Lärarutbildningen
Kultur, Språk, Media
Examensarbete10 poäng
Language Minority Students
- Five Mainstream American Teachers’
Thoughts of Teaching These Students
Språkminoritetselever
- Fem Amerikanska KlassläraresTankar om att Undervisa Dessa Elever
Sofie Johansson
Lärarexamen 180 poängHandledare: Ange handledare
Moderna språk: Engelska
Höstterminen 2005 / Examinator: Bo Lundahl
Handledare: Malin Glimäng
Abstract
In order to find out what support there is for ELL students, students with a first language other than English in mainstream classrooms in the US, I have interviewed five teachers in Atlanta. I was interested in seeing how much these teachers know of the special needs these students have. The five teachers interviewed knew basic idea of how to instruct ELL students in their mainstream classroom but no one had been taught anything about second language acquisition or theories about the needs of ELL students in their education. This study also indicates that other languages than English are not of importance in the schools in Atlanta and teachers are not taught how to deal with ELL students. This is surprising since predictions say that in 2020 twenty five percent of students in the US will speak a first language others than English.
Keywords:
American schools
English Language Learners
Mainstreamed classrooms
Support
Table oF Contents
Introduction
Background
Aim
Theoretic concepts
English Language Learners, who are they?
Methods
Selection
Methods of data collection
Procedure
Literature
Teaching ELL students
What do English Language Learners need?
Mainstreaming
Results
ESOL
Interviews
Presentations of the Teachers
The teachers’ views on teaching ELL Students
The importance of languages
Discussion
List of References
Attachment
Introduction
Background
Think of 25 countries, and take one person from each country and put them all in the same room. Some of them might speak the same language, others might only be able to communicate with body language, and even that can be hard since there can be differences in gestures. What do you do? You probably decide that you have to agree on one language of communication.
Imagine having all these people as students in your classroom. For some teachers this might be reality on a daily basis. What do you do as a teacher when your students have trouble understanding what you are telling them? Immigration to the US is not a thing of the past, it is still a frequent occurrence and the goal for a lot of people around the world is to come to the US.
As a future English teacher I am very interested in the language aspect of this topic. How do you make your students succeed in school when they hardly understand the language of instruction? Since I was studying in Atlanta, Georgia last semester I decided to look into how schools there deal with their language minority students, students who have a home language other than English. What support is there for the language minority students in the mainstream classroom in schools in Atlanta?
Immigration is not a matter for the US only, all over the world people emigrate to other countries. In a lot of classrooms there are students who speak different languages. There are a lot of issues to consider when teaching students who speak different languages. To be able to complete school in their new country they will have to learn the language of the new community. Learning a language this way is very different from studying a foreign language in your home country. When you study foreign languages you learn to communicate, and if you have problems understanding, you can often have words and expressions explained to you in your first language. This is not the case with language minority students in schools. They will have to learn a new language fast enough not to fall behind their peers. They do not learn the language only for communication, they also have to learn the language well enough to learn the various school subjects in this new language and there is a huge difference between communicative and academic language. Many language minority students do not have anybody to ask if they do not understand either. Everybody in their new school might speak the new language, and their family at home might not know more than they do of the new language. Teaching these students is a problem that a lot of schools are faced with today. How do you make the language minority students complete school successfully?
In January 2002 George Bush, the president of the US, introduced an education reform, the No Child Left Behind act, NCLB. The US Department of Education homepage states that “No Child Left Behind is designed to ensure that all our nation’s children get the quality education they deserve, regardless of their origins". This obviously also includes English Language Learners and is a reform that has brought a lot of attention to various subgroups in the American school system. Another proposition that has brought a lot of attention to schools and the issue of bilingualism is Proposition 227 in California in 1998. It states that this was “aimed to drastically restrict bilingual education in public schools and promote English-only instruction instead” (Medina). In 1968, bilingual education was introduced to the American school system via the Bilingual Education Act and ever since the topic has been widely discussed. Cromwell says that even ”Thirty years after its introduction, bilingual education is still generating controversy” (19 Jan). The debate regarding bilingual education seems to be a discussion that will continue especially since it seems to be very hard to prove which is the better way to teach all language minority students. According to Cromwell “Most educators and parents agree that the main goals in educating students with a native language other than English are mastery of English and of content in academic areas. But a heated academic and political battle rages over how best to reach those goals and how important it is to preserve the students' original language in the process” (26 Jan). As long as no one can determine the best way to achieve English proficiency for these students, what can be done is to study the various ways of instruction and to evaluate them.
Aim
In this paper I aim to explore the support for English Language Learners in mainstream classrooms in the US. I have chosen to focus my research on five teachers and how much they know about teaching ELL students. Language Minority Students need to learn a new language at the same time as they learn the subjects in this new language. How do mainstream teachers combine all this in their teaching? I aim to find out what the teachers do to help their ELL students to pass and succeed in school and how aware they are of the needs of ELL students. I will also try to find out what other support there is for these students. Since a lot of the literature on second language acquisition states the importance of a strong first language I also want to explore these possibilities for ELL students.
My main question is as follows. What support is there for English Language Learners in the mainstream classroom and how aware are teachers of their special needs?
Theoretical concepts
In the literature that I have read on this subject, a variety of terms are used to describe the students: language minority students, English language learners, limited English proficient students, bilingual students, second language learners, English as a second language learners to mention a few. These terms all refer to students who do not have English as their first language. They can be immigrant students as well as students growing up in the US in an environment where they do not come across the English language to any great extent. According to Carrasquillo and Rodríguez, “The most current term is English language learners (ELL)” (xi) and therefore that is the term that will be used throughout this paper. ELL students can have a variety of knowledge of English when they come to school. They might just have come from their home country, not knowing a single word of English, or they might have studied English before coming to the US. What they all have in common is that English is not their first language.
When new non-English speaking students come to the US schools they are normally placed in an ESOL class. ESOL stands for English to Speakers of Other Languages and this is where they learn basic English. Sooner or later, ELL students are placed in a classroom with English-speaking students. In this paper, that will be referred to as the mainstream classroom.
English Language Learners, who are they?
There is a lot of literature on first and second language acquisition, on how people actually learn languages. I have not found as much to read about English language learners however. During my teacher education I have only come across some parts and chapters on this subject. When starting this study I found some books about ELL and what is beneficial for such students, but these texts generally do not focus on English language learners in the mainstream classroom. They are more commonly focusing on English as a second language or on bilingualism. Here follows a summary of the most important aspects of ELL students according to some prominent texts.
According to the U.S. Census 2001, 18% of the students at the time “spoke a language other than English at home” (Adamson 159) Garcia predicted that in 2020, “English language learners will make up about 25% of the entire U.S. school population” (Mason and Shay Shuman 356). English language learners are obviously a big group within the American school system and this cannot be ignored. Furthermore, teachers must be aware that, “Language minority students are racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse. It is a fallacy to consider all LEP/ELL[1] students as one single group” (Carrasquillo and Rodríguez 41). They are all different individuals and deserve to be looked upon as such. Nevertheless, it helps to understand a student if you know which language they speak and what the main culture of that student is like. Carrasquillo and Rodríguez state that among the language minorities in the US
“Spanish speakers are in the majority, followed by speakers of Asian languages. Although Hispanics, Asians and Pacific islanders form the largest segments of the non-native-school students, the number of native speakers of Arabic, Armenian, Polish, Haitian Creole, Russian and other European languages have increased. The result is a diversity of languages and cultures in the United States’ classrooms” (22).
This leads to a very complex situation for teachers teaching all these students. Teachers cannot be expected to know all the languages of their students but they must make an effort to get to know them as the individuals they are.
Methods
Selection
To find answers to the questions this paper is built on there was initially a lot of reading on the topic to get a background and understanding of teaching ELL students in the US. Books about English Language Learners were chosen to learn about the history of ESOL in the US and what some research says about the best ways of teaching ELL students.
To find further information, how it actually works in schools, I decided to focus on schools in Atlanta. Initially I intended to interview teachers in two schools and focus on those two but, since I was not able to get access to schools and teachers the way I had expected, I had to change my plan somewhat. In the beginning I was told that I would have access to several schools and I then hoped I would be able to interview teachers at two of these schools. Unfortunately, as time passed and despite me asking for the schools I did not get to go to any schools other than the one I had been assigned to in the very beginning of the term. At this school it took several weeks before I was allowed to visit some classrooms, but eventually I was introduced to the year five head teacher and I could finally sit in during the lessons. I was allowed to visit four different teachers’ classrooms, but only two of these teachers had time to be interviewed, the others were busy teaching during the time I was at the school. This school is situated on the outskirts of central Atlanta and I was given a ride to get there and it was not possible for me to stay on past lunchtime, which was the time my ride back was offered. Therefore I could not wait for the other teachers to have time to be interviewed.
The next two teachers I interviewed, I got in contact with via one of my classes. On Monday evenings a couple of times I went to a graduate course. In a graduate course the students already have their degree and are out working as teachers and I asked the teacher of that class to extend the break during one lesson in order for me to have time to conduct a couple of interviews. I had only been at that class twice before I conducted the interviews and I did not know who to choose. I first picked one teacher whom I had talked to before. The second teacher I picked because she was someone who was not engaged in a conversation when I had finished the first interview. After two interviews there was no more time, the lesson had to move on.
When I had three weeks left of my stay in Atlanta I was finally allowed to visit two more schools, other than the one where I had been from the beginning. At the first school it was constantly a rush and no one had time for an interview before my ride back. At the other school I intended to interview the teacher who was organizing my day there but as I was talking to the multimedia expert of this school I found out that she had previously been teaching in classes with a lot of ELL students and I decided that I would interview her. At the end of that interview there was no more time to interview the other teacher because my ride back was due.
Atlanta is a city where it is difficult to get to places without a car, and since I did not have a car during my stay there it would have been hard for me to go out and interview teachers even if I was allowed to access schools. I had set my mind on about five to eight teachers and in the end I ended up with five. I would have wished to have the opportunity to choose the teachers that were interviewed a bit more, but as the situation was that was not possible, I had to do with the five teachers I managed to find who had time to be interviewed.
I also had the opportunity to observe and talk to the ESOL teacher at the school which I visited from the beginning several times. Our meetings provided me with a deeper understanding of the American ESOL program but she was not interviewed as one of the teachers since this paper focus on the ELL students in the mainstream classroom and not the ESOL education.
Methods of data collection
The initial intent for this paper was for it to have a qualitative approach and the number of teachers who were finally interviewed din not change this. According to Johansson & Svedner the aim with a qualitative interview is to get the interviewee to give exhaustive answers on the chosen topic (25). Due to the difficulty of accessing schools in the US I chose on an early stage to use a qualitative approach rather than a quantitative.
The interviews contained several questions on the subject of teaching ELL students and here follows a description of the questions asked. First, I asked the teachers about their background as a teacher. I then asked them what grade level they teach and how many students they have as well as how many ELL students they teach. To find out how well they know their students I wanted them to tell me where their ELL students are from, which language they speak and how long they have been in the US. I then inquired about how they help their ELL students when they are in the mainstream classroom. Following that I asked what other support there is for them at the school and how they, as teachers, think that ELL students learn best. Another area of questions concerned other languages, if there are any instructions in the ELL students’ first language and if any foreign languages are taught in their school. Finally I asked the teachers how many languages they themselves speak, and what is needed in terms of knowing languages to become a teacher in the US. I also wanted to know how much they were taught about ELL students and second language acquisition during their education.
Procedure
The interviews which initially were intended as qualitative, with the teachers telling about their experiences and discussions about the topic had to be changed once I had realized the difficulty for the teachers to have time to be interviewed. When I noticed at the first school that there was not a lot of spare time for the teachers I had to rethink the questions. The interviews were changed into rather formal interviews, which turned out to be a good idea since all of the interviews were conducted in a classroom, with students all around. Three of the teachers I visited at their work when they were working and I could not expect them to give me 100% of their attention, they had students and other teachers coming up to ask them things during the interviews. Because of this it was very good to have set questions to ask since a deep conversation would not have been possible in this situation. The other two interviews were also conducted in a classroom with the class around.