Alessandra Bados

     My name is Alessandra Nicolle Bados Hernandez but you can call me Nicolle. I was born on December 9th, 1998, in Tegucigalpa Francisco Morazán, I am 23 years old; I grew up in El Valle de Amarateca, Tegucigalpa with my four siblings and parents but, actually all of them are living in Barcelona Spain. I am married, and I have a two years old daughter her name is Skylin. Currently, I’m studying Foreign Languages at UNAH, I’m in my fourth year of the program and I decided to study this career because since I was a child, I developed a loved for English, I remember that I used to sing too many songs of the Beatles, Metallica, and other artists with my father and I always thought that one day not so far, I would be singing with total confidence in English with him.
        Years later, I enrolled for 15 months in an English academy that is called IHCI and I had excellent teachers there who inspired me to want to become a teacher! When I was taking the course, I used to dream about the day I would be preparing myself for teaching and helping others to learn a good way this beautiful language, then I began my studies at UNAH, and here I’m. But now, I have to move on and I’m glad to confirm that English, has opened me too many doors in life, I was accepted for admission to the ESL program at a college in the state of Virginia, in the United States, then, I will continue with a two years degree program that is called early childhood development in education. So, in a few days, I will be traveling for starting my studies in the U.S.A. Apart from this, I enjoy visiting Honduras' places, its culture, and nature. I describe myself as a dreamer and I believe that every goal that we set in life can come true. 

Daniela Rodriguez

     Daniela Alexandra Rodriguez Amador is a foreign languages student. She is 23 years old and she comes from a small town called Moroceli located in El Paraiso department.  Daniela was born on June 18^th, 1999 in Tegucigalpa, Francisco Morazán. Her parents are Henry Rodriguez and Dania Amador. Her father is a talented mathematician and also an excellent cabinetmaker; and her mother is a great elementary school teacher passionate about what she does in her classroom. Likewise, she has a little brother named Henry Rodriguez who is an engineering student.
     Daniela grew up with her parents and brother in Moroceli. She had a great childhood. When she was 4 years old, she started her studies in the kindergarten of her hometown. Afterwards she had to move to another town to study in elementary school. Her elementary school years were a whole experience as she was studying in different schools in different towns. Daniela also attended high school outside of her hometown. In 2014 she decided to move to the city of Danli, El Paraiso; and she lived there for three years because she was studying to become an elementary school teacher. In 2017 Daniela had to move to the city of Tegucigalpa to begin her university studies. She is currently a foreign language student and is still working so hard to get her degree.

Merlyn Reyes

        My name is Merlyn Susana Reyes Mejia. I’m 19 years old and I live in Tocoa, a small city in Colón. It is also known as the city of palm trees. I currently live with my parents, my sister, my aunt, and my two cousins. Previously, I used to live just with my parents and my sister, but my aunt’s husband died in 2020, so my parents decided it was a good idea for them to come and live with us so that they could feel our affection and understanding during this difficult process they are going through, and it has been really nice to share with them all this time. Talking about hobbies, I enjoy working out every morning. I’m really into different types of sports, but my favorite is swimming, and from time to time I fancy attending art exhibitions. Something interesting about me is that I really like classical dance. In fact, I'm a former ballet dancer. Having been part of a ballet academy allowed me to make myself happy, and even to make many more people happy. In 2018, I decided to volunteer at a foundation for children with cancer, and there I gave ballet classes to the girls who were undergoing treatments for that cruel disease. It is impressive to see how something as simple as dancing with those girls could take them away for a few hours from everything they suffer from every day. That is why we must thank God every day for his blessings and for always giving us more than we deserve. 

María Barahona

         Hello everyone, my name is Maria de los Angeles Barahona Avila. I was born in Tegucigalpa on July 24, 2002, and I am currently 20 years old. I live in Guadalajara. My mother's name is Maria Virginia Avila, and my father's name is Darwin Rene Barahona; I also have two brothers whom I love very much; one of them is called Oscar Rene Barahona, Oscar is 16 years old; on the other hand, we have José Eduardo Barahona, Eduardo is 15 years old. I am a foreign language student majoring in English; this is my fourth year. My favorite pastime is, without a doubt watching a good soap opera. In addition, I love listening to music and, above all, spending time with my family.
         I want to finish the race since it cost me a lot. One of my dreams is to be able to work for a time in a school with many children, I love children, and I would like to share my knowledge with them; but I would like to work alone for about four years teaching while I am saving to start my farm, together with my family; It would be called "family stables." when I turn thirty I would like to take up politics, I would like to help poor people and what better than being president of Honduras as I said before I love children. I want to help them with everything in my hands. Apart from that, I would like to create organizations so everyone who needs help can get it. Something significant for me is the family, and I want to find a man who loves me and gets married; I would like to have many children, and I hope they will all be boys. I know I sound like a dreamer, but I know I'll make them come true.

       Children’s books and resilience activities; some books can help children in preschool or early school-age to foster resilience. These preschool children can understand problems or challenges. As teachers, try books like; helping, and the one that is tittle Pass It on by Marilyn Sadler. To develop coping and patience, read The Invisible String by Patrice Karst, it is a book that will help the child to cultivate patience when they have to be separated from a loved one. For problem-solving read the book Blackout by John Rocco. For teaching responsibilities and jobs, choose books like In Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey. For choices and decision-making select, the book Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus by Mo Willems. How Do Dinosaurs Say Good Night? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague is a book that will help to set structures and rules. Books for making friends are good for fostering resilience and the perfect one is titled Knuffle Bunny Too by Mo Willems. To develop children’s opportunities to participate and contribute to others, use the story Tico and the Golden Wings by Leo Lionni. For increasing, caring relationships and empathy read the book The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. Finally, for setting boundaries use the book Stop Picking on Me by Pat Thomas. (Petty, 2012)

Reflections are available in the comments

      Sometimes the reading seems connected to life, but at other times, the reading seems to be connected to external factors such as assessment. Choice of reading texts may not be sufficient to engage all students in reading because texts matter and need to be appealing, on topics of interest, and representative of the students in the room. Better texts mean better book choices and increased student motivation to read heightened by personal work, actions of peers, and teacher promotions without artificial quizzes or book reports. Providing time at school for independent reading becomes an equity issue when some students have access to a wide volume of books at home and other students have none. The lack of reading time to increase stamina is also problematic. Motivating students to read is easier to accomplish when students select their own books because student choice in reading materials develops a love for reading that often lasts a lifetime. These students can name the books that have affected their lives, the next ones they want to read, and those favorite genres that keep them up at night reading.

      Independent reading also enlarges vocabulary and background knowledge. The relationship of wide reading and increased vocabulary is commonly accepted because many studies support the proposition that time and ample opportunity to read relate to a growth in vocabulary. Wide reading can help students learn the meanings of thousands of new words each year while also building schema or background knowledge. Independent reading allows teachers to seize upon students’ appropriate and applicable post reading responses to extend inquiry and stimulate additional reading. The inclusion of independent reading also opens opportunities for teachers to coach, instruct, provide feedback, and even assess the effectiveness of independent reading during those precious daily scheduled minutes. Independent reading is tricky. Setting aside time is just the first step for teachers. 

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        As a group, through the development of this portfolio, we have read, discussed and analyzed several research studies that will help us in our lives as teachers.  We have summarized the most important points of the research. Such research has the purpose of showing the different techniques and activities that are available so that teachers can make reading a process that our students can enjoy. Keeping in mind that the reading process should always be enjoyable and pleasure for our students.

      Lower-level processes do not mean that they are easier. In some respects, they are much harder to develop for L2 readers. Lower-level processes include fast, automatic word recognition skills, automatic lexico-syntactic processing, and semantic processing of the immediate clause into relevant meaning units. Higher level processing involves those processes and resources that more closely align with strategies and resources for comprehension of more difficult texts such as forming meanings of main ideas or constructing a model of text comprehension. Overall, comprehension of a text is created when the reader builds a semantic network of ideas drawn from the text to form a “text model of comprehension.” This basic text model what the text is about is supported and expanded by readers’ use of background knowledge, inferencing, and attitudes to the text information, thus creating a second “situation model of Comprehension” (Kintsch; 2012). The text model of comprehension requires that semantic information from clause-level processing be combined in a network of central ideas and references that recur through the text. 

      The goal for reading instruction, at a general level, is to incorporate key component skills and knowledge into a reading curriculum in a principled and consistent way (Grabe & Stoller, 2011, 2014). Specific instructional activities included in a curriculum should follow from the major themes developed earlier in this article and the resulting implications. The ability to understand a text requires a reasonable knowledge of basic grammar, an ability to identify main ideas in the text, an awareness of discourse structure, and strategic processing with more difficult texts. In certain cases, teaching or reviewing a key grammar point will support the material that students are reading. Teaching students to become more aware of text structure is a further critical aspect of reading instruction and curriculum planning. Teachers need to be aware that texts have larger units of structure that achieve writers’ purposes.

      Extensive reading, to be reasonably successful, generally requires a significant effort in motivating students. Students need to be aware of the goals for working on extensive reading. Extensive reading in class also requires scaffolded support from the teacher while students are reading silently (see Reutzel, Jones & Neuman, 2010). In addition, extensive reading in classroom contexts requires some type of accountability and evaluation, though this should be simple and not threatening. It is clear that motivation training and teaching positively impacts the development of reading comprehension skills (Guthrie, Klauda, & Ho, 2013; Schiefele et al., 2011). 

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        This article shares with its readers thirteen new ways in teaching reading that can be used with young readers. In addition, the information it provides is very well detailed and explained, so putting them into practice is a fairly easy task. It is important to emphasize that each of these techniques or teachings has not been created by only one person, but by about 10 people. Therefore, it is a contribution of several teachers or people interested in young readers learning to read while they do enjoy that process. They have been in charge of putting them into practice with their students, and realizing that these methods have been favorable, they have decided to share them in order to help and facilitate the work of the new teachers. Previously, teachers had made the reading process a bit boring. However, implementing these new techniques or forms of teaching shows us that this can change as long as we look for them and want to help our students.

        In short, the article New Forms in Teaching Reading shows us that, using the techniques found in it, we can make this process really wonderful. We can also realize that these new forms of teaching will not only help students in terms of aspects related to reading but will also help them increase phonological awareness, communicate through written dialogue, expand vocabulary knowledge, help students identify the main ideas of a text and productively use the target vocabulary, and many more. Finally, the most impressive and salvageable thing about this article is that, although it is aimed at helping young readers, it is quite flexible and some of the techniques found in it can be modified for different levels of English proficiency.

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       Methods for learning a second language are interesting since there is a significant relationship between metacognitive awareness of reading strategies or techniques and reading. First, we must know that to learn to read in a language that is not our mother tongue, it is essential to differentiate between global and local strategies. The global process is those that have a connection with the use of previous knowledge, that is, the reading of the essence of the text and also the use of the textual organization; On the other hand, we have the local strategies, these are closely linked with the sound of the letters, the meaning of the words and also the syntax of the sentences. According to the studies that have been done, if you want to learn a new language, knowing how to read in that language is essential, which is why global strategies are recommended for better reading comprehension.

      Cluster analysis includes a series of techniques, mainly algorithms, whose main objective is to find groups of subjects or variables that are similar and then grouped into conglomerates or clusters (Bisquerra, 1987). What is this used for when looking for strategies for a student acquiring a second language? Well, this helps them plan, think, and compare methods through the participation of people who know the subject; this is thanks to the different surveys that are practiced, reaching a satisfactory end, thus helping the student to acquire the best strategies for their reading. Another method discussed is the iterative partition; this method classifies the elements in a previously specified grouping series to later be able to compare the composition of each cluster. This with achieving some prespecified norm allows avoiding bad assignments initials. When we learn a new language, it is essential to know how to read, so it is advisable to learn new methods to facilitate reading and foster a habit (Lahuerta, 1999).

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      Literacy is a set of attitudes and beliefs about the ways of using spoken and written language that is acquired in the course of a person’s socialization into a specific cultural context. It is important to clarify the relationship between reading and literacy since research has shown that they are not the same thing. In the definitions and uses of literacy vary culturally, and the cultural contexts of literacy are the underpinnings of the acquisition and use of reading and writing. Reading in English requires a set of thinking skills and attitudes that grow out of the spoken and written use of the English language. Teaching reading in standard English to second-language learners and other limited English proficient students means helping them acquire the literate behaviors, the ways of thinking about text, that is practiced by native speakers of English. In fact, learning to read and comprehend a second language requires learning secondary literacy. Therefore, second-language students need to learn to “think in English” in order to effectively in English.

       Once students are conscious of the processes, they can monitor their comprehension and apply appropriate strategies as needed for comprehending a text (Brown, 1978). Students develop literate skills when teachers encourage them to talk about written language, when teachers model comprehension strategies for them, and when students have opportunities to talk to each other about how they make sense of a text (Hoffman and Heath, 1986). Faster reading promotes reading in thought units instead of one word at a time, and that leads to improved comprehension. The benefits of extensive reading include fluency, vocabulary acquisition, awareness of grammar, models for writing, and an immersion in the culture of the second or foreign language. 

      Extensive reading is a highly individualized approach to reading improvement. Students select their own books and read at their own pace. The teacher should guide students to select books at a level of comprehension that allows for “comprehensible input” (Krashen). According to Day and Bamford, extensive reading can be included in a second-language curriculum “as a separate course; as part of an existing reading course; as a non-credit addition to an existing course; and as an extracurricular activity (p. 41, 1998).” Reading skills are the cognitive processes that a reader uses in making sense of a text. Every language requires a different repertoire of reading skills, based on the structure of the language and the literacy habits of the native speakers of that language. ESL and EFL teachers, therefore, should train students in the skills that will give them the power to comprehend English. Reading fluency can be defined as reading fast with good comprehension and adjusting the reading rate to suit the purpose of reading. addition to improving reading comprehension, fluency will help ESL/EFL students in academic settings who are unable to keep up with their reading assignments, often a cause of failing a course or dropping out of college. Reading comprehension depends on vocabulary knowledge and vice versa. The more students read, the better their vocabulary becomes. And the more vocabulary they know, the better they can read.

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      Following, the 4^th aspect is Modeling is an important form of classroom support for literacy learning; modeling teaches students how to understand or find the principal idea of a book. Modeling has two types, implicit which is the literacy experience, and explicit, which is learning how to use a task or table of content. Explicit also has two types of modeling which are talk-alouds and think-alouds. 5. Storybook reading, done in the context of sharing experiences, ideas, and opinions, is a highly demanding mental activity for children; It is most efficient for helping children to understand the story of a book and their ability to do that. Activities like reading and retelling and discussing stories critically, role-playing, and responding to and sharing books with classmates or oral and written stories will increase their abilities to write correctly and with coherence. 6. Responding to literature helps students to construct their own meaning, which may not always be the same for all readers; responding is a natural process that helps learners to expand their metacognitive skills. Oral discussion, debate, role-playing, and graphic illustration are some activities that enhance students’ express personal responses. 

      The final principles are 7. Children who engage in daily discussions about what they read are more likely to become critical readers and learners; this explains that class discussions or small groups of peers in the classroom will help students create their own logical reasoning skills about what they read or heard from their partner’s opinions because they have to analyze what to say. 8. Expert readers have strategies that they use to construct meaning before, during, and after reading; Efficient readers create plans for solving any problem they could experience while reading. However, five strategies have been identified as crucial to learning literacy, and teachers must incorporate this into their instructions, they are inferencing, identifying important information, monitoring, summarizing, and question generating. 9. Children’s reading and writing abilities develop together; reading helps learners to become better at writing, they can’t be taught by separate or independent aspects because by rereading a text, learners will develop their thinking and writing. 10. The most valuable form of reading assessment reflects our current understanding about the reading process and simulates authentic reading tasks; Literacy evaluation in the classroom that includes performance tasks provides valuable information or assignments like portfolios that contain students’ points of view or reflections will help them to develop their reading process. (Sweet, 2000)

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       One of the methods shown in one of the articles is about reading stories, and this is an activity carried out to share experiences, ideas, and opinions, and it is beneficial for children. This method is quite flattering for children since children are like sponges that absorb everything around them; books can also be oral, so the child learns while listening or reading. Acquiring a second language is not easy, but thanks to many research studies that different people have conducted, it is now easier to have a guide to facilitate the process for students.

Grabe, W. (n.d.). Key Issues in L2 Reading Development. CELC Symposium. https://www.nus.edu.sg/celc/research/books/4th%20Symposium%20proceedings/2).%20William%20Grabe.pdf

International Literacy Association. (2019). Creating Passionate Readers Through Independent Reading. ILA. https://www.literacyworldwide.org/docs/default-source/where-we-stand/ila-creating-passionate-readers-through-independent-reading.pdf

Lahuerta, A. (2022). L2 Students’ Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies and its Relationship to Reading Comprehension. Campus Virtual UNAH. https://campusvirtual.unah.edu.hn/pluginfile.php/4611316/mod_resource/content/1/Students%20Metacognitive%20Awareness%20Of%20Reading%20Strategies.pdf

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Petty, K. (2012). Using books to foster resilience in young children. Campus virtual UNAH. https://campusvirtual.unah.edu.hn/pluginfile.php/4611320/mod_resource/content/1/Using%20books%20to%20foster%20resilience.pdf

Radi, O. (n.d.). The Impact of Computer Use on Literacy in Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Skills. Campus Virtual UNAH. https://campusvirtual.unah.edu.hn/pluginfile.php/4611319/mod_resource/content/1/The%20Impact%20of%20Computer%20Use%20on%20Literacy%20in%20Reading%20Comprehension%20and%20

Richards, J. C. (n.d.). New Ways in Teaching Reading. TESOL. https://campusvirtual.unah.edu.hn/pluginfile.php/4611315/mod_resource/content/1/NEW%20ways%20in%20teaching%20Reading.pdf

Sweet, A. P. (2000, April). Ten proven principles for teaching reading. Campus Virtual UNAH. https://campusvirtual.unah.edu.hn/pluginfile.php/4611318/mod_resource/content/1/Ten%20Proven%20Principles%20%20%20%20Teaching%20Reading.pdf