Some 2 million immigrants enter America every year, and about half of them don't have English-language skills. Many of them--in addition to immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years--enroll in adult English classes, starting at a beginning level.
If we put ourselves in the shoes of one of those students, what would it be like? Imagine you are Amina. You grew up in Somalia, attending school until you were 12 or 13. You left maybe because you needed to work to support your family, or because your family moved to a refugee camp. You eventually immigrated to the U.S. in your early 20s, too late to be served by the public-school system, but desperately wanting to get a job, to feel comfortable and get around in the new culture, and to speak English. Your experience in school back home was fairly positive, you had good relationships with most teachers, but it's been years since you stepped into a classroom, and the literacy skills you built in your native language were okay, but not advanced. You maybe got some English-language literacy training in a refugee camp, and in the U.S. you're getting familiar with what the alphabet looks like, and you can even understand and speak some words in English. You're resilient, eager to learn, and ready to set aside the time to do so.
So, you hear about and enroll in a beginning ESOL program that serves mainly, but not totally, African students. Some of the staff and teachers speak your native language. Even if your teacher doesn't speak your language, a volunteer tutor placed in your classroom might. Or another student. As I wrote last week's post on 100% immersion, it is important for programs and teachers alike to decide what the nature of their classrooms will be: will they be English immersion? Will some native language be used? What makes the most sense for you and your fellow students?
The case of Amina is fictionalized, and though it isn't exactly the story of my former adult students, it reflects some of the common scenarios students brought with them to my classes. A student might well be a former lawyer from Colombia, a middle-aged homemaker from China, a construction worker from El Salvador. Of course, it's impossible to generalize from a single student, or group of students. But for the sake of the argument, today I'll come down on this side of the argument: No 100-percent immersion; tap students' native language during class.
In any kind of adult education (and probably education more broadly), a student's comfort is very important. When a teacher (or tutor) knows a student's native language (we can call it "L1"), he or she can mix that into class, clarify directions, encourage students to discuss a conceptual topic in their own language before getting into it in English. Done at appropriate times, to an appropriate extent, using the student's L1 helps acknowledge the student's culture, and allows teachers and students to build a closer relationship. That has humanistic benefits all by itself, but if connecting to a student's home language and culture helps that student's comfort level, that comfort level is also important to language acquisition. The well-known linguist Stephen Krashen has made the case that a key element to learning another language is your emotional orientation: reducing anxiety and increasing comfort are important. Tapping the L1 can support that.
The benefits get even more concrete from there--and get into issues of making class mechanics accessible. Experts say that clarification or some translation in the L1 is beneficial to ESOL learners. What might that mean in context? Teachers often use games to support vocabulary learning, but not all students know those games. I remember vividly that I needed to carefully model how to play Memory, simply because it was new to students. Once the game got going, students delved into solid English practice. That's only one example of where using some of a student's native language can grease the wheels of the classroom.
Classroom mechanics, of course, aren't just about games. My fictional Amina hadn't been in a classroom for years--and American classroom expectations might differ from students' home experiences, anyway--so even small things like organizing a binder or doing homework could seem daunting. I remember many of my students making many adjustments to being in a classroom. This isn't to say that organizational matters are the point of class, or that they should take up much excessive time. There's language to be learned, after all. But adults I've taught craved ways to get organized and figure out how to manage the movements and norms of a classroom. There's a lot to making that happen, and the best way to get organization out of the way is to address it directly, and early. Using some native language can help those sorts of class mechanics go more efficiently, too.
Finally, the appeal to using students' native language is it means you don't have a "rule" and you certainly don't have to enforce it. Even classes I saw who volunteered 100-percent immersion had trouble actually following through on it. It would be hard to achieve without some policing--whether policing by the teacher, or peer policing. No adult wants the focus of her English-language learning to be on whether she can perfectly adhere to some language guideline. Better to foster a welcoming culture, make mechanics go quickly, and focus on the activities that can help students meet the objective--learning English--that brought them to the classroom in the first place.
P.S. Tune in next week as I argue the other side ...
P.P.S. This post isn't intended to dive into the debates over bilingual education, sheltered English immersion, and the like at the K-12. But some of the drawbacks (and next week's case for) 100-percent immersion) could transfer.
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