Acquisition and Learning Views

            Perhaps because of my experiences or my own learning preferences, I lean toward the acquisition view, especially when learning a second language.  When trying to speak another language, I feel more successful when parts of the language become subconscious.  From my experience, acquisition view makes this more possible.  The learning view seems to have a tendency to train my brain to think in English first and then translate into the other language, using such activities as looking up definitions in the dictionary, worksheets, and conducting drills.  These activities teach valuable information about the language and its structure, but practiced in isolation seem to train my brain to activate the prior knowledge of my first language, not of the second language. From the acquisition view’s emphasis on a desire to communicate (making books on the topic, reading language experience stories, and shared reading of a big book,) the words in the second language have their own meaning and not a meaning tied to an English word. 

            Because of my preference for the acquisition view, I was less able to see all the possible uses of the learning view.  I was interested to hear other peoples’ perspectives.  I though that Brandy’s description of repetitive texts was particularly insightful.   As I look back on the list of activities and how many of them can pertain to both views, I think that acquisition versus learning is a false dichotomy, as is phonics versus whole language, and decodable texts versus authentic texts.  In education, we so often talk about the pendulum swinging from one to the other, roll our eyes and go with the flow.  The pendulum swing does our students a disservice.  They need both.  We, as educators, need both.  ELLs need both—the acquisition to practice using and communicating in the language, the learning to understand its structures.  Too much of education is controlled by politics, one the of the reasons for the pendulum swing, but I wish that we could drop the pendulum and start talking about refining.   By refining, I mean taking all the information, teaching methods, lesson ideas and use them all, when needed.  I think most educators do this already, but the debate continues.

Cultural Aspects in Children’s Books

            I first chose Good Dog, Carl (Day 1986) because without words, it could be a good way for ELL students to practice oral language.  The book has many cultural references that students from another country may not understand.  Some students, especially those from developing countries, may find the concept of a pet dog that lives indoors incomprehensible.  For example, while my husband was in Mexico, a friend told him that when he died, he wanted to come back as an American’s dog because they were treated so well.  Before working with the book as a class, all students (both ELLs and native speakers) could bring in a picture of a pet or an animal they like and share about them.  This could lead to discussion or acting out the relationships that Americans develop with their pets.

Another cultural component is that Americans usually do not live in extended families, and the mother left the baby alone with the dog.  The concept of the laundry shoot, make-up, record player or hair dryer may also affect meaning.  To address all these concepts, students could compare the people and objects they find in their homes in their native country and in the United States. 

            Good Morning, City (Moore 1995) uses beautiful illustrations and poetic language to describe life in a large city.  Some cultural components presented such as night shift workers, garbage truck, subway and cathedral may affect comprehension.  To teach both subway and garbage truck, each student could create cards with labeled pictures of different types of transportation.  The class could practice grouping the types together, such as transportation used for work, for individuals, for large groups of people, found in the country, found in the city, etc.  Students could then create posters of the different groups and hang them in the classroom. 

Perhaps some students in class know someone who works the night shift.  They could describe the work the person completes and that person’s schedule.  Or students could create a schedule with clocks and pictures of activities for their typical day.  They could then rearrange the pictures for a night shift worker.  For donut shop, students could talk to each other about different places they eat for breakfast and what type of food they may eat.  After talking to a partner, the class could brainstorm things to eat at home and at a restaurant (using words and sketches).   

            As I think about these activities, I realize that so much depends on the background knowledge of the students and the teacher’s ability to perceive how much the student understands of the lesson.  I also realize that background knowledge is important for native speakers too and teachers need plan ways for all students can share or activate their knowledge and build upon it.

Constructing Meaning in a Foreign Language Text

            Before beginning this activity, I knew how challenging it would be.  Even after years of studying German and feeling fairly proficient in the language, I found reading adult texts incredibly time consuming and, at times, frustrating.  For one college German course, I had to read a few of Kafka’s short stories.  It was agony.  I remember feeling great relief when I would finally reach a period.  After rereading the sentence several times, I would still forget the meaning of the beginning of the sentence by the time I reached the end. I had such difficulty constructing meaning even though I had significant background knowledge in the language and in the basic plot of the story. I felt such frustration with the process of trying to read, that, even now, I strongly dislike Kafka’s writing.  This memory helps me realize the truth in Gibbon’s (2002) emphasis on the difference between conversational and academic language.

            Strategies to construct meaning become more important as students have less knowledge of the language.  Here are some that may help:

• Look for recognizable forms of text, such as a letter, headings, titles, charts
• Rely on pictures
• Sometimes captions can help unlock the meaning of a few words
• Try to determine the meaning of words often repeated (usually not the small ones because they can be articles or other grammatical words that don’t help unlock meaning)
• Look for words that may be cognates to a known language
• Reread
• Use knowledge of sentence structure in a known language to help construct meaning
• Use an English/First Language dictionary (although this can lead to greater frustration)
• Ask for help—someone to explain the text with actions, pictures, first language etc.

           

Implications for teaching

• Compassion
• Students cannot complete assignments if they cannot unlock meaning
• ELL students at all levels of proficiency often need more scaffolding for comprehension than native speakers.
• Actions, pictures, demonstrations are essential to help convey meaning
• Support students’ acquisition of their first languages as much as possible.  With more knowledge of their first language, they have more strategies they can try to use
• Explicitly teach specific strategies for ELL learners

Writing Instruction

When I reflect on writing instruction in my own schooling, I have a hard time remembering any instruction.  I remember assignments and teachers explaining the parameters we had to follow, such as topic, how many pages or paragraphs, number or type of resources, but I remember very few lessons about the craft of writing.  A few teachers did explain how to organize a paper; writing a thesis with precisely three supporting items always located at the end of the sentence so that each of those items could translate into a topic sentence for the three supporting paragraphs in the paper.  Always three paragraphs, even if one paragraph stretched across more than one page. I enjoyed writing and, looking back, I think that I learned to write mainly because I found magic in words and arranging them so that they expressed ideas I found important.  Most of my writing instruction felt constricting and I remember thinking of ways to appear to follow the rules of the assignments while allowing myself to express my creativity. 

The instruction I received in writing most closely matches Freeman and Freeman’s (2004) learning view of writing.   As they describe, the teacher directly instructs students and teaches them how to create the whole from parts, which reminds me of the instruction to use the parts of the thesis to create the whole of the paper.  They also explain how in this view “writing products must be conventional from the beginning” (p. 29).  I was not encouraged to experiment and, at least in elementary school, my writing seemed to be graded more on how closely I followed conventions than on the quality of what I had to say. 

As a teacher, I prefer the acquisition view (Freeman & Freeman, 2004), which seems to honor the message more than the conventions.  The purpose of writing is to communicate and share one’s unique view.  I feel that students respond more enthusiastically to this approach.  It also reminds me of the workshop model (Fountas & Pinnell, 2001), (Fletcher & Portalupi, 2001) where students have more control in the writing process.  One of my favorite quotations about teaching writing, John Poeton’s “choice leads to voice” (Fletcher & Portalupi, 2001, p. 23) also pertains to teaching ELLs writing.  The more choice students have in what and how they write, the more they can express their voice.  When limited by vocabulary, ELL students who can choose their topic can express so much more because they can choose a topic about which they feel comfortable in their writing abilities. 

Ralph Fletcher’s site http://www.ralphfletcher.com/tips.html also offers advice for young writers that fits within the acquisition view.

Oral Language and Reading

While searching for foreign language texts for next week’s class, I found my Nepali readers, third and seventh grade textbooks.  Since Nepali uses Devanagari script, for me, reading in Nepali is like learning to read all over again.  I have to remember what sound each symbol makes, blend the sounds into words and then try to recall a vocabulary word that matches the sounds I just produced.  There is something thrilling when I read a whole sentence that makes sense to me!

I also notice how much I draw on my spoken Nepali skills.  Only after I had been speaking (or trying to speak) Nepali for over a year, did I start to learn how to read Nepali.  My speaking skills are still much stronger than my reading skills.  With the help of my EDRG courses, I can now identify my decoding strategies as I read Nepali and how much my oral language skills help make reading easier. Because I have an understanding of Nepali syntax, I have an idea in my head of what word may come next in a sentence.  I find it much easier to check if the characters match that word than to decode each character.  In addition, as I am blending the words together, I try to match the words to vocabulary I know.  I struggle with decoding words I don’t know or can’t remember hearing because I don’t know if I even have the right sounds.  If I had a stronger vocabulary, decoding would be easier and sometimes I can decode a whole sentence, but not understand it because I don’t know enough oral vocabulary.   

My process reading Nepali reminds me of the registers mentioned by Gibbons (2002).  The third grade textbook is easier for me to read because the syntax resembles spoken Nepali.  In the seventh grade textbook, the language more resembles literature.  I did not hear people speak using that vocabulary or syntax, so it is harder to read. 

Philosophy of Literacy

I spoke with a high school ESL teacher about her philosophies about teaching literacy.  She first mentioned the importance of building on the academic skills that students have in their first language when teaching literacy in English.  She said that she would translate key vocabulary or connect with the students’ first language and culture as much as possible.  This rings true to my experiences both learning other languages and teaching ESL students. 

In Brooklyn, I taught an English class for adults who had recently arrived in the United States.  Most of my students spoke either Spanish or Polish as their first language.  Since I had studied Spanish in high school, I knew that the vowels E and I would be confusing for the Spanish students so I could provide plenty of practice with those vowel sounds.  Unfortunately, I did not have a background in Polish, but I noticed that the Polish students were able to make some of the connections themselves because, in general, they had stronger literacy skills in their first language.  They seemed to benefit from explaining the connections to me, which also helped me better understand their learning process.

The teacher with whom I spoke also mentioned the importance of cooperative learning in teaching literacy to students at different levels.  She explained how students with different skills in English who speak the same first language could work well together.  A student who has strong oral skills but weaker reading skills could have success working with a student who has weaker oral English skills and a stronger background in their shared first language.  Although I have never tried this approach, it made sense to me because it draws on the students’ first language. 

In general, this teacher spoke about the value of diversified instruction.  This seems particularly important in ESL literacy because there are more variables that significantly affect the students’ ability to read, such as their knowledge of English and their literacy ability in their first language.