Blog Week 2 - Entry 5

This week, for Blog Entry 5, we were to review 2 children’s books and explain which components of the books might affect an ELL’s comprehension because of cultural aspects. The two books I chose are Dr.Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas and the second book I chose is There’s a Fly on my Toast, which is a compilation of poems written by Justin Matott.

I will begin with There’s a Fly on my Toast. The reason I chose this book is because my daughter and I had the opportunity to meet the illustrator of the book, John Woods, a couple of years ago, and we fell in love with the poems in this book. Most of the poems are silly and make us laugh, but many of them also deal with relatable childhood occurances…at least those you can expect to see in our country! One of our favorites is called Jello’s in my Nose and it is about a girl laughing so hard Jello comes out of her nose. Another one that makes us laugh is called My Feet Sure Stink. To an ELL learner, a book full of poems like this would be fairly difficult to understand. First of all, many of the words used in a lot of the poems are nicknames for things, and for an ELL who is just learning basic English words, these would make comprehension nearly impossible. One way to help with the nicknames would be to discuss beforehand what these words mean or what they are related to. Vocabulary in general would also hinder an ELL’s comprehension. There are many words in these poems that are difficult and are not words that we see every day. For instance, in the poem Why do I Snort When I Laugh, there are the words chortle, giggle, snickering and of course snort. While a fluent English speaking student would have an easy time understanding that all of these words relate to laughing, an ELL would not. Again, before reading a poem like this, I would maybe pair the ELL student with a fluent English speaking student and have them brainstorm and write down other words for laugh. I would then have them get a thesaurus and look up other words for laugh, maybe having them act out the different types of laughing. Finally I would go over the specific words in the poem that I felt would not be understood by the ELL, so as to build background knowledge before reading. A third problem that may arise for ELL’s when reading this book is much of the subject matter is very “American.” For instance, one of the poems is called Cheeseburgers, and while many people around the world know what a cheeseburger is, not all people do, and if a child comes from a place where they have never eaten or seen one, the poem would make more sense. Before having a student read a poem like this, I would introduce what a cheeseburger is, even going so far as to show them a video of what one is. Another problem ELL’s would have with this book is that the rhyming may make the subject of each poem difficult to understand. As we know, poems that rhyme do not always make complete sense because the author will use a word simply because it rhymes not always interested in whether it fits with the topic. This could be very confusing for an ELL student. I would try to explain and discuss the reasoning for this with the ELL student before having them read a book like this.

The second book I chose is How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The first component that might affect comprehension is the idea of Christmas. I had a student from Africa that truly had no clue what Christmas was, let alone all the aspects of Christmas. So of course, for a student like this, I would find a very simple picture book that helped explain what Christmas was to build some background knowledge, and I would maybe even involve the class and have everyone talk about what holidays they celebrate and what they involve. It would also help an ELL student to understand why the Grinch dresses in the Red Suit and her puts antlers on the dog and uses a sled. Santa is a big idea all on its own, so it would be important for an ELL who does not know about Christmas to know who Santa is. Vocabulary would be another challenge for an ELL with this book, and I would definitely introduce and discuss difficult or out-of-the-ordinary words to them beforehand. The fact that the book is somewhat of a tall tale may also affect comprehension, so explaining to an ELL what a tall tale is and how this story while based on real ideas is not completely realistic would be very beneficial.

After reading these two books and reviewing how they may be difficult for ELL’s to comprehend, I now better understand how I can help prepare my ELL’s for reading material that may have cultural aspects which make it more difficult. Students must be given as many tools as possible to help them succeed!!