I spent two years as an elementary Spanish tutor at Olivet, working with the students who were just starting out, the beginners of the beginners. Elementary I and II were my classes; they were instructed to come to me for help rather than the three native-speaking tutors that also occupied the tutoring lab at various times during the week. Why is that? I was told that they used to have them go to the native speakers, but they frequently came back intimidated and confused and frustrated, so the department decided that they needed someone that would not be so intimidating. That person was me.
My Spanish wasn't perfect, I didn't have the cultural background that the native tutors had, I often had to consult a dictionary to look up the words they needed to know. At first I was confused as to why I had been placed in that position. Yet I came to understand that the benefit of having them work with me was that I knew what they were going through. I knew the struggle and frustration of knowing and understanding nothing in class. I knew how their English-wired minds processed the language, the errors that they were making based on the forms they were accustomed to, because I had experienced that process--in many ways, still was experiencing it. Unknown to me, I had become a piece in the scaffolding system that my professors were creating for their students. Many beginning language learners are unmotivated, constantly confused, only want to do the bare minimum of the work. They need encouragement and baby steps, and the wise heads of my department came to the conclusion that an intermediary tutor (pre-native speaker) could be more gentle and helpful, in some ways, than the native speakers.
This decision by the Modern Languages department effectively mirrors the concept suggested by Hinchman in this text. Many students come into school with little experience or joy in reading, and little motivation or desire to challenge themselves. Many enjoy reading but do not want to read as an assignment, or read texts that don't interest them. In teaching reading, as in most things, there is a tentative balance to be found that fosters a love for reading, while simultaneously challenges the students to go beyond their comfort zone to read more complex texts.
There was a part in the reading that quoted Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, stating that pro hockey players were much more likely to be recruited if they were born in the first half of the year due to the cutoff date for junior hockey leagues. The point of the illustration, of course, was that many of the boys that did not make it onto the junior leagues likely were not less talented than those that did; they were just younger and, therefore, less physically developed at the time of recruiting. It is likely, as well, that many of our students who don't seem naturally "strong" readers simply have not had as many opportunities to develop and challenge their skills.
This is something that I try to remember in relation to my lower-level students. I have had many opportunities to increase my skills in Spanish, and many experiences that have made me love the language, the culture, the people more and more. But my students? Sometimes their motivation gets lost in the process of language acquisition; they might not have friends that speak Spanish or have had the opportunity to travel. That's why for me it is extremely important to try to make it real for them, instead of having them learn the language in the isolated environment of the classroom.
I think that the concept of text complexity when it comes to Spanish acquisition has to do with more than just written language; it has to do as well with the level of conversation that a student is able to handle. Scaffolding for language learners involves many steps for all language skills involved: it begins with basic structures, then making those structures more complex, and eventually being able to create with the language using those structures in many ways. Again, it is a balancing act; moving too quickly may cause a student to be overwhelmed, yet there is the constant need to challenge them to do just a little more than they already know.
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