MY PERSONAL REFLECTION

Reading in the Secondary Spanish Classroom

As I completely my field observation, I decided to focus in on two specific Spanish
classes and their reading activities that they completed. One of the first things that I
noticed was that more reading activities were emphasized in the upper level courses such
as Spanish IV and AP Spanish. The problem is that students in the lower level may not have
the necessary vocabulary to read authentic texts like those students in higher-level classes.
As a future teacher in this field, I am going to ensure that my students learn the proper
vocabulary and literacy skills to not only to be able to enjoy the process of reading itself,
but to also enjoy learning about foreign cultures through authentic sources and Spanish
language texts.
The teacher that I observed is a phenomenal educator, and is quite frankly the
inspiration that pushed me to pursue Spanish, but the reading strategies employed in the
classroom were not necessarily the most effective. In this case, I am critiquing the work
and process, not the educator herself. The big unit that Spanish IV was completing was
reading a famous Mexican short story, El gato de Svres. This is a type of story referred to
as humorismo, which is a genre of humor in Spanish language literature. As I circled the
room, the students were completing a packet with the story and reading exercises. I
honestly found it less than appealing that the students were working on packets for this
story instead of completing a different sort of activity. The process followed the following
model: the students would complete preliminary vocabulary exercises by looking up
definitions in a dictionary or a glossary. Then, they would dive into the story and translate
the text using the vocabulary that they learned and also with the aid of a dictionary.
Following reading, the class would complete comprehension questions and review
everything together as a class. Although this process may be the easiest, I felt as if this
could not gauge individual student understanding, and not to mention, the engagement
level of the learners was far from desirable. Students completed what they needed to
complete, but they were not enjoying what they were doing. It did not seem like they were
having fun learning from the text. If I could change the approach of this lesson, I would
have students break up into groups and define vocabulary throughout the story. I would
give them the creative license to think of a method to teach the class their own target
vocabulary. This would allow the students to be actively involved in the learning, and
additionally, would allow them to remember more information. Research shows that
students that teach a concept are more likely to understand and remember the topic.
In AP Spanish, students were completing the classic novel Don Quixote. The
approach to reading this text was quite interesting. In reality, the class did not read the
true novel itself (which can be very difficult and dense), but actually read a comic adapted
to the story itself. I feel like this was a very useful accommodation to help students
comprehend the story better using visual stimuli, however I did not like the fact that the
learners did not have the opportunity to read the authentic text by Cervantes. Not to
mention, students simply sat in groups with dictionaries and translated what they read. If I
could change the process myself, I would have the students first read the authentic text
with tons of vocabulary and translation support. Of course, this work is going to be difficult
to read, but it is a keystone of Spanish literature and should at least be attempted. After
reading the dense authentic text, then we could move to the comic to help reinforce
portions of the story that were not completely understood.
Based on previous experience with cloze procedures, I elected to use the Flesch-
Kincaid formula to calculate the grade level of the short story El gato de Svres because it
has given me the most accurate results. After completing the mathematical formula, I
received a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 10.3. With this result, it is more than appropriate
to have the students read this selection in a Spanish IV class. Normally, students at this
level are in eleventh grade, making this Mexican work fitting and easy to adapt for those
students with reading disability.
I had the opportunity to talk with the teacher about students with reading
comprehension issues. Obviously, this is a problem that is encountered with texts in
English, so providing students with these texts in a foreign language makes reading that
much more difficult. So often, students will immediately give up reading simply because
they cannot translate or understand what the author is trying to convey due to unknown
Spanish vocabulary, or simply the variation of syntax between the English and Spanish
languages. Another obstacle that gets in the way is pronunciation. Learners are always
afraid of making mistakes in a foreign language, so the fear of mispronouncing a word
always gets in the way of students actually relaxing and enjoying the activity of reading in a
foreign language.
This observation experience has provided me with a lot more insight in regard to
the field of reading. More often than not, we focus on oral proficiency in a foreign language.
Upon completing this fieldwork, I have been reminded that although oral proficiency is
crucial in the language classroom, one cannot ignore the importance of literacy and
fostering the love of reading to learn through authentic cultural texts. This revelation is
one that I will take with me throughout my entire teaching career.