Teaching Grammar and the Four Skills

Running head: TEACHING GRAMMAR AND THE FOUR SKILLS
TEACHING GRAMMAR AND THE FOUR SKILLS
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1TEACHING GRAMMAR AND THE FOUR SKILLS
Part 1
Teaching is a skill which every student needs. Teachers work in order to improve reading
skills of students. When individual think of teaching reading, teachers often concentrate on the
actual act of reading. Myles and Mitchell (2014) have noted that informed teachers perceive
beyond the ‘during’ stage in order to establish their students to obtain achievements. In recent
times, Kurilovas et al. (2014) have noted one of the most efficient ways to aid students in their
reading is to explicitly teach reading strategies. According to Nikolajeva (2014), development of
vocabulary skills tends to play vital role in reading and a lack of vocabulary stands between
several readers along with their ability to read and comprehend rapidly. Research of Richards
and Rodgers (2014) have shown that 2,000 most commonly used words account for about 80%
of all the words that students tend to encounter in a text. Teachers can help students expand their
vocabulary by raising their vocabulary of word families. According to Wood et al. (2014), word
families are referred to groups of words which share a common base whereby different prefixes
and suffixes can be added that either changes the part of speech or the meaning. Proficient
reading primarily depends on the ability to recognize rapidly as well as effortlessly. It has been
further determined by an individual’s cognitive development which has been recognized as
construction of thought processes. There can be identified specific traits which determine the
way successful an individual will comprehend text including prior knowledge regarding the
subject, well-developed language along with the ability to draw inferences. Reading
comprehension involves two primary levels of processing, low level processing and in-depth
processing (Richards & Rodgers, 2014). Deep processing involves semantic processing which
takes place when teachers encode meaning of words and try to relate it to identical words. Wood,

2TEACHING GRAMMAR AND THE FOUR SKILLS
Kemp and Waldron (2014) have noted that shallow processing involves structural and phonemic
recognition, the processing sentence and word structure along with their relative words.
Reading comprehension and vocabulary have been intrinsically linked. The ability to
decode or identify and pronounce words has been self-evidently vital. However, obtaining
knowledge related to meaning of the words has significant and direct effort on knowing whether
these words have any particular message. Makni (2014) has noted that students with smaller
vocabulary than other students tend to comprehend at a lesser degree and has been suggested that
the most influential way to enhance comprehension reading skill is to enhance vocabulary.
Several theories of vocabulary instruction have their existence namely one focused on
intensive instruction of a few high value words, focused on broad instruction of several useful
and comprehensive words and thirdly focused on strategies for learning words (Blackie, 2014).
Broad vocabulary approach- Myles and Mitchell (2014) have noted that the method of
focusing on broad instruction on several words which was initially developed by Andrew
Biemiller who argued that more words would bring advantages to students at a higher level, even
if the instruction has been concise and teacher-directed. According to semantic theory, teachers
teach a significant number of words before reading a book to students by merely giving short
definitions specifically related to synonyms and then indicating to words and their meaning
while reading the book to students. Such a method tends to vary with the approach by
significantly shedding light on quantity rather than quality. However, there is no clear evidence
to propose the dominance of either approach (Richards & Rodgers, 2014).
Intensive focus on vocabulary- The idea of focusing intensely on selective words had been
initially popularized by Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown and Linda Kucan. According to Wood,

3TEACHING GRAMMAR AND THE FOUR SKILLS
Kemp and Waldron (2014), the intensive focus on vocabulary claim that words primarily occur
in three primary levels whereby the lowest tier being universal words, food items such as ‘fish’
and ‘eat’. While, the top level that is tier 3 has been highly content-centric words such as
photosynthesis and geopolitical, however the tier 2 words have been considered as terms which
have been considered as general academic vocabulary (Myles & Mitchell, 2014). Furthermore,
words which can be diversely used in academic contexts such as analyse and frequent have been
taken into importance. According to Nikolajeva (2014), in this approach teachers tend to
emphasize on tier 2 words and must focus on teaching fewer words with higher intensity. At this
juncture, teachers focus on providing multiple instances and develop activities to aid students
practice these words in increasingly autonomous ways. Wood, Kemp and Waldron (2014) have
noted that the tier 3 words have been particular to the field of science, mathematics or social
studies and thus have been taught within those subjects.
Morphemic instruction- Varatharajoo, Asmawi and Abedalaziz (2018) have noted that the last
vocabulary approach represented in the semantic theory of vocabulary teaching shed light on
learning new words. The method of learning new words can further be re-categorized into
instruction on using context and instruction on implementing morphemes or comprehensive units
within words in order to learn their meaning. Morphemic instruction has been illustrated in order
to produce positive outcomes for students reading ability as well as knowledge in learning
vocabulary. However, Murakami (2014) has claimed that context has been proven to be a
defective strategy and has been no longer considered to be productive approach to teach students.
Such a conclusion does not forbid the importance in ‘learning’ morphemic analysis such as
prefixes, suffixes and roots. On the other hand, Wood, Kemp & Waldron (2014) have suggested