Oral Language and Reading

While searching for foreign language texts for next week’s class, I found my Nepali readers, third and seventh grade textbooks.  Since Nepali uses Devanagari script, for me, reading in Nepali is like learning to read all over again.  I have to remember what sound each symbol makes, blend the sounds into words and then try to recall a vocabulary word that matches the sounds I just produced.  There is something thrilling when I read a whole sentence that makes sense to me!

I also notice how much I draw on my spoken Nepali skills.  Only after I had been speaking (or trying to speak) Nepali for over a year, did I start to learn how to read Nepali.  My speaking skills are still much stronger than my reading skills.  With the help of my EDRG courses, I can now identify my decoding strategies as I read Nepali and how much my oral language skills help make reading easier. Because I have an understanding of Nepali syntax, I have an idea in my head of what word may come next in a sentence.  I find it much easier to check if the characters match that word than to decode each character.  In addition, as I am blending the words together, I try to match the words to vocabulary I know.  I struggle with decoding words I don’t know or can’t remember hearing because I don’t know if I even have the right sounds.  If I had a stronger vocabulary, decoding would be easier and sometimes I can decode a whole sentence, but not understand it because I don’t know enough oral vocabulary.   

My process reading Nepali reminds me of the registers mentioned by Gibbons (2002).  The third grade textbook is easier for me to read because the syntax resembles spoken Nepali.  In the seventh grade textbook, the language more resembles literature.  I did not hear people speak using that vocabulary or syntax, so it is harder to read.