Most students at the younger levels are experiencing reading in another language through an immersion environment. Making the progression to be able to read is one, being able to understand what you read and retain it is a whole new ball game. Do you know how to make this progression with your students? It all begins with phonics; students need to be able to understand how sounds blend together in Spanish and they need to be able to discriminate sounds from one another. The curveball is really thrown at English speakers by the addition of the tilde because it is a foreign symbol that does not really have a cousin in the English language. It is helpful to show students how the addition of a tilde changes the intention of a word. For example, the word como means like without a tilde, but when you add a tilde it means how. This comes with practice and consistent repetition. We then can progress on to working on fluency which means to read more naturally and being accurate in what we say and hear ourselves. From there it is only vocabulary that will trip you up and as long as you work on building your vocabulary library regularly, you should be good to go.
These worksheets present several short conversations in general social situations such as dining out at a restaurant, meeting a friend, planning a vacation, or asking someone for the time. Students will read the conversations, and then answer several questions about what they have just read. While each conversation is in Spanish, the questions are presented in English. It is up to the instructor as to whether answers should be provided in English or Spanish. For extra practice in pronunciation and conversational rhythm, assign students to read each of the parts as small plays. It is also a really good idea to have them translate articles in both directions.