Gibbons - Ch 5 by Jenna Fudge

I found this chapter Reading in a Second Language to be very informative. I agree with the idea that in order to gain understanding from a text it takes all three kinds of knowledge: semantic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and graphophonic knowledge. The author proved this with the three paragraphs all missing a word. I was able to figure out the missing word based on my semantic knowledge, syntactic knowledge, and graphophonic knowledge.

I also thought it was interesting that the knowledge of the content/topic and the knowledge of the kind of genre are also important when reading a text. I have learned this before but this chapter reinforced this for me by providing many examples.

I found the four components of literary success to be new ideas for me and I think they are very important. Reading as a code breaker, reading as a text participant, reading as a text user, and reading as a text analyst are all important to strategies to teach students. Although each individual strategy is important these should all be used together in order for students to achieve literary success.

I thought this chapter also contained many important different kinds of activities to use with ESL students. I noticed that most of these activities can be used with mainstream students as well. I plan on using them in my field placement this semester and also in my future classroom. I feel that this chapter contained much useful information about how to teach reading skills to ESL students and mainstream students as well.