For this blog, I decided to try and read a French text because I wanted to know what ELL's feel like when they are asked to try and comprehend text that may be around their frustrational reading level. I took Spanish for 5 years; 1 year in middle school and 4 years in high school. Although I am by no means fluent, I thought it'd be fun to try something new.
The adult text I looked at was a French newspaper called France Soir (France Evening) http://www.francesoir.fr
I was so frustrated looking at the articles because the pictures made since but none of the words did. It was like my glasses weren't adjusted quite right! Through my frustration, though, I was able to at least make out headlines. This biggest one of which is about a victim who was recovered from the earthquake that happened in Haiti today. Then it hit me: this must be how my kids feel as I continue to pump new information in front of them that is may be above their language acquisition level in preparation for CSAP in 6 weeks! I MUST adjust my approach to literacy immediately.
In order to find a low level French text, I went to www.readinga-z.com. It is an excellent website where a teacher can find all types of resources for literacy including texts in other languages. The text I was able to comprehend was Le Ciel Tombre (Knight) or The Sky is Falling.
Some of the metacognative tools that I used were:
1. I knew the story, so I was able to remember it in English and follow along.
2. Some of the words looked like other words I already knew in either English or Spanish (Ciel = Cielo in Spanish) and so I was able to apply that knowledge.
3. I used the pictures; character's expressions, actions, etc. to help me know what was going on.
4. I noticed my pronunciation was horrible because I didn't have an accent and I didn't know how to say words with the apostrophe between words. I'm thinking contractions...but I tried what I know about phonics and applied it here, even though phonetic rules differ in other languages.
This book is a reading level D with is a 1st grade level reader.
This exercise has taught me a lot. I really like the way the teacher scaffolded for her students - from "...spoken like to written-like" (Gibbons, 2002) throughout the science lesson in the Scaffolding Language text.
Now that I have a new perspective on the way my student might feel as developing academic readers, I'm able to understand more clearly how and why I must meet students where they are on the language acquisition continuum.
Hi Quinn,
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you would have had a harder time comprehending languages with a different base? I know that French and Spanish are very similar because they are both from the "romantic language family". Perhaps you should try German, which is what I tried. Even at the lowest end (3-5 year old)I was not able to make much sense out of things. I thought that I would be able to recognize words because they were similar to something I had seen before in another language, I too studied Spanish throughout grade school. But what I found was that I was not able to use this strategy. I find it interesting that we used similar strategies to try and make meaning out of what we were reading. I wonder if our backgrounds in education have anything to do with that, or if all advanced readers would use the same process.
Thank you for sharing your experience!!
~Jessica