May Beverly B.

Morales Reflection paper

Eng6N-Edu July 5, 2012

Teaching Reading-Writing

R34D1N6 W0RD5 W1TH NUMBER5 Nowadays, it is normal for us to encounter numbers and symbols in words and sentences we read. From text messages, social networking sites, web pages, printed materials to commercial establishments, they are displayed. It is used to make something shorter practically to save time on writing, sometimes to catch attention among other things. Some are interesting, some are disgusting. It is interesting in a sense that it is informative and time-efficient. For example: C U @ d mall @ 8. One could practically understand that the person will be there at the mall at 8, without much letters used. But some are disgusting in when you see something like this: KH4mu$t4hh fp0hwZZs? The article reminds a person of jejemons and jejebusters. There are harharmons too, which are much worse than them, using numbers and symbols in text and emails which are written upside down, and it will take forever to read a single word. It is surprising to know that Leets, (or Jejemon, allegedly) is something which belongs to the time as early as the 1980s, before I am even born. I was thinking this kind of writing is a modern way of decoding, not knowing linguists has been studying about these things for decades already, before this modern technology age. I am also amazed at how the human brain can adapt and flexible to any symbol or number in reading and recognizing a word. As I read the article, at the back of my mind, I remember dyslectic people; can we have a way to make Leets a sort of therapy in curing them? Reading does not end it just string of words and sentences, but also by how the letters are created or drawn. 0ur br41n c4n r34d numb3r$ and 5ymb0l5 as a 51ngl3 w0rd, 3v3n putt1n6 th3m all t0g3th3r 1n 4 53nt3nc3. The value of the symbol and number is irrelevant in reading the kinds of sentence above. Reading them relied on visual and language domains, which is why it is possible to read them. The physical figure of the letter makes our brain accommodate it quickly to a corresponding letter, and later words and sentences. Top down reading is which schematically what a reader does to get the main idea of a paragraph. In the experiment done by the linguist it is noticeable that they always put primers, pseudo-letters, and control condition given to non-previous-knowledge examinees. This helped these people to efficiently answer the exam. I believe that in teaching, reading Leets serves as the abstract of the unknown word, and primer symbolizes as the clue for them to get the main idea of what they read, giving them learning what the whole statement may mean. In teaching reading and writing we should put words that could help learners assimilate and accommodate new information to old ones. In abstract, learners are like the non-previous knowledge learners who were examined. On the other hand, it can also be seen that not only words and letters can be used themselves in teaching reading. We can also use numbers and symbols to sharpen attack skills of learners in reading. Recognizing many words helps learners to be more adaptive to reading unfamiliar texts. We must enforce open-mindedness in welcoming new ways that emerge in reading and writing, thus widening worldknowledge.