Blog Entry #4 Decoding Unfamilar Texts

Putting myself in someone else's shoes was the objective today. French is a language that I am not familiar with so I began by searching online for text that was at the proficient level. After reading looking at this text the only thing that I could somewhat understand was that there was conversation going on, in which people were asking questions. I have no idea what the questions were about or who was even asking them. Truthfully just looking at the text and seeing that it was something that I could no read, I felt discouraged and gave up easily. Since this text was online I was able to transfer it into Bing translator. This is what the first paragraph translated into.

"Une femme s'agite dans l'artère infréquentée. Elle pénètre  dans sa voiture et s'en extirpe à plusieurs reprises.  Le surprenant agissement se met en place petit à petit. Lorsque la porte se referme bruyamment, un clebs se manifeste , s' ébat puis décampe. Inquiétés par le barouf, des groupes de volatiles s'éparpillent sur les toitures."

"A woman jiggles in the infrequentee artery. She gets into his car and was pulled on several occasions. The surprising action takes place gradually. When the door closes loudly, a cleb manifests, to frolic and peevish. Worried by the barouf, groups of birds scatter on the roofs."

This is definitely not a perfect translation, but at least I was able to make some sense of the text.

http://e-stories.org/read-stories.php?&sto=6085


The text that I was finally able to understand was Boucles d' or et les Trois Ouors (Goldie Locks and the Three Bears). THe only reason I was able to understand the text was because I was familaur with the story and the source provide some pictures to go along with it. Otherwise I would say that I probably would not have figured out what the text said. This website also provides that translation and it will read the text to you. LOVE that!

Here is the website:
http://www.thefrenchexperiment.com/stories/goldilocks/

Below is an exert from the website.

Il était une fois trois ours: un papa ours, une maman ours et un bébé ours. Ils habitaient tous ensemble dans une maison jaune au milieu d'une grande forêt. 

translation ▼

Once upon a time there were three bears: A father bear, a mother bear and a little bear. They lived all together in a yellow house in the middle of a big forest.

As a teacher I think it is often easy to forget how hard it is to learn and understand a new language. Teachers need to pre-teach vocabulary, build background knowledge and possibly provide some of the content(Vocab/key words) in the students native language to help them transfer and make connections to the text they are going to read. 

Strategies

translator
looking for cognates
pictures
oral presentation
looking at punctuation