Foreign language text

The text I chose was a French book called, Monsieur le Prèsident Scèenes de la vie politique (2005-2011). I initially chose it because it had a picture to go along with the title on the cover of the book. I know what Nicholas Sarkozy looks like so I figured the book must be about him and his presidency. Once I opened to book, I was only able to make sense out of the text by looking for the French cognates. There weren’t many so consequently the text was still very foreign to me (no pun intended). In order to have any real meaning with the language, I had to scale back the difficulty all the way back to pictures with one-word text underneath them.  This allowed me to match the word to the picture and have a meaning for it. As a teacher, this was a very powerful exercise. Students who are new to the language must have text differentiated for them in order for them to get any meaning out of it. I cannot ask a student who is new to the language to read a grade level text in their new language. The text must be made accessible to them by adding pictures, diagrams, and translations into their language.