What key language skills lead to greater literacy success in early French Immersion?

The most frustrating experience for any F.I. primary teacher is the encounter with "the student" who simply does not appear to be learning French as easily as their classmates. The frustration usually stems from not knowing how to support the student in an effective manner. In my 30 years of experience in F.I. schools both as an F.I. teacher and an administrator, I have learned that second language teachers want to do the right thing. They want to see their students succeed in French Immersion. Student success is what they live for. This is why they became teachers in the first place.

Yet, there are several factors that could be a stumbling block to success:

• Lack of professional development offered in the area of second language comprehension and word awareness skills (i.e.:letter-sound correspondences and phonological awareness skills)

• Lack of professional guidance to help F.I. teachers successfully implement such strategies in the classroom;

• Lack of appropriate materials in French Immersion to support all of the above!

Our goal at FrenchtwistsFSL is to help F.I. primary teachers become aware of key skills necessary for primary F.I. students to acquire on their way to becoming literate in French while supporting teachers on how to implement these skills using our ELR (i.e.: Ecoutons, lisons, rions) resource material. In this blog, we begin by introducing you to what we believe to be the key skills that primary second language learners (or any language learner for that matter!) need to develop on the road to literacy success in French Immersion.

POINT TO PONDER:

What are the key language learning skills that need to be addressed for increased literacy success in the primary F.I. classroom?

Having graduated from University in 1989, my whole training around teaching reading was steeped whole language. As teachers in training, we were told that literacy rich environments coupled with an emphasis on teaching children to use cues and context while reading would produce the reading comprehension that skilled readers required. However, after 30 years of being immersed in second language education and watching some students struggle with French reading and writing, it became clear that teaching children to read required additional concepts that somehow were not being addressed using whole language strategies.

Yet it was not until 2011 while participating in a teacher inquiry to support struggling primary readers in FI that I was introduced to the notion of "The Science of Reading." I had read many articles, but three key pieces of information-two articles and one info-graphic- resonated with me. The first article, written by Barbara Foorman and entitled: Research on "the Great Debate" : Code oriented versus whole language approaches to reading instruction, posited that "research clearly favours explicit instruction in alphabetic coding that concludes that the incidental instruction provided by whole language activities do not guarantee alphabetic understanding." (Foorman, 1995). This statement corroborated the reading behaviours that we were seeing in some of our primary F.I. students, specifically, the inability to recognize letter-sound correspondences in French.

The second article, written by Nancy Wise and Dr. Xi Chen, addressed the importance of phonological awareness. Phonological awareness refers to those sound skills such as syllable segmentation/blending, initial/final sound identification, rhyme and sound segmentation. They suggested that phonological sound skills screeners administered in English to young primary students could help identify those students at-risk for reading in French. The answers to our inquiry questions regarding supporting struggling second language learners in French were finally crystallizing. What was missing was a comprehensive framework for literacy that incorporated word awareness skills Ii.e.: letter-sound correspondence and phonological awareness) to the language comprehension skills that teachers were already addressing in the classroom.

My search for a comprehensive literacy framework would come to light when one day, scrolling through twitter, I happened upon a post that featured an info-graphic. The info-graphic entitled: Scarborough's Rope designed by Dr.Hollis Scarborough, a leading researcher in early language development, made its first appearance in Neuman's and Dickensen's Handbook of Early Literacy Research, Volume 1 published in 2001. To the left of the info-graphic, several strands of rope in two different colors refer to key reading skills that, when mastered over time, produce both language comprehension and word awareness leading to reading comprehension. My understanding of how students learn to read would never be the same again.

Want to learn more about Scarborough's Rope? Click HERE!

Kristin Anthian (@Kristinant), Twitter 2017

What was refreshing to see in Dr. Scarbourough's info-graphic was the mention of word recognition skills. Since the late 80's, any reference made to explicit phonics instruction in the classroom had become a "dirty word" (Forman, 1995). Teachers were explicitly told to avoid phonics instruction. Using a whole language framework, teachers became skilled at presenting literature with a focus on language comprehension but were unaware or even unsure about teaching word recognition skills in an explicit, systematic manner to students. It became quite clear that word recognition was the key component missing from our reading instruction programs and that this component could prove to be helpful in supporting not only struggling students in F.I. but all students taking their first steps on the road to learning French.

Which brings us to our next points to ponder: What could Scarborough's rope look like and sound like when practiced in the primary F.I. classroom? What instructional material lends itself best to the teaching of both language comprehension and word recognition skills? We will address these critical points in our next blog!

Want to know more? Here are some helpful resources:

• Foorman, B (1995). "The Great Debate: Code-Oriented Versus Whole Language Approaches to Reading Instruction," School Psychology Review. 24 (3), 376-392

• Wise, N & Chen, Xi (2009). "Early Identification and Intervention for At-Risk Readers in French Immersion". monograph 18. ON: Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat.

• Neuman, Susan & Dickinsen, D (2001). Handbook of Early Literacy Research, Volume 1. NY: Guilford Press.