Last night, I learned a lot in my elementary ESOL Methods class. If a young student are placed in English only classroom, it would take that student about 10 years to master academic English (the kind of English used for college and many professional careers such as being a doctor or a lawyer). This previous statement is so true because I was one of those students who was in an English only classroom in my early educational years. I did get reading support in my primary years but it doesn't help me understand the English language and how to write academic English correctly. I have had grammar lessons in grade school but I was treated like a native-language learner. However, there are some differences between the Chinese and the English language. If I could understand my native language structures vs. the English language structure, I would have master the English language quickly in a few short years. If I was supported in learning my native language and be part of a balanced bilingual program, I would be biliterate and that would be a wonderful asset for employers and our American society.If a young student had some ESL support, it would take that student about 5 to 7 years to master academic English. Even this is better than English only classrooms. It took me years to be able to write English correctly. However, there are some English grammar that I still struggle with.
In one of the in-class assignments, we paired off to work on reading an article and creating a big graphic organizer of information of summarizing the article's information. My partner and I had the article called "Bilingual Education in Texas: Lighting the Path, Leading the Way" by Josefina Tinajero from the Language Learner magazine (November/December 2005 issue). After we read the article, we had three points on our web-like graphic organizer and the supportive reasons behind it. We called our graph Texas Found A Solution. Here are our points:
1. There are many bilingual programs in Texas that are successful. But funding and high stake testing has been a problem for those programs to continue. Many of these bilingual programs are becoming more about rushing the ELL students to gain English proficiency before they are ready and not fully supporting the native language anymore. These unbalanced bilingual programs are using the native language to learn English than rush them to English only instruction. When this happens, ELL students would struggle in learning content that is needed to be successful in higher education and beyond. Ms. Tinajero reported that "the high stakes that NCLB (No Child Left Behind act) attaches to English language learners' scores on English language achievement tests are damaging to bilingual programs."
2. A true bilingual program supports both the native and the English language development. The benefits of bilingual education are:
*Students acquire at least as much English as those in all-English immersion programs and usually acquire more.
*That learning to read in the primary language is a shortcut to learning to read in English.
*Students consistently outperform those in all-English alternatives on test of English reading.
*It has a positive effect on English language development.
3. Studies have shown that non-native English speaking students can read and speak English fluently at a faster rate if they are enrolled in a balanced bilingual program. When native-speakers learn concepts in their language, they can transfer that knowledge to learn in English. Back in 2002, President Bush spent $1.8 million dollars of tax money to research the outcomes of bilingual programs through the National Literacy Panel. They had found that bilingual education actually works to help ESL students to learn English faster. This report has been blocked from being published to the public by Bush's Department of Education because of the influences of the conservative right and the English Only movement.
What can we do to support bilingual education? Teachers and all interested parties such as parents and friends must be an advocate to our English Language Learners. There are other ways to support our ELLS but you would have to read the article.
Another group read an article about multilingualism. Here are what they found about the benefits of multilingualism:
*Strong sense of identity
*More flexible thinking
*Deep concepts transfer
*Acceptance and validation of the whole child/person
*Greater connectivity through diverse language skills
*Maintaining emotional connections with family and community
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