I love asking for student feedback. So after our classes read El Escape Cubano or El Capibara Con Botas I asked for student feedback using google forms. Both of these books include many cognates, but I also wanted students to hear the correct pronunciation of the words, so we listened to the audiobooks. The main comment was that students could hear the proper pronunciation but also the tone of the reader also helped their comprehension. I’ll be interested in seeing how this affects if more students will use the audiobooks during our FVR time this year. See full student responses here.

Then I asked students  to respond to a Krashen quote with their experience. The prompt was: “Stephen Krashen says that “Picking up word meaning by reading is 10 times faster than intensive vocabulary instruction”. Respond to your experience so far in picking up words through reading.” The students responses are rather enlightening…. The following are some of the more common responses, but you can read them all here (Krashen responses).

 “I learned more words and it was less stressful than memorizing vocab lists.”

“I did pick up a lot more words than I think I would of just reading them off a list.”

“I like reading better because since it was used in text it was easier to remember the Spanish words then have a vocab list.”

“Reading helps because you see the words used in context so its easier to learn the meaning.”

“This seems to be true I learned a lot of new vocab in a short amount of time that we spent reading this.”

“It is a lot faster and you remember them better”

“I think that that is true because last year when we would learn things from a list made it a bit harder to learn and now learning from just listening and reading Spanish is more beneficial.”

“I agree to what Krashen says. In this class, so far this year, I have learned so much and it seems like a more natural and effective way of learning a language.”

“It made it easier to read the book because I would understand what it meant and if I did not understand words surrounding that word I could use context clues and what that word meant to help me understand it.”

“They repeated a lot which helped me understand what they meant.”

“Reading, in my opinion, is easier to learn from than studying a list of words because you have to read the words, translate, and identify any new words. Reading in another language helps you to comprehend the meaning of the words better.”

“I agree with what he said because I was able to understand and pick up what the words mean better by reading rather than looking off a vocabulary list.”

“It helped me understand the words that I hadn’t heard before when they were repeated in the book.”

“I feel like have learned more from reading than by doing vocab sheets.”

“I think I have picked up words and they will stick with me more long term than studying a list.”

“I picked up a couple new words reading because i have to comprehend them to understand the story”