Wednesday, January 30, 2008
January 17th Post
Because I did this week's post last week I thought I would make up for that and do the correct post for last week...if that makes any since. We talked in class and in the article about English language learners in mainstream classrooms. This article was particularly interesting to me because I am currently taking a class called teaching non English speakers the English language. We have been studying the best approaches to helping and teaching students the English language. I think that this is a very important subject for us (future teachers) to be talking about because of the amount of children in mainstream schools now that are not proficient in the English language. It bothers me that many of these children are thrown into the school system without any help from teachers or administrators. They are expected to learn English and do well in school. As teachers we have to be aware of which students in our class are English learners and help them through the process of learning English. From what I have hear it is a pretty hard language to conquer.
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2 comments:
Although I agree that these students need special attention from the teacher, I feel that a teacher cannot be entirely responsible for a child's English acquisition. Instead, I feel that a teacher should do his or her best to accommodate the child in his or her classroom, and help the student locate resources to further their learning. It might be a good idea to keep a list of websites, free resources (such as local extra curricular ELL programs) and perhaps even some private tutors or tutoring centers on hand. Depending on the ELL student's family life, they may be willing to invest money into learning English, so don't completely rule out options that would cost money unless you know otherwise. Additionally, having some additional ELL tools in the classroom library is a great idea!
I also think that it is very important for the teacher to take charge and help this child out. Finding resources in the school is important and would be the best way to start out. A teacher that has an English Language Learner in their classroom might not be the very best person to work with that student. In saying this I mean that there could definitely be someone close by that might know English and the other language well enough to where they would be the best suit for this particular student. Obviously the teacher would be the one to make this work, but if this was available it might be better than the teacher constantly talking in English. This would also be a huge benefit in terms of assessing where the child is at.
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