Argumentative Essay On The Article The Role of Language Development, Phonics,

Vocabulary, and Fluency in Comprehension Instruction

Comprehension can be interpreted as the understanding and interpretation of what

we read while reading comprehension is the act of understanding what we are reading.
While the definition can be simply stated the act is not simple to teach, learn or practice.
Reading comprehension is a bit complicated process that occurs before, during and after
a person reads a particular piece of writing. From my experience of teaching reading and
writing, children need to be able to decode what they read, make connections between
what they read and what they already know; and to think very deep about what they have
read, for them to be able to understand written material accurately. Because of these
reasons, I agree with The National Reading Panel (2000) that comprehension is important
and all the factors that contribute to develop comprehension are necessary for specific
reason.
One of factor that contributes to the development of comprehension as stated in
the article is language development. Its true that language development plays a crucial
role in reading comprehension. Children would not be able to read nor do any
comprehension task if they dont have language foundation and development. Therefore,
it is important to give children opportunity to develop language and language structure.
From experience, the activities to develop and promotes language development is
different for children with different age. The activities like rich discussions and thoughtful
question-and-answer periods stated in the article are some examples of ways to develop
childrens language structure.
Other example is being a good model in classroom. As a teacher, we need to
speak clearly and slowly. If the student says a word or sentence incorrectly, rather than
correct them or ask them to repeat it, just say the word or sentence back to them correctly
to show we have understood. This way the student will always hears the correct version.
This is one of the simple ways of how student can learn language. Other than that,
teacher can always use games to teach language as young learners will always be
attracted to games. All of these agree with the statement in the article that language
development activities should be connected to the learning environment.

Other factor or element that I agree in contributing to the development of

comprehension is the phonics. Phonics is a method of teaching people to read by
correlating sounds with symbols in an alphabetic writing system. Phonic can also be
referred as method of teaching reading based on the sounds of letters, groups of letters,
and syllables. In practice, phonics refers to several different but generally overlapping
methods of instruction. In this article, phonics is said to be connected with the skill of
decoding and this skill of decoding is needed for reading comprehension. It is similar with
what I mentioned earlier, children need to be able to decode what they read for them to be
able to understand written material accurately.
Research data on phonics analyzed by the National Reading Panel (2000) stated
in the article also supports phonics instruction and listed down the advantages of phonics
instruction. One of the advantages that I would like to highlight is the fact that systematic
and explicit phonics instruction is effective for children from various social and economic
levels. I had seen this in my own teaching experience where student with various social
and economic level would show improvement in reading comprehension when organized
phonics instruction is used. For example, in teaching sound-spelling, relationships should
be directly taught. Students are told, for example, that the letter s stands for the /s/ sound.
It is systematic in that it follows a scope and sequence that allows children to form and
read words early on. The skills taught should constantly reviewed and applied to real
reading.
The next factor that also important in development of comprehension is vocabulary.
One big part of comprehension is having a good or sufficient vocabulary, or knowing the
meanings of enough words. The article stated that, when language develops from
language-rich classrooms, vocabulary-rich conversation, and experiences to build prior
knowledge, children begin to acquire the vocabulary that is necessary for reading
comprehension. What I want to add here is, language experience doesnt necessarily
develop inside the classroom. Teacher should also encourage student to do activities that
can improve their vocabulary outside the classroom. For example, reading, learn a word a
day, play word games, engages in conversation and other suitable activity.
The four types of vocabulary in the article is listening, speaking, reading and writing
vocabulary. All of these vocabularies are very important in language instruction in
classroom. Student can learn these types of vocabulary direct and indirectly. I had stated

a few of the indirect ways earlier. I also agree with all the direct methods described in this
article. One of the methods is teaching specific words before reading (Beck, Perfetti, &
McKeown, 1982). I always use this type of vocabulary activity to help the student to
understand some of the difficult or new words before proceeding with the reading activitiy.
This type of activity connect with the types of words should be focused in teaching of
vocabulary by Armbruster, Lehr, & Osborn (2001). They listed three types of words that
should be taught including difficult words.
Other factor is fluency. Fluency also plays an important role in development of
comprehension. Fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper
expression. In order to understand what they read, student must be able to read fluently
whether they are reading aloud or silently. When reading aloud, fluent readers read in
phrases and add intonation appropriately. Their reading is smooth and has expression. All
of these are the characteristics of fluent reader that I had observed along my experience
in teaching reading and writing.
It is true as stated in the article that assessing or observing reading is difficult since
the process related with reading takes place in the brain. So teacher need to create
assessing tools for reading. This tool need to assess whether a reader is fluent by
assessing the reader automatic decoding, expression, attention to conventions, and 96100% reading accuracy. These are the criteria of a fluent reader by Gillet & Temple,
(2000).
I found out that the criteria to judge student who need a fluency instruction by
Armbruster, Lehr & Osborn (2001) can be used in my own teaching practise. However,
there are many others criteria that can be used to judge students fluency. Similar with the
suggestions to help students increase their fluency in reading by The National Reading
Panel (2000). All the suggestions are encouraging students to read aloud fluently.
However, teacher must choose the right instructional with the level of their students.
In conclusion, readers who have strong comprehension are able to draw
conclusions about what they read what is important, what is a fact, what caused an
event to happen, which characters are funny. Therefore, to make sure student or children
have a strong comprehension the four factors that have been argued above should be
focused in teaching.