The Importance Of A Second Language Teacher

ELL students can only improve their knowledge of language through speaking and writing. Practice is one of the only ways to learn a language. Knowing this students and mentors should be mindful of projects they assign students. Educators should also be mindful of study habits they teach and present to students. When it comes to teaching ELL students it is important for teachers to slow down and give clear directions. It is easy for students to misunderstand language as well as feel overwhelmed. Assigning in class partners or small groups can also be a helpful way for ELL students to interact with other native students academically. Building academic support systems and communities is an important way for nonnative speakers to

With culturally diverse environments, foreign students should have the option to learn in their language and English. When a student’s language is not kept alive, it could disappear. Some may say that the best way to teach un-native students is to teach them in only English, but cultures are diminished in this form. Students feel more comfortable when basic impressions teach the students in the way they lean at home, which is with their un-native language.

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

There is are predictable stages of linguistic and cultural processes that students who are learning a second language go through. The teacher needs to be able to identify the stage the student is in so that they are

Nowadays, with such diversity in languages spoken throughout America, it is not uncommon for students to be unable to communicate with fellow classmates. A foreign language should be taught to all students beginning in elementary school throughout the United States. The implementation of foreign language classes in early education is more beneficial than learning a second language as an adult and increases the understanding of nearby culture. In addition, learning a foreign language as a young child produce higher test scores years later, increases cognitive mental development, and creates a marketable, knowledgeable individual in the workforce. Foreign language instruction should begin in elementary school and continue through high school.

In the week 6 session, we discussed our final learning theory, Lev Vygotsky’s social constructivism (Sociocultural theory). Specifically, we learned how this approach to learning highlights how learning and development start with social-interactions, which are later internalized by individuals. We also briefly discussed two key concepts of the sociocultural approach, the first being the Zone of Proximal Development and the second being the concept of Scaffolding. The Zone of Proximal development highlights the importance of understanding not only students’ actual level of competence, but also identifying students’ potential level of competence. In other words, rather than just focus on what students can do independently it is also important to identify what students can (and cannot) do with assistance (Scaffolding). Scaffolding allows students to do what they couldn’t do without assistance. The external scaffolding is temporary and becomes internalized by students – allowing them to “stand on their own.”

Additionally, in order to outstandingly teach, students must be scaffolded. In education, the term ‘scaffold’ denotes a process in which teachers model or show how to solve a problem, and then step back, offering assistance as needed. This term while never used by Vygotsky, was introduced by Wood, Bruner and Ross (1976) in an attempt to operationalise the notion of teaching in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (ZPD) (Wells, 1999). ZPD lies amid the space where pupils can make progress with assistance from a teacher and independently completing tasks. Although Bruner’s concept of “scaffolding” came later, the two are closely linked. Of Bruner’s, scaffolding involves guiding pupils to help them learn new skills and concepts. As they develop, these aids are progressively removed, similar to how scaffolding would be taken down from a building. When scaffolding is being used, the teacher is helping pupils move on, to learn and to make progress.

No matter who they are or where they are from, there is one thing that connects everyone across the world. Language is a tool that connects people from around the world and every walk of life. We don’t often realize the importance of something that is such an ordinary part of life, the ability to communicate with the people around the world. Children who have learned a second language early in life hold many advantages over the children who don’t have a good comprehension of the language. These children who learn a second language are more understanding of other cultures, become better communicators, and are shown to learn more in school. We the people should not have to change ourselves to fit into the system, the system should change to better suit the needs of the people. Therefore, the education system should have second language courses for children.

Second language acquisition is a process whereby people learn an additional language on top of their native ones. Learning a second language can be functional to oneself especially when communicating with a person whom you do not have a common language with. In acquiring the second language, there will be difficulties that one might face as compared to acquiring the first language, which makes it harder to acquire. Our mother tongue is easier to learn as we would have been brought up by our parents or grandparents that speak the language. Learning a second language can be difficult as we are not brought up for that language and would not know the basis of it. Some factors that makes it hard is the age of the learner, experience, the cognitive

The ESL learner in the mainstream school: Discuss the nature of an ESL Learner and the cultural considerations teachers need to be aware of which may impact on the learner’s second language acquisition and, therefore, inform classroom practice.

This paper intends to display a summary of the article “Culture in Second Language Teaching” by Elizabeth Peterson and Bronwyn Coltrane, of Center for Applied Linguistics. In detail, it discusses the attached relation among culture and language and the implementation of instructional strategies for teaching the second language through culture to improve students’ linguistic comprehension. According to this article, Culture has many different dimensions which include ideas, customs, skills, arts, and tools that characterize a group of people in each period; it is moreover the views, principles, and material things that form our way of life.

Language remains an integral part of human culture that our brains instill before we are born. Scientists have known for years fetuses can hear inside the womb, but they have discovered newborns possess the ability to cry in a way which mimics their native language (Cox). Scientists also recognize that as humans age learning a new skill―like a language―proves increasingly more difficult. Adults’ brains do not possess the same absorbency skills that children do (Baer). For this reason, I would advocate for high schools and colleges requiring students to take at least two years of a foreign language. Numerous studies have linked learning a second language to increased cognitive function, heightened global awareness, and understanding foreign cultural traditions.

The aim of teaching a second language is that it provides children with the necessary language skills that enables the child to communicate meaningfully as well as to read and write at the primary level. There is an order in which young children generally acquire their second language skills and those are as follows:

Several recent studies illustrate that student disaffection in English Language classrooms is a very real problem in many counties. In the following studies various terms are used to describe English Language Learning. The abbreviations: ESL (English as a Second Language), EFL (English as a Foreign Language), and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) are used within the context of each of the following studies in keeping with the original authors’ terminology. The common thread among these studies is a focus on disaffection and/or motivation of students learning English as a second or foreign language.

Scaffolding is an instructional concept which says that a teacher or expert should structure or make a plan in which a novice should work and get positive results out of it. An example of a scaffolding is as follows. A cricket coach when shows a novice hot to play a particular stroke makes an image of the stroke in the novice’s mind and thus structures an imprint of the same which helps the novice to play the stroke successfully.