Second Language Methodology

ELL Teacher Interview (Click the link!) I interviewed Mrs. Orr and discussed how inadequate staffing, high stakes testing, and English language features impact ELL students. In the interview Mrs. Orr described how the school she works at was understaffed and underprepared for the influx of immigrant students. The classroom was comprised of a very diverse population students who traveled from Iraq, Mexico, Thailand, Nigeria and Kenya. Obviously having so many ELL students all in the same classroom with varying levels of English proficiency presented many challenges for staff as well of students. Because of the unexpected influx pf students and lack staff, students were forced into a newcomer/submersion hybrid program with pull out ESL style teaching when high stakes assessments were coming up. Mrs. Orr's classroom utilized a lot of Google translator and reliance on students who were more proficient than others in English. I didn't want to classify the classroom completely ...

Blog 2 (Click the link!) Interviewing Ivie was very insightful and validated my the opinions that i had on how I would run my classroom in the future as an ELL educator. I found the point Ivie made about referencing pop culture in the classroom to make learning English more relevant very interesting. I have hear many stories about children immigrating to America knowing very little English, and then learning English through watching American cartoons and shows. Ivie had mentioned that students learning English are around English only peers who are constantly discussing current pop music, movies, games, and cartoons. That is what will be interesting to ELL learners because what's relevant in their world, and in turn, possibly increasing interest in learning English in the classroom. I think the comments Ivie made regarding relevancy speaks to communicative competency, more specifically, "sociolinguistic competence." Utilizing pop culture in the classroom is a grea...

Although I have none of my own experience with different techniques to learn a language, I think that learning a language through immersion would be the most helpful. I've done several observations in ELL classrooms where a dual language program was put in place. In the dual language classrooms i saw that students were flourishing; native English speakers were reading, speaking, and understanding Spanish at a conversational level and vice versa for the native Spanish speakers. Half of their instruction would be taught in English, whereas the other half of instruction would be taught in Spanish. The dual language programs acted as almost a "guided" language immersion program, site the students weren't fully immersed in another language the whole day. Dual Language programs have been found to increase student motivation and student interest, since students are able to engage in more meaningful interactions with their peers due to better communication (Thomas and ...