The Science of Reading: Language Structures - What EdLeaders Need to Know
In the first blog post of this series and the corresponding first episode in this special series on the EdLeader podcast, I spent time introducing the Science of Reading. If you have not listened to that episode, I would like to encourage you to spend a few moments with it as it grounds the series and undergirds the deconstruction of Reading Comprehension that I am attempting. If you are looking for that episode, it is episode 69 on the EdLeader playlist.
Previous blog posts in the Science of Reading series have focused on the strands of fluency, background knowledge, sight word recognition, verbal reasoning, literacy knowledge, and decoding. With this blog post, I continue deconstructing the reading rope.
In this blog post, I am pulling out the strand of language structures. Neuroscientist Jeff Hawkins says that “language is a ‘nested structure.’ For example: letters are combined to form syllables, syllables are combined to form words, words are combined to form clauses and sentences” (Hawkins).
“As text increases in complexity, a reader's understanding of how words work within sentences supports meaning-making with greater fluency. Children can gain understanding and practice with language structures through hearing language often during reading experiences (including read-aloud and mentor texts), play, conversations, firsthand experiences, multimodal texts, and explicit teaching of how sentences and words work together to create meaning” (Surrey Schools).
The Science of Reading is undergirded by theories of how students learn to read and comprehend text. At the very basic level is the Simple View of Reading Theory which states that there are two elements that combine to result in Reading Comprehension. The Simple View of Reading formula states:
Decoding x Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension
From this grew “Scarborough's Reading Rope” as conceived by Dr. Hollis S. Scarborough. Dr. Scarborough believed that the elements of Word Recognition and the elements of Language Comprehension all weave together into the rope of Reading Comprehension. Just like a true rope, the more strands present and the stronger each strand is, the stronger the rope is.
The strands of Word Recognition include Decoding, Phonological Awareness, and Sight Word Recognition.
The strands of Language Comprehension include background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge.
In this blog post and corresponding podcast series, my goal is to pull apart the individual strands of reading comprehension and build our shared understanding of what EdLeaders need to know about learning to read.
So metaphorically, we grab Scarborough’s reading rope and separate the strands of Word Recognition and Language Comprehension. Within the Language Comprehension strands, we find the strand that is the topic for today’s episode, Language Structures.
When we really reflect on all that is going on when we read, it is truly mind-boggling. Think about it. Our brains are processing letters, syllables, words, sentences, paragraphs, sections, and chapters creating meaning out of what is simply markings on the page. Those markings, letters and punctuation, are also causing our brains to decipher and interpret what is seen on the page. The brain chooses sounds to associate with letters and combinations of letters. All of this is happening with what is described as automaticity.
You may recall that I discussed automaticity in the second blog post of this series while discussing fluency. Automaticity is the ability to quickly and accurately identify letters, letter-sound correspondences, and isolated words.
For new and struggling readers, there is truly a lot to master just to begin to comprehend the easiest of texts.
It is no wonder that as educators we continue to learn more and more about how the brain makes all of this work. As our understanding of what is going on when we read grows, our abilities to equip new and novice readers with the skills they need to master grows as well.
So we find ourselves holding onto this strand of Scarborough’s rope that we found among the Language Comprehension strands, this strand called Language Structures. Perhaps it stands to reason that we have to be equipped with an understanding of language structures if we want to master reading comprehension.
What then are language structures? To answer that initial and guiding question for this blog post, let’s turn to Surrey Schools, the largest school district in British Columbia, Canada. The Surrey school system has a great website dedicated to reading comprehension. I have linked it below.
Our friends in Surrey share that “Language Structures refer to sentence-level comprehension of text, including how the arrangement of words within sentences impacts the meaning. While vocabulary supports readers' understanding of individual word meanings, language structure understanding helps readers interpret the meaning of full sentences.”
They go on to point out that, “The order of the words in a sentence can drastically change the meaning, so attention to the "rules" of the language helps children understand text, conversation and communicate effectively.”
On the Great Minds blog, they ask and answer the question,
“Why is knowledge of language structures critical for students’ reading development?
- Complex texts have complex language structures. The complexity of language structures within a text contributes to quantitative and qualitative measures of text complexity. Longer sentences, figurative language, and low-frequency words increase the complexity of a text. To read increasingly complex texts successfully, students need support navigating complex structures and word choices to understand how each contributes to the text’s meaning.
- Knowledge of language structures helps readers track information within a sentence or across a text. A skilled reader uses their knowledge of language structures to accurately summarize and make logical inferences. Without understanding how to refer to a noun used in a previous sentence, for instance, students quickly lose the ability to make meaning of challenging texts.
- Reading comprehension relies on subtleties of language structures. Semantics and syntax both affect meaning.
“Let’s eat Grandma!”“Let’s eat, Grandma!”
To understand the joke, a reader needs strong knowledge of how the comma placement in the second sentence changes the meaning. Developing knowledge of language structures strengthens students’ ability to glean meaning from sentences.” (Great Minds)
Language structure is made up of a complex set of rules and conventions. Readers have to learn the rules that allow us to communicate with one another through the written word. They develop this knowledge and understanding of Language Structure as they are learning how to read.
I like the way that Braintrust describes language structure as a series of layers, “Letters make up words, which make up sentences, which make up paragraphs, which make up entire texts. Along with these components are other structures within language, such as semantics and grammar.”
There are at least six components in language structure. We have discussed the first of them, phonemes, previously. In both the blog post on decoding and the blog post on sight word recognition, I shared that the English language is made of 26 letters and 44 sounds called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word. They make up the structure that gives words meaning.
The second component is the morpheme. A morpheme is the smallest unit of sound that carries meaning. Some individual letters are both a phoneme and a morpheme. An example would be the letter ‘i’. It is a morpheme because it is a word by itself, a single sound that carries meaning. By contrast, the letter ‘t’ is a phoneme as it is a sound within a word, but it is not a morpheme because it does not carry meaning by itself. Morphemes can be whole words standing by themselves as the smallest unit of sound that carries meaning. Examples include ‘box,’ ‘smell,’ and ‘serious.’
Affixes (prefixes or suffixes) are also morphemes because, while they don’t stand by themselves, they still carry meaning that changes the words to which they are added. Think about what happens to the word motivated when we add the prefix ‘de.’ Suddenly the word that means “having an incentive or a strong desire to do well or succeed in some pursuit,” becomes a word that means having less incentive or desire to do well. The prefix ‘de’ is a morpheme because it is the smallest unit of sound that has meaning.
The third component of language structure is ‘words.’ I am confident that readers of this blog entry know what a word is. In thinking about language structure though, knowing that sentences are made up of words does not fully capture the importance of words in language structure.
Sure sentences are a collection of words, but not some random collection of words. Each word in a sentence is specifically chosen because the word conveys the meaning of what we want to say or write. Just like the addition of a prefix or suffix can change the meaning of a word, the addition or deletion of a word changes the meaning of a sentence.
The meaning that results from specific word choice is called semantics, and it’s another component of language structure.
Semantics are the fourth component of language structures. Semantics is the meaning of individual words, the meaning of entire phrases, sentences, and even whole texts. As I mentioned, changing one word in a sentence changes the meaning of the sentence. It can be said that changing one word changes the semantics. “Semantics refers to the overall message of the sentence, including the tone and mood, as determined by the words used within the sentence” (Surrey Schools).
Imagine a mom leaving a note for her son to wash the dishes. He might make use of semantics to understand ‘wash the dishes’ as ‘wash the dishes anytime you would like to.’ His mom probably meant ‘wash the dishes as soon as possible.’ Semantics refers to the meaning of the phrase ‘wash the dishes.’ Improperly understanding the semantics of his mom’s directions probably led to her son being in trouble with his mom.
Semantics is also the meaning of a single word or phrase. When we consider the word, ‘destination’ and the phrase ‘last stop,’ we might think that they mean the same thing, but understanding semantics, we understand there can be a subtle difference. We might use the phrase ‘last stop’ to refer to the ‘last stop’ before the destination or use ‘last stop’ to refer to the actual destination. Within the phrase, sentence, paragraph, or text, readers derive the meaning of ‘last stop.’ This is semantics.
From semantics, we move along to the fifth component of language structure, syntax. Masterclass.com shared that “the word “syntax” comes from the Ancient Greek for “coordination” or “ordering together.” In spoken and written language, syntax refers to the set of rules that determines the arrangement of words in a sentence.”
The syntax is the underlying system within a language of how words are arranged to make sense. As an example, in the English language, an adjective comes before the noun it describes. This is not necessarily the same in other languages. In English, we would describe the size of a library as a ‘large library,’ not ‘library large.’ However, in Spanish, the adjectives come after the noun, so Spanish speakers would say ‘Biblioteca grande.’
In the Masterclass article on syntax in the English language, the authors share the four baseline rules:
- “A complete sentence requires a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought. This is also called an independent clause. A sentence without a subject and a verb is considered a fragment.
- Separate ideas generally require separate sentences. A sentence containing multiple independent clauses that are improperly joined is considered a run-on sentence.
- English word order follows the subject-verb-object sequence.
- A dependent clause contains a subject and a verb—but it doesn’t express a complete thought.”
Encyclopedia Britannica defines grammar as the “rules of a language governing the sounds, words, sentences, and other elements, as well as their combination and interpretation. The word grammar also denotes the study of these abstract features or a book presenting these rules.”
To try to gain a more specific and basic understanding of grammar in language structure, I went to English Topper, an online platform that teaches the English Language around the world. On their website, I found what I was looking for, the basic rules of grammar. By the way, there are twelve of them.
“The 12 Rules of Grammar are:
- Every sentence should start with a Capital letter in the first word.
- Every sentence should either end with a period (or) a question mark (or) an exclamation mark.
- Every sentence should have a Subject, a Verb, and an Object.
- The Subject and Verb forms are interrelated in the sentence.
- Use Either/or [when both cases are true] (or) Neither/nor [when neither case is true], depending on the Sentence, while using singular nouns.
- Proper Nouns should be capitalized anywhere in the sentences (including at the beginning) when used.
- Common Nouns should be capitalized only at the beginning of the sentences.
- The words its and it’s, and [the words] you’re and your [are] not the same.
- Use Indefinite Articles [like ‘a’] for Countable Nouns and Definite [Articles like ‘the’] with specific Countable & all Uncountable Nouns.
- Use the article “a” for Consonant sounds and “an” for vowel sounds.
- Use apostrophes to show Possessions.
- Active voice is more preferred than Passive voice in the English Language.” (English Topper)
The six components of language structure: phonemes, morphemes, words, semantics, syntax, and grammar are all important for a student to learn and master. Ideally, students are trying to master all of these skills at one time. In reality, the skills are learned gradually over time. Master teachers differentiate instruction in these skills as students are ready for them, typically in small group instruction after an initial introduction in a large group setting.
Wow, we have now made it through 6 of the eight strands of Scarborough’s Reading Rope with a bonus blog post on Fluency. (I still feel like Dr. Scarborough should have included Fluency as a strand in the Reading Rope, but that is a conversation for another day, perhaps over a nice meal or casual gathering.)
I digress.
Two more strands remain for us to pull out and understand. Those strands will be detailed in future blog posts as we continue this exploration of what we need to know about the Science of Reading.
References
12 Rules of Grammar | (Grammar Basic Rules with examples) by Chadrakhar on EnglishTopper.com
Examining Scarborough’s Rope: Language Structures by Great Minds
Grammar by Encyclopedia Britannica
Language Structures by Surrey Schools Literacy Team, Surrey School District
On Intelligence... How a New Understanding of the Brain Will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines by Jeff Hawkins with Sandra Blakeslee, New York: Times Books (Henry Holt and Company, LLC). 2004.
Scarborough’s Rope Model of Reading by Evelyn Reiss
Syntax in the English Language: Definition, Examples, and 3 Ways to Use Syntax Effectively by MasterClass
Other Episodes in the Science of Reading EdLeader Podcast Series
*"Grammar" graphic posted throughout the internet with no readily identifiable source
Comments
Post a Comment