I became a better language teacher when I asked my students to speak only the language they were learning--and did the same myself. In my brief period teaching high-school Spanish, my students did activities in Spanish. But I didn't think of them as Spanish speakers--even though they were in an intermediate class!
When I moved to teaching adult ESOL, I didn't just change location. I changed attitude. 100% English was the name of the game--and it was only a beginning class. How, and why?
As I've written recently, there are some very good reasons for allowing use of students' native language in a second-language class. It creates a comfort zone--especially for adults already adjusting to a host of new cultural expectations. It makes classroom mechanics go more quickly, freeing up space for learning.
At the end of the day, though, I'm still for 100% immersion.* For a couple reasons.
Why not let students banter in their own language? After all, they can translate a confusing word, explain an instruction not well understood the first time around. Because the kind of classroom where students learn more language is one in which they participate in lots of small-group and pair work and use the "target language" (English in the ESOL setting). The "tidbit" language, small talk, back-and-forth, if it happens in that target language, is very helpful for building skills. How are you? What page are we on? Do you want to go first? Can you pass me a pencil? Don't or doesn't? In fact, it's actually more real than a lot of the language practice that happens in traditional "drills" or speaking activities--the questions are authentic, not out of a book. What's more, when students go back and forth in the target language, they have to adjust the language they use to help each other understand--that's also a very important way of building language skills.
Any classroom has plenty of anecdotes that show this, but there's also research that makes the case. One study I read about showed that students who interacted in the target language in small groups "negotiated meaning" many, many times more than those who weren't working in such groups. It's not side stuff; it's the main stuff.
There's also the familiar slippery slope. If you set the bar to 100%, there are probably going to be moments when folks resort to their native language. As I argued in my previous post on this topic, the job of an adult educator is not to police students. If you ask for 100%, you might get 98%, say--which is pretty good. Set the bar to "let's speak English 95% of the time"--and you'll probably get 90. I remember watching my students, who knew they were trying to hit a high bar, force themselves to "take the hard way out"--use the English phrase they thought they didn't remember, ask the English question they thought they couldn't get out.
Isn't it just too challenging to ask beginning (or intermediate) speakers to understand everything in the target language? In a sense, yes. God, when I was teaching high school, if I'd tried to explain the complex directions I laid out for vocab games, my students' eyes might have glazed over more than they already were (amount of immersion was only one of my struggles; sigh).
Hold yourself to 100% target language as a teacher, though, and it can bring out something finer. The experts say that students who are learning a language from scratch need plenty of pictures, role-plays, models. It makes for hard work. Once I adopted 100% language immersion, I had to keep Occam's Razor on hand at all times: what was the simplest explanation or activity available? What metaphor could I use to display it? Google Images was also my best friend. And Total Physical Response, which I found to be an incredibly effective teaching technique. Lengthy instructions? Better to simplify the task, and model how to do (perhaps using my favorite: Doug Lemov's I/we/you sequence of modeling). Detailed explanations of grammar? Better to structure activities where students listen and observe how language is used in specific settings--perhaps responding physically. I had to bring my teaching to a higher level in order to bring the lessons to students at the right language level.
This isn't to understate the great things that can come from more complex work. While the beginning levels of language learning demand a language-rich, yet straightforward atmosphere, I also had positive experiences integrating substantial role-plays into class. Students might act out being a nurse and a patient at a health clinic. But to get to such complex work, students first need a foundation of grammar and vocab first, a model of what to do (YouTube being another of my best friends), and support as they do it.
Can there be a place for "safety valves" of native-language use? Of course. One semester, students asked to post chart paper on the wall, and write English words they needed translated on it. Later, the translation could be done. Teachers who speak a student's native language can always clarify something during class, after break. Volunteer tutors can sit side-by-side students and intervene when something is just really confusing. But I'd tend to see these as special exceptions.
At the end of the day, I'm for 100% immersion--slightly. Done right, it brings out more in students, and brings out more in teachers.
*N.B. As I pointed out last time around, I'm making a point about language use in a second-language program--I'm not making a point about the merits of bilingual education as a whole. That's a topic for another day.
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Language. Show all posts
February 14, 2012
February 10, 2012
Limits
This week, a plunge into something new. I'm interning at the Statehouse working on education policy. Firsts: first time working in a government building, first time walking through a metal detector to get to the office. We all deal with policy--ramifications, fallouts--on a daily basis. But--first time dealing with it from the inside-out.
My first day my supervisor handed me a three-inch-thick binder. Instructions: learn everything you can about English Language Learners. I put my head in the binder and emerged a few hours later swimming in Whereas this and Ch. that.
The inherent limits of policy strike me right off the bat. I'm not in an ELL classroom, and most of the briefs and reports I've read don't make me feel like I am. I'd love to read some organized testimony of teachers: what's it like to do this work? What do you think the law should say? I'm sure it's out there for the finding.
Even if policy is informed by the grassroots, how much of current, or amended, policy can reach back to the classroom? Should reach that deep?
**
It's an interesting way to learn. Before Wednesday, I knew almost nothing about ELLs. I know something more about language acquisition. This is perhaps the most transactual learning I've ever done. Learning for the purpose of tweaking a bill that has already been written. Learning just enough, in compressed time, to suggest those tweaks. Borrowing ideas already in use in other states. Writing to the constraints of four-page policy memos. Will it feel liberating, having so specific an outcome? Will it feel limiting?
**
It was a hard decision to drop my fifth class. I was already feeling overwhelmed by the workload. I found myself stringing together 14-hour days, yet still not fully engaging with the work in some courses. I pulled the plug on an extra quantitative class, in favor of being able to dive more deeply into projects I'm passionate about in other classes. I think it's the right tradeoff.
The limit to the one-year program is always having to make these trade-offs.
I already feel better. I can follow through on having a discussion group for a class. Talking through readings solidifies learning for me. I'm excited all over again for this last semester.
**
An observation this year: I miss the grassroots. I miss my students, my class. I miss the crafting of lessons, the buzz of carrying them out, the lightbulbs when folks make connections. The new recruits for the next course. I loved--love--working with adults to help them overcome the limits of not speaking English. I miss pushing the limits of practice.
I'm trying to heed the voices of my passions as I answer the $39,500 question: What Comes Next? I came to grad school because I wanted to touch more than a dozen or two lives at a time. I came because I saw my students confronting the realities of living poor in Boston and wanted to be part of a movement that could holistically address, upend, change those realities.
Should I go back to a classroom? I don't think having a foot (heart, head) back in the grassroots need be seen as a limit. I'd love to do good work on the ground and connect to good work at the 10, 20, 30,000 foot level. Not sure how. Still working on the roadmap.
My first day my supervisor handed me a three-inch-thick binder. Instructions: learn everything you can about English Language Learners. I put my head in the binder and emerged a few hours later swimming in Whereas this and Ch. that.
The inherent limits of policy strike me right off the bat. I'm not in an ELL classroom, and most of the briefs and reports I've read don't make me feel like I am. I'd love to read some organized testimony of teachers: what's it like to do this work? What do you think the law should say? I'm sure it's out there for the finding.
Even if policy is informed by the grassroots, how much of current, or amended, policy can reach back to the classroom? Should reach that deep?
**
It's an interesting way to learn. Before Wednesday, I knew almost nothing about ELLs. I know something more about language acquisition. This is perhaps the most transactual learning I've ever done. Learning for the purpose of tweaking a bill that has already been written. Learning just enough, in compressed time, to suggest those tweaks. Borrowing ideas already in use in other states. Writing to the constraints of four-page policy memos. Will it feel liberating, having so specific an outcome? Will it feel limiting?
**
It was a hard decision to drop my fifth class. I was already feeling overwhelmed by the workload. I found myself stringing together 14-hour days, yet still not fully engaging with the work in some courses. I pulled the plug on an extra quantitative class, in favor of being able to dive more deeply into projects I'm passionate about in other classes. I think it's the right tradeoff.
The limit to the one-year program is always having to make these trade-offs.
I already feel better. I can follow through on having a discussion group for a class. Talking through readings solidifies learning for me. I'm excited all over again for this last semester.
**
An observation this year: I miss the grassroots. I miss my students, my class. I miss the crafting of lessons, the buzz of carrying them out, the lightbulbs when folks make connections. The new recruits for the next course. I loved--love--working with adults to help them overcome the limits of not speaking English. I miss pushing the limits of practice.
I'm trying to heed the voices of my passions as I answer the $39,500 question: What Comes Next? I came to grad school because I wanted to touch more than a dozen or two lives at a time. I came because I saw my students confronting the realities of living poor in Boston and wanted to be part of a movement that could holistically address, upend, change those realities.
Should I go back to a classroom? I don't think having a foot (heart, head) back in the grassroots need be seen as a limit. I'd love to do good work on the ground and connect to good work at the 10, 20, 30,000 foot level. Not sure how. Still working on the roadmap.
February 4, 2012
What's the Problem?
For Arts of Communication class, Kennedy School of Government. Assignment: Deliver a speech stating a problem and proposing solutions. NB: Constrained by a four-minute max, there's a lot I couldn't get to. And the story's true--but the name Maria Gomez isn't.
A year and a half ago, Maria Gomez, a woman in her mid-thirties who had immigrated from Peru about a year before, stepped to the microphone in the event room in a small human-services agency in Roxbury. She stood upright, her black hair pulled back over a pressed white blouse. She was one of a group of adults graduating from a 5-month, twelve hour a week, English as a Second Language class. She looked out at the crowd, and said, “When I went to the doctor’s for an appointment with my children, before, I had problems. Now when I go to the doctor’s, I say, I don’t need a translator.” In a place more accustomed to the artful speeches of Nanci Pelosi or David Brooks, it might seem curious to highlight the testimonial of a low-income immigrant parent. Around here, it’s easy to overlook the adults in our community who lack basic skills. Rather than overlook these folks, though, let’s give them a closer look. The Roxbury program Maria graduated from was one I started and ran for two years; my adult education experience has taken me into consulting and teacher-training. So today, I’d like to describe the problem of immigrant literacy—and recommend some solutions.
Maria is not alone. 2 million immigrants enter the US annually; half of them either have low literacy or don’t speak English. There are many consequences: let me focus on two: our economy—and our next generation. First, all the research shows, if we’re going to maintain America’s global competitiveness, our workers must get better skills. To this, some would say, why focus on helping immigrants make a big leap in their skills? Why not focus on workers who already speak English and have some skills, helping them make the small steps to move up in the economy? The answer brings me to our second consequence: the next generation. More and more, our K-12 students are the children of immigrants. And a parent with low literacy is less likely to pay attention to their kids’ homework or pick up the phone and call their teacher. The struggle for adult literacy is a struggle for the economy and for our children. And Maria is a great example of what’s possible: after my class, she kept studying English, got her citizenship, and started a Home Health Aide training program.
Maria's an example of someone with low skills who found a solution. The bigger problem is, we’re not serving enough people like Maria, and we’re not serving them well enough. That’s a two-fold problem: capacity and quality. First, capacity: Right here in Cambridge, go down Mass Ave about a mile to the Community Learning Center. Their waitlist is 434 people long. Statewide, a study in the 90s verified there were 15,000 people on waitlists for ESL. That means months or years waiting for a seat. Second, quality. According to a national evaluation, a third of all adult ESL students leave class within the first two months. Why does somebody drop out? He doesn’t feel like he’s making much progress. Or programs hold classes during the day—and that’s when his job is.
Let me move to solutions. The adult literacy field needs something like what the Celtics have needed for two years: to get bigger, and get better. First, the bigger part. Proposing more funding for anything is a tough sell these days. But an investment in education is a down payment for our economy and our kids. That argument may not carry the day everywhere, but it sure does in some places. Indeed, right here, in his recent State of the Commonwealth speech, Governor Patrick proposed building workers’ skills, in part through increased funding for community colleges—which happen to be a key bridge to higher skills for many immigrants. That wisdom for investing in the future should be extended to adult ESL. But an alternative to government support are public-private partnerships. In Chinatown, the Asian American Civic Association goes into Tufts Medical Center, and offers three levels of ESL for hospital employees. It’s good for everyone, and Tufts picks up the tab.
Some will ask: why make a system bigger when it hasn’t proven its effectiveness at current scale? To address that serious concern brings me to my second solution: Should adult-education get bigger, it must get much, much better. That third of students who drop out? We need to get them to where Maria got. The best solutions will probably come from the dedicated teachers who understand how to work with adults. But here are a few of my ideas: locate ESL programs in K-12 schools, and provide daycare. Increase professional development for teachers to provide an engaging curriculum that students like and learn from. And make sure students are in the right classroom in the first place. Increase assessment when students start class—what does Maria already know? What does she struggle with?—and get students in a class with others at similar levels, so they aren’t lost, or bored. Those are a few ideas: there are many more.
As future policymakers, I ask you: when the conversation turns to education, please think of it beyond just K-12. Think of adults, too. As citizens, I ask you: when we talk about immigration, let’s move beyond culture or who doesn’t belong. Let’s move the conversation to the skills everyone needs. Let’s move the conversation to how to help more people get those skills, and help themselves, their children, and our entire economy. Thank you.
February 1, 2012
Modest Proposals (for Family Engagement)
Adapted from a class activity on engaging families of children aged 0-5. Assignment: Develop a slogan and talking points to be used by the Secretary of Education to promote literacy and learning development. What our team came up with, in 25 minutes, minus the snazzy poster:
Get Active: Read!
Books are for babies too!
Even babies can benefit from regular exposure to shared bookreading. Reading to your child teaches them how to listen, associate words with meaning and helps their overall language development.
Ask! Point! Talk!
When your child is old enough to talk, ask them questions about what you’ve read. Point to the words on the page. This helps your child learn their letters and prepares them for preschool. Let them help turn the pages of the book. Talk to your child about what is happening in the story, what the characters are doing and what they think will happen next. Don’t forget to hold your child on your lap while you read so they learn in a nurturing space.
Libraries: Free and Friendly!
Where can reading happen? Your public library provides a completely free, safe space for your child to take a book journey. Library cards are free and allow you to check out books and take them home. Your child can also listen to storytellers read books to them with other children in your community. With thousands of books to explore, your supply will never run out.
Early reading experiences help unlock the gift of lifelong learning for your child!
January 24, 2012
100% Language Immersion: The Case Against It
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.
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.
January 16, 2012
100% Language Immersion: Does It Make Sense?
In the ESOL classes I've taught, I wanted students to be at the driver's seat. They wrote a Class Constitution (as I've described elsewhere). They worked with me to develop norms for class. But I held on to three expectations, posted them on the wall, and preached them when necessary: (1) Arrive on time, (2) Complete homework, and (3) Speak English in class.
As fellow teachers, my old supervisor, and students could attest, I questioned, doubted, revisited all of these. Against the strong desire to have a class where all the norms were developed by students, these three remained. Still, the third always bugged me: Was it really right to drop beginning English learners in a 100-percent immersion class?
Looking at it from 30,000 feet, there are two competing ideas. On the one hand, all teachers must foster a respectful, welcoming classroom culture, and students' native language and culture can be a great foundation for helping them learn a second language. On the other hand, being immersed in the "target language" (in this case English) to the greatest extent possible is key to learning a second language.
This isn't to propose a false dichotomy, between a 100-percent immersion class and a class where the native language can be used--and in later posts, I'll explain ways the two might be blended. The fact is, though, that many if not most programs have a contract adult learners sign before enrollment, and how language is used in the classroom and building is often addressed. Further, it's natural for language learners to fall back on their native tongue, and a teacher's got to have an approach in mind when teaching: Is this all right, in this classroom? If so, when? Or should it be discouraged?
Over the next few weeks, I'll argue different sides of this. I came down on the side of 100 percent immersion English (with much hemming and hawing, I should note, and allowing some exceptions). So I'll start next week by revisiting my own bias, and arguing in favor of native-language use in a second-language classroom.
In the meantime, I invite readers to weigh in: What have you experienced in your own language learning? What approaches do you think might work best?
As fellow teachers, my old supervisor, and students could attest, I questioned, doubted, revisited all of these. Against the strong desire to have a class where all the norms were developed by students, these three remained. Still, the third always bugged me: Was it really right to drop beginning English learners in a 100-percent immersion class?
Looking at it from 30,000 feet, there are two competing ideas. On the one hand, all teachers must foster a respectful, welcoming classroom culture, and students' native language and culture can be a great foundation for helping them learn a second language. On the other hand, being immersed in the "target language" (in this case English) to the greatest extent possible is key to learning a second language.
This isn't to propose a false dichotomy, between a 100-percent immersion class and a class where the native language can be used--and in later posts, I'll explain ways the two might be blended. The fact is, though, that many if not most programs have a contract adult learners sign before enrollment, and how language is used in the classroom and building is often addressed. Further, it's natural for language learners to fall back on their native tongue, and a teacher's got to have an approach in mind when teaching: Is this all right, in this classroom? If so, when? Or should it be discouraged?
Over the next few weeks, I'll argue different sides of this. I came down on the side of 100 percent immersion English (with much hemming and hawing, I should note, and allowing some exceptions). So I'll start next week by revisiting my own bias, and arguing in favor of native-language use in a second-language classroom.
In the meantime, I invite readers to weigh in: What have you experienced in your own language learning? What approaches do you think might work best?
January 4, 2012
Next Steps for Adult Learners: Collaboration
Helping connect students to next steps, so they can avoid language attrition, is an important consideration for adult ESOL learners. Especially if they're studying in one of the many small programs cropping up in urban areas, which may be nimble but don't always offer a full continuum of classes. In my former one-level ESOL program, students undertook a sequence of activities to seek out and get enrolled in their next class.
That's all well and good. But how can different programs collaborate to help learners at one connect to classes offered at another?
As I discussed in my first piece in this sequence (linked above), mammoth waitlists await many adult ESOL learners in my state (Massachusetts), and others. Thus, the best way to assure a student moves on to intermediate English after finishing beginning level would be to increase funding--but this isn't the place to discuss that. Just because most programs are filled to capacity, and have four, five, or six months' worth of names waiting to join, doesn't mean there aren't gaps in enrollment that could be filled by students, if only they knew about them. For instance, every year there are numerous classes at numerous sites find themselves in August looking for students to fill their remaining spaces for class in September.
"Collaboration" is a watchword in the nonprofit and human-services sectors, but how is it converted from platitude to practice? It seems worthwhile to point out that collaboration is not a mere parntership, but the actual pooling of labor--co-laboring--or a joint effort to achieve a unified end. In putting collaboration into authentic practice, a promising model is the Strive Partnership, which is a cradle-to-career educational initiative in the Cincinnati area.
Strive has advanced a model of "collective impact" built on five key principles (as wonderfully detailed here):
(1) a common agenda built on shared understandings of the problem and of actions to solve it;
(2) shared measurement systems to assess and report effectiveness, arrived at by a consensus that ensures continued alignment, accountability between organizations, and the opportunity for participants to learn from each other;
(3) undertaking of mutually reinforcing activities in which each agency focuses on activities it can do well in coordination with other agencies' actions;
(4) continuous communication in which leaders must meet regularly and over the long term to build trust, develop a common language for their work, and keep open channels for communication; and
(5) a backbone support organization to provide a range of supports for the initiative, from staff time to help with technology and data.
There are many challenges to implementing such a system, but Cincinnati educators believe they are seeing some results, five years into Strive. What could be applied to the adult-education sphere to ensure students successfully move from one program to another without seeing their language gains slide backwards?
Here are a few ideas. It's a brainstorm: doubtless I'm leaving things out, and doubtless some of these have been tried already:
1) Draft a vision for ESOL students: What does the field hope to impart to students? What different types of students are there, and how should their needs be met? What do students themselves want?
2) Define success: In a given urban area, leaders could get together and outline what success might look like for different types of learners. They could decide when to revisit these goals, how to assess their progress, and how to make corrections if students aren't benefiting from the collaborative work.
3) Communicate through Twitter: 160 characters is enough to say where a program's located, say how many spaces it has for its next classes, and link to its Web site. Educators who may not have the time to wade through dozens of emails about job postings, professional development, and the like on adult-education listservs could get feeds of tweets targeted to issues of outreach. This could also be done on modified listservs set up just for outreach coordinators, through Facebook pages, or the like.
4) Make the most of literacy collectives: In many areas of Boston, literacy collectives meet every month or few months. Representatives at these meetings could bring and share lists of students who are about to leave one program and need a class at another, and actively follow up with them. Rather than opening doors to whoever walks through, the process would guide those students already in the pipeline.
5) Use funding to incentivize collaboration: Money could reward and follow programs, or collectives of programs, that demonstrate a commitment to helping students connect to continued language support.
Just a few ideas.
What are yours?
That's all well and good. But how can different programs collaborate to help learners at one connect to classes offered at another?
As I discussed in my first piece in this sequence (linked above), mammoth waitlists await many adult ESOL learners in my state (Massachusetts), and others. Thus, the best way to assure a student moves on to intermediate English after finishing beginning level would be to increase funding--but this isn't the place to discuss that. Just because most programs are filled to capacity, and have four, five, or six months' worth of names waiting to join, doesn't mean there aren't gaps in enrollment that could be filled by students, if only they knew about them. For instance, every year there are numerous classes at numerous sites find themselves in August looking for students to fill their remaining spaces for class in September.
"Collaboration" is a watchword in the nonprofit and human-services sectors, but how is it converted from platitude to practice? It seems worthwhile to point out that collaboration is not a mere parntership, but the actual pooling of labor--co-laboring--or a joint effort to achieve a unified end. In putting collaboration into authentic practice, a promising model is the Strive Partnership, which is a cradle-to-career educational initiative in the Cincinnati area.
Strive has advanced a model of "collective impact" built on five key principles (as wonderfully detailed here):
(1) a common agenda built on shared understandings of the problem and of actions to solve it;
(2) shared measurement systems to assess and report effectiveness, arrived at by a consensus that ensures continued alignment, accountability between organizations, and the opportunity for participants to learn from each other;
(3) undertaking of mutually reinforcing activities in which each agency focuses on activities it can do well in coordination with other agencies' actions;
(4) continuous communication in which leaders must meet regularly and over the long term to build trust, develop a common language for their work, and keep open channels for communication; and
(5) a backbone support organization to provide a range of supports for the initiative, from staff time to help with technology and data.
There are many challenges to implementing such a system, but Cincinnati educators believe they are seeing some results, five years into Strive. What could be applied to the adult-education sphere to ensure students successfully move from one program to another without seeing their language gains slide backwards?
Here are a few ideas. It's a brainstorm: doubtless I'm leaving things out, and doubtless some of these have been tried already:
1) Draft a vision for ESOL students: What does the field hope to impart to students? What different types of students are there, and how should their needs be met? What do students themselves want?
2) Define success: In a given urban area, leaders could get together and outline what success might look like for different types of learners. They could decide when to revisit these goals, how to assess their progress, and how to make corrections if students aren't benefiting from the collaborative work.
3) Communicate through Twitter: 160 characters is enough to say where a program's located, say how many spaces it has for its next classes, and link to its Web site. Educators who may not have the time to wade through dozens of emails about job postings, professional development, and the like on adult-education listservs could get feeds of tweets targeted to issues of outreach. This could also be done on modified listservs set up just for outreach coordinators, through Facebook pages, or the like.
4) Make the most of literacy collectives: In many areas of Boston, literacy collectives meet every month or few months. Representatives at these meetings could bring and share lists of students who are about to leave one program and need a class at another, and actively follow up with them. Rather than opening doors to whoever walks through, the process would guide those students already in the pipeline.
5) Use funding to incentivize collaboration: Money could reward and follow programs, or collectives of programs, that demonstrate a commitment to helping students connect to continued language support.
Just a few ideas.
What are yours?
December 18, 2011
Next Steps for Adult Learners: A Sequence of Possible Classroom Activities
Last week, I laid out a concern facing many adult language learners: when you've maxed out the course offerings at one site, how do you find the next class? Especially in a climate of long waitlists at the publicly- or grant-funded programs sought out by many low-income immigrants? At my former small agency, where we could only support a five-month beginning-level ESOL course, the issue of connecting students to "next steps" became so paramount that one of the most important parts of the program became what students would get to do after the program.
Because all of my students wanted so badly to keep studying English once they'd gotten an initial taste, I developed, through trial and error, a series of activities designed to help them do just that. I had a few guiding principles. First, I wanted to elicit students' interest in next steps. I had my own theoretical bases for why it was desirable for students to keep their language-acquisition momentum, and was happy enough to share it, but I tried to maximize their own urgency. Second, it's a big, bad (well, at least long-waitlisted) world. The Boston area, like many metropolitan regions, is replete with agencies, course offerings, and levels of study. Negotiating these thickets in English is hard enough; harder still if one is learning English. I was there to support students. Finally, I made the process iterative. This might be nice: write down three program phone numbers; add water; enroll in intermediate English. But it's unrealistic. The issued needed to be visited, then revisited.
So here's the rough sequence of activities to help students explore--and secure--"next steps":
Pose the Problem: Using the "problem-posing" methods derived from the revolutionary Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, I introduce a "codification" of the problem of continuing English. Usually I show students a picture of a few adults sitting at home, looking downbeat (thanks, Google Docs), with a couple lines of dialogue from each I've typed on the paper: "I used to study English at X location. I called Y program. I'm waiting." I lead students through a five-stage process to uncover the dilemma, make meaning of it, and develop an action plan for the characters. At the end, I ask: What would you do in this situation? And it turns into an action plan for themselves.
Write a Script: Students brainstorm questions to ask a program when they call it, e.g., Is there a cost? What levels do you have? When does class meet? What's your address? Students can usually hit the main ones themselves. Teachers can suggest others they might have missed. I help them collectively edit the quesitons, then pass out a "next-steps" form. They write down the questions, and the form goes in a sacred spot in their binders.
Practice Phone Calls: This is your classic practice asking and answering the questions students have devised. Student A is potential program registrant; Student B is a staff member at the agency being called. It's more fun when students pull out their cells. For those who are ready, it's most fun (and realistic, and challenging) when one student goes into another room, actually calls the other, then holds the conversation.
Bring in a Guest Speaker: In the past, I'd invite an adult-ed mentor of mine, whom I'll call Tim, a highly-respected program director at another program, to visit my class to talk about next steps. He'd talk about "confidence," answer students' many questions (in English!), and recommend programs to look at. Students already have an intrinsic drive for next steps, but this exposes them to another voice to reinforce the message and motivate them. And, it provides them with a connection to a program. I used Tim's visit as a placeholder the rest of my course to connect back to the next steps concept.
Find Programs: I provide students with directories of local English classes, divided by neighborhood. Sometimes this means packets printed from the state Department of Education Web site, or Boston's English for New Bostonians Web site. Sometimes this means directing students to those Web sites, with guidance on how to navigate the search functions. Students fill out a preset worksheet with contact information for four to six programs.
Call Programs: A nice weekend homework assignment: between Friday and Tuesday, call two programs, ask the questions you brainstormed earlier, and write down the answers. Now, some programs' outreach officers speak languages common to Boston immigrants, like Spanish or Haitian Creole. But not always. And few programs have staff who speak languages like Mai Mai or Somalian that other students of mine have spoken. So while students may find they can simply speak their native language when calling certain programs, they'll have to ask the questions in English sometimes.
Share Back: After the first homework assignment, I have students share with each other the information they've heard from other programs. If one student calls a program in Jamaica Plain and there are no intermediate classes, another student can cross that program off her list, and add in a different program that might make more sense. We also discuss how it's going: Are there other questions students should be asking? Did somebody's aunt just get in a program nobody knew about? Do they have more spaces? Often this informal networking is just as important to getting students in continuing education.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: The next week or weekend's homework is to call three or four more programs.
Celebrate Successes: One morning last spring, a student came into my class early: "I have news," she said, "I have a class for August!" Chances were, she had already told classmates the good tidings, but I asked her if I could put her on the agenda to make sure everyone heard, and celebrated, her news.
Hit the Pavement: I take my students to visit one other program, which in the past has been a well-respected site, located downtown off several bus or train lines, with multiple ESOL levels. Such a visit, at which the program's outreach coordinator presented the course offerings and registration process, gave the concept of "next steps" yet another friendly face, provided a practical option for many students, and gave them practice getting there on public transit. A visit to a local literacy center got at the issue from the other end: most public libraries are hubs for education and job-placement resources.
Discuss Plan B: After a few weeks of this process, I often raise the qustion: what happens if you're put on waitlists everywhere you call? We brainstorm steps: read books, go to the literacy center, take a lighter-level conversation class at the library; call me for more ideas. I make sure everyone has my cell phone number (though not every teacher would be comfortable with this) and office number to call me for more support should they still be exploring classes after graduating my course.
Follow Up Individually: Over the last few weeks of class, in one-on-one conferences with students, I check in with students about their progress finding classes. As important as whole-class activities are to investigate next steps, individual check-ins can uncover particular difficulties or be a space to comfortably suggest new pathways or ideas.
Connect to Curriculum: I haven't done this in every class, but in one course our next steps explorations coincided with a unit on Following Directions (turn left, turn right, where's the restaurant? and so on). I created mock conversation between a student and program staff involving directions from the train to a downtown program. I built it into a Jazz Chant, which students practiced over multiple classes, both to reinforce in a high-energy way what they were learning grammatically as well as to suggest language useful for phone calls. Ultimately, we turned it into a role-play, again with cell phones.
**
As I look at these activities, carried out in this fashion, a few things stand out. First, it takes a lot of time and effort. Not that that's a bad thing, but it's striking how prominent a role this has played in my classroom. Second, there are obvious connections to students' self-advocacy for other resources. The most obvious parallel is to securing free or affordable childcare, a common issue for so many of my past students: just as with ESOL programs, there are eligibility requirements, many suppliers, a variety of ways in which the service is offered, and variation in quality. It might make sense to frame "searching for English classes" more explicitly as "searching for resources in general." Third, the process assumes the need for next steps is universal, and lays out the activities accordingly. In my experience, the need has been universal, but what about when several students have already discovered their next class. Does it make sense to continue to use everyone's classroom time to address the remaining needs of a few students? What would it look like to do some next-steps activities on a voluntary, out-of-class-time basis?
My dear Blog Visitors--what stands out to you? What sounds good? What's missing here? What could be done differently?
Because all of my students wanted so badly to keep studying English once they'd gotten an initial taste, I developed, through trial and error, a series of activities designed to help them do just that. I had a few guiding principles. First, I wanted to elicit students' interest in next steps. I had my own theoretical bases for why it was desirable for students to keep their language-acquisition momentum, and was happy enough to share it, but I tried to maximize their own urgency. Second, it's a big, bad (well, at least long-waitlisted) world. The Boston area, like many metropolitan regions, is replete with agencies, course offerings, and levels of study. Negotiating these thickets in English is hard enough; harder still if one is learning English. I was there to support students. Finally, I made the process iterative. This might be nice: write down three program phone numbers; add water; enroll in intermediate English. But it's unrealistic. The issued needed to be visited, then revisited.
So here's the rough sequence of activities to help students explore--and secure--"next steps":
Pose the Problem: Using the "problem-posing" methods derived from the revolutionary Brazilian educator Paolo Freire, I introduce a "codification" of the problem of continuing English. Usually I show students a picture of a few adults sitting at home, looking downbeat (thanks, Google Docs), with a couple lines of dialogue from each I've typed on the paper: "I used to study English at X location. I called Y program. I'm waiting." I lead students through a five-stage process to uncover the dilemma, make meaning of it, and develop an action plan for the characters. At the end, I ask: What would you do in this situation? And it turns into an action plan for themselves.
Write a Script: Students brainstorm questions to ask a program when they call it, e.g., Is there a cost? What levels do you have? When does class meet? What's your address? Students can usually hit the main ones themselves. Teachers can suggest others they might have missed. I help them collectively edit the quesitons, then pass out a "next-steps" form. They write down the questions, and the form goes in a sacred spot in their binders.
Practice Phone Calls: This is your classic practice asking and answering the questions students have devised. Student A is potential program registrant; Student B is a staff member at the agency being called. It's more fun when students pull out their cells. For those who are ready, it's most fun (and realistic, and challenging) when one student goes into another room, actually calls the other, then holds the conversation.
Bring in a Guest Speaker: In the past, I'd invite an adult-ed mentor of mine, whom I'll call Tim, a highly-respected program director at another program, to visit my class to talk about next steps. He'd talk about "confidence," answer students' many questions (in English!), and recommend programs to look at. Students already have an intrinsic drive for next steps, but this exposes them to another voice to reinforce the message and motivate them. And, it provides them with a connection to a program. I used Tim's visit as a placeholder the rest of my course to connect back to the next steps concept.
Find Programs: I provide students with directories of local English classes, divided by neighborhood. Sometimes this means packets printed from the state Department of Education Web site, or Boston's English for New Bostonians Web site. Sometimes this means directing students to those Web sites, with guidance on how to navigate the search functions. Students fill out a preset worksheet with contact information for four to six programs.
Call Programs: A nice weekend homework assignment: between Friday and Tuesday, call two programs, ask the questions you brainstormed earlier, and write down the answers. Now, some programs' outreach officers speak languages common to Boston immigrants, like Spanish or Haitian Creole. But not always. And few programs have staff who speak languages like Mai Mai or Somalian that other students of mine have spoken. So while students may find they can simply speak their native language when calling certain programs, they'll have to ask the questions in English sometimes.
Share Back: After the first homework assignment, I have students share with each other the information they've heard from other programs. If one student calls a program in Jamaica Plain and there are no intermediate classes, another student can cross that program off her list, and add in a different program that might make more sense. We also discuss how it's going: Are there other questions students should be asking? Did somebody's aunt just get in a program nobody knew about? Do they have more spaces? Often this informal networking is just as important to getting students in continuing education.
Repeat, Repeat, Repeat: The next week or weekend's homework is to call three or four more programs.
Celebrate Successes: One morning last spring, a student came into my class early: "I have news," she said, "I have a class for August!" Chances were, she had already told classmates the good tidings, but I asked her if I could put her on the agenda to make sure everyone heard, and celebrated, her news.
Hit the Pavement: I take my students to visit one other program, which in the past has been a well-respected site, located downtown off several bus or train lines, with multiple ESOL levels. Such a visit, at which the program's outreach coordinator presented the course offerings and registration process, gave the concept of "next steps" yet another friendly face, provided a practical option for many students, and gave them practice getting there on public transit. A visit to a local literacy center got at the issue from the other end: most public libraries are hubs for education and job-placement resources.
Discuss Plan B: After a few weeks of this process, I often raise the qustion: what happens if you're put on waitlists everywhere you call? We brainstorm steps: read books, go to the literacy center, take a lighter-level conversation class at the library; call me for more ideas. I make sure everyone has my cell phone number (though not every teacher would be comfortable with this) and office number to call me for more support should they still be exploring classes after graduating my course.
Follow Up Individually: Over the last few weeks of class, in one-on-one conferences with students, I check in with students about their progress finding classes. As important as whole-class activities are to investigate next steps, individual check-ins can uncover particular difficulties or be a space to comfortably suggest new pathways or ideas.
Connect to Curriculum: I haven't done this in every class, but in one course our next steps explorations coincided with a unit on Following Directions (turn left, turn right, where's the restaurant? and so on). I created mock conversation between a student and program staff involving directions from the train to a downtown program. I built it into a Jazz Chant, which students practiced over multiple classes, both to reinforce in a high-energy way what they were learning grammatically as well as to suggest language useful for phone calls. Ultimately, we turned it into a role-play, again with cell phones.
**
As I look at these activities, carried out in this fashion, a few things stand out. First, it takes a lot of time and effort. Not that that's a bad thing, but it's striking how prominent a role this has played in my classroom. Second, there are obvious connections to students' self-advocacy for other resources. The most obvious parallel is to securing free or affordable childcare, a common issue for so many of my past students: just as with ESOL programs, there are eligibility requirements, many suppliers, a variety of ways in which the service is offered, and variation in quality. It might make sense to frame "searching for English classes" more explicitly as "searching for resources in general." Third, the process assumes the need for next steps is universal, and lays out the activities accordingly. In my experience, the need has been universal, but what about when several students have already discovered their next class. Does it make sense to continue to use everyone's classroom time to address the remaining needs of a few students? What would it look like to do some next-steps activities on a voluntary, out-of-class-time basis?
My dear Blog Visitors--what stands out to you? What sounds good? What's missing here? What could be done differently?
December 10, 2011
Next Steps for Adult Learners: What's the Problem?
This past April, I had the good fortune to spend a week in Montreal, bumming around la belle ville, barely missing the chance to use Bixi bike-sharing, and everywhere I went trying to pull together the bits and scraps of French I'd learned in the U.S. (and was learning there): at my hostel, at the grocery store, on the street. I had enough grammar to purchase my share of wine, if too little vocabulary to discuss whether it was any good, to say nothing of follow the conversations that pinballed around my hostel's rather cramped and enlivened dining room once that first (second, or third) bottle had been uncorked.
I got by--indeed without having to fall back on English too often. And I got better. But eight months later, grad school has intervened and made those bits and scraps suddenly seem all the more infinitesimal. It's a situation any of us who has labored through the beginnings of a foreign language as an adult can attest to: three steps forward, a few months off, two steps backward. Language "attrition," as it's known, is only one of a murderer's row of hurdles facing adult language learners. For adult ESOL learners, whose language acquisition is quite a bit more high-stakes than anything I've experienced, it's a big concern. And an issue that raises important questions about helping adult ESOL learners access their "next steps"--how to help them keep studying English once they've maxed out the opportunities within a single program.
Given the demand for ESOL in Massachusetts, it has been heartening to see how many small programs exist in all imaginable corners of the city: in the pocket-sized human-services agency where I used to work, in school-based community centers, housing projects, daycare centers, churches, prisons. There are still the established, state-funded, multi-level programs, but who's kidding themselves? The state can't or won't fund all the demand.
The challenge with storefront programs like the one I worked at is that they may not have the multiple levels provided by the state-funded bulwarks. Students put 6 or 9 months in, then what happens? In my five-month program, students did a number of things to prepare for graduation and the inevitable search for a next course. For more on that, stay tuned. But after a few months, either through the grapevine or formal follow-up, I would tally up the progress of my alumni. The result was usually this: about half were studying English elsewhere, another quarter were looking or were on a waitlist, and the rest I either couldn't get in touch with or had ceased looking for more English.
I wasn't concerned about the 50 percent still studying. These students were the obvious successes of our next-steps preparations. It was the other 50 percent that got me thinking. I hardly expected every student to keep studying English. Life happens, especially for the low-income immigrant folks who came through our doors. In one of many such examples, a student once had to drop my class right after starting because her daughter had a baby. She was now a rather heavily-involved grandmother; English could wait.
I was curious about those three, four, or five who wanted to continue but didn't have the relatively immediate opportunity to. Like virtually all my students, they had entered my program with clear goals for learning English: To defend myself in everyday situations. To help my daughter with her homework. To get a job (or a better one). By the same token, I cannot remember a single student who didn't want to keep studying English once she got a taste of a class. In following up months after graduation, I found that many were waiting for a call back, and many were on a waitlist--often at multiple programs.
That wasn't surprising, given demand in our area. The main adult-education program in Cambridge has a waitlist of 439, a smaller program, 128. In Somerville, the waitlist for the program run through the public schools currently stands at 1011. In Boston, an organization in Chinatown runs to 296, another in South Boston to 211. It was an accomplishment that my students had the motivation and wherewithal to get on those waitlists in the first place. That can't be overlooked. But the waits that inevitably ensued--three, four, five months or more--were a frustration to my old students. And the likelihood that they were squandering to attrition some of their hardwon language skills ought to be a concern to all of us in the field.
Many a student--current or former--complained to me about this situation. Nearing the closure of one cycle I taught, my beginner-level crew teamed up with an offer I wish I hadn't had to refuse: Would I make my next class intermediate-level, and keep them all on board for the next six months? I couldn't, but it only reinforced my efforts to prepare students for what could come next. Still, the mixed results of future groups suggests new ways to think about next steps. Indeed, not every program has the bloated waitlists of the ones I mentioned above. But how do we go about finding out what's available, and where? And how do we get students into those spaces?
I got by--indeed without having to fall back on English too often. And I got better. But eight months later, grad school has intervened and made those bits and scraps suddenly seem all the more infinitesimal. It's a situation any of us who has labored through the beginnings of a foreign language as an adult can attest to: three steps forward, a few months off, two steps backward. Language "attrition," as it's known, is only one of a murderer's row of hurdles facing adult language learners. For adult ESOL learners, whose language acquisition is quite a bit more high-stakes than anything I've experienced, it's a big concern. And an issue that raises important questions about helping adult ESOL learners access their "next steps"--how to help them keep studying English once they've maxed out the opportunities within a single program.
Given the demand for ESOL in Massachusetts, it has been heartening to see how many small programs exist in all imaginable corners of the city: in the pocket-sized human-services agency where I used to work, in school-based community centers, housing projects, daycare centers, churches, prisons. There are still the established, state-funded, multi-level programs, but who's kidding themselves? The state can't or won't fund all the demand.
The challenge with storefront programs like the one I worked at is that they may not have the multiple levels provided by the state-funded bulwarks. Students put 6 or 9 months in, then what happens? In my five-month program, students did a number of things to prepare for graduation and the inevitable search for a next course. For more on that, stay tuned. But after a few months, either through the grapevine or formal follow-up, I would tally up the progress of my alumni. The result was usually this: about half were studying English elsewhere, another quarter were looking or were on a waitlist, and the rest I either couldn't get in touch with or had ceased looking for more English.
I wasn't concerned about the 50 percent still studying. These students were the obvious successes of our next-steps preparations. It was the other 50 percent that got me thinking. I hardly expected every student to keep studying English. Life happens, especially for the low-income immigrant folks who came through our doors. In one of many such examples, a student once had to drop my class right after starting because her daughter had a baby. She was now a rather heavily-involved grandmother; English could wait.
I was curious about those three, four, or five who wanted to continue but didn't have the relatively immediate opportunity to. Like virtually all my students, they had entered my program with clear goals for learning English: To defend myself in everyday situations. To help my daughter with her homework. To get a job (or a better one). By the same token, I cannot remember a single student who didn't want to keep studying English once she got a taste of a class. In following up months after graduation, I found that many were waiting for a call back, and many were on a waitlist--often at multiple programs.
That wasn't surprising, given demand in our area. The main adult-education program in Cambridge has a waitlist of 439, a smaller program, 128. In Somerville, the waitlist for the program run through the public schools currently stands at 1011. In Boston, an organization in Chinatown runs to 296, another in South Boston to 211. It was an accomplishment that my students had the motivation and wherewithal to get on those waitlists in the first place. That can't be overlooked. But the waits that inevitably ensued--three, four, five months or more--were a frustration to my old students. And the likelihood that they were squandering to attrition some of their hardwon language skills ought to be a concern to all of us in the field.
Many a student--current or former--complained to me about this situation. Nearing the closure of one cycle I taught, my beginner-level crew teamed up with an offer I wish I hadn't had to refuse: Would I make my next class intermediate-level, and keep them all on board for the next six months? I couldn't, but it only reinforced my efforts to prepare students for what could come next. Still, the mixed results of future groups suggests new ways to think about next steps. Indeed, not every program has the bloated waitlists of the ones I mentioned above. But how do we go about finding out what's available, and where? And how do we get students into those spaces?
November 10, 2011
From Dependence to Independence: Building Community Outside of Class
This past spring, a couple weeks into my adult ESOL class, a couple students came up to me and said, "We'd like to have a Friday Social every week." "Sure," I said. By the next week, a half dozen students were delegating who was responsible for napkins or cutlery and who was on salad duty, lugging in huge plates of food, and hobnobbing with fellow classmates they'd only met a scant few weeks before.
On the one hand, what could be better? We were building a community for folks who often lacked one. My students came from neighborhoods high in poverty in violence, from which most families try valiantly to shield their kids, if not just get out. Some of my students lived in shelters--so they were definitely trying to get out of their communities. Most of my students toiled to raise their families in relative isolation.
Friday Social was a chance to kick back among a newfound group of peers. At the bare minimum, they could let off some steam between learning the present continuous and setting realistic goals (woo-woo!). More than that, the social was a space to share what their lives were like, and learn from each other: What do you do for daycare for your daughter? What's your son's school like?
But I was faced with this dilemma: the student social started running 10 minutes over the 15 minutes which had always been the allotted time, making it tougher to dive into important material after break. And the social was happening all in Spanish--while most of the students were Latin American, one was from Africa. To tackle the language use, I introduced the concept of "small talk," modeling questions you could ask your classmate as you munched arepa: How's your family? Where do you live? I then had different students prepare questions for each week ahead of time.
To tackle the time issue, I brokered an agreement: Social could last 20 minutes (more than the usual 15-minute break), so long as 15 of those minutes were spent speaking English. While I reveled in the organically, student-created nature of Friday Social, I accepted their gracious invitation to eat alongside them, but maintained a low profile. It was their space.
In my constant mission to move students from dependence to interdependence and independence, Friday Social was, unintentionally, a great example both of how an interdependent, out-of-class culture can crop up among adult learners, and of some of the dilemmas such a cultural gathering poses in practice.
At the end of the day, for folks living in poverty, especially immigrants, the chance to build a support network was incredibly valuable. When it comes to moving adults toward relying on each other and on themselves, there are many steps to be taken. But rather than provide my usual list of promising practices, as I have about gaining independence in language acquisition and classroom culture, I wonder what more I could do.
Imagine if students created working groups outside of class to share ideas about public benefits, education programs, and supports for their children? ...
created parent unions for their schools? ...
protested adult-education budget cuts?
These are just the tip of the iceberg. Things I haven't gotten to yet.
What ideas do you have?
On the one hand, what could be better? We were building a community for folks who often lacked one. My students came from neighborhoods high in poverty in violence, from which most families try valiantly to shield their kids, if not just get out. Some of my students lived in shelters--so they were definitely trying to get out of their communities. Most of my students toiled to raise their families in relative isolation.
Friday Social was a chance to kick back among a newfound group of peers. At the bare minimum, they could let off some steam between learning the present continuous and setting realistic goals (woo-woo!). More than that, the social was a space to share what their lives were like, and learn from each other: What do you do for daycare for your daughter? What's your son's school like?
But I was faced with this dilemma: the student social started running 10 minutes over the 15 minutes which had always been the allotted time, making it tougher to dive into important material after break. And the social was happening all in Spanish--while most of the students were Latin American, one was from Africa. To tackle the language use, I introduced the concept of "small talk," modeling questions you could ask your classmate as you munched arepa: How's your family? Where do you live? I then had different students prepare questions for each week ahead of time.
To tackle the time issue, I brokered an agreement: Social could last 20 minutes (more than the usual 15-minute break), so long as 15 of those minutes were spent speaking English. While I reveled in the organically, student-created nature of Friday Social, I accepted their gracious invitation to eat alongside them, but maintained a low profile. It was their space.
In my constant mission to move students from dependence to interdependence and independence, Friday Social was, unintentionally, a great example both of how an interdependent, out-of-class culture can crop up among adult learners, and of some of the dilemmas such a cultural gathering poses in practice.
At the end of the day, for folks living in poverty, especially immigrants, the chance to build a support network was incredibly valuable. When it comes to moving adults toward relying on each other and on themselves, there are many steps to be taken. But rather than provide my usual list of promising practices, as I have about gaining independence in language acquisition and classroom culture, I wonder what more I could do.
Imagine if students created working groups outside of class to share ideas about public benefits, education programs, and supports for their children? ...
created parent unions for their schools? ...
protested adult-education budget cuts?
These are just the tip of the iceberg. Things I haven't gotten to yet.
What ideas do you have?
November 2, 2011
From Dependence to Independence: Culture Isn't Just About International Night
Teaching is listening. Learning is speaking. It's a paraphrase from my thick mental file labeled, Profound Things Debbie Meier Wrote. In some iconic sense, teaching might seem to value what teachers have to tell and give. For teaching adults, at least, I'd say it's more about learning how to ask and request.
Last week I discussed how to help ESOL students move from dependence to independence through language acquisition. What about culture? It's not just about throwing an international night where everyone noshes on food from five continents. You can help your students become more interdependent and independent by empowering them in the classroom. Here's how:
There's always a time to provide a resource or a piece of advice. There's always a time to stand in front of the class and lead a listening lesson. But find the right spots to ask and request, not just tell and give, and your students will get a lot more from the class, from each other, and from themselves.
Last week I discussed how to help ESOL students move from dependence to independence through language acquisition. What about culture? It's not just about throwing an international night where everyone noshes on food from five continents. You can help your students become more interdependent and independent by empowering them in the classroom. Here's how:
- Buy-in about class norms: Earlier I've made the case for infusing even adult classes with lessons on skills and behaviors to help students become better ... students. Building efficiencies and norms in the classroom are part of that. Smoother procedures and more minutes on task help everyone learn--not just kids. But with adults, their buy-in must be part of the process. So when you're setting up your class procedures, ask the class for input and use their ideas. One example: Class Constitutions. At the start of each course, I'd lay out a few things I needed from students (punctuality, 100 percent English use, and so on). Then I'd ask for their rules. I'd show them an exemplar constitution from a previous course. I'd provide a few categories: How students help themselves learn. How students help others learn. How to organize materials on the desks. I'd give my students 15-20 minutes to write their own rules. We'd post them--and follow them. Students became responsible for motivating (and sometimes policing!) each other.
- Buy-in about what to study: Ask your adults what they'd like to learn. The answers may surprise you. Here are some that surprised me: How to speak English at the RMV. How to understand street signs. Integrate what students need for everyday life into class! It doesn't need to derail accepted ideas about the sequence of English grammar to be learned. But content is moldable--you can shape almost any topic to almost any grammar theme. It doesn't need to derail the level of language you're teaching either: give beginners simple statements for the RMV registration desk, advanced students more complex conversations. Student buy-in for curriculum can be taken much further, though. For one course, I convened a "curriculum committee" of students to meet before class, multiple times, to brainstorm with me how to make the most of ongoing class activities and what new things to try. ESOL students aren't preparing for some pre-ordained high-stakes test. They're trying to get around America. For the most part, they have a good pulse on what they need. Listen--then use your language-teaching expertise to help them get there.
- Realia: Two days before you give a lesson on filling out hospital forms, should you make a stop at a nearby medical clinic to pick up forms? No need. Assign students the homework of going and getting realia on their own. Invariably this technique yields an interesting range of items that reflects where students actually go and what they actually need help with. For instance, before a lesson on how to navigate the RMV, a student handed me an impenetrable accident report form. We don't know how to fill this out. Duh. And I thought they just wanted to renew their licenses. Show students an example of what you're looking for before they go find it. And as I learned the hard way: make sure one student doesn't go get a form and photocopy it for the others!
- Students as each others' resources: So many of my students came from communities beset by violence, anonymity, and lack of social connections. Many of them had strong family networks--but did they know their neighbors? Visit their local community centers? That was unclear. As much as possible, I encouraged them to become their own network of support and resources. Did I tell them about upcoming immigrant events and parenting workshops? Yes. But I also got them sharing. One example: as my students prepared to leave my program and enroll in a higher-level English class, I had them go through a sequence of lessons on finding their "next step." I provided materials so they could research other English programs. I gave them very structured forms in which to write down addresses, phone numbers, and possible questions to ask a program when you called (is there a cost? when are classes?). For homework, I had them make calls. A few days later, I'd have them share what they had learned with fellow students. I called program X, and they have spaces. Here's the number. At this point, they were doing the hard work, and I was just facilitating it.
There's always a time to provide a resource or a piece of advice. There's always a time to stand in front of the class and lead a listening lesson. But find the right spots to ask and request, not just tell and give, and your students will get a lot more from the class, from each other, and from themselves.
October 26, 2011
From Dependence to Independence: Language Acquisition
How can I help my students move away from dependence and toward interdependence and independence?
That's the question I touched on in an earlier post.
The adult immigrants I've worked with constantly talk up the American Dream: they came here to get a better life, better job, better future for their kids. Now, we can quibble about how realistic that dream is. But to help them move toward it means helping them feel more independent and have the skills to be more independent.
How do we do that in an adult ESOL classroom? I see at least three areas: Language Acquisition, Classroom Culture, and Community-Building. Today, I'll focus on language.
Stoking Independence in Language Acquisition: There's a concept called the "Atlas Complex," in which language teachers tend to prance around theatrically, make themselves the center of attention, and constantly treat students to a torrent of corrections and insider hints about the language to be learned. There are definitely times when the teacher should explicitly model things and lead the class. Indeed, I could write a long post on the essentials of teacher-directed task of comprehensible input. I did some of that every day as an ESOL teacher. But in general it's much more effective to move students toward talking and using the language themselves, once they're ready. Some ideas on that front:
That's the question I touched on in an earlier post.
The adult immigrants I've worked with constantly talk up the American Dream: they came here to get a better life, better job, better future for their kids. Now, we can quibble about how realistic that dream is. But to help them move toward it means helping them feel more independent and have the skills to be more independent.
How do we do that in an adult ESOL classroom? I see at least three areas: Language Acquisition, Classroom Culture, and Community-Building. Today, I'll focus on language.
Stoking Independence in Language Acquisition: There's a concept called the "Atlas Complex," in which language teachers tend to prance around theatrically, make themselves the center of attention, and constantly treat students to a torrent of corrections and insider hints about the language to be learned. There are definitely times when the teacher should explicitly model things and lead the class. Indeed, I could write a long post on the essentials of teacher-directed task of comprehensible input. I did some of that every day as an ESOL teacher. But in general it's much more effective to move students toward talking and using the language themselves, once they're ready. Some ideas on that front:
- Correct where it makes sense to correct. Now, I'm generally a believer in Doug Lemov's concept of "Right is Right," but the limit of that approach in language acquisition is that overcorrecting students can actually impede language learning for speakers at certain levels. More broadly it stifles students' sense that they are co-creators of the classroom experience, a key ingredient of a lively language class. So be purposeful about when you provide correction. I started every class with an active language warm-up (5-8 minutes), and never corrected, because I prioritized getting the juices flowing and didn't want to shut students down emotionally by jumping in. In structured vocabulary and grammar lessons, I did correct, and early--I would rotate and monitor, take notes on trends, and provide feedback. When we did activities like having students analyze a problem in their community, it was about content, not perfect language use. There, I focused on building higher-order thinking skills and let incorrect usages slide. There's a time for correctness, and a time for fluency. Maximize opportunities for students to be comfortable and talking--the more they own the language, the more they're building skills to survive the real world.
- Correct in a "least restrictive" way. The special-education concept of "least restrictive environment" is useful in ESOL, too. Students will depend less on you and build their own interdependence and independence if given chances to find corrections themselves. If a situation arises where students correctness matters, and a student says, Does she has a fever? consider moving through this taxonomy to help them find the correct statement:
- Indirect correction: Say, Does she ... (drawing out the pause, making it obvious there's a correction needed) or say, Does she has? This prompts the student to reconsider and try again. If that fails, give her another chance, then try ...
- Peer correction: Say, Can you ask a classmate? or Can XX help you? or Can you check your book? If that fails, try ...
- Guided direct correction: Say, Does she has or Does she have? That final one almost always does the trick. It's also a form of comprehensible input.
- As an alternative in some activities, try delayed feedback. If many students are making a mistake, put the options on the board, stop class, and go over them. Nobody feels called out, everybody who needed help benefits, and you've made the error explicit.
- That said, You don't need to hover. Often, students will correct each other--if you've created a culture of collaboration (more on that in a later post). This builds interdependence beautifully.
- And pick your battles. Even in an activity where correct speech is desirable, nobody wants constant correction. Break down someone's emotional strength and you've broken down their ability to learn--and especially to learn a language. Space out corrections. Keep a pulse on who's receptive to what kind of correction. Depends on the situation.
- Up the student talking time (STT). Students learn more language when they work with each other, ask questions, negotiate speech. Few things are as important to linking language learning in class to language use in the world as this step. There are lots of ways to structure a class to do it. Here's one simple technique I've found success with: Two Lines:
- Students stand up and form two lines, facing each other.
- They do whatever the speaking activity is with the person they're facing--model it first!
- The teacher moves alongside the line, listening.
- After a minute or two, student pairs perform. Offer corrections if need be. the person at the end of one line goes to the other end, and everybody moves down a step, thus forming new partners.
- Students continue the task.
- What's good about this? By changing partners, students hear a range of accents. That's a life skill. They're exposed to more speakers who produce more variety of language, which is good for learning new words. Errors have a better shot at natural correction in a classmate pairing. And it's movement, a break from desks.
October 17, 2011
Shout #1: From Dependence to Independence in the ESOL Classroom
The home-cooked arepa. The colorful pencil, offered during break. The stuffed doll brought back from Puerto Rico: There was nothing more touching than when one of my adult ESOL students took the time to give me a gift.
After a year of teaching, under almost all circumstances, I stopped accepting them.
Dependence. My students--mostly Latino--had a major cultural predilection to it. Growing up, they stood up when their teachers entered the room, and called them maestros. In the U.S., they were heavily dependent on the social-service safety net. They were women of color taught by a white male. If they had jobs, most worked as housekeepers, where they busted butt and kept their mouths shut. Everywhere they looked, the power differential was against them.
But for immigrants, any pathway to success in the U.S. must be a path away from dependence and toward independence.
Every time students asked me for my opinion during a class discussion. Every time they asked me for my perfect pronunciation. Every time they waited for my approving smile after giving me a slice of cake--built their affinity for me. It filtered their class experiences through me. It made me the source of All Language Knowledge. It made them rely on ... me.
Are there times to accept gifts? Absolutely, and I'll discuss that more in a future post. Are there times to jump in with a correct pronunciation? Sure. In the classroom, is some reliance on the teacher a good thing? Yes, at least at first.
But my students came in with tons of dependence, and didn't need any more from me, that's for certain. So with every subsequent decision, I started asking myself one question: How will this help my students become more interdependent and independent?
It's a question all of us ESOL teachers should be asking ourselves every day.
After a year of teaching, under almost all circumstances, I stopped accepting them.
Dependence. My students--mostly Latino--had a major cultural predilection to it. Growing up, they stood up when their teachers entered the room, and called them maestros. In the U.S., they were heavily dependent on the social-service safety net. They were women of color taught by a white male. If they had jobs, most worked as housekeepers, where they busted butt and kept their mouths shut. Everywhere they looked, the power differential was against them.
But for immigrants, any pathway to success in the U.S. must be a path away from dependence and toward independence.
Every time students asked me for my opinion during a class discussion. Every time they asked me for my perfect pronunciation. Every time they waited for my approving smile after giving me a slice of cake--built their affinity for me. It filtered their class experiences through me. It made me the source of All Language Knowledge. It made them rely on ... me.
Are there times to accept gifts? Absolutely, and I'll discuss that more in a future post. Are there times to jump in with a correct pronunciation? Sure. In the classroom, is some reliance on the teacher a good thing? Yes, at least at first.
But my students came in with tons of dependence, and didn't need any more from me, that's for certain. So with every subsequent decision, I started asking myself one question: How will this help my students become more interdependent and independent?
It's a question all of us ESOL teachers should be asking ourselves every day.
October 3, 2011
Reviewing Homework: Thoughts for the ESOL Classroom
The Usual Good Stuff from Coach G on the limits to reviewing homework.
Coach whistles teachers for two main offenses:
Correct, Collect or Act It Out?
How or whether to review homework depends on what the homework is for:
Let It Be
Is there ever a time to just let students review the homework, regardless of whether you know how well they did it? Trying to muster some words of wisdom ... yes. In an immersion language classroom, it's great. Remember that middle-school German teacher who just drilled you to death on grammatical forms? Guess what? You actually weren't learning as much as Ms. Mickeltickel told you you were. Rote drills have a place ... but a limited one.
Turns out that we develop a lot of language skills through "negotiating meaning." All those little phrases like "Repeat, please," "Excuse me," "Did you hear that?" "What's next?" "Can you help me?" "Okay," "Right," "Give me my stapler back!" And so on. In an immersion class, in small groups, students are forced to use a ton of this "small stuff."
Unless you're pretty sure everyone got the homework completely right, in which case there are plenty of other techniques to get 'em talking, taking five minutes to review the homework serves two purposes at once. And since review often occurs early in class, it's a good, low-stakes way for students to get their tongues and brains working in the language.
There's plenty more to say about homework review. Cold-calling. Breaking students into groups to review one section, then share out. Collecting homework for quality control and direct feedback. But the big questions to always remember are, What's it for? and in a language class, Can I use review to get kids talking?
Coach whistles teachers for two main offenses:
- Rotely reviewing and correcting problems: if everyone got a question (or all of them) right, teacher-led rehash is a waste of time and spark for student disruption.
- "Disc jockey" review, where they ask the students what questions to go over. Kids ask to go over questions they actually got right as a ruse to fool around, and the quiet kids never pipe up.
Correct, Collect or Act It Out?
How or whether to review homework depends on what the homework is for:
- Some homework's formative, helping students develop skills on the way to larger objectives, and it's probably a good idea to make sure it's correct. For that I'd heartily recommend Coach G's suggestion that you put answers on the board and let students work through their errors. Or my own ESOL-specific technique--see below.
- Some homework's preparatory. What do I mean? It's not just practice, but a building block for a classroom activity. A key in any language classroom is what's called "information exchange" tasks, where some students have information others need, and they speak in the target language to share that info. Bare-bones example: A homework could be, "Write 5 sentences describing yourself with adjectives." The students bring it in, a volunteer reads the sentences out loud (without saying the author's name), and in teams the students guess who the classmate is. For this sort of activity, I recommend you collect the assignment, help students make corrections over the next couple days, then do the activity. That assures the activity is based on legitimate input, not someone's error-riddled scribbling from the night before.
- Finally, some homework's performative. Students work on a big or small project, and the final homework assignment is to prepare it for presentation. No need to correct here (well, a peek over their shoulders is probably a good idea!). Let them get up (or get in groups) and act it out.
Let It Be
Is there ever a time to just let students review the homework, regardless of whether you know how well they did it? Trying to muster some words of wisdom ... yes. In an immersion language classroom, it's great. Remember that middle-school German teacher who just drilled you to death on grammatical forms? Guess what? You actually weren't learning as much as Ms. Mickeltickel told you you were. Rote drills have a place ... but a limited one.
Turns out that we develop a lot of language skills through "negotiating meaning." All those little phrases like "Repeat, please," "Excuse me," "Did you hear that?" "What's next?" "Can you help me?" "Okay," "Right," "Give me my stapler back!" And so on. In an immersion class, in small groups, students are forced to use a ton of this "small stuff."
Unless you're pretty sure everyone got the homework completely right, in which case there are plenty of other techniques to get 'em talking, taking five minutes to review the homework serves two purposes at once. And since review often occurs early in class, it's a good, low-stakes way for students to get their tongues and brains working in the language.
There's plenty more to say about homework review. Cold-calling. Breaking students into groups to review one section, then share out. Collecting homework for quality control and direct feedback. But the big questions to always remember are, What's it for? and in a language class, Can I use review to get kids talking?
September 26, 2011
The Right Stuff: Skills and Behaviors Beginning ESOL Students Must Have
In "Teaching Students How to Be Students," I recommended a few steps for helping students learn the skills and behaviors they need to be successful in your classroom--or any future classroom they might step into.
Since Monday is a good day for Serious News, let me be clear: these are not quick fixes. If it took two minutes to show students how to organize a binder, and they could do it perfectly after a single observation, every teacher would do it. But everybody doesn't do it.
So in signing up for a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, it is a huge help to know exactly what skills and behaviors matter in your class, your grade, your level.
I came up with a brief taxonomy of topics for Beginning ESOL learners. I thought. I sketched ideas. I begged, borrowed, and stole from fellow teachers. Here's a sample of our results--some language-specific, some adult-specific, some transferable to any classroom:
Beginning ESOL Skills & Behaviors
1) Puncuality
This list could go on and on.
What are the most successful techniques you've used?
Since Monday is a good day for Serious News, let me be clear: these are not quick fixes. If it took two minutes to show students how to organize a binder, and they could do it perfectly after a single observation, every teacher would do it. But everybody doesn't do it.
So in signing up for a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, it is a huge help to know exactly what skills and behaviors matter in your class, your grade, your level.
I came up with a brief taxonomy of topics for Beginning ESOL learners. I thought. I sketched ideas. I begged, borrowed, and stole from fellow teachers. Here's a sample of our results--some language-specific, some adult-specific, some transferable to any classroom:
Beginning ESOL Skills & Behaviors
1) Puncuality
- Being on time
- Having your materials out before class starts
- How to listen to classmates
- Tracking the teacher
- How to find directions on a worksheet, and where to write your name and the date
- How students or the teacher should get the class's attention
- Transitioning efficiently into groups
- Working patiently and productively with other students
- Listening to instructions, and repeating them back
- Using extra time effectively if you've finished an activity early
- Self-advocating in class: I don't understand. I need to go to the bathroom. Pass me the scissors. I can't come to class tomorrow.
- How to use a "dialogue journal"
- Completing homework fully and to the best of one's ability
- Where, at what time, and with what materials to complete homework
- How to space out studying for a test, and identify what to study
- Getting help vs. copying an answer
- Practicing for a performance assessment
- Identifying a teacher's feedback, and whether it's positive or corrective; responding to it through questions or corrections
- What an organized desk space looks like
- How to organize and maintain an effective binder
- Dating papers
- Having all the necessary materials: pencil, eraser, notebook, binder with divider
- Asking for clarification about directions
- Methods to support your own learning outside class
- Evaluating personal strengths and weaknesses
- Asking the teacher or a classmate to resolve a difficulty
- Getting/making up missed work
- Finding a class buddy to save papers and provide notes if you're absent
This list could go on and on.
What are the most successful techniques you've used?
September 21, 2011
Speaking My Language
Does a parent's low literacy affect their child's language acquisition?
That was the question that came up yesterday in a class I'm taking. I'm neither a linguist nor a developmental psychologist, but I have plenty of experience helping parents with literacy and language acquisition. In hearing the question, I thought: Absolutely not. At least, it shouldn't have to be that way.
First, defining terms, "parental low literacy" entails a struggle in one or more of the pillars of reading, e.g. decoding, fluency, phonemic awareness. (In their own language, I mean; a lot of folks struggle to read English while learning to speak English, and the two are connected, but that's for another day).
Many of my adult clients have had low literacy in their native language, but they were all fluent speakers of their language. And there's no reason their children can't pick up language well, too. The parent needs to use a lot of "parentese"--real words, phrases, and sentences tailored to the child. Lots of back-and-forth with the child, even if it's responding to their babbling with words and questions. High-pitch, slow cadence, overemphasizing some words. That's not all you need for language acquisition, but it's the bedrock.
Beyond that, the amount of language and kind of language the child hears has a big impact on their cognitive development. Lots of words, and not just commands or admonitions, but speech about the past, future, colors, objects, emotions. Mixed with songs, which are a great way to teach cadence and introduce children to rhyme. The more of that you get, the better those kids' brains as they head to school!
And at home, it can happen in any language--Somali, Spanish, Mai Mai, you name it. The development is the key.
We know that kids from tough backgrounds come to school having heard fewer words, and less of a variety. That affects their learning. Their parents may tend to have low literacy, but that doesn't mean the latter caused the former. If your mom's got low literacy, it doesn't doom you to low language acquisition--as long as there's a healthy serving of good, solid "parentese."
A final note: The question for policy-makers and nonprofits is, How do we help parents help their children pick up language? In a way that's respectful, cost-effective, and reaches the parents most in need of help? How do we increase the supply of high-quality childcare that's brimming with language enrichment? Going forward, there's a whole lot I'd like to say about that.
That was the question that came up yesterday in a class I'm taking. I'm neither a linguist nor a developmental psychologist, but I have plenty of experience helping parents with literacy and language acquisition. In hearing the question, I thought: Absolutely not. At least, it shouldn't have to be that way.
First, defining terms, "parental low literacy" entails a struggle in one or more of the pillars of reading, e.g. decoding, fluency, phonemic awareness. (In their own language, I mean; a lot of folks struggle to read English while learning to speak English, and the two are connected, but that's for another day).
Many of my adult clients have had low literacy in their native language, but they were all fluent speakers of their language. And there's no reason their children can't pick up language well, too. The parent needs to use a lot of "parentese"--real words, phrases, and sentences tailored to the child. Lots of back-and-forth with the child, even if it's responding to their babbling with words and questions. High-pitch, slow cadence, overemphasizing some words. That's not all you need for language acquisition, but it's the bedrock.
Beyond that, the amount of language and kind of language the child hears has a big impact on their cognitive development. Lots of words, and not just commands or admonitions, but speech about the past, future, colors, objects, emotions. Mixed with songs, which are a great way to teach cadence and introduce children to rhyme. The more of that you get, the better those kids' brains as they head to school!
And at home, it can happen in any language--Somali, Spanish, Mai Mai, you name it. The development is the key.
We know that kids from tough backgrounds come to school having heard fewer words, and less of a variety. That affects their learning. Their parents may tend to have low literacy, but that doesn't mean the latter caused the former. If your mom's got low literacy, it doesn't doom you to low language acquisition--as long as there's a healthy serving of good, solid "parentese."
A final note: The question for policy-makers and nonprofits is, How do we help parents help their children pick up language? In a way that's respectful, cost-effective, and reaches the parents most in need of help? How do we increase the supply of high-quality childcare that's brimming with language enrichment? Going forward, there's a whole lot I'd like to say about that.
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