Vblog3

https://www.wevideo.com/view/1335566500

          For my final interview I chose my aunt, Mrs. Gates.  She teaches in a small rural elementary school in Sealy, Texas.  She has mostly students from low socio-economic backgrounds.  The students have not had many experiences that would help them learn the English language.  Many of their parents do not have a college education, work long hours at minimum wage jobs and do not really know how to help their children with homework.  The children at this school fit the educational achievement section from chapter one where it says,” … the majority of ELLs are ethnic minorities from low-income families,” (Wright, 2015, p.13).  My aunt says she believes that consideration of her students’ home language and culture is important for her success with these children.  She has a self-contained classroom and has great support from the ESL teacher if she needs additional strategies. At this point in the school year, my aunt says her students’ English skills are definitely progressing.  The students, with older siblings at home, are making the most gains because they are able to practice English at home.  Wright refers to this when he states, “If the student is one of the younger children in the family, and the family has been in the United States for several years, it is likely that the older siblings speak English and use it often in the home, “(Wright, 2015, p.17). The students who speak only Spanish at home are also progressing, but at a slower pace.

           Mrs. Gates says the students need to have daily opportunities to practice English.  She does this by encouraging them to practice in small group settings.  She says the activity they enjoy the most is doing picture walks.  She puts the students in small groups with a picture and then they share information about the picture as she walks around listening to each group.  This gives the teacher time to offer corrective feedback and share correct English with the whole group.  This is an example of what Long refers to in chapter seven when he says,” … proficient English speakers should provide corrective feedback when they interact with ELLs,” (Wright, 2015, p.158). When I asked her, what was the most important piece of advice that she would give me to help my English language learners, she said,” Be patient.”  She says at first many ELL students will be afraid to speak especially in a classroom full of other students.  She said to make sure that you learn what you can about your students’ languages and their backgrounds.  By being informed about simple routines or religious beliefs, you can help a student and their family feel valued in your school.  The last thing she suggested to me was to provide daily opportunities for students to practice their English in a safe, non-threatening environment.  The students will not leave your classroom speaking perfect English and may not be as good as other native English speakers for some time. With daily practice in the classroom, they will leave you knowing more English vocabulary and with English confidence they did not have previously.

Wright, Wayne E. (2015) Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners, Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing

Vlbog 2

https://www.wevideo.com/view/1308942107

          For my interview, I chose Jennifer Rivera. Her family moved to the United States after the civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. Jennifer first began to learn her second language, English, when she entered the public-school system in Houston in pre-kindergarten. According to Wright, she is referred to as a sequential bilingual because this term refers to, “… newcomer ELL’s who already speak the language or languages of their home country but then start to learn English as a new language at school,” (Wright, 2015, p. 5). She was in an ESL classroom in the first semester. The class was taught in Spanish by a bilingual teacher. The second semester the classes were taught in English.

Jennifer was able to practice speaking English with her older sister at home because she too was learning English in public school at this time. Their younger brother learned English from his two older sisters at home by listening to them practice. When Jennifer move to kindergarten, the class was taught in English and she said it was a pretty easy transition for her. The kinder teacher was bilingual and the class was still an ESL class which included bilingual students. For the students who needed more help, there was a pull-out ESL teacher. Jennifer said the instruction was all in English. The teacher would present the lesson and then check for language understanding along the way by asking questions to make sure the English words were understood, if not she would explain in Spanish.

          Jennifer said the techniques that she remembered helping her most were picture cards that her teacher used and the fact that the teacher used so much repetition to help them understand. She also said the class was a good learning environment because the students were allowed to use their language to communicate and help each other. This teacher, knowing it or not, was practicing the interaction hypothesis in that she believed as Long (2015) did that, “…interaction is essential for SLA to occur…” (Wright, 2015, p.53). The teacher gave them the opportunity to practice their English with each other in a nonthreatening environment and this made the students more willing to want to practice with each other.

          In my interview, Jennifer, said she wished she would have learned English at a younger age so that she would have had an easier time communicating when she began school. At the time she was learning English, at school their household still spoke Spanish. Even though her parents did learn English, they did not want her and her siblings to lose their first language. In chapter one, Wright refers to this as additive bilingualism because it, “...occurs when a student develops proficiency in a new language without losing his or her home language,” (Wright, 2015, p.21). The hardest concept for her being an ELL was grammar and spelling. Even though speaking came easily the written language mechanics took more practice to master. Her favorite memory of learning English in pre-kindergarten was when her teacher read the story Rainbow Fish by Markus Pfister. She said the teacher would stop and have them repeat the nouns from the story in English to help them learn English and comprehend the story. To this date, that book is still a favorite of hers.

Wright, Wayne E. (2015) Foundations for Teaching Language Learners, Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing

Hi, my name is Stacey Stary. I am a Senior at the University of Houston Sugarland. I am graduating May 9th this summer and I could not be more excited. I am happy to be taking this as one of my last courses before I enter the classroom in August as a teacher. I hope to have an amazing semester and learn alot from this course. Best of luck to everyone! Enjoy my blog.

Click the link below for Vblog 1

https://www.wevideo.com/hub#view/1290754825

 Vblog 1 Introduction

https://www.wevideo.com/view/1286725799

ESL Interview

Click BELOW to watch my video
https://www.wevideo.com/view/1212328495


 

           A common problem for ELL students occurs when they are working in subject areas that require meaningful comprehension or present a lot of the new vocabulary within a short period of time. According to what Ortega talks about in chapter 5, this is considered a dual-task condition that involves two tasks trying to occur at the same time, (Ortega, 2011, p.84). The student is not only trying to process new vocabulary, but also trying to comprehend the text containing the new vocabulary.  This is slower for ELL at first because it takes time to perform these dual-tasks, but with practice will become more automatic.  During Reading, vocabulary can be especially difficult for some and also affected their comprehension skills. Comprehension and vocabulary are difficult for ELL because as Ortega says, “New L2 knowledge is stored in the mind and has to be accessed and retrieved every time it is needed for use in comprehension or production,” (Ortega, 2011, p.83). So, at the early stages of ELL acquisition the learner takes longer to access and retrieve information and like vocabulary words and their meaning.  This time lag causes comprehension to slow down.  This can be especially difficult for learners because they may not want to speak up if they do not understand. Cognition and ELL get better with time and practice.  Amazingly, some of students who are really motivated to learn can actually surpass some monolingual students over time.   

          My interviewee mentioned to me that in the upper grades she could see more differences between monolingual and ELL, but that in kindergarten her students are very much more similar.  The younger students depend more on visual pictures and cards and they utilize the word wall more.  She also said that these students are also similar in that some are in their first year of public school and may have not had an opportunity to practice their formal language and speaking skills at home. In his video, Dornyei, talks about the importance of engagement, he describes it as indispensable. He also mentions how engagement is more challenging than ever in this day and age because of all the external distractions, (Dornyei, 2018).Therefore, teachers have to look at different ways to address today's learners. It is very important to engage students and encourage them to speak often in class.  This oral speaking practice with peers in class not only practices language, it also forms friendships between students.  Ortega mentions this building of friendship as a motivation to learn the language more proficiently.  Even though the students do not necessarily realize it, according to Ortega they are, “…fostering general friendships with members of the target language,” (Ortega, 2011, p. 173), by practicing with their peers.  Gass and Selinker say, “The idea is that if the child has target language peers, there is a greater social context where the child learns the L2 rules as if the L2 were an L1, with no language transfer occurring,” (Gass and Slinker, 2008, p.123,124). The more opportunities language learners have to practice, the quicker their language will progress. Therefore, it is important to provide plenty of opportunity for language practice throughout the day.  

[Cambridge University Press]. (2018, April 19). Zoltan Dornyei-Engaging language learners [Video File]. Retrieval from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg6BSbpVgVU

 Gass, Susan, M. and Selinker, Larry. Second Language Acquisition. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.

Ortega, Lourdes.Second Language Acquisition. London: Routledge, 2011. Print.