There are many different children in my school and each child learns in a different way. For some students it is a struggle for others it is easy. For many of these students it is not a struggle because the material is too hard or that the teacher doesn’t teach to suit them but the language barrier. As mentioned before many of the students at this school are either Hispanic or African American. For many of these students it means that their first language is Spanish. Teachers need to understand there students and know their backgrounds. In Mrs. F’s classroom there is a Kindergarten student who only speaks Spanish and knows very little English. He and his parents moved to Providence only a year ago and “Joe” has struggled to learn English. Mrs. F realizes the difficulty that he has and tries to accommodate him. They constantly do work sheets with pictures and she helps him to sound out the words and they play games that help him to identify words. Mrs. F also allows him to tell her stories while they are getting ready so that he has better practice with his English and she corrects him on words he mispronounces. According to Goldenberg to be culturally competent the student must fully understand their first language in order to understand and learn in a different language. In order for Joe to learn he must think in his first language, Spanish, and then transfer it to English.
For Joe it is very difficult to take a timed test because he needs to transfer the information and unfortunately ends up doing poorly due to timing. Unfortunately, Joe is not the only student in the school with this problem. There are many students in higher grades who also struggle do to their language barriers. They have not fully mastered their first language and so it is difficult for them to learn in English because they cannot effectively transfer the information. According to infoworks.com over 70% of students are ESL (English second language) learners. And none of the students in the school are bilingual. ( see chart below)
Teachers must realize that each of their students are different and that they learn in many different ways. For some students it is easy to learn for others it is extremely difficult. Once the teacher recognizes what affects each students learning they can accommodate them and teach using appropriate techniques.
I actually read an article that completely went against everything that Goldenberg said about teaching students in their native language first, then transferring it to english. People have actually proven that students that are English Language Learners and are in all-english spoken classrooms actually do better on standardized tests than students who are in bi-lingual classrooms who learn everything in spanish first. I believe this could be because students who are in bilingual classrooms are still using their native language, and it would take them longer to learn english. Think about it. In high school, when taking a foreign language, you could take that language for 4 full years and still not be able to speak it fluently. This is because you are learning it all in english and just learning words here and there. In my Italian classes in high school, my teachers spoke minimal amounts of english, and I learned Italian so much faster, because they walked me through it, and forced me to learn how to understand and speak Italian better. Because English is such a complex language, it is going to take students a long time to learn it no matter what, but this article made me think about all of this, and I agree that this could be true because of these reasons.
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ReplyDeleteHi Karleen,
ReplyDeleteI found your discussion about Joe's journey toward acquiring academic English fascinating. It sounds as if your teacher is sensitive to his needs. As you mention, Goldenberg insists that the research is compelling regarding the need for a student to be literate in his first language. Those skills and strategies become transferrable. (The concept of transfer is not the same as translation, but strategies for making sense of text and cognates certainly help a student learn a second language.) I would love to know which research Kim is citing.
Keep me posted,
Dr. August