Re(2): vygotsky and contextualism

Martin Owen (Martin_Owen who-is-at rem.bangor.ac.uk)
Fri, 26 Mar 1999 15:40:46 +0000

Maria writes:
>as I can understand what Martin said, it is usual to read in a language
>and speak
>in an other. I do this very often to my students, when I have an
>important paper
>in English or French, I read directly in Portuguese to them, and this is
>not so
>difficult. Other professors do this also.

I think it more than that Maria. It is quuite normal for me in a bilingual
context to read in one language and speak in another, however in both
languages I have learned to read those languages and somewhere along the
way I have also learned to understand in both languages (ie I don't
translate when I normally read one of my two"native" languages... unlike
when I read Spanish).

For the Somali news reader, apparently the written from is English. There
was never any written Somali to acquire from... hence there are some
interesting questions about the acquisistion of "reading" Somali.

As I intimated in my original posting, I am quite ignorant as to the
complete picture
M.