Reading #4 - "Reading Matters..." (Tennant, 2012)

Encouraging reading in an L2 is very important for increasing fluency level.  As an Anglophone teaching French, it is very important for me to engage in professional development activities to increase my own fluency level.  I agree with the author’s point that decoding text becomes near to impossible when an L2 learner has so many words and meanings that they cannot make sense of.  As a professional I should engage more in reading in my L2, however, there are points when I too will ‘hit a wall’ and reading will not be as enjoyable as it is in my native language. 

In my practicum classroom reading was limited to French text book passages that were generally outdated and irrelevant to the students.  I envision trying to use more authentic pieces of French material (i.e. French daily newspapers, magazines, ads) in the classroom to spark interest in the reading the text so that my students will be more motivated to ‘decode’ and ‘find meanings’.