Reading and re-reading L2-texts by young learners

Heidemarie Sarter (Institut für Anglistik, Universität Potsdam, Deutschland)

Email: sarter@rz.uni-potsdam.de

 

ABSTRACT:

This presentation will concentrate on reading strategies of young learners growing up in a multilingual, non-German speaking society, having acquired German in a German school and using it as a daily means of communication within the school context. Reading a text and understanding its meaning will be shown as interacting, but not necessarily identical processes. For many students, focus on form can be identified as the first strategy for exploring the framework of the meaning. Unknown cultural experiences and daily routine do not inhibit the willingness and the capacities of reading (aloud) the unknown text and its words, whereas having understood the framework of meaning of the text might harm the correctness of reading (form).

The presentation is based on a longitudinal study of 16 bi- and multilingual children acquiring German in an immersion programme in a South African context. The results show their reading competences and strategies of acquiring understanding in grade 2.