One of my teachers does not know that she is making a big mistake in teaching reading to children who do not speak English. The problem is that some students even do not know the letters of the alphabet ; for this reason they are not allowed to read yet. However, this situation is not the most complicated, but the strategy that the teacher uses to start teaching how to read. The purpose is that the children have to repeat the sentences related to the school many times trough singing in order to memorize and understand them ; then, they have to make a picture about each sentence; for example, I read books and write words in school. Despite the fact that the students feel very proud because they can write , they do not understand anything about what they were reading because they can not associate the sentences with the pictures that they made; in fact, some pictures did not have any relation with the sentences.
My teacher does not understand that according to the Comprehensible Input Hypothesis belongs to Krashen , the students are allowed to acquire a language only if they can understand it but what they are doing is just repeating a sentence with knowing what they are saying. Besides, teachers have to find ways to make information more comprehensible to the learner by using strategies ; for instance, connecting new information to prior knowledge , using gestures, drawing, etc. The teacher uses gestures and drawing to explain the sentences ; nevertheless, the students do not understand them.
Apart from that, Natural Order Hypothesis says that the acquisition of grammatical rules happens in a predictable order. Moreover, it is important for teachers to recognize that emphasis of certain grammatical structures may be beyond what a learner is linguistically ready to understand. For this reason, the teacher can not teach reading before the students know the letter of the alphabet and their pronunciations.
Websites:
1 comment:
Carolina,
One thing I would suggest that you think about is how a young child comes to the process of reading--through a wholistic approach--they see books read and hear them read and 'read' them themselves before they know the alphabet... Somthing to think about as you consider this topic.
Gina
Post a Comment