I went to the library
this week on a mission. It is not top secret. If it was top secret, everyone on
this blog has the clearance to know that my mission involved finding a book in
a foreign language that I could read if it was in English. My options were few
and far between. I had never sought out the world language section of the
library before.
I have a long history of
getting library cards and checking out books. When I was little, my dad would
take my sister and I to the local library and we would explore. Dad would get
books from the history, biography, science fiction, and fiction sections. Our
favorite section was the children’s books. One library had a square room with
murals of characters on every wall and cushions on the floor with a stained
glass window on one side. Dad would let us pick books to read in the library
and books to take home. I still visit the children’s section for classroom
books. Sometimes the budget does not allow much wiggle room for more picture
books to own. I love going up and down aisles to find something to catch my
eye.
For this particular
library mission, I needed a librarian to show me where their world language
books were located. Once there, I realized there were only about twenty adult
books in Spanish most of them biographies. So I picked a book with pictures
that I recognized, this will tell you that I am a book cover judge. Now I have
never read or watched Come Reza Ama (or Eat Pray Love), but I knew it was about a woman’s journey
to learn about herself through new cultures after a divorce.
The first thing I noticed
when I opened the book was a short sentence. The second word in the sentence is
a name because it is capitalized. I could tell when there was a question or
list because of punctuation. I also recognized numbers, such as diez or ten. I
know that this language reorders descriptive words, so I should expect a noun to
come before adjectives. Alright I admit to one semester in college with
Spanish, but I have not used it for five years.
The next thing I did was
guess what words meant based on their roots. Motivos must mean motive, right?
Companero must mean companion, right? Here is a list of more vocabulary word
guesses: convertirlo (convert), sentimental (sentimental), improbable (not
going to happen), matrimonio (matrimony), divorcio (divorce), devastador
(devastated), historia (history), ruptura (rupture), fragil (fragile,)
principios (principles), inocente (innocent), consiste (consist), celibate
(celibate), observador (observer), and excelente (excellent). These seem like common sense even though I am not sure I am right.
I collected all of this
information and applied it to the text for meaning. This is what I understand
about the first chapter.
·
This book is
written in first person because the author uses I and me (yo and me)
·
One male character
is Giovanni
·
He is Italian and
lives with his mother
·
He is 10 years
younger than the author
·
The female
character or the author was married and divorced
·
Something is
mentioned about pregnancy
·
They are in Rome
Obviously, I did not
learn much about the story with my limited memory of Spanish or the techniques
I employed. When I was at the library, I picked up a Spanish children’s book
hoping that illustrations would help to unlock meaning behind the foreign
language. First, the cover shows a llama in red pajamas at bed time with a title
that colors the Spanish word for red to help make the connection. Next, I went
through the book just looking at pictures to understand what was happening.
Then I tried to discover if the words matched the illustrations or if the
pictures were just giving more detail. I could occasionally pick out a word's
meaning using the same techniques as Eat Pray Love, but I got more
information through the pictures than the words. Lastly, I looked through the
English version of the Llama, Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney to compare the
story to what I assumed from the Spanish version. Basically, the illustrations
could tell the story without any words.
The implications of my
mission pointed out the need for demonstrations, pictures, and graphics in the classroom to be
very specific. It may help to have words listed on illustrated flashcards,
label everything in the classroom, and try to make connections between the
words they know and the ones they do not understand yet with gestures. In order
for students to have comprehension in a new language, they start at the
beginning and need to know quite a few words orally to make a connection to the
text. They may be able to read in another language, but this one is new, so we
start where everyone starts at the beginning. It also takes a lot of time and
brain power to go through a book in a different language, so the teacher needs
to change things up and have activities to put what we learned from the text
into action or practice.
The key is to find good resources to provide practice with vocabulary and ways to make connections between what a student already knows and what they have yet to learn, so they are prepared for the text material the teacher introduces.
This website offers a variety of alphabet, number, common word, shape, and color practice in different languages.
The following website, Martha Speaks is a PBS Kids page designed to help students learn new words. There is a collection of stories which are read aloud and highlighted as they are said. Each page is interactive and if a student clicks on a word they are provided with more information. At the end of the story, the characters review word meanings and quiz students through games.
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