Your language-teaching mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use the leapfrog reading technique to emphasize L2 reading comprehension in small-group settings.
When having students read difficult texts, but wanting to give them a sense of autonomy and encourage group work, I like to use leapfrog reading. Unlike popcorn reading, which has a lot of legitimate criticisms, leapfrog reading emphasizes comprehension and doesn’t subject students to whole class scrutiny.
The term comes from a physical game where children jump over each other’s backs. Fun linguistic fact, there are a lot of cultures that have a version of leapfrog, but depending on the language, the animal being leaped changes: saute-mouton (French, “leap-sheep”), haasje-over (Dutch, “over-hare”), 跳山羊 (Chinese, “leap goat”), うまとび (Japanese, "horse leap"), etc.
Like the physical game, the reading activity involves students jumping over a text, and pausing in the same place within the text, in the L2. The way it works is:
Student A reads one sentence aloud in the target language
Student B translates aloud what Student A has read
Student B reads the next sentence aloud in the target language
Student C translates aloud what Student B has read
Student C reads the next sentence aloud in the target language etc.
This can work in groups of two (going back and forth between Student A and Student B), groups of three (Student A would translate what student C said aloud, and start the cycle over again) or larger (for bigger groups, I like to involve the element of tossing a koosh ball to the next student to read & translate). The important thing is that each student has the opportunity to both read in the L2 and translate into the shared L1, but not for the same sentence.
The first time you do this with a class, it may be helpful to model what it looks like in front of the class. To do this, I recommend you choose a student (or two) to model with you that you know are strong readers. To lessen the anxiety further, you could even give those students the text ahead of time (just a sentence or two) so they could feel confident in both their translation and their pronunciation.
This is, in my opinion, the most valuable for texts that are deliberately difficult, but still within the zone of proximal development. For example, if there is an authentic resource such as a news article or short story, with supports in place for difficult vocabulary or grammatical structures. I would also use leapfrog reading for a French fairy tale that I wrote for students to understand idioms. Within the text, there are idioms incorporated, and footnotes below translate the idiom for students. Since this is a multi-step thinking process, reading it aloud (and maybe hearing the idiom for the first time) and then stopping to think about a) what was read and b) what it actually means, is helpful. Furthermore, rather than reading alone, by doing this in a group, students can support each other.
A criticism that I have of this technique is that it does not help improve pronunciation unless a group-member corrects their peers or the teacher walks around correcting students, jarring them out of their rhythm. One thing I try to do is spy on groups and if I’m overhearing a mispronunciation that is common, I’ll collect a list to go over when the activity is done. Then, when I do this activity with the same text again with a different class, I’ll go over the pronunciations before we begin the activity, assuming they will have similar issues. Ultimately, however, I recognize that you can’t do all the things all of the time, and it’s good practice to have students just read aloud, even if small mistakes are being made.
If leapfrog reading isn’t your jam, or you’re looking for other replacements for popcorn or round-robin reading in addition to leapfrogging, there’s a great list here from Edutopia.
How do you practice reading in your class? Feel free to share below in the comments!
