Blog #4

Choose a text in a language that you are not familiar with... Make meaning. How did you do it? What are the implications to your teaching?

The book was Stuart Little. I have knowledge of that story in English, so that helped with guessing at the plot. I have knowledge of the text structure of a novel. This helped, because they do not use quotation marks for dialogue. They use dashes, but I could figure this out, because they still tabbed in a new paragraph and a new line with a new speaker. The punctuation is similar but utilized differently. I could tell what word meant chapter.

The book in Spanish was easier, because I have past experience with the language, so I had some background awareness to draw upon. Plus, the alphabet is similar to English, and they are both Romantic languages which helped, because I could guess at words that looked similar. Words like "una, su, and la" could be more easily deciphered, because of their syntactical clues. Knowing the phonetic sounds of the letters helped, because I could sound out the words, and sometimes it sounded like words I knew.  If I couldn't read the text at all, I looked at the images. The book was Stuart Little. I have knowledge of that story in English, so that helped with guessing at the plot. Even in the chapter book, the small images on most pages helped.

This will impact my teaching. To begin, I need to try to find the same text or a similar text in the student's native language to give them some security and background knowledge. Also, taking the time to preview the text structure can be helpful. Providing text with images is really important. Choosing key vocabulary to pre teach can really add to the understanding of the story. Finally, allowing students a way to process their understanding and to keep it/ store it while processing further can also be useful.