The Edutopia Poll
by Sara Bernard
A political quagmire has renewed the debate over the education of English-language learners in California's public schools. In January 2006, Democratic state legislators, joined by the Latino Caucus, proposed that giving schools the option to adopt core curriculum, which includes material designed for English-language learners, would help minimize the achievement gap between native and nonnative speakers. The State Board of Education, however, voted against the legislators' proposal, contending that it would further segregate the two groups of students without helping them learn.
Although Proposition 227, passed in 1998, effectively banned bilingual education in California's public schools, some voices in the general debate maintain that bilingual education is an asset, not a hindrance, to English-language learners. Where do you stand on this issue? We're interested in your opinion.
what to teach in first second and third grade
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on August 4, 2007 - 13:25.
I am a teacher, I teach from playgroup to fourth graders. In Chile we have planifications from fifth graders up but not for the mentioned above. I would like to know what to teach in each level, to emphasize what they really must manage in each level. Please let me know the best wy of doing it by mentioning the topics for each level or mailing me a web page from which I could obtain the material. I'll be waiting for your response. My children have a very basic almost non-english so It must be very very basic.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Thanks
Veronica
I'am a new english teacher
Submitted by Sari Lestari (not verified) on March 1, 2007 - 04:30.
I'am a new english teacher for children first grade of elementary school only for private and I would like to ask you all what the best thing to teach English
Reading the most previous
Submitted by fethi-bendahmane (not verified) on March 14, 2007 - 14:58.
Reading the most previous posters,I consider myself a learner from their opinions. yet I will be very honoured to receive helpful literary and pedagogical materials. I have been teaching English for more than eight years. I have tried high and low to make my pupils grasp the English language , however I concluded that the parents role is vital in providing their children with the necessary documents and materials to obtain a remarkable level . No doubt that the state's policy towards English in paticular plays the major role to make the acquisition effective.
As far as my own method in teaching the foreign languages is concerned, the implication of the mother language is worth using.
This posting serves as an
Submitted by John D. Williams (not verified) on February 18, 2007 - 18:10.
This posting serves as an essay on the above comments for an inservice class about Spanish communication. I am a high school Earth Science teacher on Long Island NY, and have classes combining Latino, Euro, and Afro descended students, and, increasingly each year, students that are blendings of these and other ethnicities.
Fewer each year speak the "Queen's English" as they meet me, yet this is the language of our Regents test as it is now. I am on the Regents writing committee and advocate simplifying the language, without compromising the science. I find myself spending time showing students how to be efficient readers, to get to the real question and information, then to begin their attempt at answering. Tellingly for the Latino population, much of the language for Earth science has real overlap-- for example, condensation and condensacion, precipitation and precipitacion, rocks and rocas, etc. Others are explainable
with reference to Latin roots-- earthquake as "terra morto" means "ground death."
Curiously, I find all my students listening closely when I explain language in this way. There are many overlaps, and I know that science has an advantage in this regard. And for those who speak different forms of English, the key words are the same.
I do not believe in any kind of segregation. Reading the above comments, I find that, even though I've been through teacher education, it is not now clear to me what exactly everone is referring to with special bilingual, partial inclusion, semi-immersion, and the other names of programs. I agree that students in Latino communities have little incentive to learn English, so why continue that segregation more than it is now? Immersion science classrooms, to be most successful, would have to operate more and more with just the basic vocabulary of science, which would make tests more like matching systems at first, then to further develop concepts so that the student could show mastery. I have tried some of these techniques with some success.
I agree with the comment that students in need, of any academic kind, should be made to spend more hours on instruction, and that this should become policy, either as Saturday school or after school. This could be in the form of an entrance examination for English proficiency. From the student's view, it might be an incentive to improve rapidly, to lessen work hours. I use a form of this in my classroom, where homework is not for everyone, but can be graduated out of with increasing proficiency-- in other words, the 80s and 90s students can have less homework. It is popular and talked about.
I know that, at any level-- state, local administration, teacher-- we try our best. Controversial topics usually have the most variables. To summarize what I have stated above, so that the reader can decide on this essay's benefit:
1. Immersion and mixed ability classes are better, if only to lessen feelings of segregation.
2. Teachers should show students how to be better test takers, simplifying the reading of questions and emphasizing key and language-overlap words.
3. Immigrating students should be given entrance exams in English and, if necessary, assigned EXTRA classes and time in addition to their regular classes. This EXTRA time is also for other failing students.
4. There is nothing equal to "raising the bar."
John D. Williams
February 2007
motiheal@yahoo.com
I'm in a quandry about how,
Submitted by Dew (not verified) on October 29, 2006 - 01:51.
I'm in a quandry about how, if at all, sensitive topics like 9/11, Darfur, Rawanda can be addressed in an adult ESL class. There appears to be a lot of mixed emotions about this. Recently, in an ESL class I observed, a teacher was criticized for talking about 9/11 which coincided on the day of 9/11. She simply made a part of her lesson to say 'When it happened I was. . . It turned out that many of the students had a lot to say about it and proved to be a good exercise, withou it becoming too intense. I would really like to know what your opinion is on this. Anyone! I personally think it is alright, along as people do not pass judgement or criticize anyone. It is something that affected everyone in the world so why shouldn't it be brought up?
I teach mathematics to
Submitted by Bob Eldridge (not verified) on July 31, 2006 - 13:36.
I teach mathematics to children (Grades 5-8) in northern New Jersey. I have seen students enter our bi-lingual program and be mainstreamed within a year.
On the other hand, I have seen students who remain in the bi-lingual program for many more years than necessary because they have no motivation to learn English. They only associate with other students who speak their language, live in neighborhoods where they can get along perfectly well without learning English, and therefore, have no real need to learn the language. For these students, the bi-ligual program provides a "cocoon" by permitting these children to avoid dealing with the need to learn English.
I would like to see a program in our schools that involves immersion into regular classes immediately with support for those students who need it.
I spoke about this with my wife, who is a high school Spanish teacher on Long Island (NY). Some of her colleagues live in a district on Long Island that has an innovative program. (Commack, NY?) It is a special bilingual program that has classes made up of bilingual and English speaking students. Parents of English speaking students must apply to have their children placed into this class. Instruction is provided in both English and Spanish and therefore English speaking students are semi-immersed in Spanish and Spanish speaking students (who comprise most of the foreign born students in the district) are semi-immersed in English. One of the two colleagues who has enrolled his/her children, is also a Spanish teacher (native born) and is happy that his native language as well as English is being reinforced in regular school instruction. The other colleague is not a Spanish teacher and is happy that her daughter is speaking Spanish through this immersion program.
Imagine receiving instruction in your science, social studies or math class in two languages!
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.
Bilingual education is
Submitted by Rhonda Browning (not verified) on July 28, 2006 - 01:30.
Bilingual education is probably best for kids who are just beginning to learn the language, but some will survive in immersion and supportive programs. These are usually the brightest chldren or those whose families are integrating well. They are goign to succeed whether they get a quality education or not. For some, however, their home language is so different from English or they are just a little slower and it is just going to take time---just like teaching a slow learner to read or a child with ADHD to pay attention.
Even six months behind is too much in this accountability based world especially since no child makes very little accommodation for children with special needs and is quick to punish, slow to accommodate schools that are not predominantly middle class and English speaking.
I remember a child who came in my class when I was in the third grade. He was from Iceland. He spoke not a word of English and at lunch time the teacher pointed to her teeth. Oskar grew up kind of mean and hateful toward others even though he picked up social English pretty quickly. I stayed away from him because of his attitude so I don't know how he did in his school work. I wonder if he would have had a more positive outlook with more nurturing and an ELL teacher.
You can do all the "tough love" you want by throwing kids into immersion and expecting them to keep up, but just like using that cruel method of teaching kids to swim, some are going to drown. In school that is called dropping out.
We have a number of foreign
Submitted by Sherry Prange (not verified) on July 26, 2006 - 20:54.
We have a number of foreign exchange students in our high school. The Asians have the most difficulty with language and the initial semester is particularly difficult. At the end of the first year, one was reading at 6th grade level, comprehending at 7th grade level, but doing appropriate high school work in all other courses. Each year the English gets better and comprehension improves by maintaining an English environment and caring teachers who stop to explain things when questions are asked.
The controversy over
Submitted by Mr. Joaquin C. Armendariz (not verified) on July 27, 2006 - 17:03.
The controversy over instruction of Non-Native English Speakers is due to the continuing violation by politicians and racist/xenophobic groups like U.S. English of the Academic Freedom of teachers, administrators, and school boards to provide instruction based on sound research in Language Acquisition, Language Learning(Formal), Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Ever since the Lau vs. Nichols Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court the anti-minority groups in and out have obstructed the full implementation of even the transitional useless approaches to "Bilingual Education". Millions of children have been condemned to low wage jobs, lifes of crime, etc. as a result of the Educational Malpractice committed against them. We need to inform society and parents that early modern language learning is an IQ amplifier and xenophobia reducer for all learners- look up Wallace Lambert,Fred Genesee, Rolf Kjolseth,etc. and promote national cultural cohesion-see Christina Bratt Paulston's research. Why have credentials for teachers,administrators and others if we are treated as irrelevant? English Teachers, ESL Teachers, Modern Language Teachers, and their research colleagues need to say enough is enough!!! We need communities of mutual majority/ minority language learning in our schools so that business,industry and our military have the resources to keep us safe and competitive! See "The Tongue-Tied American: Confronting the Modern Language Learning Crisis" by the late Senator Paul Simon of Illinois- if read by policymakers, 9-11 might have been avoided as well as our continuing blindspots around the world.
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