Revisiting the language experience approach.

Abstract

The Language Experience Approach (LEA) is described and reviewed as a technique for teaching reading and writing to upper elementary students from all backgrounds. Specific activities for classroom use are included for immediate classroom application.

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Language Learning: An Experiential Approach to Improve Reading

"Before we start on our work, please pick up your schmarz." If a teacher said this to you, could you follow the direction? Would it help you if the teacher said it louder ... slower ... more clearly? What if he/she wrote the direction on the board? Would you understand it then? You probably would, but only if you have adequate sound-symbol relationships and closure abilities. But would it help you to understand the concept by reading it? Probably not.

All of this is to demonstrate that without the knowledge of the word "schmarz", you would fail at following a basic direction given by a teacher. Of course, if you had had a variety of experiences in a classroom, you could probably guess at what a "schmarz" might mean if you have profited from past language experiences and generalized that information to the present situation. You might guess that the object in question is a pencil or perhaps a book. But what if you guessed incorrectly or did not guess at all? How far behind would you be in relationship to those who guessed correctly? What behaviors could you develop to cover up your error? How would you avoid other similar classroom situations? Without belaboring an obvious point, we all rely on our ability to process, act upon, and/or generalize language experiences in order to learn. Without intact language or compensatory language strategies, learning does not occur. One reading approach that has been successfully reviewed in the research is the Language Experience Approach (LEA). This approach is an excellent way to help make the connection between speech and writing concrete.

Description of the LEA

The Language Experience Approach to reading is a technique that draws upon the real life experiences of students. It is especially prevalent in kindergarten and first grade classrooms as well as in classrooms with English language learners (Vacca, Vacca, & Gove, 2000). These experiences are incorporated into the curriculum through reading and writing and can be utilized in the classroom as a whole group lesson or as an individual lesson. As a group approach, teachers can set up daily guidelines to follow. For instance, on the first day, the teacher directs the class to think about an experience that they all have in common. This could be a field trip, a whole class project, an assembly, a class pet, a newcomer's reaction to life in the United States or any other topic which would be relevant to each member of the class (Rigg, 1989). Next, the class would discuss the knowledge they have about this particular topic which was jointly agreed upon by the whole class. The students then dictate a story to the teacher who would write it on the board or a transparency. Each student is responsible for dictating one sentence for the story. Rigg (1989) points out that the focus is on students' ideas and not on adult grammatical forms. The teacher then reads the story aloud to the class. On the second reading of the story, the teacher would track each word as it is read. Finally, each student would be asked to read the story out loud.

On the second day after the introductory lesson, the teacher and the students read the story aloud together. The same story is used for instruction on both days. As each sentence is being read, the students are called upon to bring a sentence strip written previously by the teacher to the front of their class with the appropriate sentence on it. In essence, they "rebuild" the story. By this time, the students should be able to achieve the final step which consists of reassembling the sentence strips. Therefore, each sentence strip is cut up and rearranged and the students are responsible for putting them back in the correct order. Students can revise the LEA text after rereading with the author's permission. The text can be displayed or copies can be made for individuals so that the students can use it for rereading, illustrating or as a story starter (Vacca, Vacca, & Gove, 2000). When the Language Experience Approach is used as an individualized approach, it can be presented in the same way, but the teacher would use just one individual's experiences to create a story.

As former classroom teachers for many years, we have found this strategy to be extremely helpful for students with mild/moderate disabilities as well as for students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. These two populations benefit most because they are able to use their own language without strict correction to create a story. Most important, LEA gives students from diverse backgrounds the kind of reading material that they can most easily read because they dictate or write it. We encourage others to try this practical and creative strategy.

The LEA Research

A large amount of research was conducted from as early as the 1960s that gave added insight into the Language Experience Approach as an effective method for teaching reading and writing. Allen (1961, 1976) found that experiences children express in their own written language become their reading material. Since both the language and the experience are familiar, this method to teaching reading presents fewer difficulties for children who are learning to read because it integrates speaking, listening, reading and writing (Allen, 1961). The Language Experience Approach has been proven especially helpful for second language learners because their own language is reinforced (Brown, 1973; Krashen & Terrell, 1983). Students feel comfortable talking about a subject they are familiar with and understand. This makes the learning meaningful, authentic, predictable, and contextually complete. The research on the Language Experience Approach supports the following activities for teaching reading and writing:

1. Daily journal writing

(a) Examples of prompts include the following: "Today is Tuesday, October 12th, Christopher Columbus's birthday. He ..."; "Today, Wednesday, October 13th, is special to me because ..."; "My favorite holiday is ..."

(b) The four steps in constructing a daily journal include: (1) experiencing; (2) group journal writing/reading; (3) independent journal writing/drawing; and (4) sharing.

2. Description of Art--After painting a picture, the student would describe the picture. The teacher would then print one sentence about the artwork using the student's specific description.

The research clearly demonstrates the advantages to teaching using the Language Experience Approach (Durkin, 1980; Vacca, Vacca, & Gove, 2000). These advantages are as follows: (1) children are motivated to want to read; (2) accurate modeling occurs during shared writing and reading within the classroom context; (3) each student participates at his/her language level; (4) students receive encouragement to attempt independent writing; (5) reading charts are non-threatening for students from diverse backgrounds (Rigg, 1989); (6) students' personal writing is seen, praised, and valued; (7) instruction is personalized; (8) the left-to-right, top-to-bottom orientation of written English is demonstrated; (9) the function of capitalization and punctuation is taught; and (10) the meaning of word and the function of space in establishing word boundaries are taught.

Some disadvantages are also noted. Practitioners must be careful that inventive spellings do not re-occur often enough to interfere with learning correct spelling. Accepting a student's language ability may also be interpreted as not correcting his/her errors. Therefore, each teacher must decide how he/she wants to address this issue in a consistent manner. Because LEA is an interactive approach to teaching reading, it is placed more toward the whole language side of the continuum. From a learning-to-read perspective, students will greatly benefit from both language experience and learning the writing process (Vacca, Vacca, & Gove, 2000). LEA vividly demonstrates the relationship between speech and print as well as allows children to have the personal thrill of authorship at a time when they may not yet be capable of writing on their own. A strategy similar to LEA is outlined in Strategic Teaching and Learning (2000) published by the California Department of Education. It is called Community-Based Reading and Writing because it focuses on the students' knowledge of their own culture, literature, and home language. Students are involved in learning family stories and either writing them down or taping them. Like LEA, Community-Based Reading and Writing avoids giving learners short reading passages or fill-in exercises. Students provide interesting and meaningful contexts to improve their reading and writing skills.

Summary

Reading is the primary goal when using the Language Experience Approach. Students learn to experience communication in natural ways by sharing ideas orally, visually portraying experiences, dramatizing experiences, discussing and conversing with others, exploring writing, and writing individual books. Students study communication to be literate. After being taught with the LEA, the goals are that students will be able to recognize high frequency words, explore spelling patterns, extend vocabularies, study grammatical style and form, study language structure, and read non-alphabetic symbol systems (Devine, 1989; Martin & Friedlburg, 1986; Scheft, 1997).

Finally, students will relate communication to others and themselves. They will be able to listen and read the language of others, comprehend what is read, organize ideas and information, assimilate and integrate ideas, search for multiple sources, evaluate the communication of others, and respond in personal ways. Allen (1976) summed up the theory from the young reader's point of view: What I think about, I can talk about; what I can say, I can write or someone else can write for me; what I can write, I can read; and I can read what other people write for me to read. We have concluded this manuscript with a sample lesson and unit in LEA format for upper elementary students, a lesson planning outline, and LEA activity ideas.

See issue's website <http://rapidintellect.com/AEQweb/spr2003.htm>

References

Allen, R.V. (1961). Book talking in class, School Library Journal, 30, 44.

Allen, R.V. (1976). Language experiences in communication. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Allen, R.V., & Allen, C. (1982). Language experience activities (2nd ed.). Hopewell, NJ: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Brown, R. (1973). A first language: The early stages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Devine, T.G. (1989). Teaching reading in the elementary school from theory to practice. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

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Martin, J.H., & Friedlburg, A. (1986). Writing to read. New York: Warner Books.

Neeley, V. (1992). Language experience phonetic analysis. Ontario, CA: West End Special Education Local Plan Area.

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Pritchard, R., & Breneman, B. (2000). Strategic teaching and learning: Standards-based instruction to promote content literacy in grades four through twelve. Sacramento: California Department of Education.

Rigg, P. (1989). Language experience approach: Reading naturally. In P. Rigg and V. Allen (Eds.), When they don't all speak English: Integrating the ESL student into the regular classroom. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Scheft, T. (1997). The language experience approach: Enhancing the reading process, enhancing the writing process. Education Issues, Fall.

Stauffer, R.G. (1970). The language experience approach to the teaching of reading. New York: Harper Collins.

Vacca, J.L., Vacca, R.T., & Gove, M.K. (2000). Reading and learning to read. New York: Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc.

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Melinda R. Pierson, California State University, Fullerton
Barbara C. Glaeser, California State University, Fullerton

Dr. Pierson is an associate professor in the Department of Special Education. She was a classroom teacher of culturally and linguistically diverse exceptional learners for over seven years. Dr. Glaeser is an assistant professor in the Department of Special Education. She was a public school teacher for over 13 years who worked with special education students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.