Blog #5

The journal that I read had to do with cognates and how cognates can be used to help new students to a foreign language or students who are struggling. It explains how cognates can make anyone read in Spanish. Meaning even if it’s a Spanish one class if the Reading has enough cognates students will be able to comprehend what the reading is about. The author described it as “puzzle reading”. Puzzle reading basically means that if students uses the cognates and pieces them together they can get the overall view of what the article was about. After all comprehension is one of the main goals a Spanish learner has to meet. Some classroom strategies the article talked about was “reading aloud”, the teacher reads an article out loud slowly and when the students think they hear a cognate they say “stop” and they go over what the cognate is or if it’s a false cognate. Another strategy discussed in this reading is “student reading” which means that the students read an article then they circle or underline what they think is a cognate then the whole class discusses the answers. Some activities mention in the reading is “Word sort” this activity consist of pairing up students and giving one student a set of card’s in English and the other student a set of card’s in Spanish and then they have to work together in order to match up the cognates. And lastly the Article talked about false cognates and how it is important to tell students that false cognates do exist so that they don’t think that every word that sound or looks the same is a cognate.

My opinion on this topic is pretty much the same as the article I believe that cognates are a very useful tool for students who have trouble reading the targeted language and even for more experienced learners like myself. I still look for cognates when I read in Spanish. If I don’t understand what a word means in Spanish I look at it and see if it looks like any word in English and usually it does so I get a general idea of what the word means. So I do believe that cognates are a good tool to teach Spanish. As for the article I think that the strategies discussed might sound like common sense like “reading out loud” but I think sometimes the most common sense strategies are the best.

Blog #4

1. What are the most common ways that you have experienced listening and reading comprehension as a learner in FL classes?  Please identify and evaluate the approaches or techniques that were used most often, explaining any difficulties you experienced with listening or reading comprehension. In your critique, make sure you reference the Omaggio text.

I have not have had many foreign language classes threw my educational carrier but in the few that I have taken I have seen a similar trend. In all of my classes there has been a lot of “teacher talk” I like this approach because it makes the student fill like they are part of a real conversation in the targeted language. I personally liked this approach because it made the class open for conversation but I also know that most of my other classmates did not like this approach and one of the reasons was that the teacher was talking too slow and that would make the class very boring for them and that is one of the down falls of this approach like Omaggio says that “it consists of a simplified code, characterized by slower, more carful articulation” so for a native speaker this approach might not be the best one. Another way I saw listening and reading comprehension in my foreign language classes was by students doing “Oral presentation of a written text” unlike “teacher talk” this approach involved students more because the students are the ones that had to write the text that they are going to present to the class. I like this approach because it gives time to the student to think and practice what they are going to present to the class before they have to. That is a good idea because if students don’t get that chance to write something down and the teachers just puts them on the spot most students will just freeze and will have a very hard time saying what they want to say in Spanish. And finally the most important reason why this approach is important for foreign language students is because it involves both writing and speaking the two most important things a foreign language student needs to learn in order communicate in the targeted language that they are studying which is the goal of the class in the first place.

2.  What strategies have you used for listening and reading comprehension that you think might be helpful for your students? What strategies did you use that you would not recommend?

Some of the listening comprehensions strategies that I think might be helpful for my students is the use of multimedia software. Like Omaggio says multimedia can be used to bring authentic material to the classroom. For example if in my class I am teaching the student about day of the dead I could use multi media to show them a video of the day of the dead or could even make it more interactive by asking a native speaker in his native country to video call us and explain to my students what day of the dead is. An example of reading using multi media is giving my students a newspaper article of a Spanish speaking country about the day of the dead. This way my students are exposed to readings made for native speaking people. I have not use a lot of strategies yet because most of the time I just help my CT but one of the strategies that my CT uses that I would not recommend other teachers to do is give the students a text to read in Spanish and have the translation on the back. Most of the students will not even look at the Spanish and just go strait to the English side. this defeats the purpose of the class.