I am enjoying the discussion.

 

While my experience is anecdotal, it is far more significant to me than
theories and research, because I needed to learn so I could progress with my
work.  I had a fulfilling 27 months on the eastern-most tip of Crimea and my
success was in part, due to the fact that my tutor used a variety of
approaches to  help me move forward.  

 

When I was "dropped" into Ukraine and eager to begin my business
development/facilitator projects I needed to learn to read and write Russian
very quickly.  Initially, like the Chinese student, I found myself
overwhelmed and having nightmares.  Once I changed my focus from deciphering
the words on the printed page and negotiating through the meaning of every
word and instead took a more holistic approach, my skills improved
substantially.  Hearing the spoken language, listening to how sentences flow
and discovering patterns in the spoken word, I became far more adept at
using prediction and contextual clues to improve my ability to read and
write.  I was grateful to have television because I could follow the basic
plotlines and absorb many nuances of language in a way that did not produce
the performance anxiety that comes from reading and decoding under the eye
of a tutor or coach.   I imagine given the systems of education generally
used in Chinese systems, the student mentioned earlier would be even more
inclined to suffer from performance anxiety than would those of us brought
up attending US schools!)

 

My immersion into Spanish was also accelerated once I began to find ways to
simply hear the language rather than deciphering individual words.  (I lived
in Spain for about ten years total and arrived with only a very small
vocabulary and extremely limited experience with hearing the language.) 

 

 

Life is good.

 

Virginia J. Pulver, AmeriCorps*VISTA

Recruiting Consultant, NM Coalition for Literacy

3209-B Mercantile Court, Santa Fe NM    87507

virginia at nmcl.org

 

YOU can become a volunteer adult literacy tutor or 

refer adult learners for FREE 1-1 tutoring!

1-800-233-7587  

Visit our Website:  <http://www.nmcl.org/> www.nmcl.org

 

From: professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:professionaldevelopment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Steve
Kaufmann
Sent: Friday, September 26, 2008 11:43 AM
To: The Adult Literacy Professional Development Discussion List
Subject: [ProfessionalDevelopment 2558] Re: The "Decoding" of words,
sentences, and paragraphs

 

Of course the situation of someone like this Chinese student is different. I
was referring to students at an earlier stage of learning a language. For
your student I would recommend that he spend a lot of time listening to
recordings of his lectures or recordings of material on related subjects.
Even asking native speakers fellow students to record their own essays or
writing, or even to talk to each other in these subjects would help. This
student then needs to spend a lot of time listening.. Listening creates the
rhythm that often brings the meaning alive. He also probably needs to
improve his vocabulary of words and phrases. He needs to force feed himself
the exposure that he has not had.

On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Bonnie Odiorne
<bonniesophia at sbcglobal.net> wrote:


What you say works for most types of reading, but not academic--maybe even
literary--reading,  where the ways the words connect are crucial, and an
overall idea may not be sufficient. I have a Chinese student now under
considerable stress because he cannot make the jump quickly enough to
academic language to understand the textbook material, let alone the
professor. Any tutoring he gets from me in reading strategies, finding the
important concepts, and explaining the meaning of the words in paraphrase,
giving the pronunciation in the hope that when his professor uses it he can
understand it, doesn't really seem to help the fundamental problem: he needs
more time to assimilate the language. As someone has said, depending on
sight words, context clues et al. to "guess" the most likely meaning of a
sentence or paragraph can only take one so far, and some of that
misperception of connection, grammar and syntax can be crucial to meaning.
But tell that to the young man who's having nightmares, and is so tired he
can barely stay awake.

Bonnie Odiorne, Ph.D.

Director, Writing Center, Adjunct Professor

Post University, Waterbury, CT

bonnisophia at sbcglobal.net

-


-- 
Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com
1-604-922-8514

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