Chapters 2 & 3

These chapters reminded me much of our discussions in my bilingual courses this week. There are so many different ways people 'think' that dual language programs can be approached, but it often comes down to heated discussions between bilingual education majors. I have spent endless hours, long dinner conversations, and many researched papers showing the content we have learned on how to teach students in their L1 prior to working in L2. This past weekend I actually had a discussion with my dad who thought he knew so much about my major, and basically redirected any theories he had previously. Students should not feel as if they are being forced to give up their native language, and even further not have to erase their cultural identities within the school/ classroom. We are taught that students must develop fully in their native language- developing grammar, syntax, phonetic awareness; etc before they can be told what they are doing is 'incorrect' at all.

We just recently did an experiment in our C&I class. We were given an 'assessment' that was completely 100% in Italian. We were given a long paragraph to read and then questions to answer. All of us are fluent Spanish speakers and some even different levels of Chinese or Japanese. However, the class was dead quiet for several moments. Honestly, I am in the depths of a great novel so I didn't make much effort because I know NO Italian. Some girls I could see were truly trying to understand it. After our professor held a discussion on our thoughts of this 'assessment'. It took everyone a long time to piece things together and our teacher made us realize that these assessments are often timed tests, students who are English language learners don't get to take their time trying to figure out material. Some girls said they were trying to go to the questions and then find the answers. I boldly stated that although there are similarities between the two languages (Spanish & Italian) that everyone simply had to be pretending what they were comprehending. There are words/ vocab/ spellings/ verb usage that is just way too different for us to be able to process what was sitting in front of us. Even with the background of we have in developing language skills, there was little we could do to make sense of it all- no matter how hard we tried to assimilate the two languages. I also feel like this is a strong example of how I feel that pull out programs are not what we should be centering our program development around. Just as Special ed students are mainstreamed into classrooms, as are ELL students. As a bilingual ed major we know the ins & outs of how much culture plays a part in the classroom. There are only like 30 of us in this program, so how does that help? So many teachers do not understand the importance of teaching the fundamentals of a language before bombarding students with new knowledge. There is a happy medium, as there are in all things in life, that teachers must master with ELL students.