Assigned Reading Reflections (Reading/Week11-3/23/2009)

This week’s reading focuses on teaching children literacy skills. It is stated that reading is a complex and interactive process. The importance of early teaching is emphasized. The role of L1 is discussed and it is stated that L1 literacy directly affects L2 literacy. At his point it an important development that a number of country has changed their foreign language policy because a great number of research shows that “early language teaching is essential” for instance in my country children start to learn a foreign language when they are at 4th grade. Two main teaching approaches in early language literacy are discussed in the book. The first one is Part centered approach according to this approach a language should be taught from the small units to the whole. The second one is Socio-psycholinguistic approach. According to this approach students should be taught from the familiar units to unknown units gradually. I learned my L1 by starting from the small units to the whole units. I can remember it clearly it was the first day of the school. Our teacher asked us to draw some lines first, and then he asked us to read and write the alphabet. After that we learned syllables, then words and finally sentences. This system changed long time ago. Students are starting to read and write by sentences. It was really hard for me to learn English. Sometimes your L1 can be a disadvantageous to learn L2. Especially for adult learner this is a big challenge. They want to learn L2 as they learned their L1 and this might not be possible sometimes.