One of the things that I have found the most interesting to read in Multiple Texts, Multiple Voices is the role that predictions play on reading. The authors of this text provide an article from the newspaper and they take out a few words and replace them with blanks. The authors then ask readers to fill in the blanks, “Readers are asked to fill in the blanks with single words that are appropriate to the meaning they construct from the passage” (Dornan, Rosen, & Wilson, 1997, p. 27).They argue than just knowing the context of the newspaper article enables readers to fill in the missing words. To be able to fill in the blanks readers most posses meta-knowledge relating to the article, “To be able to fill in the blanks successfully, the reader must have knowledge of the syntactic structure of English, an understanding of the morphological system, appropriate vocabulary to express the notion suggested by the context of the article, and an understanding of the semantics and the meaning of a passage” … (Dornan et al., 1997, pg. 28).
It is incredible how much we know about our first language without actually realizing it. We know how to put a sentence together. At the same time there are a lot of things that we do not know about our first language becomes it is just kind of innate. As I was taking a linguistics class at the University of New Mexico I realized how much people didn’t know about their first language, English. My first language is Spanish, therefore I learned English as my second language in school. When I took this linguistics class I was surprised at how many people did not know what a prepositional phrase is or something simple like an adverb, or what a dependent clause is or an independent one. They didn’t know things like how many past tenses there are in English or how many future tenses there were. There were just so many things that I realized that native speakers did not know about English. Then I stopped a bit to think about it and I realized that I did not know all of these answers for the Spanish language. I know there are fourteen tenses in Spanish, but I would not be able to name them all.
I had a similar experience to yours in English classes at UNM. People had no idea where commas went, what an exclamatory sentence was, or even if they had subject verb agreement within their sentences. These kinds of things were pounded into my brain from very early on, so I have a somewhat solid hold on them. It is interesting how we are able to fill in blanks by not really thinking about it. Our brains have been taught how to function within our primary Discourses and therefore need little hard thought to form sentences that are correct.
ReplyDeleteOur first language develops as a primary discourse. Studying the structure and use of the language is a secondary discourse. I believe that meta- knowledge allows us to make those connections, just as it does for filling in the blanks in the newspaper article.
ReplyDeleteWow I never really gave my first language any thought. As I looked at the questions you asked in your entry, I felt a bit embarrassed that I didn’t know all of the answers, I mean I know most of them but there are a few that I definitely don't know.
ReplyDeleteI like to do prediction activities before we do readings. I think that they really help to get the students interested in what will be read. For instance, if we are going to do a geography lesson, it is fun to see who can find countries on the map. By the way, I believe that you are discussing a different type of prediction, one that involves the acutal reading process, but I just wanted to share this. :)
ReplyDeleteI too have had this insight about my first language. Why do you think that is? I think that we put to much importance and emphasis on certain parts of language and not enough on others. For example, when we are in elementary school, we focus on how to sound out words and reading orally. I can remember being in high school taking a honors English class and having too look up what an adverb was! Shouldn't that be instilled in our brains at that point?
ReplyDelete