Language acquisition begins with babies. The initial sounds are babbling and cooing, then they try to imitate what they hear. Eventually, they can say a word. They learn the rules and grammar of their home language Rowe and Levine) What about the children who are learning a second language? There are many questions that can be asked about students who are speaking more than one language. How do they do in school? Are they getting the instruction that they need? Are they really understanding what the new language they are learning? These are all valid questions and teachers need to make sure that these questions are being answered when it comes to dual language learners. Many children attending school speak more than one language. …show more content…
The teachers agreed that They have all used the Spanish resources available to the school to help fill out the paperwork needed for school. These sources include translators and helping enroll parents (who are willing) into an English class offered for Spanish parents at the school to help teach them basic English. The teacher’s interview also agreed that older siblings do a lot to help their parents and younger siblings. They will attend conferences for the younger siblings and translate for their parents. In other cases, they will do drop off and pick of the siblings and ask questions for their parents. Homework can be difficult without help, so the older brother’s and sister’s will lend some …show more content…
The curriculum used at Kent City is a play based curriculum called Creative Curriculum. Teachers will put out activities that invite the child to play. There are math and literacy activities throughout the classroom. There are words in English and Spanish on the labels. Newsletters also go home in English and Spanish. Other correspondence that goes home through the school also goes home in English and Spanish. Kent City employs a person to work with the Spanish-speaking families. She helps them when forms need to be filled out, or if a parent or teacher to have a conversation or
It is important to maintain children’s home language as it may help them learn and understand a second language. Barratt-Pugh (2000) discusses the benefits of bilingualism and maintaining it through early childhood settings, also mentions the concerns families have for their children maintaining two languages through schooling. Research within the article states that children who speak more than one language will have a higher level of understanding literacy content, form, genre, as well as understand the differences and translating within both languages. This demonstrates a contrast of strengths and experiences with literacy (linguist...
“Should all students be bilingual.” NEA Today 20.8 (2008): MasterFILE Premier. EBSCO. Web. 18 Feb. 2011.
In this period, the lot of teachers was a much more expanded role in the community than that of present-day teachers. Many teachers had to become translators when faced with the problem of teaching children who knew little or no English. In the book, Portrait of a Teacher: Mary Elizabeth Post and Something of the Times in Which She Lived, Ruth Leedy Gordon explains that Mary Elizabeth Post, an early schoolteacher in Yuma,learned Spanish simply to communicate with her students (10). She also wrote recipes for her pupils’ mothers in Spanish and went to their homes to show them how to cook new dishes (76). In their collection of stories from the pioneer days in Arizona, Dust in Our Desks: Territory Days to the Present in Arizona Schools, Alleen Pace, Margaret Ferry and L.J. Evans recorded that in an Arizona town called Morenci, teachers taught night classes for those who wanted to learn English, as well as those who wanted to learn Spanish (29). The language barrier created a lot more work for Arizona teachers, work that was not written in their contracts, but they took on the task of learning another language and teaching English to others without complaint.
Bilingual education in public schools has been the topic of much discussion over the last several years. This discussion has been prompted due to the ever increasing numbers of Spanish-speaking persons emigrating to the United States, especially in those states that border Mexico--California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. What the debate seems always to overlook is our country’s other non-English speaking members. This country is now and has always been the “Melting Pot” for the world with persons emigrating to this country from most every country in the world; however, we commonly gear the focus of bilingual education toward our Spanish-speaking citizens.
When we asked these teachers whether they supported or were against the bilingual education system, they each shouted their answer as if it were instinctive. Although they had different reasons why, each and every one of the teachers said they supported the system without a doubt. We were given a multitude of reasons why bilingual education is advantageous. Ms. Velez stated that she supports bilingual education because, first and foremost, she is a product of it, and second because she believes the program allows the children to earn credit and learn the language at the same time. She said that if the non-English speaking child were immersed in the English mainstream classes they will fail, and as a result the already high drop out rate of Latinos would increase. Ms. Harrison felt that the bilingual education program would be even stronger and more effective if it served more of the ethnic groups in Hartford. The Vietnamese, Lao, and Albanian students are often put in transitional classes because there are not enough in that particular ethnic group to create a bilingual class that will help them to learn English, while maintaining their primary language. Presently, the state requires twenty students who need assistance in the same language to hire a teacher to create a class for them. She also stated that the students in bilingual education classes have just as many difficulties in academics as do the students in mainstream education, and that the bilingual education program is often used as a scapegoat for those students not achieving.
The issue of bilingual education is a much debated topic in this country and especially in this state. The Spanish-speaking populace has grown tremendously in these past decades, much of which has immigrated with Spanish as their only language. This has left the public school system with an interesting problem; how to successfully transition Spanish speaking students into an English environment. Public school systems have generally adopted one of two approaches to this problem. One is to allow students several years to develop their English with lessons taught in both languages. The other is a total immersion program where students are thrust into English-only lessons with little time develop their second language. Both approaches have ardent followers with valid arguments for each approach.
Children are better learners than adults except in the area of the pronunciation of words. That is why the second language program will be accepting children who are in elementary, they will be taught how to read signs, and learn how to speak in the desired second language. The objective goal of the second language program is to get students ready to speak another language as if it were their primary language. The second language program will not be as any other school program because it will require dedication, responsibility, and focus. Kids now are lazy and also don’t communicate well with other people, which is important because they will need to know how to communicate when they graduate high school, but because they were not taught how to they are lacking that skill. Students because they are being taught out the book they don’t get to learn different skills that will be useful when they leave high school. In the program students won’t be learning straight off the book they will be assigned a pen pal who they will be writing to not in English but in their chosen second language, and every so often they will talk on Skype this will show if they are understanding the language; with the interaction that the students will be doing they will develop communicative skills that will be helpful when they are out of high
Bilingual education has been a politicized topic of debate for years. There are many whom support bilingual education being incorporated into students’ curriculums while others are adamant that it should not be a part of the classroom. Those that are opponents of bilingual education seem to fear the idea of students being exposed to a second language or becoming proficient in two languages. Bilingual education has many dimensions and definitions, which can cause some confusion, but the benefits of its inclusion into student’s curriculum are irrefutable.
Since, the issue of Bilingual education became relevant in the United States, people have argued over the need and effectiveness of such programs in American school systems.
There are three main theories of child language acquisition; Cognitive Theory, Imitation and Positive Reinforcement, and Innateness of Certain Linguistic Features (Linguistics 201). All three theories offer a substantial amount of proof and experiments, but none of them have been proven entirely correct. The search for how children acquire their native language in such a short period of time has been studied for many centuries. In a changing world, it is difficult to pinpoint any definite specifics of language because of the diversity and modification throughout thousands of millions of years.
Babies begin to develop language skills long before they embark on speaking. The foundation for learning language begins before birth by the baby listening and recognizing his/her mother’s heartbeat and voice in the womb. “In a study, researchers played a 2-minute recording of a popular Chinese poem to 60 pregnant women and their unborn babies while monitoring total heart rates. Heart rates rose while the babies listened to their own mother's voice, but they fell and stayed lower while the stranger recited. Obviously, the babies were paying close attention, leading the researchers to suspect they were not only recognizing morn, but beginning to learn the ins and outs of language” (Dawidowska and Harrar (2003))....
Children’s acquisition of language has long been considered one of the uniquely defining characteristics of human behaviour.
“Learning a second language not only has cognitive and academic benefits, it also supports a greater sense of openness to, and appreciation for, other cultures” (Tochen, 2009). For many students in the United States, English is not the primary language spoken at home. There are several options for getting these children to reach proficiency in the English Language. However, there is only one model that preserves the child’s first language, while also gaining literacy in English. This model is Bilingual Education. Bilingual education is not new to the United States. It in fact started in 1968 under title VII. However, there is still a lot for the general public, and parents of language learners, to learn about this form of education. Bilingual
Research also confirms that children learn best in their mother tongue as a prelude to and complement of bilingual and multilingual education. Whether children successfully retain their mother tongue while acquiring additional languages, depends on several interacting factors.
This situation was no longer allowed. While over ten percent of the total adolescent education systems contain emergent bilinguals, a whopping sixty percent of those students are educated in only English (Bale). Maria Estela Brisk, a Boston College Education professor, believes, “schools have wasted much energy in the search for a "perfect" model and the best way to learn English” when they could just focus on providing “quality education” to every student in the system (1). Teachers’ main priority should consist of effectively teaching their students to prepare them for the future, but currently there is a lack of certified bilingual education teachers.