Entry #4 Choose a text in a language that you are not familiar with, at a level at which you should be proficient (an adult publication). Read it. Find a way to make meaning. Do whatever you have to do to make this text comprehensible. Now scale back the difficulty of the text. How far back do you have to go until you understand what you are reading? What did you do to make meaning? Make a list of strategies that you used. What are the implications to teaching?

After searching online, I was able to find some articles in Italian. I found one in particular about Italian families. I have never been exposed to Italian, but I have heard that it is similar to Spanish so I was hoping to be able to make some connections.  Unfortunately this was not the case.  I did not even make it through the first sentence without feeling frustrated. I think my Spanish background might potentially help me with pronunciation, but certainly not comprehension. My next approach was to simply skim and scan the text looking for any words that looked familiar, and to my surprise, this helped. I came across the word amore and mondo several times in the text. Then I used my cognates to help me make meaning of other words like vita (life) and nova (new). My knowledge of English actually proved to be more beneficial to me than Spanish. English helped me decode the following words divino, atmosfera, famosi, incredibili.  I was so relieved when I came across English names like Roberto and words such as New York and Boston.  Even though I was able to make out several words here and there, I was not able to make any solid meaning of the text. Unfortunately when you only understand one word in the entire sentence it’s very difficult to know what is being said about it. The more I looked at the text the more the mere sight of it made me feel dizzy and frustrated. Being a literate individual added to my frustration and caused me to give up easily. I thought I would be relieved to go down to an easier text, (one written for kids and with pictures) but to my surprise it was only slightly easier to make meaning from. The text was again in Italian but this time I actually recognized fewer words. The text appeared to be about rabbits and it appeared to be fiction since the rabbits were standing on two legs and were wearing clothing. The fact that there was less text on the pages made it seem more doable and less overwhelming. Since most of the words were unfamiliar to me I relied heavily on the pictures, however there were only pictures on every other page. From what I gathered the story was about a rabbit who found a carrot and then a cabbage. He kept finding more and more vegetables and he appeared to be joined by more and more rabbits. In the end, it looked like a gardener had discovered that his garden had been eaten by an animal but maybe was not sure who had caused the harm since the rabbits were hiding behind a plant. The rabbits took off running when they got caught. Since there were not very many cognates besides carote (carrot) in this text I can only guess about the meanings of words that were repeated again and again such as coniglietti, which I guessed was rabbit or rabbits.

What I learned from this experience is how important it is to provide text with pictures to English Language learners. I learned that less text is less overwhelming. I thought that it would be beneficial to provide beginning speakers with picture supports on every page and maybe even comic books or graphic novels that can show action through pictures. I thought it would be neat for them to take both picture and word walks to look for cognates that they may recognize. This experience also made me realize the importance of teaching sight words and allowing ELL’s to identify them in text. Not knowing any small sight words in Italian made it next to impossible for me to make meaning of sentences or even parts of sentences. In addition, I saw firsthand how teaching vocabulary (especially words that will be repeated in a text several times) can also help an ELL anticipate the text.  I can see also how using repeated readings of familiar texts would be less intimidating than starting a new text all the time.