READING ALOUD STRATEGIES IN READING ENGLISH TEXTS

Reading aloud by a young language learner shows unique patterns as the evidence of his/her language data processing. This study, thus, explored the strategies applied by an Indonesian young language learner to read English written texts aloud to identify errors that actually bring certain benefits in her language learning process such as making intelligent guesses when she encountered unfamiliar words. It adopted qualitative case study design involving a seven-year old girl as the subject, who had been exposed to English four yearearlier.The data were gained through observing her reading and interviewing her after reading. The data from both techniques confirmed each other and provided in-depth data analysis.Next, the data were analyzed under the the framework synthesized from Littlewood (1984). The findings indicated that to read aloud the subject made use of three strategies among others: overgeneralization, transfer and simplification. This means that the subject employed her L2 oral proficiency and L1 reading ability to process the L2 data from reading. The study implies that educators need to pay moreattention on how children process the language data they gain and to povide appropriate learning environments in order to prepare them to be better readers, beside improving awareness in similarities and differences of L1 and L2.

Research on reading aspects in L1 and L2 contexts have gained attention for decades.Particularly in learning L2, learners will undergo different language orthography systems (deep and shallow), that is the consistency between what a sound is like and how it is written (Pinter, 2006).According to Geva (2006), if children learn L2 with shallow othography system, their accuracy in reading will be achieved faster in the language.Different result shows if the L2's orthography system is deep.For example, a learner whose L1 is shallow in the system (like Indonesian language) will have to put much effort to achieve reading accuracy when learning English because the language belongs to the deep system of orthography.
Research conducted by Lee and Schallert (1997)to Korean studentswas identified and proved that L2 oral proficiency contributed more significantly than L1 reading ability in predicting L2 reading ability.
This study, thus, emphasizes on how a young language learner in Indonesia made strategies when reading aloud English written texts, such as children stories.Indonesian language has shallow orthography system, compared to deep orthography system of English.Consequently,English oral proficiency in English reading may attract different strategies used in English reading.

Literacy and Reading
Generally, literacy skills deal with reading and writing.Cameron (2001) defines literacy skills as the ability to read and to write kinds of texts for different purposes.In line with it, Bainbridge (2011) states that literacy skills are all the skills needed for reading and writing.They include such things as awareness of the sounds of language, awareness of print, and the relationship between letters and sounds.In other words, in order to read, one must be able to decode (sound out) printed words and to comprehend what she/he reads since the aim of reading is comprehension.Nevertheless, knowing how to pronounce written words correctly does not mean that someone can read (Anderson, 2003in Linse, 2005).Cameron (2001) states that teaching and learning reading can be started from any level in every approach and starting point, yet transfer between languages is always there.Linse (2005) and Savile-Troike (2006) mention that the ability to read in L1 assistsreaderstoacquire reading ability in L2faster.The level of L1 reading ability can become -a strong predictor‖and determines the success of L2 learning to read (Linse, 2005).This kind of thing works regardless the orthographical system of languages they speak.

Orthographic Systems of Language
The significance of reading encourages researchers to explore it both in L1 and L2 contexts.Dixon,et al. (2010)show that in terms of the influence of L1 orthography on bilingual children's L2 spelling performance, the Chinese group scored higher than Malay and Tamil.This is because the orthographic system that the Chinese has if it is compared to English, that it is grouped into deep orthography with morphosyllabic letter.
In terms of its depth, there are two kinds of orthography, deep and shallow.Pinter (2006)asserts that the first refers to the language whose letter-sound correspondence is not direct and consistent.On the other hand, the latter refers to the language that is more consistentin the way it is.
One of the examples of language with deep orthography is English.According to Cameron (2001) and Moats in Linse (2005), sound-letter relationship of English is less straightforward that 26 letters of alphabet can be 44 sounds.This is because some letters have only one sound, for example b /b/ and k /k/.Some of them have two possible sounds, for instance the letter candg.The letter c may be pronounced as /k/ like in cat, orit can be pronounced as /s/ like in cereal.Besides, gmay be pronounced as /dʒ/ like in bandage, or it may be pronounced as /g/ as in flag.In another case, two letters just can produce one sound or a single sound but with two possibilities, such as th, they can be pronounced as /θ/, like in think, and they can be voiced as /ð/, like in this.Considering this less straightforward lettersound relationships, consequently, there are many things to learn.According to Besnerand Johnston (1989) and Henderson (1982), cited in Segalowitz, etal. (1991), learners need to learnthe pronunciation and irregular wordsmore often.In contrast, the instance of language belongs to the shallow orthography is Russian.In Russian, c is always pronounced as /s/.In this kind of language, the relation between the sound and the letter is more predictable.
As an illustration, when English native children learn to read, their solid L1 language knowledge will help them when attempting intelligent guesses for the many words and phrases they have.Although they have banks of words with them, it takes them rather a long time.From the illustration, it is obvious that sounding out the words does not always help with working out how it is written (Pinter, 2006).Therefore, learning to read English for Indonesian young language learners is maybe two folds since they not only have to process different orthographic system, but also to equip themselves with L2 oral skill which is not their L1.Cameron (2001), in her book, observes that written language is developed to represent talk.Therefore, before moving on to written phase of the language, the oral phase should be firmly established.
Children who learn language that is different in orthography and directionality from their L1 need to be able to recognize symbols in the target language.Learners who are literate in their L1 and have already recognized a substantial amount of L2 vocabularies and basic grammatical structures can expect to extract a significant amount of information from L2 written texts as soon as they can process its graphic representation (Saville-Troike, 2006).

The Influence of L2 Oral Proficiency in L2 Reading
The four language skills are interrelated, so that the importance of oral language in L2 reading task is unquestionable.
The knowledge of oral language may be the most significant thing that children carry to the task of learning to read (Strickland, 1998).Besides, plenty of second language reading research verifies the important function of L2 oral proficiency in reading L2.Llah's work (2010) which was conducted to young Spanish learners of EFL highlights the importance of L2 oral proficiency in establishing the nature and magnitude of reading-writing relationship.In addition to that, Akamatsu's research (1998) concerning L1 and L2 reading of Japanese learning English confirms the importance of oral vocabulary prior to beginning to read in L2.
Apart from listening, the oral stage of language is also constituted by speaking.It is an important area of activity for L2 learners if they will be using the language for interpersonal purposes, whether these are primarily social or instrumental (Saville-Troike, 2006).Additionally, according to Chaney (1998) in Kayi (2006),speaking is defined as a process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbol in a variety of contexts.This speaking ability will help the learner enter the written stage of language, in this case reading.According to Cameron (2001), oral skills in the new language are an important factor in learning to be literate.In addition, she, citing Vygotsky (1978),states that written language is ‗second-order' meaning representation and spoken language was used first to represent mental idea and meaning.In addition to that, Pinter (2006) states that oral language proficiency is directly related to the reading ability; because the solid language knowledge helps children make intelligent guesses when they attempt to read.

Reading Aloud Strategies
Learning Indonesian Language and English might be a different experience for Indonesian children.Regarding with this, Krashen (1982) investigates that what happens to a native speaker of English is a process called language acquisition, it is the natural process used to develop language skills in a child's native language.The focus of this process is on the meaning being conveyed rather than the form or correctness of the language.However, what happens to a child learning English as a second or a foreign language is language learning that is often described as a more formal approach to language instruction.The focus is not only on the meaning, but also about the form of the language being used.
Since it is a learning process, strategies might be needed in that process.This language learning needs strategies since Indonesian children have to process the more difficult language orthography.This is due to Indonesian as their L1 belongs to the shallow orthography, while English as their L2 belongs to the deep one.This becomes even more assorted since they also have to equip themselves with English oral proficiency.
In relation to the strategies, Littlewood (1984) states that there are several language learning strategies: overgeneralization, transfer and simplification by omission.The notions analyze the product of language learning in terms of learner's speech.The subject's reading is in some ways similar to learner speech--speaking.Hughes and Trudgill (1979), in their research, observe that reading a passage facilitates the subject to speak more rapidly with careful pronunciation.In contrast, spontaneous speech is useful to indicate how the subject speaks in a natural rapid way and possibly paying less attention to careful pronunciation.

Overgeneralization
Language is not something static; language changes (Orr, 1998).The studies of language contribute many shifting things from decades.According to Littelwood (1984), since the 1950s, a child's speech is no longer seen as just a faulty.It is recognized as having its own underlying system which can be described in its own terms.Furthermore, he states that learners' errors need not be seen as a sign of failure.On the contrary, they are the clearest evidence for learners' developing system and they offer insights into how they process the data of language.
Littlewood (1984) observes overgeneralization as a fundamental learning strategy in all domains, not only in language.In generalization, one constructs categories and creates ‗rules' to predict how different items will behave.Sometimes the prediction is right, but sometimes it is wrong.The mistakes are probably caused by two main reasons.First, the rule does not apply to the particular item, thus some exception should be learnt.Second, the item belongs to different category, which is covered by another, thus a new category has to be raised.
From the explanation above, it can be concluded that generalization is important.Moreover, Brown (2001)in Linse (2005) emphasizes that generalization is a significant part of children English learning and it is a vitally important aspect of human learning.Generalization involves inferring and deriving a rule, or low and children have a tendency to do that.In generalization, the rule that is generalized can be either from L1 or L2.
In case the learners' result of generalization is wrong, the source of language rule in generalization they use will determine the kind of error.Errors that are derived from generalization of L2 rule are labeled as intralingual error.On the other hand, if the learners generalize L1 rule, the errors caused by it are labeled as interlingual errors.

Transfer
Transfer has a similarity and a difference with the previously mentionedovergeneralization.
The distinction between them is related to the source of knowledge in using it.According to Littlewood (1984), the similarity between them comes from the fact that learner makes use of what he or she has already known about the language.Specifically, in generalization, the knowledge used is the knowledge about the L2, but in the case of transfer, the language used is the learners' mother tongue.By doing transfer, learners do not have to discover everything from zero.
The notion of transfer can be viewed from the degree of appropriateness of the transferred language rule.According to Lado(1957) cited in Saville-Troike ( 2006), there will be both transfer and interference in second language learning.In particular, the first happens in learning when the same structures are appropriate in both, but interference happens when L1 structure is used inappropriately in L2.
Degree of similarities between the L1 and L2 and difficulty level of linguistic structure do influence the process of transfer.Ladocontinued to explain that the easiest L2 structures are those which exist in L1 with the same form; meaning and distribution are thus available for positive transfer.On the other hand, the ones do not exist in L1 need to be learnt and most likely to cause interference (negative transfer).In line with that, Ellis (1994) cited in Akamatsu (1998), adds that the degree of difficulty depends on the extent to which the learners' L1 is different from target language in terms of their linguistic structures.Where the two are identical, learning could take a place easily through positive transfer of the native language pattern.However, when they are different, learning difficulty arises and errors resulting from negative transfer are likely to occur.
The two languages have similarities.Both languages use the same 26 alphabet letters, divided similarly between vowels and consonants.Besides, the ways of arranging sentence and paragraph are similar.Additionally, both languages use similar method of classifying word types into nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, etc. in addition to that, both languages form words in the same way by attaching prefixes and suffixes to rootword.Above and beyond, they have transitive and intransitive form, passive and active voice and use similar numbering and punctuation system.Moreover, symbols and capitalization are nearly the same for both languages and there are many words that are identical

Simplification by Omission
Generally, the language produced by children is simpler, as stated by Littlewood (1984).According to him, children language is spoken more slowly and contains shorter utterance.In addition to that, children language contains fewer complex sentences, less variety of tenses, and the range of vocabulary is limited.Besides, in children language, there are more repetitions and the speech is more closely related to the ‗here and now'.
In making sense of anything around, one makes categorization; it is also applied in reading.Simplification is the last strategy that is proposed by Littlewood (1984).His statement asserts that this strategy refers to the process of fitting the confusing linguistic data into a framework of categories that the learner has already processed.Besides, readers make this confusing rule to the more manageable one.
There are two observable kinds of simplification: elaborative simplification and redundancy reduction.They share the same processing in omitting something in the text.However, the division of these strategies into two different items is due to their distinction.
The elaborative simplification is used to refer to the strategy that contributes to learner development of an underlying system (Littlewood, 1984).It is the result of constructive hypothesis about the second language and a sign of progression.Second, redundancy reduction refers to the strategy to eliminate many items which are redundant to convey the intended message.There is no system construction, but the limitation of children capacity.
The reduction that is done by children may be because of several things, one of them is related to English morphology.It is relatively different if it is compared to Indonesian language.In morphology, the term of morpheme could be identified and it refers to a smaller unit than a word that has meaning.Furthermore, it can be classified into either bound or free morphemes.In relation to the first, it can be categorized into derivational and inflectional.Derivational morphemes are the ones that change the meaning or part of speech of a word.The example of this is the suffix -ness.For example, if it is attached to the word ‗happy' itchanges into ‗happiness'.In the example, the meaning of 'happy (feeling, showing or causing pleasure or satisfaction)' changes into 'happiness (the feeling of being happy)'.Besides, part of speech of the word changes as well, it is altered from adjective to noun.On the other hand, inflectional morphemes only change the grammatical function.The meaning of it is preserved.The example of this is suffixed in regular past tense.If ‗want' changes into ‗wanted', it is only function that changed.However, the part of speech is just the same, both want and wanted are verbs (Cipollone, etal., 1998).

METHOD
The study employed qualitative case study design to gain in-depth comprehension on a single instance, involving a young language learner of English aged seven years old.She had good oral English proficiency for being exposed to English much earlier than average children in Indonesia, that is since age 2.5-year old.As a result, she became familiar with the orthographic system of English.
The data were collected through observationsand interviews.
The observations were conducted during the process of reading in several meetings, and the interviewswere done sometimes before and after reading.The data collected were thencategorized and interpreted.
In effort to categorize the strategies employed by the subject to read aloud English texts and to assess the accurateness of the words read by the subject, Received Pronunciation in Cambridge Advance Learner 's Dictionary (2003)was used as the reference.British English was chosen since it can be found in many ELT materials.According Hughes and Trudgill (1979), RP is considered as the most intelligible of all accents.It is believed that to emulate RP is to ensure that one is intelligible to speakers of English across UK and hopefully from around the world.
Considering English as an International language that has greater nonnative speakers than the native speakers, according to Crystal (2003) there is no standardized accent associated with Standard English.In relation to this, Cook (1999, p. 196) states that learners following native-speakers model are no different from people who want -to change their color of skin, the straightness of their hair, the shape of their eyes to conform to other group‖.
In the discussion of EIL, the issue of mutual intelligibility arises.According to McKay (2002) cited in Mete (2010) there are three concepts involved in intelligibility; intelligibility, comprehensibility, and interpretability.Intelligibility means recognizing the expression, comprehensibility means knowing the meaning of the expression, while interpretability means knowing the expression signified in a particular sociocultural context.Thus, in the sense of English as a global means of communication, as long as it is understandable by the interlocutors, it is fine.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
During the observations, reading the texts silently seemed to be more comfortable and preferable for the subject, that she was more encouraged to read aloud.When reading the texts aloud, her mispronunciation of certain words were highlighted.It was aimed to see the strategies that were applied by the subject to read aloud.The framework that was used to analyze the strategies to read aloud was the one proposed by Littlewood (1984).This analysis process was based on the Received Pronunciation in Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary(2003)by setting aside the intelligibility.
From the observation, it could be concluded that there are several findings related to the strategies to read aloud English texts.Generally, it covered three things proposed by Littlewood (1984): overgeneralization, transfer, and simplification by omission.Besides showing the occurrences of those three strategies, it also showed that they were sometimes overlapping.In the study, an overlap of strategy usage between transfer and simplification by omission could be observed.Overgeneralization There were some kinds of overgeneralization that could be noted in the study.The subject over generalized several words by employing her L2 language knowledge in the reading process.The overgeneralizations sometimes resulted in mispronunciation, but sometimes it produced accurate pronunciation.In the first case, the errors occurred in the excerpt above were intralangual errors since they were the processing products in the same language, i.e.English.The word ‗board' in ‗cupboard' in the first instance was pronounced as ‗board' /bo:rd/, like in ‗blackboard', whereas ‗board' in ‗cupboard' had to be pronounced as [b əd].In the second example, the subject over generalized the letter -u" in huge and use as /ʌ/, similar to /ʌ/ in the word ‗cup'.When reading The Dinosaurs Rescue story, the subject pronounced those two words consistently in the same way.In the other example, she generalized the letters ‗ea'in ‗heavy' as long /i:/, like in ‗beach'.
These samples of overgeneralization in the subject's reading aloud were a positive sign to her English learning.They were not only an error, but were also an indication of second language processing in her brain.This becomes clear evidence that she had already possessed the knowledge of second language, though she made some errors to occur.It was in line with whatLittlewood (1984) says that in generalization, one constructs categories and creates ‗rules' to predict how different items will behave.He adds, as the cases showed,thatthe predictions as results of generalization were not exactly accurate.With respect to this, Littlewood (1984) state that sometimes the prediction is right, but sometimes it is wrong.In this case, the mistakes were in accordance to Littlewood's explanation (1984) that the rule constructed by the subject was not appropriate to this particular item.
Sound overgeneralization that the subject tried to make sometimes was less accurate.This is because English, as the target language, has less direct sound-letter relationship.Because of this, exceptions are unavoidable and some of them should be learnt.Besnerand Johnston (1989) and Henderson (1982), cited in Segalowitz, etal.(1991),suuggest that in such cases the learner should more often learn the pronunciation and irregular words.This is the logical consequence of learning a deep orthographic language.Linse (2005) states that the speakers of language, which have one-to-one letter correspondence, in this case Indonesian may experience difficulty when learning the language whose lettersound correspondence is not direct, such as English.
In other chances, the subject attempted to generalize the letter ‗i' in ‗dive' as /ai/ and it was precise.In the second sample, she tried to generalize the 'a' in ‗pals' as /ǽ/ as it was in back /bǽk/, and it was accurate.According to Littlewood (1984), in generalization, categories and ‗rules' are constructed and created to predict how different items will behave.In this case, the categories constructed by the subject meet the others; as a result, the prediction was accurate.
In some samples related to overgeneralization, the subject's errors occurred due to the subject's misrecognition toward the words.Like what happened to the word ‗checked', the subject pronounced it as ‗cheek'.Besides, she also pronounced ‗came' as ‗come', ‗then' as ‗the', ‗every' as ‗very', and ‗supper' as ‗super'.All of the words were almost similar in their letters arrangement.In the interview, the subject confirmed that she thought those pairs of words are actually identical in meaning.In her opinion, one of the words in each pair was incorrectly printed.These were proofs that the subject had already possessed L2 knowledge.
This overgeneralization strategy is related to one of the EFL learning principles: risk-taking.Because the results of generalization might be either accurate or inaccurate, learners have to take risk.In relation to this, Brown (2001) states that in risk taking learners become gamblers in the game of language.They attempt to produce and interpret language beyond their absolute certainty.
In relation to the intelligibility of the utterance produced by the subject in her effort to generalize, it can be both intelligible and not intelligible.There are errors that are still understandable such as the pronunciation of cupboard with the pronunciation of board as /bo:rd/ instead of [bəd], and came as come.However, in the case of huge that is pronounced as /hʌdʒ/, checked as check, every as very, they might cause misunderstanding.However, context will help the interlocutor to clarify the meaning.Thus, they were still possibly intelligible.

Simplification by Omission
Generally the subject omitted morphemes including past tense (-ed) and suffixes (-s) or (-es) in verb for third-person-singular subjects.Besides, (-s) or (-es) to show plural form and (-‗s) to show procession were also excluded.These omissions were categorized into redundancy reduction since the subject eliminated many items which were redundant to convey the intended message.There was no system construction, but the limitation of children capacity.This simplification was a form of the subject's attempt to fit the confusing linguistic data into a framework of categories that she has already processed.Besides, the subject made this confusing rule to the more manageable one (Littlewood, 1984).
The interview result showed that in the subject's knowledge (-s) and (-es) inflectional morphemes only indicated plural form.If it was attached to a verb, she meant it by reduplication.Besides, she thought that with or without those inflectional morphemes, the meaning of the words was similar.As a result, she did not pay attention to them.
The sample is concerning simplification that occurred together with Transfer.This is the evidence of overlapping strategies done by the subject.She directly transferred pronunciation of ‗violins' from her L1 and omitted suffix -s in the word.Therefore, this sample was categorized into transfer and simplification.In connection with the intelligibility of the utterance produced by the subject in her attempt to simplify, the observable errors are still comprehensible.

Transfer
The other finding to discuss is related to transfer from Indonesian Language to English reading.The subject transferred a number of words directly from Indonesian Language.In this kind of samples, the transfer occurred was between the two languages and it invited interlingual errors.In relation to pronunciation of 2010 and 6.30 as duaribusepuluh, enamtigapuluhinstead of two thousand and ten and six thirty was because both languages, i.e.English and Indonesian language share the same numeric system.
Besides, the two languages use Roman alphabet although in different level of orthographic depth.In relation to the pronunciations of words bang, mules and terompet, from the interview the subject confirmed that she directly transferred them into English reading since those three words abide in Indonesian language.
In those samples presented, instead of transfer, interference was something that was likely to happen.The L1 structure that the subject tried to transfer did not meet the L2.This is in accordance with what Lado (1957) cited inSaville-Troike(2006) said that there will be both transfer and interference in second language learning.Interference happens when L1 structure is used inappropriately in L2.The result of this was error that was caused by the negative transfer.
In relation to the intelligibility of the utterance produced by the subject in her effort to transfer her L1 to the L2 reading process, it was still intelligible and understandable.This may be because the people involved in the observation, both the subject and the researcher are Indonesian and share the same L1.It might be different if the interlocutor comes from different L1 background.

CONCLUSION
The aim of the research is to find out an Indonesian young language learner's strategies to read aloud English stories.In relation to the strategies, overgeneralization, simplification by omission and transfer were identified; and overgeneralization was the most frequent of all.The overlapping strategies between transfer and simplification by omission were also revealed.These findings showed that English oral proficiency and Indonesian language literacy skill had certain roles in English reading.
The recommendations go to teachers, curriculum developers and next researchers.The study inferred that the subject L2 oral proficiency and L1 literacy skills had certain roles in English reading.Thus, it is recommended for teachers to accommodate and optimize this tendency by developing appropriate learning activities.Second, referring to the reality that Bahasa Indonesia and English have some similarities and differences, teachers may want to draw students' attention to those two points in order prepare them to be good readers.
To curriculum developers it is recommended to design the curriculum that puts more attention to oral cycle in early level of education.Besides, it is also recommended not to force them to read in L2 before they have their L1 literacy skills and sufficient L2 oral proficiency.