Phrasing

Reading’s Best Kept Secret

Phrasing is the best kept secret in all of reading. In the workshops on reading that I’ve attended over the years, no one has ever talked about it. In the dozens of books I’ve read on reading, it’s hardly mentioned at all. Yet in my teaching of reading, I’ve found it to be one of the most valuable things I teach to young readers.

Phrasing is the process of breaking sentences into smaller groups of words that go together according to their grammar. For example:

                  Phrasing is the process
                  of breaking sentences
                  into smaller groups of words
                  that go together
                  according to their grammar.

Most of us do this naturally when we read. We do it when we talk, too. Why? Because the phrase is the easiest unit of language for our brains to understand. Single words often don’t make sense without the context of other words around them. For example, all by itself, the word “process” could be a noun, a verb, or adjective. On the other hand, entire sentences are often too long.

Phrasing is the source of that smooth and satisfying flow we call fluency in reading. If you listen to yourself read out loud, you’ll notice that you naturally break your sentences into small but meaningful pieces. Between each piece, or phrase, you put just the tiniest bit of space, or maybe you stretch out the final sound of the final word a little bit longer. Like notes on a musical staff, you group words together and give your reading a satisfying flow.

What seems to come naturally teachers never materializes for some kids. Without the ability to phrase, their fluency is stunted. This makes reading difficult because fluency is a key component of automatic decoding, a direct precursor of comprehension, and a great source of the enjoyment that comes from working with words.

To help kids improve their fluency by working on phrasing, I teach them the following:

• Phrasing is normal and natural. Most kids phrase naturally when they speak. They also phrase naturally when they sing songs or when they recite things like The Pledge of Allegiance (“I pledge allegiance” / “to the flag” / “of the United States of America” / “and to the Republic” / etc.). I help kids become aware of this natural ability and then I ask them to read the way they talk.

• Phrasing breaks sentences into “right-size” parts. We don’t want to read word-by-word, but most of the time we can’t read a whole sentence in one bite either. Phrasing breaks up sentences into pieces that are just the right size for us to read easily and understand. Phrasing is not something unusual that we do only for certain sentences. It’s something we do all the time in every sentence.

• Phrases follow predictable patterns. To learn to phrase well, we have to know where phrases are. Most are three to six words long. Phrases typically begin with small “function” words like prepositions, articles, pronouns, and conjunctions. They typically end with larger “content” words that have specific meaning in the sentence. Phrases are also marked by internal punctuation like commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, parentheses, as well as periods, question marks, and exclamation marks.

• Phrasing helps you understand hard words. Words are easier to understand in context than they are on their own. And the best context is the phrase and sentence they’re in. When kids hit a word they don’t know, I ask them to read it with the phrase it’s in. Then I ask them to break the rest of the sentence into phrases. Then they can make an inference about what the word means, substitute it back into the phrase, and put the phrase back into the sentence. Phrasing and re-reading improve kids’ awareness of the context clues they need to learn new words.

• Phrasing helps you understand long sentences. The best way to make sense of a long sentence is to build up an understanding one phrase at a time. Often we understand all the words but still don’t quite get the meaning. By isolating phrases, we understand them better one by one and as a group.

• Phrasing helps you read smoothly. When we read with good phrasing, our voice smoothes out. We tend to read the little words that begin phrases more quickly and with less emphasis than the bigger words that finish phrases. This gives us the natural iambic rhythm of English where the stress patterns of the syllables go like this: unstressed-stressed, unstressed-stressed, etc.

At first, phrasing may seem like a subtle thing that’s hard to get a handle on. To improve your awareness, listen to yourself phrase when you read. Slow your reading down just a bit and listen to how you put small groups of words together.

Everyone is aware of the importance of fluency. Even if we don’t know the theory behind it, we understand the practical implications: kids who don’t read fluently, don’t read well. Listening to kids read, it’s easy to tell if they’re reading is fluent. If it’s not, phrasing is the place to start.

Comments

[Margot C. Lester]

I didn't really understand the true power of phrasing till I taught it to an ESL class. Just showing kids how to work with smaller chunks of text really boosted their confidence and comprehension.

How has phrasing worked for you and your kids?