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Tawnya's comments:
on English as a Second Language
Sandy-
How have budget cuts effected the ESOL program quality in your district?
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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on English as a Second Language
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 :)
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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on English as a Second Language
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.
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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on English as a Second Language
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.
posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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