Thursday, May 31, 2007
Silent Period
After listening to the audio clip of Junko discussing the silent period, I was reminded of a couple ELLs in my class during my junior field experience last semester. The students were extremely quiet, and rarely even spoke to the teacher. Unaware of the silent period at that time, I had just assumed that the students had shy/unfriendly personalities or were uninterested. Now I realize it’s likely that these students were not shy or uninterested, but were just taking in and studying the language. Now that I am aware of the silent period, I will not make the mistake of pushing or forcing a student to speak out loud just because I assume that the student is withdrawn or disinterested. I would never want to make a student feel uncomfortable or embarrassed by forcing them to speak an unfamiliar language in front of the class. Learning about the silent period has enabled me to respect this crucial period of time in an ELLs life. ELLs should be encouraged, and given the support needed so that eventually they do feel confident enough to begin taking risks in the class and speaking out loud. This big step should only be taken however, when the student is ready.
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3 comments:
When I had a student in my daycare who didn't talk to anyone, I hadn't known about the silent period either. Now that I know about it, I realize that she was exhibiting characteristics of this period. She only spoke Chinese at home, and didn't know what to say to the English speaking students in her class.
I remember when I was a senior in high school, there was a student who came in the middle of the year from India, and everyone thought he knew no English. He never talked in class, and would just sit in the back of the room. It wasn't until the end of the year that he began talking to some of the students in class. It was then that we found out he did know some English, but didn't want to say anything because he his English was really bad, when it was actually not bad;enough to carry on a simple conversation. I know now that he was going through a silent period. I don't have any students going through this stage now, but after going through the assignment, I would feel pretty sure about how to treat them in the classroom.
After learning about the silent stage of language acquisition I thought that a student in my class who did not speak, did not speak or understand English. So I started making some modifications to my lesson so that he would be involved and working with the other students. But later on I found out this was not the case he was just very shy and only liked talking to his friends in class. So though my changes where for a differnet reason it still worked out and got this student discussing things with fellow students.
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