Week 2: The Reader, Mr. Han

1. When one is illiterate, how is he/she behaving?

   Because of her illiteracy and the social settings, as we can see in the movie, Hanna has lived a superficial life without feeling the inner world of human emotion of others and even her own. During the ardent summer with young Michael, Hanna has an argument to which Michael doesn’t intent showing an indifferent attitude toward Michael and gives psychological wounds to Michael sometimes.

   They go on a bike trip to a suburb and drop by an outdoor restaurant. When the waitress gives a menu to Hanna and asks what she’d like to have, she gets annoyed and anxious.

   In the law court, she expresses her belief as a member of SS with a calm attitude and everyone is astonished by her wickedness and cruelty. But Michael knows it’s due to her illiteracy.

   However, according to my experience, illiteracy itself doesn’t necessarily cause problems like Hanna. My aunt was illiterate but she used to be a good wife, mother and member of a rural society in which I was born.

 

==> Have you ever asked your aunt how she felt about her illiteracy?  Generally, they avoid situations which will disclose their illiteracy. They pretend they are fine, but they are emotionally disturbed.

 

2. What motivated Hannah learn to read?

   I think Michael’s true love and compassion for Hanna makes lots of voice tapes which arise Hanna to feel her inner world and motivate her curiosity to stories and books and finally make her to start learning to read.

 

3. How does she learn to read?

   She listens to the tapes from Michael for a long time and borrows a book from the library in the prison and compares the letters to the voice from the tapes and her memories. After this manner, she gets to know the sound of each letter and finally she can read lots of books and write a few sentences.

   According to our textbook, there are four prerequisites for formal reading instruction: (1) know at least some of the letter shapes; (2) be aware that words are made up of separable sounds(phonemic awareness); (3) know basic writing conventions of the target language; (4) know the spoken forms of most of the words that will be met in the initial stages of reading.

   Of the four prerequisites, I think Hanna has two, ‘Phonemic Awareness’ and ‘Spoken Forms of Words’, which leads to a success in learning to read according to the movies.

   First, Hanna learns the letter shapes by comparing to the sounds from the tapes.

Second, for Hanna, it may possible to know that the spoken words are made up of sound that can be separated because she can communicate with others and has the fluency of spoken language.

Third, She may not know the writing conventions at first according to the movie.

Fourth, When learning to read, learners should bring a lot of experience and knowledge to their reading so that they only have to focus on small amounts of new information. Hanna has lived in the country for a long time and as an experienced middle-aged woman, she may have lots of knowledge needed to read and comprehend the text within the experience of her.

Even though it is possible to learn to read for Hanna, it’s hardly effective way to learn to read by incidental learning. In a normal setting, we need to learn by deliberate learning applying for the various helpful principles, applications and effective reading programs.

 

==> Your analysis of Hannah's learning process, and the way you are connecting your study with your review is very impressive. Thank you for the good work.

 

4. My question: To what extent or degree do you think people can achieve reading skills to the view point of reading development process by using that Hanna’s methods in ESL and EFL situations?

 

==> Well, I am not a reading specialist, but these are what I can discuss with you:

(1) In case of Hannah, it was not ESL/EFL setting to her. It was her L1 setting. She already got her L1, and the problems with her were her reading and writing.  Bottom line is that she was fluent speaker of her L1.  When it comes to ESL/EFL setting, as we previously discussed in our week 1 reflections, we have to 'learn' the target language as well as 'reading and writing.'  Therefore we are not supposed to expect the same process from the ESL/EFL learners.

 

(2) Even though the learning process of L1 and L2 reading and writing has some differences, it shares something in common in its nature. As you analyzed Hannah's learning process, it was systematic in a way. What we can do as ESL or EFL teacher is to apply some effective strategies of different learners in your teaching context for the benefit of our students.

 

(3) Please remember that Hanah did  not have a teacher (although she had emotional supporter who recorded and sent the audio material to her), but  your students have teachers like you. I should ask you how do you think you can apply what you've learned from Hannah's case in your classroom.

 

Thank you for the good question. :)