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It's always a challenge — and it can be a nightmare — to learn a new language. Just how challenging is based on a variety of factors, including the age you start your lessons, and the opportunities you have to speak the new language with others.
A recent report now shows that five years is not enough time for the majority of students learning English as a second langage in Oregon's public schools to become proficient. This isn't just a disappointing statistic: a federal mandate currently requires that at least half of the students learning English in each school be able to handle the language well enough to take history, science and other classes with the mainstream student population. Next year, the expectation increases to 70 percent of ELL students.
While federal mandates don't dictate expectations for adults learning English, many recent immigrants struggle to master the new language while juggling family responsibilities and employment opportunities.
One ELL coordinator in the eastern Oregon district of Stanfield says parents' language skills can make a big difference in their children's learning. This is why she teaches a free evening class for parents learning English.
There are many different teaching methods for adults and kids learning English, and some disagreement about what is most effective.
Did you learn English as an adult or a young student? What worked best for you? What was most challenging?
Do you teach English as a second language? What are the most effective methods?
GUESTS:
- Elizabeth Kim: Sophomore at Oregon State University who came to the U.S. from Korea and began learning English when she was 11
- Sherrilynn Rawson: Principal of Nellie Muir Elementary School and adjunct instructor at Portland State University in the ESL endorsement program
- Sandy Valadez: Stanfield Elementary School special education teacher and ESL coordinator, special education coordinator and migrant coordinator for the Stanfield school district
- Liz Hardy: Instructor at Rogue Community College teaching language and computer classes in Spanish and English, who came the U.S. and began learning English as an adult
Tagged as: language
Photo credit: Leo Reynolds / Creative Commons
COMMENTS: (40 total)
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jacob's comments are valid. I know from an experience for I am a immigrant who came to US as an elementary student myself.
My English, although my sister thinks it cosists terrible grammatic error and a bad accent, is fine. Well, I call it "good enough to study in college and communicate with others with no language barrier." How did I learn my English? I simply practed naturally through public schooling. I only needed to take 1 year of ESL class, tested out of ESL by taking proficiency test and began studying in all the regular core subjects with even honor classes. After learning the language, my intelligence in accepting new teaching and understanding was freely expressed and I excelled in academic areas as well as musical and social aspects. My confidence grew each time when I felt I was nothing more or less than any other English speaking students and classmates influencing involvement in student body offices as a Vice President, Principal Concert Master in Orchestra, etc. All of this dramatic change took only 1.5years. I began as the "outsider" who spoke absolutely no English, or at least very few that made sense, to a confident English speaking outstanding scholar who can now fluently speak two languages and learning the third.
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What I have noticed these past 10years is that children in general at young age take very short time to learn any language. However this is valid when the child is exposed to the foreign language speaking environment constantly and regularly. The child must be encouraged to communicate by their wills without any help with translations in their mother language. I've both experienced and seen this as a proof. My sister who came to US at a age younger than I has zero, absolutely zero difficulties with English. She is our family's writer and diplomatic speaker who my parents call the "American" in our family. This was natural for her since she was barely 2nd grade when she came. I on the other hand catched on the language a little faster than her, but as time progressed my skills with English as both verbal and written form was far from what my sister can do. Though we both came on a same date, and went to same schools and lived together the past 10years, I can never speak or write as naturally as her. The younger the child is, the faster and smoother the foreign language is learned.
As for an accent, I have say this deppends on who to learn, or hear most commonly, the English from, the age of the child's starting, and individual abilities with pronounciation. Obviously the pre-schoolers learning English as a second language have zero accents. As the starting age increase, there are more likely change the child of having an accent. I myself cannot hide my accents. It gets worse when I'm upset or emotional. However, it is very lite that people can pass by without noticing. At least I can distinguish the difference between B and V or L and R. My friends from Korea who came when they were Freshmen in high school and learned from then have strong accents that sometimes even I have hard time understanding. Not only the accents but the pronounciation is sometimes horrible that it interferes with communication. Again, the children who learned English as a young child has no problems with accents or pronounciation errors. This gets worse with adults. My parents still cannot speak English. Their inability to pronounce words correctly and failure to connect English as English, not interpreting every thing into Korean prevented from speaking fluent English.
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I also agree with SEbiker's comment where emphasizing too much on the issue of accent is unfair to English learners. It is difficult enough understanding the conversational languages in both veral and written forms. Besides, unless having the English learned from English speaking parents at a very early stage of life, particularly toddler to pre-school aged chidlren, it is almost imposible to have no accent. However I must also point out that strong "accents" may prevent the listeners to understand the speakers statements. This acts as a strong barrier when communicating. I remember being fraustrated by not being able to understand the outsourced customer service representatives from foreign countries. I had trouble understanding and also the representative had trouble understanding my inquaries. So the subject of "accent" is still important, however not as much as the first step of mastering English; the ability to listen, comprehend, and speak their minds accurately so that the listening party understands completely.
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You will not believe this, but my wife works as a temporary teacher and has no specific training for ESL.
How fast can a language be learned without an accent? TWO MONTHS. THREE MONTHS for slower students.
This is with no specific ESL or Foreign language teachers, textbooks, or multimedia lab. It has to do with the plasticity of the human mind and age of receptivity.
My wife volunteers at a preschool. It seems very young children when placed in a total immersion, can go from ZERO comprehension of a language to almost complete mastery in a couple months with NO accent. They do not learn by conventional grammar or venn diagrams or verb conjugation...they learn by constant practice, listening, conversation and correction...much as Americans as toddlers learned their mother toungue English. They learn to ask for more cookies and juice and how to go to the bathroom and not doing sing-song reptition or copying lesson plans again and again. These toddlers in language acquisition can learn up to 20 words a day and retain it...they outperform Harvard Graduate Linguists and will become NATIVE SPEAKERS. Yes this is only oral communication...but written can come latter with dexterity and grade school.
Our high school based and adult based ESL problems are needlessly ineffective--some adults never gain profficiency and all have terrible accents and problems of mispronunciation that are laughable to native speakers. In Europe they have figured this out centuries ago by incorporating multilanguage kindergartens and their children grow up knowing 4 or 5 languages effortlessly. Then the secondary schools can concentrate on other essential academic subjects like math and science instead of Spanish 1.
We have to acknowledge the natural process of human mind development and use this plasticity to an advantage in education. Very young children should have a European Romance language(.ie Spanish) as well as an Asian language like Mandarin Chinese if they are to be equipped to survive in a competive and changing world.
Imagine learning 4 separate and distinct world languages in the span of ONE YEAR. FIRE the High School language teachers. HIRE Pre-School language facilitators.
Sometimes you cannot teach an old dog new tricks...better begin with the puppy.
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jacob's comments are widespread and have some grains of truth in them. But the picture is much more complicated than he suggests.
Research on language acquisition shows that children are, overwhelmingly, more successful than adults at learning additional languages. Children do not do this 'effortlessly' but it may seem effortlessly because children are learning, often, through play. Many adults, however, can achieve the mastery of additional languages that many children achieve. This is most likely due to a combination of neurological, psychological, and social factors. Adults often do not have the time or focus available for learning an additional language that children have.
Achieving mastery in an additional language in two months would be very unusual.
Research does support jacob's advocacy for bilingual or multilingual education.
Finally, the issue of 'accent' needs to be addressed. The fact that 'accents' are laughable to native speakers shows the intolerance of monolinguals toward those speaking mutlitple languages. Fully fluent speakers of multiple languages may retain aspects of the sound system of their native languages as well all maintain our own regional, social, or personal accents.
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While those that have already posted have provided some case scenarios that may be accurate for their given situations we must remember that every learner is different. Even among fluent native English speakers there are varying degrees and environments in which each person learns best. This is true of second language learners as well.
Throughout the history of Education in this country we have always had students who were learning English as a second langauge. This is not a new phenomenon that has all of a sudden become a burden in our education systems. However, with NCLB and the mandate for all students to acquire grade level proficiency through the application of rigorous standardized testing we are seeing an achievement gap.
Why is there an achievement gap? Let's look at ESL students in particular. Sure if a student begins learning English in preschool they will become "fluent" rather quickly. But, what does this fluency entail? To be deemed fluent at the preschool level means that you have acquired preschool vocabulary. When a student, however, begins learning English later, say in 4th or 5th grade then they must acquire the fluency of their peers in order to be considered "fluent". Thus the process will take much longer than that of a preschool student. On top of this we require ESL students to gain langauge fluency alongside learning academic proficiency at grade level.
In larger school districts you are looking at variables of 50+ languages being spoken in the classroom while in a rural district you may only see a handful if any second language students. This presents yet another huge variable in the educating of ESL students. Many of these national and local mandates do not take into account that every district has different needs and that there is no cookie cutter learner, program or overall solution to the fact that ESL students are not meeting the mandates. This doesn't even begin to address the issue that research shows that it takes a students 7-10 years to acquire the academic langauge necessary to perform well in school.
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Further more....
If you took just a moment to think about the foregin langauges taught in school and the "fluency" we are producing you might relate a bit better to the current dilemma. After 5 years of langauge instruction at the high school level your own fluency will be intermediate to advanced at best, I highly doubt you would sufficiently be able to perform at grade level in high school coursework for which the instruction and assessments are in the second language, yet we expect our ESL students to meet these demands.
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I began learning British English in Fifth Grade in a foreign country. It was easy because the curriculum was adapted for middle/high school students both grammatically and lexically. I learned American English after coming to the U.S. at the age of 28. It was very difficult first two years.
My family's patience, acceptance of my mistakes and encouragement were three instrumental factors. I'm thankful to friends of my family and my American neighbours for neglecting my accent and talking with me about gardening, cooking, or just weather; they are brilliant.
Learning language and trying to continue an established career (not a job) are two most challenging things. People in the larger metro area represented some challenge. Some acted as if I were mentally inadequate because my English didn't sound local enough. I would be willing to hug each and all of them if only they spoke, read, and wrote in my mother tongue at the level I do it.
Five years in the English-speaking environment is a reasonable amount of time to embrace language skills. Older kids need more motivation. No one can learn foreign language in their sleep, just ask Gov. Schwarzenegger or former U.S. secretary of state Kissinger. Motivation and positive attitude are very helpful.
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My parents moved our family to the US from Israel at the age of eight. Although both my parents had some basic proficiency in English my twin brother and I didn't even know the alphabet. We were in enrolled in third grade and became fluent English speakers within less than one year.
My parents outlook greatly affected our self-fulfilling prophecy in our learning.
1. My parents immediately began speaking in English to us whenever possible.
2. They set goals for us; specifically I received a pair of roller-skates when I advanced out of the ESL reading room and fully into class instruction. (This was the only ESL class my brother and I received; about forty-five minutes in language instruction each day.)
3. We wanted to be able to communicate with our classmates, as well as our teachers. No one in our upstate New York suburb school spoke Hebrew, so pandering to our needs was simply NOT an option. It was immersion in the most extreme sense.
Having a strong home base that supported change and assimilation was probably the strongest factor in our education. The other, and though I hate to say it, we were not physically type cast as "non-english" speakers. Specifically we are Caucasian. The outlook of our peers as well as our instructors was that we SHOULD be able to speak their language. There was never the stereotype against us that allowed others to box us in.
Also in my third grade class was an emigree from Laos. Her parents spoke no English, at home her family spoke their native language and as a result, she did not fare as well as my brother and I in her scholastics.
I think that addressing a child's whole environment: home as well as school is vital. In the same sense that children with parents that have the leisure to help them with school tend to get better grades, so do children whose parents are able to be part of the English speaking community (job, shopping...other activities) will be better able to assimilate into the language of the culture within which they are living.
If bringing up race and culture seems like poor taste I suggest that NOT bringing it up is in even worse.
Once we recognize that language change may also reflect cultural change we can take the steps to create ESL classes that are better formed to be all inclusive of home, cultural needs and societal needs. And who knows, maybe the test scores will come up as well.
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Tomer-
Your examples provide an excellent example of how diverse each second language learner is. We often neglect to take into account that some students are more apt to learn language in an immersion situation, while others, similar to test anxiety; will shut down due to stress. Also some students have a rich learning environment at home as well as in school while others do not. I strongly believe that if every general subject area teacher were to emphasize language development this would be a huge benefit to ALL learners. Research has shown that students who receive sheltered instruction throughout the day in their immersion classrooms are becoming academically proficient in a much more rapid pace then those that are not receiving this support. Furthermore sheltered instruction has been proven BEST teaching for every child in the classroom, not just second language learners :)
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I appreciate your guest's comments, which sound like a typical experience. I wonder if she was educated in Korean before moving to the United States, and if her parents are also educated. I teach English as a Second Language and I have worked with students who were born in refugee camps and whose parents have never been educated in their native language. These students (and their teachers) are held to the same federal standards as those of your guest.
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I am an ELL teacher in an elementary school. I have also taught English Language Learners at the middle school level here. One big point I hope listeners realize is that Federal and State regulations for English Language Learners are not based on language acquisition research. Research shows it takes 7-10 years to learn academic language (which is much more complicated than conversational language). (One famous study is known as the "How Long..." by Thomas and Collier)
The state regulations were formed by a committee looking to appease the "new" (at that time) No Child Left Behind federal expectations. Each state had to submit their plan to get ELLs up to speed. Our "plan" increases the percentage of proficient ELL students every year. So we have a moving target- each year a higher percentage of students have to become academically proficient.
So it is not that Oregon is failing, or that Oregon is getting worse at teaching English to English Language Learners, it is that a state committee picked an arbritrary percentage of students that should "pass" each year and that number continues to increase. It is akin to deciding that the first year we teach Kindergarten 20 percent of students will finish the year reading at a level 5. Then the next year 40 percent, then 60, and then 80. We can't magically make 80 % of Kindergarteners read at a level 5 because someone decided they should be able to.
Teaching English to non-native English speakers is a multi-fauceted, complicated, and politically charged issue. This is just one point I hope to help the listeners understand.
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I am a non-native English speaker who became an ESL teacher in the U.S. I've also learned two other languages. All four languages I learned (Persian, Russian, Japaneseand English) have completely different sets of alphabet and are from different language groups. I am fluent in three of them. Having been both a learner and a teacher, there are several factors I believe are crucial for non-native to learn English:
1. Knowing how to learn; it's a fact that those who have never been schooled before have harder time learning, at least in our school system.
2. Being immersed in English speaking environment 24/7 or as often as possible. If a classroom is the only environment where a student is exposed to and encouraged to use English, he/she will not be able to acquire English skills very well. This applies not just to immigrants here but anyone who wants to learn another language. It would be ideal if a whole (immigrant) family is taking English class together and is encouraged to practice between themselves at home.
3. Reduce the stigma among immigrants in using English. This is the biggest hinderance in ESL for immigrants in the U.S. Those who want to use English all the time maybe perceived as "traitors" to their own immigrant subculture; i.e. "you no longer want to be part of --- culture but want to be a part of 'them'", "you forget your identity" etc.
I began learning English grammar at 12, but it wasn't till I was 21 that I first came to the U.S. People can't tell if I'm a non-native when on the phone now. What helped me most, I believe, is that I love to learn, to communicate, to get to know people wherever I go. I see languages I speak not as my identity but as tools.
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I've been an ESL teacher in Portland Public Schools. I have two comments:
My understanding of the common research says that a child needs 7 years of quality ESL instruction to be at pace with his/her native English speaking peers. I am baffled by why the state decided on 5 years as the goal. And annoyed when the fact that we don't live up to an unrealistic expectation is seen as a huge failure.
I have noticed that because kids are watching TV in Spanish now instead of English, the rate of acquisition has slowed for Spanish speaking kids in the last ten years. So I often tell my students, "If you must watch TV - please watch it in English."
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"Do you teach English as a second language? What are the most effective methods?"
The British have many hundreds of years of experience in teaching english as a second language to the great variety of the peoples that they brought under their colonial empire, so I wonder if our Americans have researched what they did.
The British were very meticulous in keeping records of what they did, of what worked, and of what didn't work. I'd bet there is a goldmine of their history of teaching english to natives in order to build up their colonial adminstrations.
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Question: Do any of your guests (teachers or students) have experience with and opinions about the value of computer-based language instruction like the heavily-advertised "Rosetta Stone" program.
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I teach ESL classes to young adults, who speak many different languages. We have the Rosetta Stone program at our school, the newest version, 3, which is voice interactive. It is a good program, and I encourage my students to use it But I've never seen a student learn become proficient in English by completing the Rosetta Stone program, only. It needs to be used in conjunction with a program. I have had students omplete all three levesl of the program, and ask me to put them back in at the beginning so they can do it again. One good feature is that it allows you to individualize curriculum such as the amount of practice allowed, or the standards for passing scords.
The Rosetta Stone uses a 'whole language' approach to teach a language. That is, they do not explicitly teach the principles and rules: they give you examples of them, and you have to infer the rules, yourself. For this reason, I believe strongly that while the program is helpful, it will not teach you English , or any language, all by itself. They seem to imply that it will do this in their ads. Used in conjunction with a program that teaches language according to the newest research based methods, the SIOP method and the GLAD, it can be very helpful. I just completed the coursework for my ESL endorsement, and I see great results when I use these methods with my students.
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5 years is not enough to learn English and pass standardized state tests.There are so many factors that people don't take into consideration. For example, the lack of literacy in their 1st language. I am a high school ESL teacher. In the past 2 years I have been getting more students who are illiterate in their 1st language. Students who are 17 to 19 years old who never learned how to read or write in their own languages. Another factor is that standardized tests like ELPA are online tests. A lot of my students came from refugee camps, so they never saw or had a computer before. in addition to English, they also need to learn computer skills so they can pass ELPA.
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Sandy-
How have budget cuts effected the ESOL program quality in your district?
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My experience may bring insight to the actual question posed about the results of the report being unacceptable.
My 5 y/o son is in kindergarten here at Woodstock School. I recently moved us from Los Angeles were he attended a Pre-K class in LA Unified School District. In our neighborhood school in Korea Town (Downtown LA), he was the only english speaking child in a class of 25.
Instead of the class being an introduction to the language, the class was taught in Spanish, and the teacher stopped intermittingly to translate things to my son in English.
Being a low income single mom, this was the only resource I had available to us for any sort of childcare or pre-school. I moved my family away from LA because of the lack of access to education at LAUSD. I experienced it myself. I suspect their numbers are worse than Oregon's
My question is this; Does Oregon treat early ESL students in a similar manner as in Southern California? If so, to what extent? Shouldn't ESL at the pre-school stage be equally as important as any other grade level? MY guess is yes, judging by these test scores.
The students are the ones who suffer in the end analysis. In my opinion, Oregon's got to do better.
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My parents were both immigrants, without prior English knowlege. I, myself, went to Austria at 15 with only basic German phrases. Later, I taught for 10 years in a foreign country. What seems clear to me is that we will not gain fluency while we focus on academic performance. Fluency is actually gained by using the approach that opens the language centers in the brain: necessity and immersion. The uncomfortable experience of being in linguistic chaos is the very thing that activates the growth hormone in the neurons. Humans do not learn language by reading translations, but by being required to associate visual and auditory experiences with concepts. Then the brain forms all the connections for the individual language. Dreaming in the language- the cardinal sign of fluency- occurs quickly in such cases.
Latin speakers - French, Italian, Spanish, - often retain their accents strongly because of the ease and similarity between Latin languages. The language areas overlap to a great degree.
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Seeker - great post. It makes so much sense that the "linguistic chaos activates the growth hormone in the neurons." Wow. I found myself in a Spanish immersion college course and for 3 weeks I "cheated" as much as possible - waiting around, the lazy way our kids in school do too, for a friend to speak to me in English to let me know what the heck the teacher was talking about. I comprehended about every few words of Spanish, but not being truly immersed made me aware of how easy we are making it for our students to fail to learn English, by giving them a (particularly Spanish) crutch to fall back on instead of walking and talking confidently on their own. I was that kid for 3 weeks. Oregon State Education Board needs to take note.
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I too have over 16 years experience with English Language Acquisition, coming from the world of business into education via an instructional assistant job in ESL when I moved here to Oregon. My first school started out with 3 ESL kids and when I left, just 4 years later there were 200.
Miss Kim said it perfectly when she said she learned English the best during immersion in Spokane. That is my observation - the kids who learn the fastest do not rely on waiting for someone to interpret for them in their native language - they jump in and ask questions and learn, rejecting the draw to watch Spanish language tv, radio and keeping only to Spanish friends. It's sad that we give Spanish speakers no compelling reason to learn English well enough to get them into colleges by keeping them "down", essentially by making bi-lingual schools, making it seem to them, as one student told me, "Why should I learn English when none of my relatives speak it, and they are doing okay?"
Just to cut off any potential feelings that I am being racist - my daughter is half Mexican. My ex-husband's parents spoke Spanish in the home and English, however, they stressed that their kids learn English as well as possible. He had successful job growth because he knew English very well - bless his folks.
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There needs to be a balance - the reason for bilingual schools is not to coddle the students in their first language - it is to give them the academics and conceptual understanding in their first language, which then becomes a direct transfer into their second language. Those programs need to be a part of the larger community which is also gives students a need and desire to communicate in English.
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Do immersion schools have lower rates of discrimination?
It may seem intuitive that learning a second language broadens horizons, and decreases behavior problems but can that be measured?
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Yes - there are studies in academic journals that attempt to measure some of these issues. If you are interested in this issue, you may want to attend a presentation by Dr. Myriam Met this Wednesday (Jan 20) at 6:30pm at Benson High School. She is an expert on foreign language immersion programs, although this presentation seems to be focused on second language acquisition rather than english as a second language. See here for more info:
http://www.pps.k12.or.us/news/2569.htm
Search scholar.google.com on her name if you want to know more about her work. The articles you find will probably also lead to ones that discuss attempts to quantitatively measure the benefits of learning a second language.
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In a time of huge cut backs ESL should be dropped and all programs that assist other language speaks immeadiately think of how much better english speaking kids education would be if we invested in them instead of people who don't want to assimilate to america
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America has been developed by immigrates for many generations. We can't forget about it.
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I would like to weigh in on Woodburn's language program. I meet many student's from Woodburn and the surrounding areas in my work . I am very impressed with Woodburn elementary and high school students. They are spanish as a first language students but they are articulate in both languages. I always tell them that I could tell they are in Woodburn schools before they tell me. In other words not in a surrounding school. Please let the school principal from Woodburn that I have always wanted to compliment Woodburn schools on the good job they are doing.
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Joskath, on behalf of the outstanding students and staff in our district, thank you. I will certainly pass along the compliment. :-)
-Sherrilynn Rawson-
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I came to USA at the age of 16 from Japan. In high school, I was involved in sports, theatre. The group activity set the great stage for me to learn the language in the best context. The language w/o context is just like learning language w/o pictures and native speaker. The school also provided me w/ a good tutor and a great friend that I went to get help w/English.
Connecting with local native language speaker is essential part of learning language. Having to target non-native speaker and pair up with native speaker in a good context proved to be effective for me.
Later, I learned Spanish by working in the volunteer program in Puerto Rico. I also learned that by putting myself in the "must use language" situation, I had no choice but to speak and learn in ER quickly. It was very fast pace, but did its job.
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I am a two way immersion coordinator at a school in Portland Public. Mnay of our students whether they are ESL or English-only students come to school without the readiness to succeed academically.
Sherlynn was asked about the fact that many of her ESL students were not making the adequate progress that the federal government requires. I want to point out a kind of double jeopardy that is placed on ESL students: They must make progress in English language development as measured on the state ELPA tests and they must make progress on the OAKS testing that all students take. Many English speaking students who come to school without academic language could not do parrticularly well on the ELPA test, yet they are not required to take it nor do schools need to document academic progress in English.
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This was a frustrating show to listen to. You never mentioned that the measure of success that you are commenting on is unrealistic. Please See comment above from ELLteacher. Grrr
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lkk and jonathans, I know whereof you speak. I think mostly because the topic was more focused on what it's like to learn English and what techniques work, we simply didn't have the time to address the points you mention. If it were the topic for discussion at some point, I would be *more* than happy to address the issue of the AMAOs, AYP etc. (the "measure of success" to which you allude) that prompted the discussion. I too would appreciate the opportunity to address the federal mandates and what they mean, especially for an audience whose main knowledge of the topic might only be limited to the information they might glean from a cursory glance through a newspaper article or a quick reference on a radio show. :-)
That being said, I can understand why we didn't get to this point in the discussion. We could easily have spent one whole hour talking about the varied experiences of second language learners; another hour talking about the different program options available; another hour talking about effective teaching techniques; another hour talking about federal mandates and measures, and what they do--and don't--tell us; and another hour talking about adult and community education. :-) Ah well. Another day, another time, perhaps.
-Sherrilynn-
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As a parent of children that my wife and I struggle to keep bilingual in both English and Mandarin, I feel you left out the importance of the parent's attitude in determining the children's language skills. If the parents value the children speaking in a language other than that used at home they need to convince their children how important it is. I constantly tell my 5 and 6 yo kids how many more opportunities they will have if they are fluent in Mandarin when they grow up. We also use "tricks" to make language study appealing, such as restricting about half of their television to Mandarin movies we own on DVD. (This worked beautifully in reverse with English while we lived in China.) Of course these concepts need to be reversed in the case of ESL. But I believe that to be most successful in second language acquisition, parents need to give up some amount of communication with their kids to help them improve in the language the parents do not speak.
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You are so right, econotechie. That's the point - the parents are the key to each child's success. It's their values that get passed on to their children, and their expectations that encourage kids to succeed. Sounds like you are doing a great job. Wish there were more like you; we'd be a stronger country. It's nuts for parents to regularly pull their kids out of school for 1-2 months to go back to Mexico to visit relatives; how can one learn English when away from school that long in a short enough school year? Someone made the comment that bi-lingual (Spanish) is not "coddling". I've heard all the arguments, read the studies, yet, I can't help it, I do have to believe what my own eyes are telling me, what my direct experience proves to me. Go back and read how often people use the word "immersion" in this forum.
The system is deeply flawed, with new "methods" being tried out every year. Yet, it is all up to the individual family and their support that is the key. I feel for the gal who was forced out of LA. It would be awful if Oregon took that direction, so we just need to be careful and remain open minded instead of relying on, dry "studies" that continue to support a party line which is filled with imperfection.
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I am replying to English Tutor's comment, " It's nuts for parents to regularly pull their kids out of school for 1-2 months to go back to Mexico to visit relatives." While some of my Hispanic and ELL students go to Mexico to visit relatives for a couple weeks, an equal number of my high SES students vacation in Hawaii for the same length of time. After much thought, I finally decided that family values are important to our society, and giving them an excused absence (number of days gone + 1) is fair. When this is multiplied by the number of classes these students take, it presents a considerable and unfortunate hardship.
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A number of listeners have commented on the blog and phone about the role of cultural and family attitudes in language acquisition. I was intrigued by a comment by Sandy Valadez, Stanfield School District. As I heard it, Ms. Valadez said that free language classes for parents have an advantage beyond teaching them English. Teachers also have an opportunity to reinforce the importance of school. This encourages parents to support education and set educational goals and expectations for their children. I had not considered this perspective. What a great opportunity.
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It is a sad situation when a teacher assistant is placed as the main instructor in an ESl class. What makes it worse, is when that instructor does not possess a full-working knowledge of the English language.
The students are left with a deficit in their education.
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I have personal experience with ESOL the new term for ESL or English for speakers of other languages. After three months my wife learned how to describe the furniture in a house and can say "I have an Armoire"
When she asked me how I said armoire I replied " I never have said the word" After the first semester she still was not taught how to say, "How much does this cost?" "Where is a hospital" " How can I take a bus to my house?" Where is a policman,restaurant etc. Or even "Do you have a job for me?"
But she can say 'I have an armoire,desk, table,sofa'. What a waste of time but then it is a government program.In addition the students had a tour of PCC campus and three lost days because of parties and my wife was told to bring food for the party.
A good practical class emphasizing needed communication skills is what is needed and IMMERSION at the earliest age possible is the way to learn language no matter what the teacher's union tells us about parallel classes for non english speakers.
The mexican american parents fought this " bilingual" program for english years ago, it never meant speaking two languages it meant two languages taught spanish and english and the spanish speakers were not integrated into the general school population until age 12. Dooming them to speak with an accent and to have less job opportunity forever.