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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