Entry 4: Trying to read French

I choose to get a variety of texts in French.

I began with an adult novel titled "Le Fantome de L'Opera." I am familiar with the play called "Phantom of the Opera," but I was still unable to make sense of the text. The only line I was able to figure out was, "Le fantome de l'Opera a existe," (The phantom of the opera does exist.) There were a selected few words that I could make sense of because they looked and sounded familiar to words in the English language ( opera, existe, fantome, petites.) Although, I found it hard to chuck one sentence at a time to make sense of it because the page was filled with so many unknown words and the book used a lot of commas within a sentence. This was frustrating and I couldn't get myself to read more than a few pages. It is extremely hard to read words, not understand how they are pronounced and try to make sense of the meaning.

I then choose to read "Le Petit Prince." This was a chapter book younger children. I wanted to see if I could get more out of it and if the language would be simple. Once again, I was able to get through the first few pages, and my eyes began to glaze over because it was impossible for me to make sense of this text.

The next text I tried was "Madeleine." I was the most excited about this book because I have read it and I have it at school. I was able to make sense of the story line as I read it because it was familiar to me. I found the picture to be extremely helpful. I was able to use my picture cues to help me decode a variety of words. This text was still frustrating and without having prior knowledge of the story I would have been completely lost. I ended up getting the English version and reading the texts side by side to make meaning out of it.

The last story I tried to read was a picture book called, "je suis ton petit ours." This story line was extremely simple and I was able to understand it because the language was very repetitive and the picture cues aided to the new word on the page. This story was also less intimidating.

I can't imagine being told to read a book without knowledge of the letters and symbols and without having any background knowledge of how the word sound. I was able to understand the story line of the picture book, but without the pictures I would have been completely lost.

I ended up finding a kids dictionary (with pictures) to help me make sense of some of the French language. I was able to read and understand quite a few words. This was the easiest because I was working with one word at a time and there was a picture next to it. As I read each word I was able to find many similarities between English and French. For example: monnaie-money, locomotive-train, insectes-insect, bebe-baby, auto-car...)

Strategies I used to try and decode and understand an unknown language:
1. Look for familiar words.
2. Look at punctuation to try to gain meaning.
3. Use picture clues to decode text.
4. Use a children's picture dictionary to make sense of a new text.
5. Find an English version of the same text and read them side by side to gain meaning.

I don't feel like I comprehended any of the texts, but I was able to guess what it was trying to say. This activity reminds me of the class activity where we were trying to learn a new alphabet and apply it to reading. Both of these activities reminded me how hard it is to learn a new language and how frustrating it can be if you are not given the appropriate tools to be successful.