Entry #4 Reading foreign language text

Entry #4 – reading foreign texts

If one is looking for a way to make an intelligent person sweat, raise her heart rate, and cause massive amounts of insecurities to flood her brain, ask her to read a foreign language book.  And by read I mean making the text comprehensible enough to, at the very least, give a brief surface level summary.

I chose a Japanese fashion magazine because there were lots of pictures and I was very familiar with the layout.  My first noticing was attempting to figure out which side was the front of the magazine.  I noticed larger titles on one side and something that looked like a table of contents.  This led me to the conclusion that it opened opposite of an English language magazine.  So, my first approach was to activate any background knowledge and experience I had with this time of reading material.

Because Japanese is not written with familiar Roman letters but rather beautifully crafted lines and circles, there was nothing I could call upon to help me read any of these descriptive words.  There were a few Roman letters that I could understand as meaning sizes such as small, medium, large.  I made a few small connections by noticing that the clothes looked somewhat familiar to American clothing.  Other than enjoying the pictures, I was unable to decipher much more than that.

The next book I chose was written in Spanish and I chose that as a more accessible text for two reasons.  One, Spanish uses the same letters that English does, and I have a very, very, very, limited knowledge base of Spanish and thought I might be able to decode a few of the words to help me figure out the meaning.  And, there were a few pictures to support the text.

The book’s title was, “Fiestas de Cumpleanos Infantiles” and I deducted that it was a book about different theme parties for children.  The pictures and the familiar letters took my stress level way down.  One of my next strategies was to use the pictures and skim through the book looking for common themes.  There were some bold headings I could understand such as actividades, which must mean activities.  So, I looked for English words embedded within the Spanish words. 

As we were discussing in class about our experiences, I noticed how easy it was to revert back to very basic, simplistic words such as things and stuff because my Spanish vocabulary is so limited.  I felt some level of success with this text although I certainly could not have planned a successful, fun party by using this text alone.

The strategies I used for both texts were activating background knowledge, relying on picture clues, looking for familiar words within larger words and making connections with personal experiences.  This experience taught me how important it is for a teacher to front load an Ell learner with vocabulary and to scaffold reading using a variety of strategies.