Entry 2: Student Interview
My second entry into my Vblog is an interview I conducted with a formal ELL student who was able to share with me her experiences as an ELL student placed in ESL classes.
In this Vblog I interviewed a former ELL student, Mary De Leon, who gave me insight into her experiences with learning a new language and her experiences with being placed in regular and ESL classrooms. As a native Spanish speaker, Mary is a part of 3.5 million ELL students whose native language is Spanish, this makes up over 80% of students identified as ELLs (Wright, 2015, p. 8). I asked Mary who was her most memorable teacher while learning English and how did this teacher have a positive effect on her success as an ELL student. She mentioned one teacher that supported her and didn’t make her feel like an outcast when she did have trouble with certain words in English. This teacher made sure that the students helped one another when they were struggling, which created a positive atmosphere in the classroom and allowed students to make mistakes without feeling like they’ve failed. One of the struggles that Mary mentioned was simply learning the language and differentiating between the rules of constructing a sentence in English and the rules of constructing a sentence in Spanish. In the book, Wright mentions 5 subsystems (phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics) of language that ELL students tend to have trouble with while learning the English language (Wright, 2015, p.8). Syntax, how words are combined to form sentences, seemed to be what Mary was struggling with the most. Wright says, “for ELLs, producing grammatically correct phrases and sentences can be a major challenge because of the rules for syntax vary across languages (Wright, 2015, p. 33). I have experienced non-English speaking individuals struggle with this but through lots of practice and support, they are able to differentiate between the syntax in their native language and the English language.
Hello Jeroy! It is good to have another class with you. I agree that syntax is one of the more difficult aspects of the five subsystems of language (Wright, 2015). As future math teachers, what would you say is a good method for encouraging growth in this particular subsystem? Both you and I agree on the importance of positive classroom culture (something Mary cites as having a major positive role in her ELL development). Additionally, I found your thoughts on incorporating positive relationship building skills into our teaching strategies for ELLs interesting. I am glad that you mentioned sentence stems and accommodations; what are your favorite for ELLs? Personally, I like the visual anchor charts we use, since they are not heavily based on text.
ReplyDeleteHello Ila, it's great to have another class with you also! I've found, since watching several interview Vblogs from our classmates, that syntax is a common subsystem of language that most of the former ELL students who were interviewed, found difficult. One way that I can encourage growth for this particular subsystem, is simply correcting the student when speaking a sentence out of order, and modeling how to say the sentence correctly. I can also use sentence stems as another way to model how sentences are structured in English.
DeleteHi Jeroy! For sure one of the hardest things when learning a language is learning about the syntax. Wright does mention how students struggle with phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics the most. When I began to learn English I struggled with sentence structure. When you are trying to translate English to Spanish you have to switch the verb and subject around.
ReplyDeleteI know there is not a perfect ELL program where it's a "one-size fits all", but according to Wright there are multiple programs such as sheltered instruction and primary language support to help with these kind of difficulties for ELL students.
Hello Marcela, I can absolutely see how a student or anyone learning the English language would struggle with syntax. I honestly had no idea how important having a deeper understanding of how the English language works, would be as a Math teacher. From word problems, to vocabulary, to classroom discussions, students are expected to be able to communicate in multiple forms and are depending on us as teachers, to be able to assist them becoming proficient at these tasks. I'm happy that there are programs specialized in helping students learn the English language. Yes, they may not be perfect, but they are great programs that allow non-English speaking students to be successful.
DeleteHey Jeroy! Through my experience with language learning I have noticed that syntax was a difficult topic to master when going from different languages that have different sentence structures in a way that Spanish and English do. The book states that this misunderstanding of sentence structure can be mistaken as dyslexia (Wright, 2015 p.33). Knowing that this is a common mistake will help me while I am in the classroom and prevent me from jumping to conclusions that I should not have. I also noticed the environment that she referred to was one that seemed similar to sheltered instruction (Wright,2015 p.92). This structure would be able to provide that comfortable and encouraging environment that helped Mary learn English.
ReplyDeleteHello Andrew,
DeleteI'm happy you mentioned that misunderstanding sentence structure as an ELL student can be misinterpreted as the student having dyslexia. This is a major reason why courses that focuses solely on English language learners are important, so that misdiagnosis does not occur. I think environment does play a great factor on the success of, not only English language learners, but students of all learning styles. In another interview I watched, the former ELL student explained the differences in size or "teacher to student" ratio in ESL classrooms, versus regular native English speaking classrooms. In her ESL classroom, the teacher was more accessible since there were less students and in a regular classroom, the teacher wasn't as accessible since there were more students.
Hey Jeroy,
ReplyDeleteI liked your interview with Mary because I shared a lot of similarities with Mary. For example, when she mentioned that the predominant language spoken in her household was/is Spanish. Also, when she mentioned that an obstacle, she faced that she had to look for someone that looked like her to translate for her because everyone around her spoke English. I’m glad that she had a positive experience in her time in the ESL program and that she had a teacher that legitimately cared enough to help her learn a new and sometimes difficult language! I also like your idea of sentence stems, even though they are a simple form of help, they can go the extra mile for ELL students! Another similarity that I have with Mary is the syntax because trying to understand how words are combined in English could sometimes be the total opposite in Spanish. She gave a perfect example with the white horse because sentences or phrases as simple as that could confuse ELL students especially those newer to the language. According to our text, “Syntax is about the relationships between words. You can think of syntax as helping us understand who did what to whom when, where, and how… Once we understand the basic rules of grammar, we can produce an unlimited number of sentences. (Wright 2015)”.
Wright, Wayne (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, Second Edition.