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.