Authenticity

I’ve enjoyed this textbook so far, but after reading this quote from Chapter 5, I want to high five Shelley Wong. “Because of our school system’s democratic façade, people think that every child has equal opportunity because the tests are supposed to be “objective.” In fact, there isn’t equal opportunity. These exams are both racially and class-biased. They are a more accurate measure of family income and parent education.” I couldn’t agree more with this. Throughout my entire education I still cannot understand why our government thinks the answer to our education system’s problems is standardized and IQ testing. No child can be measured and labeled by a number, especially not by an unauthentic one. This is important for all children regardless of their background or race, but for ELL’s it can have an even more negative effect. A culturally biased test leaves no chance for a child who has just been introduced to the mainstream culture to succeed. These are the children who answer a question “incorrectly” not because they don’t have the knowledge, but because they do not understand the cultural implications behind it. By using this type of standardized IQ testing, we are perhaps unintentionally segregating our students based on things other than their knowledge.
Another point that I am glad Wong made in this chapter is that the assimilation into American culture often fosters a rejection to a child’s native culture and language. In Branch5-2 this issue is evaluated on. As a bilingual major I identify with this sentiment. It is my job as a teacher to not only value home cultures and languages of my students, but to learn as much about them as I expect my students to learn in class. Bringing bilingual and bicultural methods into the classroom is a way to fight prejudice, jump-start critical thinking, and to create an environment where every child is accepted and valued. When children are exposed to different cultures and languages, a different type of learning occurs than does in a “mainstream” classroom. The students become the teachers, instruction is student- led and students have a lowered affective filter because they feel valued and safe. One way to ensure this is happening in your classroom is to make sure your methods are authentic. Literature, art, assessment, etc. all must be authentic in order to be effective.
If all of our classrooms looked like this, I do not believe we would need standardized or IQ testing. When we are authentically assessing our students, we as well as they will learn their strengths and weaknesses, but more so we as educators will realize that there is more to intelligence than we sometimes credit. Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is a theory that can debate the authenticity of IQ testing. Our students education with be richer if they are a part of a culturally diverse environment. To do this, we have to go beyond “Heroes and Holidays”. I think the most important thing to remember is authenticity.

Dialogic Approach

       After reading this chapter in the Wong text, I cannot help but to be reaffirmed a bit. Sometimes in my own personal endeavor to learn a second language, I am increasingly discouraged by the fact that I am not as fluent as I would like to be, even though I started taking Spanish classes when I was 12 years old. 10 years later, I feel I should be much more capable than I am at this point. While reading about Bakhtin's dialogic approach and Mao and Freire's learning by doing, I see so many differences between these theories and the way I was taught Spanish. Rote repetition is not the focus of these approaches, nor are grammar drills. Learning a language is not unlike learning in general. It has to be connected and practiced with a purpose. Looking back, I never really saw the connections as I was in my Spanish classes.
       One of the points in this chapter that stuck out to me the most is "Bakhtin's theory suggests that we have an active role to play in our use of language; our "doing" language is transformative not only of ourselves but also of the language itself". There is so much more to language acquisition  than I ever realized. It makes me wonder, had I been taught using a dialogic approach, would I be much more fluent now? What if what I was acquired had actually been through "doing" instead of memorization? Would I be able to speak and use my knowledge more proficiently because of it?
       I imagine the answers to these questions are yes. The other part that I connected with in this chapter was when it described the Chinese theologians  learning English through the focus of theology. They were learning for the purpose of their interest. There is so much more motivation behind that, I wish that I had been taught like that. I want this to stand true not only for the ELL's I will have in my classroom, but for all of my students. I want to use a dialogic approach in all subjects. These theories present an indisputable point; learning by "doing" is definitely the way to pave the road to acquisition. Learning by doing can teach you how to learn, which is a far more valuable tool than memorization.

March 15

            Branch 3-6 of this chapter intrigued me. It posed a question that I feel comes up recurrently in teaching. When looking at the difference between how the girl and boy answered the dilemma of morality, the girl received a much lower score for her moral development than the boy. It seems as though this girl just did not interpret the problem in the same way the boy did. Although the book was targeting this example to Kohlberg’s six-stage theory of moral development, for me it can be related to all of my future students.

            I think that all too often I forget that children in general look at and process things much different than each other and than me. As educators, children can be labeled wrongly because they are not thinking the same way the other students are or because it is different than what the teacher expects. This is especially important to remember when it comes to second language learners. Not only does every child learn differently and interpret things in their own way, their background greatly affects how they learn. If a child comes to the U.S. from a Spanish speaking country, even aside from the language barrier they are likely to interpret things differently because they grew up in a different culture. This is the problem with many standardized texts; the cultural context is often related to white, middle-class Americans.

            When the author went back and looked at what could have caused the girl to interpret the situation differently it made me reflect on how we can do the same thing as teachers. All too often we blame the students for being wrong, when in reality it might be the way we are teaching that is not cohesive to their learning strengths. Also the girl’s answer was not wrong, it was simply different. This will be one of the most important things to do and remember as a teacher, to not judge a student’s response because it is not what you expected or it is different. The way we teach our children needs to be meaningful, always looking at how we pose questions, how we assess and what we are doing to help them learn. If we can demonstrate and open mind, students will be more likely to develop the same acceptance and the learning environment of the classroom will become richer.

 Annotated Bibliography

1)

            Effective Early Literacy Skill Development for Young Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners: An Experimental Study of Two Methods studies the early literacy development of English language learners. The group of children were divided into a control group which receive regular high-scope curriculum, a group that received  high-scope along with small groups from the Literacy Express Preschool Curriculum and the third was the same as the second, but began in Spanish and transitioned to English instruction. Part of the research in this study was also based on what the children received at home, whether English or Spanish was spoken more often, or equally. This source will supplement my own research because it focuses on pre-school aged children and the efficacy of a method used in English language acquisition. The home aspect of the study will also correlate well as I am researching what works best in the home environment as well.

Farver, J, Lonigan, C, & Eppe, S. (2009). Effective early literacy skill development for young spanish-                                                   speaking english language learners: an experimental study of two methods. Child Development, 80(3), 703-719.

2)

         Learning For Life, A Structured and Motivational Process of Knowledge Construction in the Acquisition/Learning of English as a Foreign Language in Native Spanish Speakers explores the methods of a theory, Learning for Life. This theory focuses on student centered instruction with emphasis on human values as a part of instruction. Each student is seen as unique and the teacher is expected to know of and be involved in aspects of their life even outside of instruction. The article also touches on acquisition versus learning under this circumstance. This will aid in my research because it is specific to Spanish speakers learning English as a foreign language. 

Miño-Garcés, F. (2009). Learning for life, a structured and motivational process of knowledge         construction in the acquisition/learning of english as a foreign language in native spanish speakers. International Journal of English Studies, 8(1), 81-89.

3)

          Mother Brand English as an Effective Approach to Teach English for Young Children as a Foreign Language in Korea explains this method, developed by parents and used by mothers and father in Korea to help their own children acquire English in the home. This study shows the use of outside resources such as media and the internet to provide access to natural English input for the children.  The goal of this method is natural acquisition of the language by exposure to rich English surroundings and environment along with appropriate stimuli. The study iterates which steps and stages children go through as they are acquiring the language. This article will aid in my analysis of research as I am inquiring of methods to use in the home, this parallels my research question and will help to find useful strategies to use in the home.

Seung-Yoeun, Y, & SookHee, L. (2006). Mother brand english as an effective approach to teach english for young children as a foreign language in korea. Reading Improvement, 43(4), 185-193.

4)

           Language Immersion Programs for Young Children? Yes, but Proceed With Caution analyzes a dual-language immersion school in Hong Kong that equally exposes their students to English and Mandarin. They have found that there are cognitive advantages, but that young children do not “absorb second languages like a sponge”.  They have also found that these programs must be carefully created and monitored to be effective. This article will compliment my analysis of other research as it shows parts of the hardships of second language acquisition in young children. It will help me to answer my research questions knowing not only what works in teaching English as a foreign language, but also what does not work.

Soderman, A. (2010). Language immersion programs for young children? yes..but proceed with caution. Phi Delta Kappan, 91(8), 54-61.