Tuesday, June 21, 2016


Reading skills are very important, and definitely helps one become a better writer. When someone is reading they are basically learning from other writers. Since my first B.A. degree was in History there was a tremendous amount of reading involved and from a very wide range of authors. I wish that I could say I loved to read from a very young age like many of you, but for me it did not become a hobby of mine until college. The foundation I had in reading and writing in L1 I believe helped me learn Spanish as a L2. For instance, I already understood the meanings of words such as humanist, imperialist, confederation, and emancipation so I just learned that you change the ist to ista or the tion to cion to form the Spanish word. I learned about thirty other cognate categories like those in a Spanish vocabulary class which was very beneficial because so many words in English and Spanish are cognates. I don’t think multilingual students could take advantage of cognates very well if they are not strong in their first language so being able to read and write in ones first language is crucial to learning a second language.

As an academic reader I normally prefer to read nonfiction books. I think this is because my first degree was in History. True accounts, or research works about what happened in the past is what I find myself reading the most. Sometimes I like reading historical fiction books like The Canterbury Tales so that I can get a better feel about what people in the past were like. After reflecting on this question, I think I tend to read more fiction books in Spanish. Since I am definitely not as strong of a reader in Spanish, I think I tend to gravitate towards fiction because it is a little more exciting to read at times. That helps me overcome how much work it is for me to read in Spanish. If I am reading something for more factual information or knowledge, I would just rather read it in English. One exception to that is that I like to read history books from other countries and I sometimes read books from Latin American authors about political issues so I get other people’s points of view on issues. For example I bought a Mexican History textbook while traveling in Mexico, and I found it interesting to compare the Mexican History textbook accounts of the Mexican American War to an American History textbook. One nonacademic genre that I read is political blogs from time to time. To me these are very informal settings so I find it funny when people start getting on each other for their grammar. Bloggers are normally writing very fast and have little time to proofread so I expect people to make more grammatical mistakes. Normally there are numerous grammatical mistakes until you get to the final draft of an essay and even then there seems to be a few mistakes so I don’t understand why people get so worked up over grammatical mistakes in an informal political blog. Actually it is probably due to the fact that there are very few things more divisive than politics.    

I have found that I was somewhat more reliant on textbooks when I first started teaching than I am right now. Even from the beginning I supplemented textbooks with other materials but I am doing more and more supplementation as the years pass. One of the other materials that I use besides a textbook is information former professors gave me throughout the years. Often times I try and take everything that I thought really helped me improve as a Spanish student and apply that to my classroom. For instance, I believe learning vocabulary is the most important aspect of learning a foreign language so I have used many resources and assignments that was used by my professor in Spanish Vocabulary Building. I have my Spanish students go over all the cognate categories for English and Spanish. We also work from a frequency dictionary, and by the end of Spanish 3 they learn the 1,000 most frequently used Spanish words. Actually one area where I differ my instruction from some of my former professors is in regards to reading. Often times I thought the reading material some gave us in Spanish class was too difficult unless it came from a textbook. Because of that experience I really like using the real basic level books such as Pobre Ana, Patricia va a California, and other books like those to promote reading. This takes away the stress of having to look up every other word in the dictionary because the books are at Spanish 1 and 2 levels. Of course I realize it would be difficult or maybe even strange for a college professor to use those books because the thematic aspects of those books are at such a low level. I am sure it is really tough to find appropriate books for L2 learners that are university level students. When I decide on textbooks to use I look for ones that have an abundance of activities that I think will be helpful to students, and I look for ones that introduce topics in a similar order to the order I would prefer to teach them. Because each chapter assumes students know the vocabulary from previous chapters I prefer not to skip chapters, but sometimes I feel compelled to do it anyway.

L2 students are going to come from many different backgrounds so it would be difficult to come up with textbooks that meet all their needs. Most of the student population in other classes would be similar so it would be easier for a textbook to meet those students’ needs. Even students from the U.S. can have some differences. For instance the vocabulary and topical knowledge of a student from rural Iowa would most likely be different than a student from the inner city of Detroit. A textbook would have to try and cater to differences for U.S. born students so it would be even more challenging for the various backgrounds of L2 students.

Because of the difficulties in drafting textbooks to meet students’ needs which I talked about in my last paragraph, I think it is very important to augment textbooks. Again, even students in the U.S. come from varied backgrounds so it can be very beneficial to make assignments that cater to the different backgrounds of students. It might be beneficial to allow a student from rural Iowa to write about different topics than a student from Detroit. That is not to say one should never try and get those students to expand their horizons and get out of their comfort zones, but if given topics they are very comfortable with a teacher can see students at their best. That can be helpful in evaluating those students. This could be even more important for L2 learners because their backgrounds are even more varied.

If writers are very inexperienced and do not have a large vocabulary, I will tend to have them just write sentences. If they are learning vocabulary terms, I will have them write a sentence using that vocabulary term so I can tell if they really understand the meaning. When we are working on a certain verb tense, I will have students write sentences in that certain verb tense. I normally tell students that the first step towards writing paragraphs in Spanish is writing good complete sentences. For more advanced students I will give them topics to write about, or prompts. I will sometimes have them summarize as well. Now that I am taking this course, I reflect back and wish that I would have allowed my more advanced students to do more pre-writing, brainstorming, revisions, and peer reviews. I definitely agree with another student in this class and their blog entry’s about the challenges of out-of-class writing assignments. Those are difficult because of Google Translate. Many times it is easy to identify those using Google Translate so I tell them that if they are using a tense they have never learned before I will count the question wrong. That strategy is tougher when it is upper level classes and I will tend to just have in-class writing assignments for them.