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Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Welcome to Growing With Proficiency: The Podcast! Are you a World Language teacher who is looking for ideas, strategies, activities, and inspiration to create a World Language class where you and your students enjoy using the language to learn about the world and each other? Do you want to transform your class into an acquisition-driven instruction space where you intentionally provide a ton of comprehensible input?
If you are, you're in the right place.
Let's start this journey together. Head over to IG, and send me a DM @claudiamelliott to let me know what topics you would like me to cover in an upcoming episode.Join my free Facebook community, Growing With C. Also, check out my blog to start discovering some of these ideas and strategies at growingwithproficiency.com
Growing With Proficiency The Podcast
Episode 209: How to Teach Reading and Writing Skills in the World Language Classroom: A Conversation with Dr. Lara Bryfonski
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We all want our students to acquire the language. We also want them to read it and, eventually, write it. But are we teaching them how to become readers and writers in the target language?
That’s what I discuss with Dr. Lara Bryfonski in this episode. Lara is a professor at Georgetown University and coauthor of The Art and Science of Language Teaching. Together, we explore why developing literacy and acquiring a language are different processes—and how we can support both in our classrooms.
In this episode, we talk about:
- Why we cannot always assume that students’ reading and writing skills in their first language will transfer automatically to the language we teach.
- How to find out what support students need when they read.
- What to do before, during, and after reading to help students make sense of a text.
- How to show students what they can do when they reach a word or paragraph they don’t understand.
- Why writing needs time for brainstorming, drafting, feedback, and revision.
- How to teach useful peer feedback, even when you have a large class.
One thing surprised me during our conversation: I was already using some of these strategies. Understanding how they help students develop literacy skills made me want to name and model them more intentionally.
If you’ve ever finished reading with your class, looked at the comprehension questions, and wondered, How do I actually help my students become better readers?—grab your cafecito ☕️ and join us. This conversation gave me tools I can use in my next lesson.
MORE FROM GROWING WITH PROFICIENCY
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Gracias for listening. ❤️
Profe de español,
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Profe de español,
Grab this free resource and bring into your classroom 5 fascinating and comprehensible leyendas Latinoamericanas.
Go to growingwithproficiency.com/leyendas to grab your free copy.