Franchesca

Conversation, a very natural way of communicating, is one of the many difficult obstacles in acquiring proficiency in a second language for our students. Both August and Snow, authors from __Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners__, agreed on this as well as many other points regarding the literacy development of language-minority students. The only difference I found was in the presentation; August wrote a very detailed, procedural explanation of research while Snow mainly discussed the findings found in the available research. One of the common findings in both readings was that language-minority students were able to decode well, but struggled with reading comprehension; this was not surprising to me. In my teaching experience more than 80% of my students were language-minority students and as I tested their skills in reading, decoding was never a large obstacle, but remembering and interpreting the correct information was difficult. Although, each author found that societal factors do not play a part in literacy development. On this point I agree partially. I do not believe that your own cultural norms might not prevent you from understanding or remembering text in another language, but I do believe not being truly immersed in the culture of the language you are trying to comprehend can delay deeper understanding of the literature. Currently I am teaching fifth grade and the text at this level has become complex and students are expected to determine the theme of pieces and analyze characters. If you do not have a grasp on the culture you might have difficulty understanding the figurative language presented in text that is needed to be able to comprehend. That confusion could lead to students either taking the text too literal or not focusing on what is important because the expressions or wording. Transferring was another aspect of the findings. In early development stages of literacy I can easily see how trying to learn new language that contains a similar alphabet and cognates might be an advantage. However, like the findings indicated it can become negative as well. I have seen students who cannot get away from the phonemic sounds of their native language in their spelling and decoding. Also these same students tend to be losing proficiency in their native language or tend to be the students who were not proficient in their native languages. Bilingual education was another topic discussed by the authors. Students who participated in that type of instruction were more successful in acquiring a second language. That was not shocking at all. Instruction for language-minority students is much more explicit and focused on developing the new language while still being taught the same learning strategies as their monolingual peers. All of the above findings really depend on the factors of the each individual. The authors found that socio-economic status, experience during immigration, and intelligence make an impact on how one acquires a language. I really feel like this issue will not have one exact answer because of this very reason. We as human are all very different and trying to find a one-size fits all way to approach such differences will never be truly successful.