Tell To Teach
Step three is literacy. We use reading in two ways. The first source of reading will be a rendering of the story we did the day before, usually about half a page long. By looking at the story in written form, the brain has a chance to cement more strongly what it learned the day before. This is a powerful tool for all learners, but specifically for the visual, especially if we combine the written story with simple illustrations, or if we have the students illustrate the written story. As we cover the totality of our target vocabulary, we will be reading more short stories like this, until we get to read the original story that we chose for our target. In the next section you will see a sample of how I chose and adapted a simple story, and then wrote a series of mini-stories to use the vocabulary we learned step by step.
After the first lesson with the new vocabulary and making up of a story, I bring in writing the same story for the class to read. Even though the students are so familiar with their own story, it will be a completely new experience for them.
They feel successful. And truly, as Susie Gross always says, “Nothing motivates like success.” In this way, reading becomes a discovery and they feel curious and engaged. It also becomes a way of assessing their comprehension.
Again, from Carol Gaab, regarding this important step:
“Beginning students, who are in the process of learning new vocabulary, are generally led through the reading process, as the teacher reads aloud in the Target Language and then has students chorally decode the meaning into their native language. The idea is not to translate; rather it is to help students link the written word to the spoken work and then link meaning to that word. Decoding the text allows the teacher to evaluate just how well students have internalized the target language structures.”
Later on, it is advisable to add small nuances that will make it a little more advanced. This can be just the use of the conjunction “and,” which sometimes is overlooked, or a cognate (a word that looks the same in both languages, such as “restaurant”). In his Comprehensible Input Hypothesis, Stephen Krashen states that the idea is to teach CI+1, which means we will use all the Comprehensible Input they are mastering plus one slightly more advanced particle, so that they can make sense of that last bit through the context in the reading.
This theory is in accordance with Steiner’s idea of offering reading that doesn’t necessarily contain only well-known vocabulary, such as was mentioned earlier:
“Do not worry about lack of comprehension, even of whole sentences; your expression and intonation, plus your hearer’s urge to sense meaning open up one half of what you say; and, given this, time will open up the other. Intonation is for children, as for the Chinese and for seasoned globe-trotters, the half of language. Have trust in time, the great code-breaker, time and the context.”23
We usually read these stories together, so that they can hear the right intonation and pronunciation. Sometimes we ask a student to read out loud, sometimes the teachers reads out loud, and sometimes we let them all read silently on their own. Make sure the students understand the written story by either asking them to give the gist of it in English, asking for direct translation of one or two key phrases, etc. While doing these readings, it is a good moment to stop and explain grammar points briefly, as stated before when we spoke about “pop-up grammar,” so that grammar is first tied to context and later understood in its more abstract form.
However, this is just one use of reading. The other use of reading is to offer the students the opportunity of reading just for pleasure. This is also a very important part of our teaching, since by bringing real literature to them they can see true language at work and can begin to train their mind to overcome the need to understand every single word, but rather to extract the main gist of a paragraph and maybe guess the meaning of key words that appear repeatedly. This will give them more freedom and a better familiarity with the language, not so speak about the sense of accomplishment. It is highly recommended that we build a carefully selected library of children’s books in the target language, beginning with the very simple ones up to the level of our most advanced students, and give them a weekly or bi-weekly opportunity to sit comfortably and just read for their enjoyment, for what is called within the TPRS community Free Voluntary Reading. You can make it accessible to them by having it in their own classroom. Books with beautiful illustrations are the best choice, and especially stories that they already know. We also promote reading by bringing cultural readings regarding some special holiday in the country of our target language, or a historical figure, etc. With upper level students we can also write up a simplified version (adapted to their skill level) of any current events, or even bring the news directly.
Dr. Stephen Krashen is a big advocate for reading as one of the most important tools in language acquisition. He says reading "is the most powerful tool we have in language education, first and second."
According to research by Dr. Stephen Krashen, 70% of adult lexicon is acquired via reading. This concept is also in accordance to Steiner’s general indications in Practical Advice to Teachers, Lecture 9.
Back to the teaching method: This whole process, from establishing meaning to the reading of the mini-story, takes at least two days. One way to do this would be to spend Day One on Steps 1 and 2, and then the Day 2 for Step 3, Reading. Recently some teachers are advocating for taking much longer with each step, sometimes as long as two weeks for the whole process. It is a matter of mastering the skills, as with any art; the most important point here is that the teacher feels confident and comfortable with the flow.
By repeating this process with sets of two to three structures, we will be preparing the class for the reading of our final target story, which now can be about something other than their class-made stories. This longer story is our original target, from which we have derived all the structures that we have taught. As we said before, this can be a cultural reading, a real story that they know (like a fairy tale or a legend, etc.), or just a story written by their teacher.
22 Kiersch, Johannes, page 57
23 Rudolf Steiner, The Education of the Child, 1907