Reading with A New Lens

Imagine you are in a foreign country, you want to grab a coffee and read the newspaper. You are familiar with a few words that you have overheard, but reading is difficult. Also, the language does snot use the same letters as English. What could you do?

I tried to read the heading and subheading of this Israeli newspaper. I am familiar with basic words in Hebrew conversation, however, reading is difficult for me. I have an understanding of some of the sounds, but words in adult publications remove the vowel markings. I could read the headline by trying to say the sounds that may be right (many words use the same sounds), however, I am not positive I pronounced the words correctly. I recognize one word (yesterday--maHair).

Now, I am scaling it back a little bit. My daughter has a Hebrew picture book of animals. It is a typical toddler board book with a picture and a word on each page. The words contain vowel markings (which I can remember 50% of the time). However, when I look for these words in a Hebrew story about a girl who sees animals, I can make a slight connection between the two books. However, I cannot read it without mot of the words I am speaking being a guess of pronunciation. To make meaning, I had to rely on picture cues and the few words I knew how to say based on my experiences with hearing words.

As teachers, we have to encourage our ELLs to make connections between what they read, see, and hear. When we are learning how to get to a new place, we go once, but then the following time we can remember a landmark or a street name, but not all. This is that same with language learners. If I was in a classroom learning English, I would need, "...aditional work on English phonemes (and letters) that are not present in the students' native tongue" (Irujo,  N.D). I also think it would be important for teachers to use language throughout the day which they will come across in text.

Irujo, S. (N.D.) What does research tell us about teaching reading to English language learners?
Accessed through http://www.adlit.org/article/19757/