Reading Longer Target Language Texts

Techniques to support students by making reading challenging and fun!

My 19-year-old daughter has taken Spanish since middle school and has always been something of a reluctant world language student. As I was working on this blog post, she shared her experience reading in Spanish class (which she equated with ‘translating the text’).

“Translating the text was terrible, because the way Spanish is set up is not the way English is set up. Like, you would say ‘the yellow bus’, not ‘the bus yellow’. So if you go through the article word for word, you miss things or it becomes very stilted and confusing. And then, even if I understood the article, I could never answer the questions. Either I didn’t have the vocabulary, or I wasn’t sure enough that I understood the question correctly to be confident in my answer. Reading in Spanish was awful, and I hated it.”

My daughter’s Honduran boyfriend has been more successful in motivating her to learn Spanish than I ever was!

Today my daughter has a Spanish speaking boyfriend, and this has motivated her to build her Spanish proficiency (in ways I never could!) Her current approach to reading is very different from the approach she used in class. “Today, maybe I’ll be reading a group chat and even though I don’t know a lot of the words,I can get the conversation. Like, I know the guy is from Tegucigalpa. And I know it’s the capital. And I know he’s talking with a female coworker who’s complaining that she can’t get her kids to go to bed on time. Like, I understand what I’m reading about, even if I don’t know every word.”

In other words, reading comprehension is complicated! It involves understanding vocabulary and grammar, yes, but there’s more to it than that. Good second language readers also use their judgment to make inferences, monitor their own comprehension, skip unimportant information, ask questions, and accept ambiguity. So, how do we shift from slogging through every word of a text to teaching students reading skills? 

Effective world language reading instruction incorporates several elements.

Element 1:  Explicitly teach students to apply reading strategies when they encounter a challenging text. 

Good readers automatically employ strategies such as rereading, making inferences, accepting ambiguity, and working from known information to build comprehension. Struggling readers often don’t realize they need to employ such strategies; they begin at the first word, read to the end, say ‘I don’t get it,’ and give up. To help these students, we must first become aware of our own strategies as readers and then teach these strategies and give learners time to practice. Read part 1 of this blog post to investigate how to teach reading strategies to world language students.

Element 2: Immerse students in a variety of texts and texts of varying lengths.

“Good second language readers use their judgment to make inferences, monitor their own comprehension, skip unimportant information, ask questions, and accept ambiguity. ”

 If you think about your own reading in a typical work day, quite a lot of it is short, simple texts. This is also true for our students. Incorporating short texts such as advertisements, memes, text messages and headlines into your instructional repertoire mirrors the type of reading learners do in a real target language context. Short, frequent reading instruction does not replace instruction on longer texts, but instead complements and supplements it to infuse reading throughout the classroom experience. For practical ideas about how to incorporate more, shorter texts in your instruction, read part 2 of this blog post.

Element 3: Introduce Vocabulary Effectively

In part 3 of this blog post I share several ideas for introducing vocabulary students will encounter in a text. Incorporating context, giving students a problem-solving task, and providing multiple exposures to the new word are key. These strategies will not only teach students the specific words they need, they will also help students learn the skills to handle unknown words in their reading.

Element 4: Have students use the text to complete a task. 

Instead of ‘read and answer the questions’, ask students to refer repeatedly to a text to accomplish a concrete task. There are several benefits to a task-based reading assignment:

• Examining the task before reading serves as an advanced organizer and a chance to predict what the text may be about

• A well-designed task requires students to return to the text multiple times to predict, test, and clarify their understanding

• The task makes learning ‘visible’ so the teacher can easily assess students’ mastery and can provide additional support if needed

• Tasks can be modified for differentiation using the same text

Here are a few examples of text-based tasks which help students construct meaning from a text.

Text-Based Task Example: Mystery Phrases

Before beginning the text, give students a list of 8-10 “mystery phrases” needed for understanding the reading. You can use phrases with new vocabulary or just key moments in the story. Give students time to work in groups to read and understand each mystery phrase.

Then provide the text, with the mystery phrases blanked out. As students read, they must select the correct mystery phrase for each blank. Correctly completing this exercise requires a concrete understanding of the text, and the teacher can quickly assess students’ comprehension and identify problem areas.

This activity is easy to differentiate for individual students

• Simplify the task by reducing options - separate out the mystery phrases for a portion of the text. The student must still place the phrases correctly, but with fewer variables.

• If a student finishes quickly, ask them to add an adjective to each missing phrase, to provide a transition phrase, or to rewrite the paragraph using a new subject pronoun or verb tense.  

I love doing this activity with graphic novels or texts! For example, I like using this French Comic strip book of Aesop’s Fables. Have students match the morals (the last sentence of each page) with the appropriate drawing for a fun, visual lesson with lots of great vocabulary.    

Text-Based Task Example: An Unexpected Series of Events

Before reading, give students a target language list of 8-10 events that will occur in the story. Have students predict the sequence of these events by numbering them or with a physical sort.

Here’s an example from “Le Petit Nicolas - Un souvenir Qu’On Va Chérir"

• Agnan cries and howls

• Alceste is eating bread and jam in the picture

• Alceste attacks Eudes, but he hits Agnan by accident

• Alceste drops a blob of jelly on his shirt.

• The teacher makes Alceste and Eudes change places

• The teacher punishes everyone

• “Get back in your places!” Shouts the photographer

• The photographer organizes the boys

• We are ready for the photo

• We all want to stand on the risers

“Instead of ‘read and answer the questions’, ask students to refer repeatedly to a text to accomplish a concrete task. ”

Asking students to guess the sequence of story events before they read requires them to make predictions, ask questions, and clarify unknown vocabulary… all before they begin reading.

As a variation of this activity, give students images to sequence, and then have them write a sentence in the target language for each image to create a suggested story sequence before they read.

With either variation, students should keep this document handy as they begin reading so they can correct their predictions based on the actual story events. Kids will be proud of themselves when they predict accurately - but this exercise also reinforces the idea that discovering the “right answer” is a process of constructing understanding based on the text. Ultimately, THAT is our goal for readers!

Text-Based Tasks: Taking it further

Visit my blog post, Using Social Media Quizzes in the world language classroom for more ideas on effective reading instruction.

I’m so thankful my daughter - when properly motivated - figured out how to read in Spanish. With innovative instructional design, we can ensure more of our students get that chance. It takes a good foundation in literacy and every trick in the book!

How do you teach L2 reading? Share in the comments!