How to help your French Immersion student with Reading
The more fluent a student is in his/her own language, the easier it is to learn another. Read aloud to your child every day. Read books in your own language. Do not worry if you do not speak French; you can instill a love of literature in your child regardless of the language in which you read. By fostering enthusiasm, and motivating your child to seek out books independently, you are laying the ground work for positive attitudes that are essential to life long learning in French or in English. It is important that your child’s first language be as rich as possible; you have the ability to provide that enrichment at home. Besides reading to your child often, let them see you reading and using books frequently. You can help your child’s reading development by:
- reading books with repetitive words and phrases.
- finding stories and poems about everyday experiences which are easily related to their own lives and can be easily discussed.
- reading materials that are just plain fun, like riddles, silly rhymes etc.
- encouraging active participation in reading by asking for their opinion, talking about the pictures, predicting what may happen next, are the events in the story true or factual (fiction or non-fiction), have the student retell the story to another person, draw a picture of their favorite part of the story.
- finding stories on audio tape. Have an older sibling tape a story which can be listened to over and over again.
- playing word games. For example, find rhyming words, especially with the sound wheel.
- don’t stop reading to or with your child once they can read. It’s a great way to spend some time together!
A Quick Mini lesson on pronunciation
Trying to help your child in their reading or pronunciation of French words? Here is a quick lesson:
- while there are significant differences between the sounds of the vowels in the two languages, the consonants are essentially the same
- h is always silent in French
- an s at the end of a word to indicate the plural is silent
- qu sounds like k (not like kw as in quick)
- th is pronounced t
- ch is pronounced like the English sh
- i is pronounced like the long English e (bee)
- y sounds like yes event at the end of a word
- ou in French always sounds like group (not out)
- oy and oi sound like the wa in water
- au and eau have the long o sound (so)
- ez has the long a sound (way)
- accents change the sounds of vowels; e sounds much like the short English e (deck) while é sounds has the long a sound (hay)
- stress falls on the last sounded syllable (ami sounds like am-ee)
- when a word begins with a vowel (or a silent h), it is usually joined with the last consonant of the preceding word- it will sound as though your child is reading one word instead of two.
