Submitted by Zanada Maleki (not verified) on July 29, 2006 - 15:48.
I believe that an incremental approach to teaching the dominant or target language is most important. First there needs to be an acculturation in the target language, which in our case is English. This involves moving the student from simple commands and simplistic expressions into more complex nuances of our language expressions. This springs from a command of the spoken language before commanding the written language. One will eventually catch up with the other. The next logical step is a semi-immersion.
There should be established milestones or benchmarks as performance indicators for the students to transist from one stage into another successfully.
Semi-immersion is the next logical step, to total immersion based on the student's exhibited and measured readiness factors. Many students come to us from the romance language rooted languages, whereby some of the words from their primary language have parallels in our American English language. However, there are also students who come from primary languages that in no way resemble our American English. The grammatical expressions are so different in function and form from ours, voice intonation might determine the meaning of a word in how it is used and interpreted. Those coming from a written language tradition may use the Roman based alphabet, but there are also students from a written tradition that do not use the Roman alphabet; or they might be from a totally oral tradition. Students from a totally oral tradition tend to exhibit a slightly different learning style more based on "wrote" memory as the means for survival and for information survival.
There should also be benchmarks as performance indicators to help identify students with learning difficulties and language acquisition handicapping conditions. This vital tool helps the teachers to better facilitate the child's learning efforts without creating undue stress on all parties involved. There is often an assumption that the students coming to us from another target language is a perfect specimen of learning, but they come to us just as our American students do, perfect and flawed all at once, often in the same bundle f a person. I have seen teachers expecting these children to be model and perfect students in every way, with no respect for the fact that children are children with wide ranges of attitudes and behaviors, all trainable and educable.
In the over 19+ years in public education that I have experienced, I have taught students in just about all stages of English language acquisition. This not includes students from outside of the US, but also students from inside the US, where there are no literacy skills at home, as well as where regional dialect and idioms are not Mainstream American Academic English. I have also taught in areas of the country in which the immigrant students are blamed for not being fluent when they arrive in our classrooms. Further, as a student of other languages, I have also been through many of the experiences of what our English Language Learners are going through. While an older student might accelerate in the target language development, the readiness factors of language acquisition and application are still important. Teachers really do need to walk in the "moccasins of the other person" before judging the learning worthiness of the English Language Learners. Every teacher, to gain a wider persective and appreciation of this as a shared experience personally, needs to learn a language different from American English, a language that uses an entirely different grammatical structure, as well as totally different alphabet symbols. With that accomplished, then we might have more proficient teachers ready to teach more proficiently because we will have been there, done that, motivating students to learn from a much wider and comprehensive perspective! Words that tend to burn my ears when I hear them coming from allegedly highly qualified educators: what am I supposed to do with these kids, how am I supposed to teach them? At the same time these same people are willing to be more forgiving of their English speaking students who have a smaller knowledge base, and lesser exhibited motivation to learn.
I have seen this more pronouncedly in reactions to students who are more visibly different from the background of the teacher and the usual dominant community the teacher serves, and their population in the classroom is more than 1.
Whose responsibility is it to teach these children? It is a community effort, but the parents, the child's community outside of the school need to become involved in extra assistance beyond the school day. We cannot do it all in the confines of the school day. We cannot do it all with the already acculturated and native-born students that we have. Here is where I am in favor of a school plan such as the famous Harlem Kids' Zone (Geoffrey Canada) school that has students learning on top of learning: afterschool programs, and Saturday school which is open to all with a variety of different types of learning experiences not affordable time-wise during the regular school day. See What's Wrong with a 6 Hour School Day by Kate Tuttle. Learning is an emotional experience, so why not avail our learning opportunities for students with that in mind! As adults, that is also how we learn. We, both children and adults, do learn what we live, as emotional experience outcomes, intentional or not.
I believe that an
Submitted by Zanada Maleki (not verified) on July 29, 2006 - 15:48.
I believe that an incremental approach to teaching the dominant or target language is most important. First there needs to be an acculturation in the target language, which in our case is English. This involves moving the student from simple commands and simplistic expressions into more complex nuances of our language expressions. This springs from a command of the spoken language before commanding the written language. One will eventually catch up with the other. The next logical step is a semi-immersion.
There should be established milestones or benchmarks as performance indicators for the students to transist from one stage into another successfully.
Semi-immersion is the next logical step, to total immersion based on the student's exhibited and measured readiness factors. Many students come to us from the romance language rooted languages, whereby some of the words from their primary language have parallels in our American English language. However, there are also students who come from primary languages that in no way resemble our American English. The grammatical expressions are so different in function and form from ours, voice intonation might determine the meaning of a word in how it is used and interpreted. Those coming from a written language tradition may use the Roman based alphabet, but there are also students from a written tradition that do not use the Roman alphabet; or they might be from a totally oral tradition. Students from a totally oral tradition tend to exhibit a slightly different learning style more based on "wrote" memory as the means for survival and for information survival.
There should also be benchmarks as performance indicators to help identify students with learning difficulties and language acquisition handicapping conditions. This vital tool helps the teachers to better facilitate the child's learning efforts without creating undue stress on all parties involved. There is often an assumption that the students coming to us from another target language is a perfect specimen of learning, but they come to us just as our American students do, perfect and flawed all at once, often in the same bundle f a person. I have seen teachers expecting these children to be model and perfect students in every way, with no respect for the fact that children are children with wide ranges of attitudes and behaviors, all trainable and educable.
In the over 19+ years in public education that I have experienced, I have taught students in just about all stages of English language acquisition. This not includes students from outside of the US, but also students from inside the US, where there are no literacy skills at home, as well as where regional dialect and idioms are not Mainstream American Academic English. I have also taught in areas of the country in which the immigrant students are blamed for not being fluent when they arrive in our classrooms. Further, as a student of other languages, I have also been through many of the experiences of what our English Language Learners are going through. While an older student might accelerate in the target language development, the readiness factors of language acquisition and application are still important. Teachers really do need to walk in the "moccasins of the other person" before judging the learning worthiness of the English Language Learners. Every teacher, to gain a wider persective and appreciation of this as a shared experience personally, needs to learn a language different from American English, a language that uses an entirely different grammatical structure, as well as totally different alphabet symbols. With that accomplished, then we might have more proficient teachers ready to teach more proficiently because we will have been there, done that, motivating students to learn from a much wider and comprehensive perspective! Words that tend to burn my ears when I hear them coming from allegedly highly qualified educators: what am I supposed to do with these kids, how am I supposed to teach them? At the same time these same people are willing to be more forgiving of their English speaking students who have a smaller knowledge base, and lesser exhibited motivation to learn.
I have seen this more pronouncedly in reactions to students who are more visibly different from the background of the teacher and the usual dominant community the teacher serves, and their population in the classroom is more than 1.
Whose responsibility is it to teach these children? It is a community effort, but the parents, the child's community outside of the school need to become involved in extra assistance beyond the school day. We cannot do it all in the confines of the school day. We cannot do it all with the already acculturated and native-born students that we have. Here is where I am in favor of a school plan such as the famous Harlem Kids' Zone (Geoffrey Canada) school that has students learning on top of learning: afterschool programs, and Saturday school which is open to all with a variety of different types of learning experiences not affordable time-wise during the regular school day. See What's Wrong with a 6 Hour School Day by Kate Tuttle. Learning is an emotional experience, so why not avail our learning opportunities for students with that in mind! As adults, that is also how we learn. We, both children and adults, do learn what we live, as emotional experience outcomes, intentional or not.