English Language Learners

The video was hard to get through. Is it being read by a computer? The narrator’s voice has a very choppy, Siri-like quality at times but seemed totally normal at other points. 

While fractions is a little high for my target age group, I think this idea in general is great. I know in my student teaching class my master teacher had students work on the ipad with our 8^th grade “helpers” to play math games. I know they really enjoyed it. (On a side note if anyone knows of math apps, sites or games that target 1^st or 2^nd graders let me know! I’m looking for games for my new job!)

Finally an article that feels more in my wheelhouse! This is probably because it has a bilingual/ELL focus, but it was so much easier for me to read than a lot of our past articles. An issue this article brought up right away is the viewpoints of native language as a deficit vs. native language as a resource. “Viewing heritage language as a resource encouraged us to design an instructional approach that valued and leveraged cultural practices and linguistic knowledge”(Puzio, Keyes, Cole & Jiménez,, 2013).Depending on your viewpoint on ELL education and your own level of education about ELL education and second language acquisition, there is a large divide. On a side note, when public education began in this country some of it was what we now consider to be dual language in English and German.

I think the idea of collaborative translation is a great way to involve a student’s native language in the classroom, particularly if you have a large about of students with the same native language. I like that this also gives students a level of independence they may not have doing work only in English, if they are at a proficiency level where they must depend somewhat on the teacher. As a substitute in bilingual classrooms I didn’t see a whole lot of translation work but I did see students who would complete assignments in a mix of Spanish and English. Often times if they were prompted to complete an assignment solely in English, if they weren’t sure of a word they would write that particular word in Spanish. The difference there being that all of their teachers were bilingual.

There are a lot of misconceptions about English Language Learners and how they learn. Many of the “facts” that are out there are really chalked up to be folk linguistics perpetuated for certain peoples political gain. I included a little snippet of an assignment from my T&L 510 class that just ended that was about disputing folk linguistics:

I disagree that the more time students spend in a second language context the quicker they learn the language. A child being put in a poor quality immersion or submersion program is not going to help them learn L2 as quickly as a high quality transitional or development bilingual program. As Crawford (2004) states, “What counts most is the quality of second-language exposure, not the quantity,”(Crawford, p. 189). I also disagree that children acquire an L2 once they can speak it. According to linguistics expert Stephen Krashen, “We acquire language when we understand it,”(Crawford, p. 189). We acquire a language through comprehensible input, or being able to understand what others are saying in L2. “Speaking per se does not cause language acquisition,’ Krashen argues, but follows from it as a ‘result of obtaining comprehensible input,’”(Crawford, p. 189). Students also often experience a silent period where they choose not to speak English, no matter the amount they are able to speak or understand.

The most preposterous of all the statements from the focus reflection is that all children learn L2 in the same way. Many factors affect how a student learns L2. Including negative influences that may change their affective filter such as “anxiety, lack of self-confidence and inadequate motivation to speak the second language,”(Crawford, p. 191). All of these factors can make acquiring L2 more difficult for students. There are also positive influences they can affect how students feel while at school and may affect their attitude towards L2 such as a bilingual-bicultural curriculum and a classroom that recognizes the value of their L1 and native culture. Implying that all students acquire L2 the same is the same as implying that all students learn to read or learn early math skills in the exact same way.

Many of the proponents of English-Only education are politicians or public figures with absolutely no background in education or any kind of scientific research. In fact the man behind getting ELL programs taken out of California schools (where there are more students who speak a native language other than English, than those whose native language IS English) is Ron Unz, a “businessman” with a Harvard physics degree. While he may be highly educated about physics, that doesn’t give any background in SLA or teaching 6 year olds who speak zero English. His movement was/is called English-Only. An interesting fact is that his supporters included Arnold Schwarznegger, which I find ironic. Not because of the picture seen below but because part of his original fame coming from his imperfect ability to speak English.

I included another section of a past assignment about the English Only movement and Proposition 227 in California:

Bilingual education is dismissed by this movement as failing students with ineffective instruction to help them learn English. However this movement is built by politicians looking to capitalize on semantics through deceivingly worded catchphrases such as English Language Empowerment Act, English for the Children and Yes on English (Crawford, 2004). This movement and Proposition 227 is built mainly on public misconceptions such as language is easier to learn the younger you are, immersion is the easiest method for children to learn English and bilingual support from classroom teachers acts as a crutch. Unz was not quick to point out that “because of teacher shortages, fully 70 percent of California’s LEP students were not enrolled in bilingual classrooms,”(Crawford, p. 324). Bilingual education with a gradual transition to a traditional English classroom is a strong and effective option that school districts should be able to consider and/or implement based on their own needs. I believe that bilingual education should be an equal effort on the part of the school, school board, teachers and school support staff as well as parents of students.

Crawford, James. Educating English Learners. 5^th ed. 2004. Los Angeles, CA: Bilingual Education Services.

Puzio, K., Keyes, C., Cole , M., & Jiménez,, R. (2013). Language differentiation: Collaborative translation to support bilingual reading. Bilingual Research Journal.