As you saw in my video, I grew up in a monolingual household in
Texas. Although my father speaks Hindi, my brother and I do not. I actually
don’t remember ever hearing my father speak Hindi until I was in my teens. Most
of my friends as a child and teen spoke English but I didn’t have very many
non-English speaking friends until college. I have met and made friends with
many people who are bilingual—English being their second language. One of my
peers throughout the time that I have been in the Education Program at the
University of Houston is Ana. I interviewed Ana last semester and she told me
about her experience learning English. Ana, who was born outside of the United
States, would be considered a “Foreign-Born ELL” (Wright, 2015). Part of SLA
that I find interesting and am excited to learn more about are the different
sociocultural factors that come into consideration when instructing students.
According to Wright (2015), teachers should be familiar with things such as
students’ home languages and prior schooling. Ana’s heritage language is
Spanish, meaning that is the language that is spoken at her home by her family.
I agree with Wright when he says that it is important to understand these
different sociocultural factors so that teachers are, “…able to provide
effective instruction” (Wright, 2015).
Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research,
Theory, Policy, and Practice.
Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.
Main streaming your class to include ELL students is a sound strategy to aid the students bring out their full potential. According to Wright there are many strategies we as teachers can implore to accomplish this. I believe effective strategies such as phonology can help include a diverse number of students to the effective teaching flowing through your medium. I like how Wright creates different sub-levels of the strategy such as syllable structure and sequence of sounds to further these strategies which would be easy to integrate with the some of the strategies you listen in your video. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteHi Tametria, thank you for your reply.
DeleteI also think that strategies like phonology can certainly be integrated with some of the strategies I mentioned as well, and they would be helpful for all students. I also think that the personal approaches that Wright (2017) are important to implement in the classroom. I want my classroom to be a safe, productive learning environment for my students where there is tolerance of mistakes and many opportunities to learn and participate in different ways. Instructional and academic strategies are, of course very important. But I want my classroom to be rooted with core principles like these.
Your cultural background is impressive but it is really sad that you missed the opportunities to learn other language having relatives who spoke those languages. I wonder if the lack of interest in this country for other languages and cultures impacts even people who like you belong to multicultural backgrounds. This would be an interesting conversation for you to have with your parents and find out why they felt it was not important for you to grow up bilingual but rather monolingual making you part of the minority in the world according to Baker and Wright (2017) who claim that the majority of the people in the world grow up bilingual.
ReplyDeleteIt is very sad. I've always told my father that I would have loved (and still would love) to learn Hindi, but now with our busy schedules combined we hardly get to see each other. I remember learning in second language acquisition what you mentioned about monolingual people being part of the minority in the world and that was very surprising to me. Maybe I will become fluent in another language someday and will be able to speak it to my children so that they have the opportunity that I never did. I think that it would be nice for my children to learn the language subconsciously, as Krashen's Hypothesis about language acquisition suggests (Wright, 2017).
DeleteHi Danielle,
ReplyDeleteLike you, until college, I did not have a lot of friends that spoke languages other than English. Now that I attend such a diverse university, I have many friends and peers whose primary language is not English. I have enjoyed learning more about their languages and cultures. As a teacher, it will be important to educate ourselves with the students’ cultures and backgrounds so that we can build rapports and get a better understanding of the students. Wright (2015) mentions student profiles and how effective they can be for the teacher. The teacher creates these portfolios by gathering information about the students’ background, culture, and language and can later refer back to the file to incorporate pieces of the students’ culture in the classroom.
Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research,
Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.
Hi Claire,
DeleteI think that what you said about being aware of our students' cultural backgrounds is very important and I love the idea of building a portfolio for each student. I even like the idea of having them write/draw/create things that tell me about their culture and background to put in the portfolios, that way it is specific and unique to them. In addition to learning about their cultures and backgrounds, I think it is important to take into consideration some of the sociocultural perspectives that Wright (2017) mentions. For example, using the terms "home language" instead of "first language" or "native language" may make the children feel less singled out or different than non-ELL students.
Hey Danielle, your diverse cultural background is very cool. This diverse background could help ELL students feel more comfortable with a teacher who has connections to so many cultures. Despite not continuing your learning in Spanish, that experience could help you decide what techniques may or may not be effective in your instruction. The techniques you mentioned are good scaffolding for ELL learning. Incorporating these techniques with Vygotsky’s theories would improve the effectiveness. Your techniques make use of student interaction and collaboration supporting their grown, since “learning is a social activity, and knowledge is constructed through interaction and collaboration with others” (Wright, pg. 42).
ReplyDeleteWright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research,
Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.
Hi Franklin, thank you for your reply.
DeleteI certainly think that collaboration helps students learn because I truly believe that we sometimes learn best from our peers. Students can help other students understand things maybe at a level teachers sometimes can't. Cooperative learning, or the use of small groups is something Wright (2017) mentions and that I see daily in my placement that I will definitely use in my classroom.