Friday, May 25, 2007
This is different side of ELL
I've been talking with my cooperating teacher about our class and she gave me a different story than I've read so far. She told me that she had a student a few years ago that spoke limited English, but enough to be mainstreamed from the ESL class. She had taken Spanish, and was pretty fluent, but she noticed that the more she spoke his language, the less he spoke English. Do you think it's possible for a student to regress like that? Was he being stubborn and thinking that it was easier for her to speak Spanish than for him to learn English? She said he managed to pass and go on to the next grade, but it's something that still makes her wonder about. It makes me wonder if he had a learning problem beside the language barrier. Any thoughts?
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3 comments:
I work in a daycare/preschool and I have seen this happen. We had a child that was four years old and his parents speak nothing but Spanish. It was extremely hard to communicate with because I don't speak Spanish. I had another teacher help me communicate with him. After a couple of days, we found out that he did understand some English and could say many words but because the other teacher would speak to him in Spanish it gave him a reason not to respond in English. In this case it was easier for him to speak Spanish than to learn English. Because we are a daycare/preschool we did not have the program to put this child in a ESL class but I know when he went on to kindergarten he definitely was put into one.
I think that this story brings up an important issue concerning ELL students, and American society as a whole. As the America's immigrant population grows, so does the population of people speaking languages other than English. Years ago, these immigrants would have to learn English because that was the only way for them to progress in American life. However, now the U.S. is becoming more and more foreign language friendly, especially with Spanish. A person can do whatever they need in Spanish, and therefore the need to learn English decreases. This is also evident in the school's, as ESL students are happy to be among there peers where they can speak there language. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I think it is great that we have all of these resources to help spanish speakig people. But it does make it less important to learn English, and as a result, there are some cases like the one you wrote about, where because they are able to go about there routine in their language, they don't feel the need to speak English.
I think that while this country is becoming more and more foreign language friendly, the importance of English still needs to be stressed. While many teachers know both Spanish and English, I feel that students should not be catered to in their native language. It is only hurting them, because they do need to learn English. If you were to go to another country, they would not cater to you and your non-ability to speak their language; you would have to learn to speak their language. And as our country grows, I think that it is important to maintain the need for one common, unified language so that everyone can communicate with one another. However, I am not saying that people should lose base with their native language, and I am not being an ignorant American. I am only addressing the fact that if we have people from all over the world speaking only their native languages, people will not be able to communicate with one another. Therefore, students should realize the importance of learning the English language and not be catered to like the above teacher had done.
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