures, and are encouraged to con-tribute articles, reviews, and perspective piecesto it. In addition, we are sending this news-letter out in an e-mail version, which you canreceive by contacting Charles Jannuzi at<jannuzi@ eduOLf-edu. jitkui-u.ac.jp> . Toobtain a printed version, contact David Dycusby e-mail at <dcdycus@ asu.aasa.ac.jp> or<dcdycus@japan-net.or. jp> or at the addressin the "Officers and Contact Information"section.

52 25

Literacy Across Cultures, a publication ofJALT's Foreign Language Literacy N-SIG,welcomes submissions, in English or Japa-nese, on topics related to reading and writingand their social product, literacy. We inviteany interested person to submit:

articles (up to 3000 words, not heavilyreferenced)perspective/opinion piecesbook and article reviewsannotated bibliographiesresponses to LAC articlesdescriptions/reviews of literacy-relatedWorld Wide Web sites and materialsclassroom and teaching tips

for upcoming issues. In addition, we wel-come annotated bibliographies and othercollections of information on topics related toliteracy, both for LAC and for our WWWsite.

Literacy Across Cultures is publishedtwice a year, in February, and September.Submissions for a given issue must be re-ceived by the 10`h of January and Augustrespectively. We encourage relevantsubmissions that may not fit into any of thecategories above.

Submissions can be made in three ways:1) As attachments to an e-mail message tothe editor. The text should be providedtwice, once in a Text file (.TXT) format andonce in a Rich Text Format (.RTF). Thee-mail message should include a message tothe editor explaining the content of thesubmission and a short personal biography toaccompany the submission if accepted. Themessage should include information aboutwhat computer OS was used (Mac or IBM)and what word processor was used, including

the version number of that software. Ifpossible, an additional version saved in aWord Perfect format (ver. 5.2 to 7.0) isappreciated. It should be sent to DavidDycus, the LAC editor, at <dcdycus@asu.aasa.ac.jp>, with a copy (CC) sent to<dcdycus@ j apan-net. or.jp>.

2) On a 1.44 mb floppy disk accompanied bya printed version of the submission. The texton the floppy disk must be provided in 2formats, once in a Text file (TXT) formatand once in a Rich Text Format (.RTF). Ifpossible, a version saved in a Word Perfectformat (version 5.2 to 7.0) is appreciated. Ashort personal biography should accompanythe submission. (See the address below.)

3) If the author does not have access to acomputer, two typed, double-spaced copiesof the text and any accompanying tables,graphics, etc. can be sent to the addressbelow.

If the document includes graphics, tables,drawings, etc., they should be save asseparate files on the floppy disk or sent asseparate e-mail attachments, in one of theseformats: .JPG, .BMP, .GIF, .PCX, or .WPG.A printed copy should also be included.

Printed submissions should be sent to:David DycusAichi Shukutoku University9 Katahira, Nagakute, Nagakute-cho,Aichi-gun, Aichi-ken 480-11 JAPAN.FAX at 0568-85-2560 (outside of Japan, thatis 81-568-85-2560). (Please do not faxsubmissions.)

5326 Literacy Across Cultures Vol.2 No.2

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