Cracking Buenas Historias”: Creating Fiction For Low Literate Adult Immigrants in Spain

Cracking Buenas Historias”: Creating Fiction For Low Literate Adult Immigrants in Spain

SOSINSKI, Marcin
DEL ARCO, Esteban T. Montoro

Key words : Spanish, immigration, extensive reading ABSTRACT Practitioners working with low literate adult immigrants in Spain must deal with the lack of suitable materials. The manuals used in class have two major flaws: they are based on outdated and not significant methods of teaching literacy or they have been designed for native children and, therefore, they are not suitable for non-native adults. In order to change this situation a “Cracking Good Stories” project was launched in Newcastle University by Martha Young-Scholten and afterwards it was joined by Granada University in 2010 where it received the name of “Cracking Buenas Historias”. Both projects aim to create fiction texts for extensive reading programs focused on low literate adult immigrants with low (under A1) language skills. The books are designed and illustrated by university students who have to reflect on the language and literacy learning process, the situation of the immigrants in Spain and the features of interesting fiction texts. Finally, the copyright free products are uploaded to a web site (wdb.ugr.es/local/sosinski) and printed copies are distributed among adult centers. The goal of the presentation is to explain the basis of an extensive reading program, show how the original English project was adapted to the Spanish context, present the webpage and the printed versions of the materials.

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1837