Reflection Of The Second Language Class

Many of their learning needs are similar to those of other children and young people learning in our schools. However, these learners also have distinct and different needs from other learners by virtue of the fact that they are learning in and through another language, and that they come from cultural backgrounds and communities with different understandings and expectations of education, language and learning”. (NALDIC, 1999).

When an educator walks into her classroom for the first time, she needs to be prepared to encounter students that come from a variety of backgrounds. The children will be in different stages of language development, and the educator must accommodate for each of these students. Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, and Matera (2013) state, “The US Census Bureau projects that by the 2030s, children whose home language is other than English will increase from roughly 22 percent to 40 percent of the school-age population” (p. 9). This increase in second language learners will cause the educator to accommodate for those needs. Second language learners “need teachers who welcome them and recognize their unique abilities, what they know, and what they need to learn” (Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, and Matera, 2013, p. 10).

My seminar provided an overview of chapter 4- explaining second language learning. During my introduction, key points from each of the 5 perspectives were discussed. The cognitive perspective was given priority as it contained many subcategories within itself. This section also allowed my group mates to connect theory and practice of second language learning. My group mates were able to connect to the noticing hypothesis, processability theory and the three principles of practice through their own personal experiences while learning a second language. The first discussion question asked my group members to evaluate their own understanding of how language learning occurs and compare it with the perspectives we covered. The second discussion question provided them a chance to assess each perspective and think of one weakness and one strength for each. Overall if I were to re-do my seminar, I would like to provide more attention to the other perspectives. I would add more discussion questions in order to stimulate more in-depth discussions. Similarly, adding supplemental information from an outside source to further discussion and connect the theories to pedagogy. Additionally, I would create an activity that focused more on teaching of a second language and how these theories have influenced the current practices used.

The students that make up the school are mostly Latino, African American, West Indian and white. Language is the medium through which students gain access to the curriculum. (Tamara Lucas). For example, Maria was placed in a dual language classroom, since arriving from Mexico and when she entered middle school that was taken away. The teacher in her English class needs to realize it takes second language learners longer to develop fluency in academic English than in conversational English. (Tamara Lucas). Ms. O’reilly should take this inconsideration when it comes to the strategies used in the classroom. Social interaction will help Maria’s language development and a method that can be useful to promote social interaction is the use of group work. Using group work will allow Maria to not only expand her English skills but also learn from the other students. Tamara Lucas states; “Scaffolding learning for ELLs requires teachers to consider the relationship between students’ linguistic abilities and the tasks through which they are expected to learn”. Ms. O’reilly has set the goal of having all the students to be on the same level at the end of the school year, this might not be a realistic goal since each child comes from different backgrounds and learn at different speeds. Different scaffolding strategies should be use to accommodate the ELLs in her classroom. Group work, sharing about ones culture, knowing the child’s mother tongue and creating a comfortable environment where the students can raise their hand or ask questions without feeling dumb or like an

Students have enough opportunities to practice the target language, in pairs, individually and as a whole class. They practice the language in speaking and written form.

With the United States demographics changing rapidly, school systems are flooded with students from other countries. According to state and national guidelines, these students do not have the language skills necessary to be successful in general education classrooms. Teachers often face the dilemma of how to effectively reach these students. Traditional methods or strategies do not fully reach these students, so teachers question themselves as teachers or question the student’s intellectual ability. This frequently causes misconceptions about teaching ELL students. Knowing how a new language is acquired helps many teachers build success quickly, making learning and teaching

I am new to the profession of education, but where I lack in experience I make up for it when it comes to my enthusiasm and willingness to learn more. My first field experience was at Milton Union high school, and it was also the most scared I’ve ever been in the classroom. However, when I went to Stivers School for the Arts things got even better—I felt more prepared. This year I’m back at Stivers and so far everything has been good, and I really enjoy working with my cooperating teacher. This year will be a test of my endurance and capabilities. I am up to the challenge to work with students who are linguistically diverse, even though I know it might be difficult at times. Studying Spanish for six years half in high school and college have given me an idea of how disorienting it is to not understand the language. Not only is it disorienting it is also very challenging, because languages are all unique in vocabulary and grammar structure. These experiences will become of aid to me when I’m working with ESL students in the classroom.

This is evidenced by the teacher’s insistence that whenever the students separate from the group discussion, the students need to have a new partner of a different level from them. This is due to the varying proficiencies in the classroom regarding the target language, and by using a peer-based instruction with the teacher-based instruction, the students are building confidence in using French in both small group discussion and when called on in a whole group

As a first-time freshman, I honestly was very excited about English. I expected it to be much like my AP Language course, but somewhat better. I was always told that you read a lot in college, and I was not sure how I would manage reading different texts while also keeping focused in my other classes. But, thanks to the lord above! I did not have to stress about that during this course. I loved the way this course was taught mainly because it was not overly demanding. Throughout this course, I was taught the correct way to use dialogue in my writing, as well as being grammatically flawless.

The researchers argue that it is more helpful for these students to continue to communicate in their home language while learning a second language. Everyone obtains the language of their surrounding environment and is comfortable with that form of communication. The success comes, it is said, when the second language is acquired. In effort to put this into action, the solution that researchers Cummins and Kenji Hakuta recommended was to use teachers who were bilingual

The following paper will focus on an individual placed in a very specific teaching setting. For the purpose of the paper, the classroom will be located in an international school in Spain, therefore the language being taught will be Spanish. However, the majority of the concepts introduced are applicable to similar classroom setups in a variety of countries. As this is an international school classroom, the students hail from a multitude of different countries, meaning they do not all share a common first language. This will pose a great challenge to the teacher, whose previous experience solely consists of teaching Spanish in the United States, where almost all of her students spoke English as a first language. She is accustomed to using her students’ L1 as an anchor for teaching the L2, often code-switching to explain grammar and other key concepts. Now, however, she understands that she will have to modify her teaching method. She must now figure out a way to spend almost the entirety of her time teaching in the target language of Spanish. This will serve as the umbrella theme under which she will also address a variety of other modifications and concepts she must consider in her new classroom. All of these modifications serve to improve her ability to teach the class almost exclusively in the target language. What is to follow in this paper is the teacher’s firsthand account, written approximately a month before she is to start teaching, of how she plans to handle this

For most of the ESL institutes and Universities in Panama, which bid English as a second language, this is their main goal, developing critical thinking in their students who can express it through either orally or written English language. However, stating this as their aim does not ensure that ESL Panamanian students will enhance their English proficiency. There are a number of administrative problems in those places, which influence their failure in getting their aspirations. Specifically, it has to do especially with the organization and development of their teaching programs. Another reason is the fact of teaching second language learners without a real input. Finally, there is a reality in our educational system,

I was a six year old kid sitting on the floor with numerous other kids my age. We were sitting in a rather large white classroom blanketed in multiple posters of words and the alphabet. It was the first week of first grade and Mrs. Wilson had just begun to go over with the class words that rhyme with each other. CAT! RAT! My classmates and I shouted out examples and felt a little joy in receiving praise from our teacher, as she wrote them on the whiteboard. By the time we had finished we had filled up almost the entire board. Then Mrs. Wilson began to talk about the importance of having an impressive vocabulary, or “knowing a lot of words” as she put it. She told us that learning more words gave us more things to be able to say, and that we would need them for the rest of our lives to communicate our opinion to others. Being the clueless six year old I was, that never crossed my mind but it really stuck with me and made me ponder an idea in my head: if there were no words or literature in our world, there would essentially be nothing. How would workers be able to keep their companies up and running? We would have no understanding between ourselves and others. Language continues to and will always be a required element of communication and everyday lives of humans. My experience in Mrs. Wilson’s class was almost 12 years ago and still I have this image in my mind and remember it like was yesterday. Though it stuck with me over these years, I am unsure of why this particular

When learning a new language, it is always a great idea to interactive with native speakers of that language. This is exactly what I was able to do for the ASL function assignment. As I was completing this assignment, I attended the Halloween Appetizers event and the Holiday Decoration event.

Knowing and having the capability of using a foreign language has become more widespread throughout the professional and nonprofessional population. In order to gain knowledge of another language, there must be a group of people willing to share their wisdom with others in a way that can be understood. The most common example of these kinds of groups are teachers, and the foreign language teachers at Columbus North High School are one of many. They are formed in their own discourse community within the high school. According to John Swales, a discourse community must have six characteristics; the teachers must all share the same goal, have created their own lexis, communicate with one another, have a hierarchy, utilize a genre to help in communication, and have relevant knowledge of the subject (Swales 220-222). One of the ways that this discourse community is successful in teaching a foreign language is through their communication, not only between the teachers themselves but with the students as well. The purpose of this research is to better understand the communication between the student and teacher relationship in a foreign language classroom and discover an easier and more effective way for both teacher and student to communicate. A way to do this is by using the Universal Design of Learning (UDL), a guideline designed for teachers so that all students can learn in the way that best suits their learning style (udlcenter.org). These guidelines were