Chapter 5: Reading in A Second Language

Chapter 5 focuses mainly on students who are reading English as a second language and how difficult it is for them. It then states different activities for them to participate in in order for them to feel apart of the class. One particular point Gibbons brought up which I have never thought of was how ESL students/people feel when they are in an English speaking setting. He mentions that its like walking into a conversation without having any personal or background knowledge about the subject; ". . . you are effectively robbed of the ability to make use of a key resource for reading: what you already know: (Gibbons, 78). At the school I am placed they have a Chinese teacher who comes in a few times a week to teach Chinese. However, she doesn't know really how to converse with the other teachers because she doesn't have enough background knowledge of what they may be talking about. Her responses do not always correlate to what is being said which shows she does not understand the other communicator. I can relate to how she may feel because I traveled around Europe last Spring while studying abroad and while visiting Slovenia I didn't know one word they said, however when my friend introduced me to them they were so friendly and tried to speak in English so I could understand. The Slovenians helped me with some background knowledge on where we would be going and what to say to people so I would not feel out of place. In France, on the other hand, they did not want to speak English and forced you to feel completely out of the loop.
Looking at the different type of activities the students can do to help their background knowledge I came across one in particular with a good point to it. The activity is Storytelling in the Mother Tongue. This is when they first read it in their first language then read it in English so they know what is going on and they are able to correlate certain words with each other. This could also help them build their English vocabulary.