Science of Teaching Reading Resource Guide

Context: In Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers, Louisa Moats identifies five universal components of language – phonological skills, syntax, morphological skills, pragmatics, and semantics or vocabulary.

• Phonemes: a finite set of speech sounds
• Morphemes: meaningful speech units that can often be recombined to make new words. Words, phrases, and sentences are all examples of meaningful speech units.
• Semantics: the study of word, phrase, and sentence meanings, which includes: underlying rules of syntax or sentence structure.
• Pragmatics: the rule system that tells speakers how to use language for social communication.
• Orthographies: the representation of the sounds, syllables, and morphemes of spoken language or symbols

Let’s unpack each component in greater detail:

Phonology

Oral language is composed of two components:

• Receptive, i.e., listening, and
• Expressive, i.e., speaking.

Phonology: Phonology is the study of the speech sound (i.e., phoneme) system of a language, including the rules for combining and using phonemes.

In terms of oral language, this means:

• Listening: ability to identify and distinguish phonemes while listening (i.e., phonological awareness)
• Speaking: appropriate use of phonological patterns of that particular language system or subsystem while speaking
• In the classroom: When we ask a student “How many sounds are in the word ‘cat’?” or “How many syllables are in the word ‘adventure’?”, we are asking them to identify discrete speech sounds in spoken language.

Morphology

Morphology: Morphology is the study of the rules that govern how morphemes, the minimal meaningful units of language, are used in a language.

English is a morphophonemic language, which means that the English spelling system represents sounds, syllables, and morphemes. Morphemes are the smaller units of meaning within words, and they include two separate classes: bases (or roots) and affixes, including prefixes and suffixes. (SEA, n.d.)

In terms of oral language, this means:

• Listening: understanding morphemes when listening
• Speaking: using morphemes correctly when speaking
• In the classroom: When we ask a student “What suffix can you add to the word ‘dance’ to change the meaning to a person who dances?”, we are asking them to identify and manipulate morphemes.
• Resource: For additional guidance on morphological instructional support, read pp. 194-201 of Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers.
  • Reference: Moats, L (2020). Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers, Third Edition (pp. 194-201). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing.

  Reference: “What Are Morphemes?” SEA - Supporting English Acquisition, https://www.rit.edu/ntid/sea/processes/wordknowledge/grammatical/whatare

  Syntax

  Syntax: Syntax is the study of the rules that pertain to the ways in which words can be combined to form sentences in a language. Knowledge of syntax includes knowledge of the parts of speech, phrases, clauses, and sentence types.

  In terms of oral language, this means:

  • Listening: understanding sentence structure elements when listening
  • Speaking: using the correct sentence structure elements of a particular language system or subsystem when speaking
  • In the classroom: When we ask a student to identify the subject and predicate in a sentence or to combine two sentences using the “because,” we are asking them to leverage and apply their syntactic knowledge.

  Semantics

  Semantics: Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and word combinations in a language system.

  Semantic processing is critical to reading comprehension and written expression; in order to understand language, students need to understand the meaning represented by the specific vocabulary words, phrases, and figurative language they encounter.

  In terms of oral language, this means:

  • Listening: listening vocabulary
  • Speaking: speaking vocabulary
  • In the classroom: When we ask a student “What are some synonyms for the word ‘happy’?” or “Why does the author use the phrase ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’ to describe this moment in the story?”, we are asking them to think about semantics, or the meaning of words and phrases.

  Pragmatics

  Pragmatics: Pragmatics is the study of the rules associated with the use of language in conversation and broader social situations.

  Pragmatics skills can be nonlinguistic (e.g., eye contact, proximity, turn taking) or linguistic (e.g., conversations), and effective communication is dependent upon understanding and using pragmatic rules in context. Children who have developed strong pragmatic skills are able to combine phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax to achieve effective communication.

  In terms of oral language, this means:

  • Listening: understanding of the social aspects of spoken language, including conversational exchanges
  • Speaking: social use of spoken language, including production of cohesive and relevant messages during conversations
  • In the classroom: When we encourage students to engage in discourse, or classroom conversation, and follow the unspoken rules of conversation (e.g., taking turns or using facial gestures), we’re asking students to leverage their pragmatic skills.

  Metalinguistic Awareness

  These five language domains are part of a continuum that builds toward higher order language skills, including:

  • Inferencing
  • Comprehension monitoring
  • Interpretation of complex language, such as jokes and puns
  • and metalinguistic awareness

  Metalinguistic awareness is "the ability to think about and reflect upon language" (Gillon, 2004, p. 10) or "the ability to objectify language and dissect it as an arbitrary linguistic code independent of meaning" (Roth, Speece, Cooper, & de la Paz, 1996, p. 258).

  In other words, metalinguistic awareness is the ability to think consciously about language as a code and manipulate it accordingly. This awareness is critical for language alternation between dialects as well as translation between languages — an idea we’ll explore in greater depth in the next section.

  References: