“Breaking Them Up, Taking Them Away”: ESL Students in First Grade

        The title of the article written by Kelleen Toohey accurately describes what I thought of the first grade observations made in the public school in Canada.  The author uses the term, legitimate peripheral participation by which learners move toward “full participation” as they engage in community practices over time.   The three main components of the author’s observations were the location of participants, the management of material, and the source of the intellectual resources needed to complete school tasks.  From the evidence given in the article, I do not believe these students met the “legitimate” peripheral participation.  

The first observation was the location of participants.  The teacher assigned each student to a desk where most L2 learners of English were seated next to a native L1 English speaker.  Most of the L2 learners of English were seated up front by the teacher.  I believe this seating arrangement went well throughout the year because students could engage in conversation with native English speakers.  The problem that I have is that the teacher did not allow the students to move around and speak to others.  This could be problematic because it as if the teacher is inexplicably saying that the L2 learners of English are not capable to speak to others, only to the teacher herself or to the person next to them.

The next observation that was collected was the aspect of “using your own things.”  Each student had to use their own things.  Borrowing and lending led to a little social interaction, some conflict, and physical movement in the classroom.  The problem was that some students were actively using the act of borrowing to sustain frequent interactions with one another.  I believe the act of borrowing can help with conversing with one another, but with the assigned placement of seats, how could students lend or borrow materials without getting out of their seats to ask their peers?  I believe the teacher put too much emphasis on the assigned seating and should adjust her ideas of “using your own things.”

Lastly, the author collected evidence of the source of the intellectual resources needed to complete school tasks.  The author states that from time to time the teacher organized the children in small groups.  In my opinion, the teacher should use an ample of scaffolding strategies such as, small groups, individual work, pairing, and choral.  In a classroom where more than half of the students are L2 English language learners, it is imperative that the students are engaged in the curriculum at all times.  In all, the teacher’s approach seemed to me a bit controlling.  She should probably re-think in the organization of her classroom.

Understanding Other Cultures

          In 2003, I walked into the corridors of Loyola Academy, a private Jesuit high school in a prestigious neighborhood; Wilmette, Illinois.  Looking around me, it seemed as if 90 percent of the population was White-Caucasian, 5% Black or Hispanic, and the other 5% were people of other nationalities.  I felt like an outcast being a dark skinned, middle eastern Christian, with dark brown hair and eyes.  I walked into my first class ever in high school and heard a few people talking.  They were talking about me.  I could hear someone whispering into another persons ear, “Hey, look, it’s Osama’s cousin.”  I felt like a no body.  

        Its 2011 now.  I look back on this occasion and laugh to myself.  A quote from Chapter 1 in the book, Dialogic Approaches to TESOL; Where the Ginkgo Tree Grows, states,  “Because English has become a worldwide language, many native speakers of English have never learned a second language, and this limits their understandings of other cultures” (12).  This quote clearly explains why the person in my class said such awful things about me.  It was obvious that “this” person had little to no understanding about other cultures and stereotyped me as “Osama’s cousin” because of my dark, middle eastern heritage.  

         Moreover, a solution to this problem is that learning a second language as an English native speaker may open many doors, such as enhancing the understanding of other cultures.  As a future language teacher, I hope to work in a dual-language classroom where native English speakers and native Spanish speakers can collaborate using scaffolding strategies to enhance both of their second languages.  Thus, creating a less stereotypical mindset.

Changing Perspectives on Good Language Learners

         In this week’s readings, I was especially interested in the identification of two good language learners and how they came about learning the language. The first person is Eva,a young Polish woman lived in a neighborhood in which little English was spoken.  Eva’s motivation to negotiate entry into the social networks in her workplace made her a good language learner.  On the other hand, Julie, a 5 year old Polish girl was identified as an ESL learner.  Julie showed success through her motivation and strategies that led to her success in language learning.  Both learners, Eva an adult and Julie a child, showed exceptional performance, and the question is how they both did so?  
Eva’s boss did not see it as his responsibility in the development of Eva’s communication skills, rather it was Eva’s responsibility to learn the language.  In Julie’s case, in contrast, the teacher saw it as her responsibility to help Julie and other ELL’s improve their English skills.  But, both learners set up counter discourses in which their identities could be respected and their resources valued, thereby enhancing the possibilities for shared conversation.    
According to this article and the information provided on these two language learners, it seems to me that researchers should spend less time focusing on language structures and focus on individual learners.  Moreover, by looking at social resources and the community that language learners live in will help in their research. In all, good language learning requires attention to social practices in the contexts in which individuals learn L2s.  

Chapter 5: Social contexts of Second Language Acquisition

         
           As I was reading through the chapter, these two terms really drew my attention.  Communicative competence is “what a speaker needs to know to communicate appropriately within a particular language community” (100).  And that language community refers to a group of people who share knowledge of a common language to at least some extent.   As I have said before, I am a Bilingual educator major and language community is a huge part of the acculturation process in immigrants coming from their home country to the US.  

Acculturation is the full participation of learning the culture of that community and adapting to those values and behavioral problems.  Although the notion of acculturation sounds amazing, it is not easy to do as an immigrant coming from the US.  The immigrant already has morals and values that they live by and then have to acculturate themselves to adapt to the values of the US and the culture of the community.  However, some immigrants find it difficult to acculturate and turn to assimilation.  Assimilating is basically, “trying to fit in to get by.”  Moreover, assimilation is not the key and that is where Bilingual education classes come into play.  On page 127, Saville-Troike differentiate between the types of bilingualism.  Additive bilingualism is where members of a dominant group learn the language of a subordinate group without threat to their L1 competence or to their ethnic identity.  The other is subtractive bilingualism, where members of a subordinate group learn the dominant language as L2 and are more likely to experience some less of ethnic identity and of their L1 skills.  The more additive bilingualism occurs in education, the more people will acculturate, rather than assimilate.

Never say Never...

After reading through the three broad theoretical prospectives for explaining first language acquisition, I agree mostly with initiate perspective.  Chomsky believes that children are biologically programmed for language and that language develops int he child in just the same way that other biological functions develop(15).  He concludes that children’s minds are not blank states to be filled by imitating language they hear in the environment.  However, I do not agree with Chomsky’s idea of the critical period hypothesis. He suggests that children who are not given access to language in infancy and early childhood will never acquire language if these deprivations go for too long(17).  The word “never” is too strong because that is not always the case.  The child may not fully develop the language natively, but the child will be able to communicate.

On the other hand, in class, I brought up the idea theorized by Jim Cummins of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency).  I am in total agreement with these ideas, but as for Chomsky’s idea of critical period hypothesis, I think that is a little too strong of an idea to hold when some people can easily learn their first language with the help of language resources and the environment they are in.  Jim Cummins theorized that there are two different languages, BICS which is the social language and CALP, the academic language acquisition.  BICS takes about 1-2 years to acquire and CALP takes about 7-9 years to acquire.  Although this theory is for second language acquisition I believe this clearly shows evidence that the critical period hypothesis can be questioned.  Anyone can learn a language, it just may take a lot of time to acquire.  In conclusion, to “never” be able to acquire a language after a long period of time has passed,  does not hold true for me.

Second Language Acquisition-Foundations of TESOL

       Three questions that people are trying to seek answers for are: What exactly does the L2 learner come to know?, How does the learner acquire this knowledge?, and Why are some learners more successful than others?  I never really thought about these questions until now.  Researchers have no exact answers, but they have come up with ideas and some have been provided in Chapter 2.  The last question that researchers have proposed is: Why are some L2 learners more successful than others?  Some answers are feedback, aptitude, motivation, and instruction.
       For example, my second language is Spanish.  I began taking Spanish in 6th grade and was clearly motivated to keep taking classes throughout high school and college.  Moreover, this led me to become a Bilingual Education major, specifically Spanish-English.  In high school, my aptitude of learning Spanish was very high and my memory capacity of learning vocabulary was exceptionally high, which thus lead me in taking two AP Spanish classes my Junior year of high school.
       In all, Chapter 2 has introduced me to the foundations of Second Language Acquisition and has begun to answer the three basic questions most second language researchers would like to know.  The bases of the approaches to the study of SLA will eventually answer the what, how, and why.

Monitoring teaching acts

        The last chapter for the Kuma book clearly stated what to do when observing a classroom.  There are three very important stakeholders to consider when observing a classroom: observer, teacher, and learner.  The idea of this chapter was how to create your own personal theory and put it to practice and then self-observe, self-analyze, and self-evaluate your teaching act/theory.  Although I may have a teaching philosophy as a pre-service teacher, I do not know if that will work in my classroom because I have yet to have my own classroom.  When I do, it is important to take the M & M observational scheme into consideration.
        The M & M observational scheme consist of a three-stage activity: preservation, in which the observer and the teacher consult with each other regarding the aims, objectives, and activities of the class to be monitored; observation itself; and post observation, in which the observer and the teacher select a few episodes for a detailed treatment, analyze classroom input and interaction, interpret their analysis, derive pedagogic implications, and put all this knowledge together to develop a theory of practice.  This observational scheme is very detailed and takes a lot of time, but I am so happy that I have this to refer to when I actually am in the classroom because it will definitely help my teaching decisions.