Modifying Lessons For ESL Students

During my observation hours at PS 89 Q Elementary School, I have noticed that modifying lessons for ESL or ELL students is crucial for their learning process. At the beginning of the school year, each ESL teachers provides with a list of specific modifications recommended for each ESL student.

The Later Development of Bilingualism

The Later Development of Bilingualism

(Chapter 6)

People may learn many languages and become bilinguals or in any moment of their lives. The later development bilingualism happens when a person learns a second language and becomes proficient on it, after he or she acquires a first language. It responds to the sequential acquisition of languages where a child or adult speaks a language and then becomes proficient in other language. Learning a second language implies ideological, cultural or international, and individual reasons. No language learner or language instruction is isolated, they are surrounding by individual psychology and an effective second language instruction.

Each bilingual speaker has different ways to learn, and these may be informal or formal. However, the reasons why people learn a second language respond to societal and personal factors. The societal reasons are conceptualized by people’s interaction with other individuals or with a group of people, promoting intercultural understanding, and providing information among them, through assimilation and subtractive language. In contrast, individual reasons are more related to the individuals by helping them to lead intercultural sensitivity and awareness, cognitive development, and for social, emotional and moral development.

Aging is a debated theme in second language acquisition. Age impacts on second language learning and in the success to gain language proficiency. The critical period hypothesis suggests; “younger children have biological cognitive advantages for language learning that close as they enter adolescence and adulthood” (Becker, 2017, p. 117). However, there are others who tend that older children and young adults have advantages that may help them learn a language efficiently and quickly than young children.

In fact, aging is an important factor for second language learning, however, there are many outcomes that have to be considered in order to find out the reasons of bilinguals second language proficiency. We have to understand that individual attitudes and motivation, provides us an explanation for success or failure to learn a second language.

Later development bilingualism has many outcomes that improve or fail bilingual proficiency. Learning a second language may enrich knowledge of a person, however, there are many situations that have to be observed to success. Interacting in a second language shapes our identity.  

Reference

Baker, C.,& Wright, W. E. (2017). Foundation of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Pennsylvania: Multilingual Matters.

The Future Education Is In Two Languages

The Future Education Is In Two Languages

  When people immigrate, they take their language, culture, and beliefs from one place to another completely different place. This has an impact on the society into which they immigrate. The main issue between the old residents and immigrants is lack of communication, due to the language barrier. It is important to establish that many countries in the world today are not monolingual; instead, they are bilingual, or have many people who can speak more than one language.

Having more than one spoken language requires pushing bilingual programs that contribute to language enrichment and the preservation of heritage and culture. Installing a bilingual program commands us to espouse the cultural specifics  to families and linguistic communities, to promote cultural heritage, to engage parents with their children’s school and education, and to promote the social, cultural and economic environment.

Bilingual education means different things to different people; however, English is the language that provides the most opportunities worldwide. There are many perspectives of bilingualism, yet many immigrants want their children to blend into their new environment. That is the main reason why bilingualism has to be universal and bilingual education becomes critical.

In fact, there are benefits to bilingualism and multiculturalism that impact on cognitive enhancement, critical thinking and sensitivity toward other people and cultures that are critical to our children’s growth.

Bilingual World in 20 Years

Assignment #1: The Bilingual World In 20 Years

     Imagine you are in a classroom 20 years in the future. In that futuristic classroom describe how language acquisition might take place. What kind of technology might be used? Will there be more or less emphasis on learning minority and majority languages? What motivations might the students have in the futuristic classroom? For what purposes are languages being learned? What forms of assessment are being used?

On year 2,038 one of the major improvements will be technology and economy. After scientists discover that mothers can communicate with their children before they born, children will acquire their first language before they will be born. Bilingualism will start to disappear in a very slow process because people will think that the priority will be to learn the language of the most powerful country which will become the first language in the whole world.

Because of technology our interaction will be limited to a solar device. This will make that people in the future may use devices for longer without worries about communication interruption. . A developed communication system will make people improve common language proficiency and many countries or all of them will make laws to empower one language.

Because of developed technology and economical interaction there will be more emphasis on learning majority language. In these days we can see how many people learn English around the world. Many countries have in their schools’ curriculum English as a language for learning. There are no countries in the world that they do not have commercial interaction with United State of America. Thus, students will be motivated to improve the language more used around the world. Classrooms will be designed for unifying our communication codes, and classes will be in one language. In many cases the purpose what language being learned will be economics.

The assessments will be advanced. These will not have major difference with a regular test, because parents will provide to their children a second language lessons by internet or another way of communication. The advanced world is growing up and each day globalization is taken place. In 20 years the world will become more consolidated and people around the world will create ways to be one.

Early Develpment of Bilingualism

Week Six

Chapter 5: Early Development of Bilingualism.

Early bilingualism is a very important topic in America’s schools. In fact, since America started to integrate bilingualism education in the educational system, it was a need to focus in children who exhibited early bilingualism. Thus, it is crucial to address the ways how children become bilingual and multilingual, examine the issues involved in these aspects of the early language development, and include psychological, linguistic, social and educational factors.

Since birth, many children grow up to become bilingual or multilingual. Children may be impacted by bilingualism simultaneously when they are exposed to both languages at the same time from birth, or sequentially when the child learns one language first and then learns a second language. It is crucial to establish that there is no distinction between informal language acquisition and formal language learning. As a matter of fact, acquiring two languages from birth is not detrimental to a child’s language growth. Infants can differentiate between languages from a very early age. They are able to use appropriate “language matching” when talking to others.

Parents may take choices and use more than one language. They have the ability to speak more than one language to their children. The choice is referred to as “private language planning and family language policy”. Parents make language choices by conscious, subconscious and spontaneous decisions. Languages choices may change, in many cases, dependant on where the family lives. Also, bilingualism in childhood is influenced by factors outside of parents and the home. It is crucial to set that there is no balanced bilingualism. The usage of two or more languages is related to the change of the time as family, social and educational circumstances, and language use opportunities.

In order to have a broad knowledge of early childhood bilingualism, we need to categorize it according to the language or language spoken by parents to children or languages ofthe community. The categories are: (1) one parent one language (OPOL), (2) home language is different from the language outside the home, (3) mixed language, (4) delayed instruction of the second languages. Although, this category system has limitations, all categories describe how children may acquire two or more languages in their early childhood.

There are many people who are multilingual because of their geographic location. For example, some Swedes are fluent in Swedish, German and English. Many individuals in Africa, India and China speak local, regional and national or international languages. Also, children may become trilingual because parents speak two languages at home and they are learning other languages outside of the home, such as in school.

Mixing one language with another is an issue that parents and teachers have with bilingual students. Codeswitching and translanguaging are terms used to describe how bilingual children occasionally switch their languages. The first one is used to refer to any switches between languages that occur within or across sentences during the same conversation. The second term is related to how bilinguals use their two languages in daily life. In other words, codeswitching tends to focus more on the code and translanguaging focus on bilingual speakers. Both are frequent behaviors shown among bilinguals.

 The study of early development of bilingualism provides us a broad analysis of how languages are used by children and how languages impact a child’s linguistic.

Tongue Tied": Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence pg.134

Chapter summary

The article Academic Ignorance and Black Intelligence by William Labov displays how minority groups got some straggles on English proficiency, and how it becomes the main factor for their low educational achievement. There were many theories that try to explain why this happens. Professionals who have investigated this fact have established different positions. Some of them have believed that heredity is substantially more important than environment in determining intelligence. Others maintain that environmental factors rather than any genetic deficit explain the poor performance of lower educational performance. And, the third position held by professionals such as; linguists and anthropologists locate the problem in the relationship between students and school system. It has to be understood that all position are rooted in the fact that everyone has the right to learn the standard language and culture.

Accounting for the poor performance of children in schools requires trying to discover what kind of disadvantage or defect the children are suffering from. In fact, we can’t improve children language proficiency if we don’t know what their deficit factors are. William Labov said: “The viewpoint which has been widely accepted and used as the basis for large intervention programs is that the children show a cultural deficit as a result of an impoverished environment in their early years” (Santa Ana, 2004, p.134). This theory appears as the notion of verbal deprivation. However, verbal motivation has no basis in social reality. It is not clear to establish that students’ bad performance is related to socioeconomic status. Segregated ethnic groups, however, seem to do worse than others: in particular, Indian, Mexican-American and black children. In conclusion, we are dealing with American society cast system, essentially a color-marking system.

Considering that the most extreme view of the Verbal Deprivation Theory points out that the lower class black children have no language at all takes away factors from their language proficiency. Basil Bernstein sets the idea that much of lower class language consists of a kind of incidental emotional accompaniment to action here and now (2004, p.136). Thus, the deficit of language proficiency is related to the circumstances that the child experiences and not of the language capacity of the child.

William Labov does not disagree with Carl Bereiter who from his interaction with young black children shows a limited use of language by black students. The Bereiter’s program is based upon the premise that black children must have a language which they can learn. It provides an alternate explanation such as: the mono-syllabic language from black students is a result of the context of the adult-child interaction, not of the language capacity of the child. The author comes to this conclusion due to a series of interviews with a group of boys in Harlem. From the interviews we can notice that the boys had knowledge of their language, and could speak freely. It is crucial to establish that the social situation is the most powerful determinant of language proficiency. William Labov makes us think about our assumptions of how our students use language.

In the article, the author seeks to discredit the idea of verbal deprivation. He said: “Linguists are in an excellent position to demonstrate the fallacies of the verbal deprivation theory (2004, p.151). He also articulates the position of professionals who agree that American Educational System has to be adapted to the languages and learning styles of students’ majority.

References

Santa Ana, O. (2004). Tongue Tied, The Lives of Multilingual Children in Public Education. Rowman& Little Field Publisher; New York.

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