While reading chapter four, I gathered a list of ten different words, which seemed to reflect the chapter and also seemed to fit what one would see in an ESL classroom from the teacher and student's point of view. The ten words I have highlighted and further described below are: trajectories, participating, interactions, unknown, challenges, analyzing, receptive, productive, questions, vocabulary.
Trajectories is demonstrated in chapter four in the way that there were synopsis of several ELLs all on the same path to learn English, but despite the fact that they are on the same path, all of these children were at different levels with different backgrounds that factored into their trajectory.
It was interesting to see the level of participation that the ELLs portrayed. Despite the level of confusion, many of the beginners took intelligent guesses. Others participated using their L1 when discussing objects they were looking at. This leaves a great amount of hope that their knowledge in L1 can transfer over easily to their L2 and the barrier is just language rather than knowledge and language in some instances. It makes you wonder how important, if at all, it is that teachers all their students to use their L1 especially when something new is presented to them so they can easily build background knowledge and then focus on the language.
I was amazed to see how technical it is in the developing process. The ELLs were involved in these developing stages: responding physically to requests, imitating, responding by saying yes or no to questions, repeats, comments spontaneously, produces responses, describes and so on.
With these students, there was more unknown than known English yet they still had much determination despite the long road ahead of their acquisition.
It was important to take note in the different ways the volunteers and ELLs approached the challenges they both came across and how they overcame those challenges.
I picked analyzing because this chapter allowed for the reader to analyze a numerous amount of different interactions between an ELL and a volunteer. The reader was able to analyze the children's personalities, experiences, abilities, and even appearances to paint a picture of an image of the child in their head, which made it feel like you, the reader, were a part of the journey too.
The ELLs needed to learn English in a receptive sort of way through interpersonal interactions in order to comprehend the language overtime.
In the same manner, the ELLs were given the opportunity through one-on-one interaction to not only comprehend, as in receptive, but to produce English in a productive way and it too changed overtime.
Taking note in the sorts of questions being asked to the ELLs was interesting. Since the volunteer simplified each sentence to only a few words, some being repetitive phrases, helped with the development of new vocabulary.
Lastly, I decided to add vocabulary to my list since after reading this chapter and seeing the improvements made and how all minds work differently, it is difficult to fathom the process of second language acquisition with the fact that language is so rich of vocabulary words.
In what ways and circumstances do you think you would need in order to flourish in learning a new language?
As far as ways to flourish in learning a new language, I would think that using a child's multiple intelligences would keep a learner actively involved. I know that when I learn, and teach, I don’t just like lectures, but I like group work, drawing, singing and dancing in my classrooms.
ReplyDeleteFor circumstances in order to flourish in a second language, I believe that acceptance and a community environment is essential for a learner, especially for a person learning a new language. A learner needs to feel free to ask questions and take risks in participation. If they do not feel free of criticism I would think learners would put up a filter.
I found your word choice to completely fit with the chapter. I like the connection you made with trajectories—so true. Too often in educator we try to keep students on the same path; we need to plan for students to be on different trajectories but still arriving at the same destination. I have seen repeatedly in classrooms teachers putting students on the same trajectory and the class ending at various destinations. I was also surprised by the developing process—communicating is very complicated when broken down in to parts and studied. To answer your questions, I believe you need good models and ample exposure in order to flourish in language acquisition.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your ideas about participation. I believe that using L1 to teach concepts and then transferring this knowledge into vocabulary in L2 is an effective way of teaching.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe that I would ever "flourish" in learning a new language. I have taken about 7 years of French classes and still cannot get past fairly basic statements. My listening skills are not great either. However, I can read fairly well. Repetition and time would have to be key factors in my becoming more fluent in French.