LITERACY ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

Literacy Across the Curriculum (LAC) means that students are learning literacy skills while
learning other content areas like mathematics, integrated science, social studies etc. Whether it is
listening to directives, reading a passage, writing a response, or discussing a point of view, the
individual student’s ability to perform and grow in a classroom rest squarely on his/ her
corresponding language capacity. The reading, writing, speaking and listening strategies are
necessary for student engagement across disciplines. In the world of formal education, these
strategies are requisite at every level. The need to read, write, speak and listen effectively is
fundamental to every subject in every grade and in every class these learners will ever attend.

Every standardized text, whether it is internal or external, is first and foremost, a reading test.
Therefore, if a student cannot read mathematical problems, then s/he cannot do them. Explanations
of mathematical procedures and principles are written in words and sentences so if students cannot
comprehend basic prompts like ‘divide’ or ‘multiply’ or ‘square root’, then he/she will fail on the
test item.

Misconceptions of Literacy Across the Curriculum

• Teachers of language are responsible for literacy

• Literacy is all about reading and writing
•

Why is the study of Literacy across the curriculum important?

1. Learning in any subject requires the use of language; thus reading and writing are used as
tools for learning that subject area.
2. Connecting literacy learning to other content areas reinforces learning in all areas.

Principles and Practice of Literacy Across the Curriculum

1. Revising and explaining the role of all teachers (all subjects and levels) so that they see
themselves as language teachers.
2. Separating vocabulary into three distinctive types with distinctive instructional approaches
in every classroom.
 3. Building creative notetaking strategies for extraction and reaction as opposed to a passive-
receptive approach.
4. Designing and employing a consistent editing and revision policy for writing for every
class on a developmental (basic 4-6) basis.
5. Using a formal approach to speaking skills through discussions types that are assessable.
6. Employing direct technical instruction that promotes the use of the human voice and body
as a speaking and communication instrument to develop posture, confidence and power for
each student in the classroom.
7. Employ group work/presentations to reinforce speaking skills.

Strategies of improving speaking skills across disciplines

1. Let students work in groups.

2. Encourage students practice selective attention.
3. Let students do note-taking.
4. Let students do self-assessment after presentation.
5. Use question and answer technique in teaching.
6. Let students memorize and recite texts.
7. Let students re-tell stories.
8. Create opportunity for students to read to learn vocabulary and/or grammatical structures.
9. Provide role play opportunities for experiments with language.
10. Make students read aloud.
11. Help students have self-talk and simulated conversation practice with peer.
12. Value the home language of the children.

Classroom activities and task for practicing speaking skills.

1. Dialogue: This is a technique used for practicing functions of language such as greeting,
agreeing, disagreeing, apologizing, suggesting, and asking information.
2. Role Play: this is a technique used to practice speaking. There are three types:
i. With clues
ii. Totally guided
 iii. Free types
3. Discussion/Opinions: This technique is used to ask for ideas on topics
4. Group work/Problems: As learners walk together to solve problems they use language.
5. Visual Comprehension: The learner will be provided a picture and after a careful
observation, they are asked some questions.
6. Rhymes: This is a play way method of learning a language.
7. Songs: Learners enjoy songs and it can be used for developing the speaking skills.

The Concepts of Listening

Listening is an active process of hearing. It involves paying attention to sound and making
meaning out of the way it has been composed. Listening is one of the most basic communication
skills. About 70% of our daily communication involves listening. Listening is the main channel of
classroom instruction and the most used language skill at work and at home. Many learners want
to develop effective listening comprehension because it is crucial to their academic, professional
and personal success.

Reasons for Listening/ Kinds of Listening

1. Listening for information (Information/Comprehension)

2. Listening to evaluate
3. Listening to empathise (therapeutic)
4. Listening for enjoyment/pleasure (Appreciative)

Role of Listening in Language Acquisition

1. It is the first essential language skill because it is the first tool for language acquisition, we
learn to listen first before we learn to speak, read and write.
2. Listening plays a role in learning language and any branch of knowledge. Attention to form
of voice, pitch and accent reinforce comprehension.
3. The overall role of listening in language acquisition learning is to help people to
communicate with each other without difficulty.
Perspective of Listening

Listening can be viewed from three (3) different perspectives. These are:

1. Bottom-Up: listening is a process of interpreting/ understanding sound a person hears in a

linear way. That is; sound-words- phrase- clauses-sentence-text. This involves using the
incoming input as the basis for understanding the message. Here, comprehension begins
with the data that has been received which is analyzed as successive levels of organization-
sound, words, phrases, clauses, sentences-text-until meaning is arrived at.
Here, the listener’s lexical and grammatical competence in a language provides the basis
for bottom-up processing. For example:
Sentence: “The Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service
has rolled up a new curriculum for basic schools in Ghana, and this new curriculum takes
effect in September 2019”.

In order to understand this utterance using bottom-up view, we have to mentally break the utterance
down into its components. This is called ‘Chunking’. The chunks to arrive at the core meaning that
the proposition carry. At the end of the day, it is the units of meaning which we remember and not
the form in which we initially head them. Our knowledge of grammar helps us to find the
appropriate chunks, and the speaker also assists us in this process through intonation and parsing.

Teaching Bottom-up Listening.

Learners need a large vocabulary and a good knowledge of sentence structure to process texts
bottom-up.

Listening activities for Bottom-up

1. Dictation
2. The use of multiple choice questions after a text
3. Close listening (fill-in).

NB: Activities which requires close and detailed recognition and processing of the input and which
assume that everything the listener needs to understand is contained in the input.
Bottom-up Skills enhanced through:

1. Identify the referent of pronouns.

2. Identify key words that occurred in a spoken text.
3. Identify which modals verbs occurred in a spoken text.

Top-down perspective of listening

This refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message.

Eclectic perspective

This refers to the judicious combination of bottom-up and top-down perspectives of listening.

How to help learners develop good listening skills

1. Provide enough listening opportunities. E.g watching Television/ movies, radio.

2. Use think-aloud (in the course of listening, stop and ask students what they are thinking)
and help learners to use a variety of strategies.
3. Organize pre-listening activities
4. Provide a purpose of listening
5. Use authentic materials. E.g. Dialogue, Lecture, etc.

Developing listening activities

In developing listening activities for our students, we must bear in mind the following:

1. Construct the listening activity around a contextualized task-real life task.

2. Define the activities instructional goal and type of response-the goal should be the
improvement of one or more specific listening skills. Listening activity should not
overburden the students.
3. Check the level of difficulty of the listening text. Ensure the materials are appropriate to
their level. Pretext information in a natural chronological order. The text should have visual
support.
Format for a Listening lesson

1. Pre-listening: Predict questions; key words; prior knowledge

2. While listening: Play recording twice, let student reduce writing.
3. Poor listening: Activities to help learners act upon what they have heard to classify and
extend their thinking-asking questions; summarizing; review notes.

Teaching listening

What to text?

• Specific skill
• Main ideas
• Drawing conclusions.

Assessing Listening

Dictation

Multiple choice

Close (fill-in)

Short answers

Paraphrase/ summary

Components underlying speaking effectiveness

1. Grammatical competence-the knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and language

conventions.
2. Discourse competence-the learner’s ability to produce coherent speech, the ability to put
words, phrases and sentences together to produce contextualized speech.
3. Sociolinguistic competence- the appropriate use of language. That’s what expected socially
and culturally.
4. Strategic competence- the knowledge of the techniques and strategies which can be used
to deal with lack of fluency. The learner’s ability to use appropriate communication
strategies according to the context in which the communication takes place.

Components Underlining Speaking Effectiveness

 READING
Reading can be defined from different perspectives, but the ultimate explanation one can give to
reading is ‘making meaning out of printed material.’ Reading involves words, phrases, clauses and
sentences. These constructions are all based on information. The kind of information contained in
the material and the purpose of the writer, and reader determines the kind of reading that is done.
One may see reading as any other subject, but reading goes beyond that. Reading is the basis of
academic work. If one cannot read, there is no way that person can write

Components of Reading

There are components that underlie reading and the teacher and learners must bear in mind during
teaching and learning process.

Vocabulary: Vocabulary as a component of reading is one’s ability to identify and eventually

mention words in a passage. It is the reason why teachers drill pupils or students on selected
vocabularies that they deem or find difficult for the students. Teaching vocabulary in reading
comes in two ways and these are explicit instruction (drill), which involves someone telling you
how a word is pronounced and what its meaning is. The other way is through context clues which
helps the reader to find the meaning of the words on the basis of how the words are used.

Fluency: Fluency in reading is a reader’s ability to read with speed, accuracy and rhythm. There
is a direct relationship between one’s ability to identify and mention words (vocabulary) contained
in a text with his or her ability to read with a faster speed or pace. This is because, a reader’s ability
to pronounce words in a text easily contributes to the rate or the speed with which he or she reads.
Fluency also informs understanding.

Comprehension: Comprehension is one’s ability to understand what he or she reads. It is more

than just understanding words in isolation. Comprehension is the most complex component of
reading because it involves all the other components of reading. There is, for example, a direct
relationship between a reader’s fluency and his or her comprehension. This is because a reader’s
ability to read in a faster pace usually depicts that he/she has grasped the meaning of what he or
she is reading whereas a slow reader uses a lot of time to understand what is before him or her,
and it implies that the reader does not understand the vocabulary that are contained in the text to
bring out the meaning.

Types of reading

There are styles of reading that are more useful in some contexts, and less so in others. The four
most important of these styles are:

• Extensive Reading
 • Intensive Reading
• Skimming
• Scanning

Extensive Reading

Extensive reading which involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to develop general
reading skills. It refers the reading for joy. This approach supporters reading as much material in
your target language as humanly possible. This way readers will be exposed to the widest range of
vocabulary and grammatical structures. All of this is supposed to make the reader a better language
learner and help you on the way to fluency (smoothness). To read extensively is to simply read as
much as possible, without concerning oneself with the meaning of the unknown word. This is done
by reading for large swaths (bands) of time, and looking up words only when you consider it
absolutely necessary to your understanding of the text. Extensive reading is meant to be a fun and
pleasurable experience, requiring a low expenditure of mental effort. The more extensive reading
you do, the more language you are exposed to, allowing you to increase your passive knowledge
of vocabulary quite quickly. Specifically, if you wish to read a text extensively, you must read
texts that are interesting, level-appropriate, of moderate length, to read when you can dedicate
longer blocks of time, and to do so when you are relaxed.

Important aspects of extensive reading:

• Texts must be interesting. Since extensive reading is done for longer periods of time, you
must take care to select texts that hold your attention, and keep you coming back for more,
hour after hour.
• Texts must be level-appropriate because you must be able to understand a high-percentage
of a text before you even begin. The goal is to absorb unknown words through context
therefore, if you don't understand the bulk of the context, the text is not yet appropriate for
you to read extensively.
• Texts must be of moderate length. Specifically, a text should be on average at least 15-30
pages long. Texts of this length are long enough to fully develop an idea or narrative, and
require you to keep mental "track" of ideas, concepts or characters as they develop over
time.
Intensive Reading

Intensive reading: It refers reading carefully for an exact understanding of text. Necessary for
contracts, legal documentation, application forms, etc. Intensive reading involves learners reading
in detail with specific learning aims and tasks. This approach helps language learners really
understand the language’s grammar and syntax. The proponents of this method use a range of
exercises to complement the reading itself. To read intensively is to completely deconstruct
(analyze) a text, with the goal of absorbing as much meaning from it as possible. This is done by
taking a text, and systematically (thoroughly) looking up every word, phrase, or collocation that
you do not understand. This activity requires great mental effort and focus. Because of this, the
learner who engages in intensive reading must be careful to follow specific guidelines, or else risk
dullness and stress (burnout). If you wish to read a text intensively, you must take care to read
texts that are interesting and short, to read only for brief periods of time, and to do so when you
have the most mental energy.

Important aspects of intensive reading:

• Texts must be interesting, because if you do not enjoy what you read, you will quickly
forget the content, and have more mental resistance to the intensive reading process.Texts
must be short, because end goal is to understand the text. The longer a text is, the more
laborious it is to complete such a deep analysis, so it is better to stick to shorter texts in
order to avoid mental exhaustion.

Skimming

Skimming is a reading technique meant to look for main or general ideas in a text, without going
into detailed and exhaustive reading. In skimming, a reader reads only important information, but
not everything. This technique works effectively in non-fiction materials, newspapers, and long
novels. To get a gist of the text, a skimmer reads the introductory paragraph, the topic sentences
of paragraphs, and notices pictures, graphs, charts, titles, headings, subheadings, italicized and
boldface words, and their illustrations, and makes a mental picture of the text after viewing this
information. He then transforms this picture into a summary.
Scanning

Scanning a text is a reading technique where the reader looks for specific information rather than
trying to absorb all the information. Scanning is aimed only at finding the necessary information
in the text. It does not mean a complete immersion in the text and a deep comprehension of the
facts, analysis of grammatical constructions. Often in this mode, the text is viewed for the presence
of unfamiliar words, so that after their translation it will be easier to read the text fully.

WRITING
Writing is the process of using symbols (letters of the alphabet, punctuation and spaces) to
communicate thoughts and ideas in a readable form. Writing is a medium of human
communication of a language with symbols.

Types of Writing

1. Expository
Expository writing’s main purpose is to explain. It is a subject oriented style of writing, in
which authors focus on telling you about a given topic or subject without voicing their
personal opinions.
2. Descriptive
Descriptive writing’s main purpose is to describe. It is a style of writing that focuses on
describing a character, an event, or a place in great detail.
3. Persuasive
Persuasive writing’s main purpose is to convince. Unlike expository writing, persuasive
writing contains the opinions and biases of the author. To convince others to agree with
the author’s point of view, persuasive writing contains justifications and reasons. It is often
used in letters of complaint, advertisement or commercials.

4. Narrative
Narrative Writing is a piece of writing that tells a story. It can be essay, fairy tales and
jokes. Writers use narrator style, a point of view and other strategies to tell a story.

Process Involved In Writing

There are two types of processes involved in writing: Product writing and Process writing.

Product Writing

Product writing is concerned with the result of the writing and not how it was done. This product
approach to the teaching of writing emphasizes mechanical aspect of writing, such as focusing on
grammatical, syntactical structures and imitating models. This approach is primarily concern with
“correctness” and form of the final product. Product approach to writing largely concern the forms
of the written product that student compose.

Process Writing

Process approaches concern the process of how ideas are developed and formulated in writing.
These approach to writing, is where language learners focus on the process by which they produce
their written products rather than on the products themselves.

1) The stage-model theory. This viewpoints sees the writing process as a series of distinct.
Sequential steps: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, evaluating and post-writing.

Prewriting or Planning
The first step of the writing process is prewriting or planning stage. During prewiring, you
think about the topic, you brainstorm, you focus and develop a working thesis.

Drafting
The Drafting stage is the next step in the writing process. During this stage, students use
the information from prewriting stage and craft it into a rough draft. The goal is for students
to take the jumbled thoughts that they had brainstormed and put it into actual sentences.
This is the stage in which students do not have to worry about spelling, grammar, or any
punctuation. They are free to expand their thoughts into fluent sentences that make sense.

Revising
The third step of the writing process is revising. During revising, you should read your
writing and look at the content. You can think of revising as looking at the big picture.
Here, do not worry about the mechanics of the paper, but focus on the content.

Editing
Editing involves tidying up the text as the final draft is prepared for evaluation. Editing
involves taking a critical look at the grammar, spelling, punctuation, examples and the like.

Evaluating
This is a stage were the piece of writing is inspected. Sometimes grade or scores may be
assigned.

Post-writing
This is done after evaluation, it can be in a form of publishing, sharing, reading aloud or stage
performance
Components of Writing

Central Idea: It is the topical issue(s) that a text or a passage talks about and it directs the text
from start to finish. All other part of the text must contribute towards the central idea. It is the idea
that controls the text and it is also the theme or the subject matter of the text. For instance, when
you are to write about causes of accident, all the information in each paragraph should talk about
the causes of the accident from the beginning to end and in this case, the causes of the road accident
is the central idea of the passage.

Organization: Every piece of writing should have an organized structure, which is the structure
of the text. It should comprise an introduction, a body and a conclusion. The introduction should
give an overview of what the text or writing is going to talk about. The body of the text should
also contain paragraphs that contribute directly to the controlling idea or the main idea or the
central idea. The conclusion also summarizes all that the text has spoken about.

Supporting material: The claims that we make in a piece of writing, which is the information that
we give or the ideas that we talk about should be accompanied with evidence. A good text is the
one that is able to support it claims or concept with proven materials. This proven materials may
come in the form of examples or quotations. This helps the reader to be able to trace and find out
evidences for him or herself. Information that is given in a text should not be left ajar as they cast
a lot of doubt in the readers mind.

Expression: The intention or motive of every writer is to inform, educate, and entertain. This is
done or achieve through a medium. The medium through which the intention of the writer are
conveyed to the reader is through the use of language. For a text to be able to communicate
meaningfully to a reader, it depends on the choice of words that have been employed in it. It is
very important to make sure that the choice of words that we use in our text are clear, specific,
accurate and free from other structural and rhetorical errors.

Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation: Apart from diction, spelling, grammar and punctuation
marks are element of writing that contribute towards the general understanding or comprehension
of the texts. A text that has a lot of spelling mistakes becomes very difficult for readers because it
affect the pace of reading and also forces the reader to think for the writer as to what exactly the
writer wants to put across. A text that is made up of grammatical errors also go a long way to affect
the coherence of the text in general. Wrong use of punctuation, on the other hand, also leads to a
difficulty on the text. It is therefore very essential for all writers to gain mastery over their
spellings, grammar and the use of punctuation marks in order to promote a better understanding
of their text.