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Understanding language construction directly impacts students’ ability to communicate effectively, comprehend texts, and develop strong literacy skills. One way that K-12 teachers can make this happen is by stressing language structure skills.
Today, we’re examining the fundamentals of language structure, its importance, and how to teach and reinforce these skills to enhance students’ overall success.
Language structure is the systematic arrangement and organization of words, phrases, and sentences that make clear, coherent communication possible. It’s a critical component of the language comprehension strand of Scarborough’s Reading Rope.
Learning about language structure—along with other key areas like vocabulary, background knowledge, and verbal reasoning—can help build students’ ability to “read to learn,” or construct meaning from what they read.
[What are the building blocks of language structure?](id-blocks)
There are five core components that make up the underlying structure of language. They aren’t isolated from one another. They interact to create the words and sentences we use to communicate meaningfully with one another.
Students who are learning to read and write must be taught and practice each of these components to build fluency, understand language, and become skilled readers:
Phonology
Phonology is the study of speech sounds and how they’re organized within a language. It determines which sounds are meaningful in whatever language students are learning.
Bilingual students or English language learners (ELLs) may learn the phonology of one language at home by communicating with family and friends, and another when learning how to read and write in English in school.
A key concept in phonology is the phoneme. These are the smallest units of sound that can change the spelling, pronunciation, and meaning of a word. For example, changing the /b/ in “bat” with a /c/ creates the word “cat.” The English language has about 45 different phonemes.
When students are learning to read, we teach them phonemic awareness. This is the ability to hear and manipulate individual sounds in words. Mastering phonemic awareness is a highly predictive skill for later reading success. Understanding phonology also helps students improve their phonics skills, which involve connecting speech sounds to printed words.
To help teach phonology in the classroom, try:
Using pronunciation guides to help students distinguish words with similar sounds.
Do rhyming work through rhythm and songs, such as the Raffi favorite "Down by the Bay."
Adding activities that involve clapping or tapping fingers to find syllables. You can also use concrete objects like blocks to represent sounds, syllables, and word parts.
Morphology
Morphology is the study of how words are formed and structured. Morphemes, the smallest meaningful units in written language, are a key concept.
Some, known as free morphemes, are whole words and provide meaning when they stand alone. For example, words like “eat” or “water” are free morphemes. Others are called bound morphemes and must be attached to another word to have meaning. These include:
Prefixes: “Un” in “unhappiness”
Suffixes: “S” in “penguins”
Word stems: “Act,” meaning “to do or perform,” in words like “action” and “activate”
Morphology helps students’ vocabulary development and shows them how to break down new words into smaller parts to understand their meaning. To teach morphology in the classroom, provide direct instruction about root words, prefixes, and suffixes. You can also encourage students to analyze new words by breaking them down into parts to build their vocabulary skills and make sense of unfamiliar words.
Syntax
Syntax is the set of rules that decide how words and phrases are arranged to make well-constructed, logical sentences. Different languages have different syntactic rules. For example, in English, we typically place adjectives before nouns, but in French, it’s common to place adjectives after nouns.
Word order is a significant part of many languages, especially English. The order in which words appear in the sentence can change its meaning. For example, the sentence “The dog ate chicken” is logical. It tells us that someone’s pet had chicken for a meal. But the sentence “The chicken ate dog” doesn’t sound right. Most living things don’t eat dog meat, and it’s especially not part of a chicken’s traditional diet.
Building students’ syntactic awareness helps them understand written text and develop strong writing skills. To teach syntax in the classroom, try:
Teaching the parts of speech and how they’re used in sentences.
Encouraging students to write their own sentences in a variety of constructions to understand how the order of words can change the meaning.
Integrate grammar lessons directly with reading and writing so students can analyze the relationships among words, phrases, and clauses in complex texts.
Semantics
Semantics is the study of meaning in a language. It includes meaning for individual words, phrases, sentences, and whole texts.
Semantics helps us understand situations of language ambiguity, like when a sentence could have more than one meaning. For example, the sentence, “The turkey is ready to eat,” could mean two things:
A human cooked a turkey for a meal, and the meal is ready.
A living turkey on a farm or in the wild is ready to eat its own meal.
Semantics and context clues can help you figure out which meaning is correct. They can also help us understand figurative language, like similes and metaphors.
Understanding semantics allows students to grasp the nuances of meaning and expand their vocabulary and understanding. To teach semantics in the classroom, try:
Discussing authors’ word choices and how they affect meaning.
Playing word games where the same word or phrase has a different meaning depending on its context.
Using cloze passages to help students identify possible words that could fill the gap, and how different choices change the meaning.
Helping students use prior knowledge to understand new vocabulary words.
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is the study of how language is used in context. It focuses on the social aspects of language and how we understand and use it in the real world. It includes understanding what to say, when to say it, and how to say it appropriately.
Pragmatics also includes interpreting implied meanings, even when something is imperfectly spoken or grammatically incorrect. For example, the sentence “Can you pass the mashed potatoes?” is a request. It’s not a question of if someone is physically capable of passing a bowl of mashed potatoes.
This discipline also covers adapting your communication styles based on the audience or situation, and when it’s acceptable to use formal or informal language. For example, the way students speak or write to their friends or siblings may be different than their communications with the principal or their grandparents.
Students need to develop communication competence, which involves knowing how to use language effectively in various social situations. These skills enhance their ability to adapt their speech and writing for different audiences and purposes.
To teach pragmatics, try:
Discussing how punctuation helps convey meaning and tone in a text.
Exploring the different functions of language, like informing, persuading, describing, or comparing and contrasting.
Analyzing how language functions affect vocabulary, syntax, tone, style, and non-verbal communication, such as facial expressions.
Encouraging students to have partner or group chats with you, each other, and other members of their home or school communities to practice conversational skills in different contexts.
[4 ways language structure skills impact overall student success](id-success)
Teaching language structures in the classroom is critical for overall student success. Here are four ways that students benefit from learning and practicing these skills in class:
1. Enhanced communication and comprehension
Learning language structures helps students build clarity for listening and speaking. It also influences language processing efficiency and the ability to make connections when communicating.
Learning these structures helps students navigate complex texts, track information within sentences or across multiple texts, and understand how the meaning of words and sentences can change based on textual subtleties, such as comma placement.
2. Expanded learning and worldviews
Language isn’t just a communication tool. It’s also a cultural lens that we use to shape our identities and worldviews. Vocabulary and grammatical structures in language often reflect the cultural priorities and values of its speakers. This understanding helps us teach our students to appreciate linguistic diversity and the unique ways different cultures use language.
This can be especially useful in classrooms with bilingual students and ELLs because it helps the whole class have a better understanding and appreciation for the languages their classmates speak.
3. Integrated instruction
Language structure lessons can integrate with reading, writing, and background knowledge instruction across subjects. For example, instead of teaching grammar or vocabulary in isolation, you can help cultivate students’ comprehension while they analyze complex texts.
Students can learn about syntax and semantics by studying language in authentic texts and then applying these learnings to their own writing.
Plus, this language learning doesn’t have to stay confined to ELA classrooms. Social studies, science, math, and world language classes are all places where they can learn and practice what they know about language structures through building vocabulary and targeted reading, writing, and speaking exercises.
4. Diverse learning support
Teaching language structures can help support diverse learners, especially your ELLs or those with language-based learning differences.
Covering all aspects of the building blocks of language structures helps you stress nuances among students’ native languages and their learning of English. These lessons can also help you understand where students need additional support, allowing you to differentiate instruction and help them build meaning from what they hear and read.
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