How to Teach Reading in Spanish

Video Transcript

"Buenos dias. My name is Priscilla Monserrate-Sanders and I'm the founder of the Ole School. If you would like to teach someone to read Spanish, there's several steps you can take to get you started. First, begin with simple visuals, such as flash cards. Or, something even more interactive, such as this puzzle set which has specific images that correspond to specific letters and words, which allows the learner to slow down and absorb the information that they're looking at. The next step would be to probably begin some simple, short stories which are in bilingual books, such as this one by Eric Carle. Many of the most popular children's books are offered in both languages, where the sentences are brief enough to allow the learner to hone in on the specific verbs and nouns that are being addressed in the images. As that occurs, you might progress to some books that are all in Spanish. The importance of reading simple stories in all Spanish is that it allows the child or adult learner to slow down by coming across words that are unfamiliar. What one will do is naturally pick up a dictionary, or a Spanish-English dictionary and look for the translations. And this entire process of slowing down, looking at multiple resources and tools only reinforces what one is trying to learn. Then, another very handy tool are any songs, nursery rhymes that are common in the Latin American culture, or even in American culture that have been translated, that can be found in the series offered by Jose Luis Orosco. One of my favorites is The Colores, which offers a host of popular children songs that includes hand play and body movements to accompany the music. It includes the notes, if you play an instrument, and a translation as well as ideas for how to convey the songs through movements, body movements, finger play and games. And all of this only helps to internalize the language and increase vocabulary, so that when the child goes to read the words will come to them much faster."