Teaching Reading Thai to L2 Learners Issues, Challenges and Strategies

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Teaching Reading Thai to L2 LearnersIssues,
Challenges and Strategies

• Yuphaphann Hoonchamlong
• University of Hawaiii at Manoa
• yuphapha_at_hawaii.edu
• Languages of Southeast Asia Conference , UCLA
• January 31st, 2009

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Outline

• Characteristics of Thai language
• Characteristics of Thai orthography and writing
  convention
• Discussion demonstration of the challenges and
  reading strategies for L2 learners learning to
  read Thai used in teaching at UH Thai program

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About Standard Thai

• Tai language family
• Tonal language- 5 tones in Standard Thai
• SVO and topic-comment sentence structure
• isolating/analytic language (no
  inflection/conjugation)
• C(C)V(C) syllable structure
• Derivation (compounding and reduplication) as
  dominant and productive morphological process
• A pro-drop language, dominance of zero anaphora
  in inter- and intra-sentential reference
• discourse-oriented language

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characteristics of Thai script

• developed from "Grantha", an ancient Brahmi
  script of South India, since 1283 A.D.
• alphabetic, fairly systematic lettersound
  mapping
• write from left to right
• the vowel symbol(s) are in fixed position(s)
  around the initial consonant
• tone markers to represent tones, the position of
  the tone marker is on top of the initial
  consonant.

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Thai Orthography (cont.)

• 44 consonant forms, 42 in actual use (2 obsolete)
  representing 21 consonant phonemes
• 28 vowel forms representing 18 single vowels
  sounds (9 short, 9 long) and 3 diphthongs
• But also unseen vowels (such as a and o)
• 4 tone markers (2 were added to handle tones in
  loan words), interacting with initial consonants
  in live syllables to represent 5 tones

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Thai writing convention

• no space among words/morphemes
• rarely use punctuation marks to mark clause and
  sentence boundaries
• space may be used to separate words in lists,
  before and after numbers, clauses or sentences
  but can be random

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Thai script examples
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Cognitive processes in reading

• decipher the symbols(graphemes), word
  division/identification
• (lower level)
• comprehend the meaning of the graphemes and the
  message conveyed
• (higher level)
• word meaning
• text meaning (clause, sentence, discourse)

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interactive model of reading proposed by
Rumelhart (1977) as adapted by Ehri (1998 6)
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Challenges for L2 learners in learning to read
Thai

• Lower level
• learn to "decode" or "decipher" unfamiliar
  scripts
• learn to identify syllable boundary
• Higher level
• learn to identify word boundary and word meaning
• learn to identify clause/sentence boundary
• Learn to identify zero pronouns and other
  ellipsis

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Example of Thai writing convention (using English
to demonstrate)
howtofryanegg overmediumheat warmasmallamountofoi
lorbutter inasmallskillet crackanegginto
thepanandcookuntilthewhiteappearssolid about 3
to 4 minutes
How to Fry an Egg Over medium heat, warm a
small amount of oil or butter in a small skillet.
Crack an egg into the pan. Cook until the white
appears solid, about 3 to 4 minutes.
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Strategies for reading Thai for developing L2
readers (1)

• Identify syllable boundary
• Use cues from vowel forms to determine position
  of initial (I)/final (F) consonants
• Use cue from tone marks to determine I position
• (tone mark on I)
• Discussed in J. Marvin Browns AUA Language
  Center Thai Course Reading and Writing Mostly
  Reading

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Strategies for reading Thai (2)

• Identify (make an educated guess) of (potential)
  word boundary
• Need to know about word morphology of Thai
  compounds and reduplications
• lexical items in Thai seems to be largely
  bisyllabic compounds
• Use maximum collocation approach

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Strategies for reading Thai (3)

• Identify phrase, clause, sentence boundary
• Need to know connectives (relators,
  conjunctions), their variant forms and their
  positions in a clause and learn them as sight
  words
• Use connectives as punctuation words
• Single connective
• ??? (and), ???/?????? (but)

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Strategies for reading Thai (4)

• Set connectives
• Giving examples
• ???? aaa bbbb ccc (???) dddd (???????)
• ?????? aaa bbbb ccc (???) dddd (???????)
• ???????????? aaa bbbb ccc (????) dddd
• for example aaa bbbb ccc and dddd etc.

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Strategies for reading Thai (5)

• Time relation
• ????? ---E1----- (????) E2 ??Verb----
• When ---E1---------, ----E2-----------
• Concession (contrast) variant forms
• ?????????E1------(?????) (???) E2 (??)verb
• ?????? E1------(?????) (???) E2 (??)verb
• ??? E1------(?????) (???) E2 (??)verb
• Even though E1---, --E2------
• Time period
• ??????? ----(Time 1)----------(??)???-----(Tim
  e 2)--------
• since ----(time 1)----------until
  ------(time2)---------

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Strategies for reading Thai (6)

• Identify the position and function of zero
  pronouns and other elliptical units
• ??????-???????? ???-??-???-???
• Travel Thailand not go not know
• ?????? ???????? ??? ??? ????? ??????????????
  ??? ?? ??????
• Travel Thailand. If one doesnt go (travel
  Thailand), one wont know.
• Need to know both syntactic structure and
  expected position of connectives

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Reading instruction at UHHow do we use these
strategies?

• Explicitly teach strategies of language learning
  to students.
• independent learners
• Teach Thai writing system in First Year Thai,
  covering basic foundation (the regular
  consonants and vowels) in one semester.
• Reading syllables and making syllables
• Tone Rules (Gedneys Tone Box)
• start using paragraph-length text in Thai as
  instructional materials in Second Year Thai.

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Reading Instruction at UH (2)

• Start with paragraphs, the unit of Thai text
  with clearly defined boundary.
• Pre-intensive reading process
• Identify potential clause and sentence boundaries
  (and their relations), using connective
  words/sets as the main clue (along with spaces)
• Identify main verbs (or verb clusters)
• Identify boundaries of unknown words from strings
  of unknown characters by looking for potential
  doublets and compounds
• Identify potential names (as opposed to words)
• Observe sentence and paragraph structure

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Reading Instruction at UH (2)

• Intensive reading (reading to learn) process
• silent reading for meaning
• question and answer with instructor to clarify
  syntactic or vocabulary usage or meaning in
  context
• reading aloud with translation, one sentence at
  a time. Instructor also reads aloud to correct
  and provide a model for students
• silent reading to review and reflect
• additional question and answer with instructor
• instructor read to students before doing
  comprehension activities orally (question-answer,
  summary of content etc.)

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Reading Instruction at UH (3)

• Strategies for text comprehension
• Discourse structure/cohesion
• (Halliday Hasan (1976) Cohesion in English)
• Reference
• Lexical cohesion
• repetition
• A conference will be held on national
  environmental policy. At this conference the
  issue of salination will play an important role. 
• synonymy
• A conference will be held on national
  environmental policy. This environmental
  symposium will be primarily a conference dealing
  with water.

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Reading Instruction at UH (3)

• hyponymy (superordinate vs. subordinate concepts)
  
• We were in town today shopping for furniture. We
  saw a lovely table.
• metonymy (part vs. whole)
• At its six-month check-up, the brakes had to be
  repaired. In general, however, the car was in
  good condition.
• antonymy
• The old movies just dont do it anymore. The new
  ones are more appealing
• Collocation
• Politician-congress ?????? (violate) ??????
  (law)

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Examples
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???- ???- ???verb x-?? ??????
?????????? ????-??? ????
???-???? ???-?????????-??
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sa-wa?t-dii ??????
QA
http// www.hawaii.edu/thai
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Annette M. Zehler, Saloni Sapru (2008). Learning
to read in Khmer in Learning to read across
languages cross-linguistic relationships in
first and second-language literacy development.
Keiko Koda, Annette M. Zehler,ed. New York
Routledge
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Thai Vowel positions

• In relation to initial consonants
• before /ee/
• after /aa/
• above /a/
• below /u/
• Combination form
• /aw/
• /ia/

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Thai compounds (1)

• 4 main types of compounds
• 1) Regular compounds (???????)
• ??????? ??? ??????????
• machine fly airplane
• 2) Semantic doublets(??????) compounds
  with components that share semantic similarity
  (synonyms, near-synonyms, same semantic field),
  typically components are mono-lexemic/mono-syllabi
  c
• ???? ????? ?????????
• house house
• Vongvivapanond, Peansiri E. 1992.
  "Lexicological Significance of Semantic Doublets
  in Thai." in Papers on Tai Languages,
  Linguistics, and Literatures in Honor of Willliam
  J. Gedney on his 77th Birthday. Compton, C. J.
  and J. F. Hartmann, eds. DeKalb Center for
  Southeast Asian Studies. Monograph Series on
  Southeast Asia, Occasional Paper No.16.

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Thai compounds (2)

• 3) Phonetic doublets a non-meaningful syllable
  added to a mono-syllabic/lexemic word with
  similar phonetic features (as a filler to make a
  2 syllable word)
• ??? ??? ma?ak-maay a lot
• ????? ???? kwa?a?-khwa?a? wide
• 4) Elaborate Expressions multi-syllable
  (typically 4) expressions based on the above
  compound types by inserting syllable(s) for the
  sake of rhyme (such as English artsy-craftsy) or
  syllable(s) that have some semantic relations.
• ???????? painsick
• ???? ??? ??? ???? ce?p kha?y
  da?y pu?ay
• pain fever get sick

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Writing Systems

• Logographic/Ideographic ex. Chinese
• Syllabic ex. Devanagari, Kana character
• Alphabetic
• regularity in letter-phoneme mapping Thai vs.
  English
• word/syllable boundary marking device space
  (English), other device (Thai)