C&D Chpt 5

This chapter talked about literacy in the language classroom. The authors stress the importance of building literacy as reading and writing skills are important to to both the interpretive and presentational modes of language. They also say that teaching reading and writing skills to second language learners can begin as soon as possible as long as the basic skills are there in their first language and students either have the background knowledge needed to understand the text, or the teacher provides sufficient scaffolding. I liked the idea of having students keep some sort of word bank for learning new words. I actually do this myself, although in a much less organized way, but I'll scribble down words that I am unfamiliar with while reading so that I can look them up and try to use them in other contexts. I was also surprised to learn that having students take turns reading allowed wasn't a good activity to use. I always thought that it would help students practice pronounciation, but I suppose it is a waste of time if the students aren't paying attention to the meaning of the words they are reading, but rather just the sounds the letters make.