The Peregoy & Boyle article covers a myriad of program philosophies and attempts to compare and contrast the different types. Some important words to know when reading the summaries below are language minority students and language majority students. As the name implies, language minority students are those whose first language (or L1) is not the dominant language in the community. In the United States this would be any language other than English in many communities. Language majority students speak the language that is spoken within the community as their L1. Below I will summarize each of the programs discussed in the article and try to distinguish between them.
Transitional Bilingual Education
· Serve language minority students who are limited in English proficiency
· L1 instruction is provided for one to three years
· Program focuses on building academic content and literacy so English can be better picked up in later years
· Instruction is eventually transitioned to English only
Maintenance Bilingual Education
· Serve language minority students who are limited in English proficiency
· L1 instruction is provided throughout elementary school and sometimes into middle school
· Program focuses on keeping L1 proficiency, while adding English (bilingualism)
Immersion Education
· Teach minority languages to majority students
· Subject matter is delivered in target language (or L2)
· Ultimate goal is full bilingualism in English and minority language
· Usually focused on language majority students to learn a minority language
Two-Way Immersion Programs
· Combine immersion and maintenance programs to serve both language majority and minority students
· Classes have equal numbers of two languages, one being English, the other a minority language
· Early years are taught in non-English language, and then switch to English
· Goals is for bilingualism by both majority and minority students
Newcomer Programs
· Designed for students new to the country to teach culture, language, and schooling of their new country
· Often short-term, intended to prepare students for future English programs
There is more to the article but it has been covered in another blog post. I thought I’d use the rest of my time to voice some of my concerns with these programs.
My main concern is that these programs seem to be very specific and focused on a ‘concrete’ situation for English language instruction. In the short amount of time that I have been involved with teaching English, I can tell you that it is far from this orderly. The article goes to great lengths to praise the Canadian models for showing great success. But I have to ask, how practical is this? Take the two-way Conversion program for example. I can see a program like this working in a place like Los Angeles, which has a high number of Spanish L1 students. However, what is the school to do with all of the other minority language students? Wouldn’t your program push other minority languages aside? Isn’t that, in a sense, creating two majority languages? These scenarios seem too cookie-cutter and not applicable to actual teaching scenarios.
I’m glad research is being done to find the perfect mix of one thing or the other, but in reality I think everyone’s situation is so unique that it is difficult to summarize programs into one category or the other. Maybe the point of this article is to show the different schools of thought and allow teachers to blend different programs to meet their needs.
Task:
Let’s say you are an English language coordinator for a school district and it is your job to decide which approach to go with. Your community has hundreds of languages represented but one language, Cantonese, is the majority with over 50% of the minority language students having it as their L1. What program do you believe would best fit this situation? It can be a blend of a few, or maybe something new that you have come up with yourself. Keep in mind that English teachers who also speak Cantonese are very difficult to come by and therefore would cost a lot of resources to bring in.
Two-Way Immersion Programs
ReplyDelete· Combine immersion and maintenance programs to serve both language majority and minority students
· Classes have equal numbers of two languages, one being English, the other a minority language
· Early years are taught in non-English language, and then switch to English
· Goals is for bilingualism by both majority and minority students
I believe that the Two-Way Immersion program would be best suited with such a high percentage of the same minority language. I think that this is true because the beginning instruction is taught in non-English language, which would support students apprehension about learning a second language. Secondly, I think that this is the best suited program because it is seeking to support both non-native speakers and native speakers, therefore no language group is receiving a higher level of attention than the other. Lastly, this is good because the end goal is bilingualism, not to eradicate the L2 learners native language, but to maintain education in both. I know that you have said that Cantonese teachers are difficult to acquire and expensive, but I don't think that a price can be placed higher at the cost of a students education. I think that this is the correct way to education students in this particular situation. Let me know what you think!
Thanks - Elizabeth
I agree with the two-way immersion program. With having a classroom with 50% Cantonese, I believe it to be crucial that the students are taught some in their native language. This would obviously be an ideal situation, but due to the cost, it would prove to be very difficult finding a Cantonese/English speaker. However, if the community has many Cantonese speakers, the school could hire some people to help the students. This would benefit both the community and the school. The students can begin their teaching in Cantonese in the early stages and progress to English. By doing this, the students can establish and gain thorough knowledge in both languages. I think many ESL students are, unfortunately, encouraged to learn English and kind of "drop" their first language. Hopefully, this program would encourage the speaking both languages.
ReplyDeleteRoshalle,
ReplyDeleteI like what you said about including community members in the education of their own students. This is something that I wish was done more often, but because of steep teacher certification requirements, community members would not be allowed to stand in front of the class to teach. I wish there was a way for some of these community leaders to step forward and be able to teach their own kids in school. I know a university degree is required pretty much everywhere, but I wonder if in some of these areas some assistance from local advocates could really help the students.
Getting community members involved is a great idea.
I think it is important to realize that many of the students are speaking Cantonese as their first language, therefore the community should cater to that particular group, at least that’s what many would think to do. However, it is very political because the other majority that is made up of hundreds of other languages are being left out. Perhaps those groups disagree with bilingual programs and feel that they are not being included like they should be just because there is not a concentrated amount of those that speak their language. This is tricky because you want to include all groups and make everyone happy in the community. Since Cantonese speaking teachers are hard to come by and expensive, I guess resorting to ESL teachers is the way to go. Although, I would hope and like to think that the school district would come up with enough funds to hire Cantonese and English speaking teachers. Using a blend of Maintenance Bilingual Education, Two-Way Immersion, and Newcomer Programs would be a good plan to start with. And also of course, patience is vital! Maintenance programs will help the student from elementary school all the way to even high school allowing them to still fully use their native language, but also be highly proficient in English, orally and written. I think this program is useful because it pretty much “maintains” one’s language proficiency in both languages, but concentrating a bit more on English which is important for academic purposes. Two-Way Immersion is helpful because some students may be Cantonese only or English only speaking, and with this method it is divided 50/50. Both languages are brought to the table and used equally. However some students may not want to learn, or their parents, if they themselves do not speak the new language their children are being taught. Lastly, I think that Newcomer programs should be incorporated just because it is a support system that also helps the students learn about the culture of the language they will be learning. This is important because language is a part of one’s identity, their culture, where they came from, and will be able to understand and respect others.
ReplyDeleteI am going to start with talking about which program I don't think is very beneficial. In the full Immersion Program, the students are fully immersed in the minority language. The teacher must be proficient in the language and speaks it the entire time. I experienced program first hand at an elementary school in Lansing. The classroom I worked in was a Kindergarten Spanish Immersion classroom. All of the students' first languages were English. The teacher taught in Spanish the whole day. She would speak slowly and act out things that she would like the students to do. For example, if she were to say "Take out your pencils," she would pick up a pencil while saying the word. She would speak little English when trying to explain something. The students wouldn't really comprehend what the teacher was saying, most of the time they would just repeat after her. If a student didn't understand what the teacher had said in English, then she would repeat it and act it out again until the student understood. Some times she would have the class explain to the student who didn't understand, if they understood what the teacher said. Although the students were constantly hearing the language all day long and were required to use the language to get assignments and lessons completed, I don't think that this was a very beneficial program because the students would stare at the teacher, not understanding a word sometimes and would become lost and confused. I think a better way to do this would be the Two-Way Immersion program.
ReplyDeleteThe Two-Way Immersion program would have half the students that speak native English, and half that speak native Spanish. The teacher teaches the lessons either in both languages. I prefer this program better because if she is teaching a lesson in Spanish and some of the English-speaking students aren't understanding, the Spanish-speaking students could help them comprehend, and vice versa. I think this is the best out of all of the bilingual programs and would have positive results for the students.
I think looking at the description of the task the obvious program is the two way immersion using English and Cantonese. This would incorporate the large number of L1 English and Cantonese speakers. It would allow for them to learn a second language without having to drop their first language, which is the result with transitional bilingual eduaction and maintenance bilingual education. However, we have to keep in mind that there are hundreds of other languages that students have as their first language. By implementing a two way immersion program without any others would put them at a great disadvantage.
ReplyDeleteThus, after closer examination I believe the best program to implement in this siuation would be English Language Development (ELD). This would involve having teacher who is knowledgable of second language development. The teacher would be responsible for both English language and literacy skills along with the basic core curriculum. In these types of programs a majority of the students are non-native speaking students. The goal of this type of program is for students to gain full English language, literacy, and academic development.
A consequence of using the ELD is that the students are not encouraged to maintain proficiency in their L1. However, I beleive it would be the most affective program considering the circumstances provided. It would be more cost effective than implementing the two way immersion program because it would not require bilingual teachers. However, it would be important to have teachers knowledgable in English language learning. As students, we like to believe that cost should not be a factor in this type of education, but in the real world it is. I think it is important to come up with realistic solutions to such tasks that could be implemented in most school districts instead of the ideal schools with an unlimited budget.
I also agree with Jaclyn that a new comer program should be implemented for the incoming non-native speaking students. Such a program could be included with a community outreach to bring in the parents of these children to also ease their transition into the community.
But it all brings me back to the issue of majority minority. When I lived in Arizona there were programs for students who came from Spanish homes or Navajo homes. But had I had my son then, there would have been no program for him. I don't want to take the two-way immersion away from those who want it and need it, but we also cannot forget that there are others that may need something else. Which also raises the question of the distribution of the financial resources that a school district has.
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