Entry 2: Interview with ELL

https://youtu.be/4uoEyz01K20


I interviewed my boyfriends mother Herminia Bello who learned English as a second language in the United States. As far as learning English, the subsystem morphology was the most challenging for her. "Morphology is the study of the structure of words" (Wright, 2015, p.32). She struggled with things such as the difference  between to and too, and using past, present, and future tense. This is one of the challenges that comes with teaching a new language because the rules on how certain words change meaning differs across the languages. "For example, many languages do not use inflectional morphemes to indicate number or tense, such as -s or -ed in English, but instead use a stand-alone morpheme, a separate word, to indicate number or tense" (Wright, 2015, p.32). I believe this is the case for Spanish, her native language, because there are different words to use when speaking about the past. "Voy" means I am going and "fui" means I went. These are two separate words to express the different tenses. In English, for many words if you just add -ed at the end it makes it past tense so it is very confusing for ELL's.

Herminia mentions she comes from a very poor family of 12 in her home town of Alamos, Sonora Mexico. She said she had basically nothing there. There were 60 students to 1 teacher ratios at school, no air conditioning in the building, and very uncomfortable desks to sit in. At home, she did not have resources to help her grow and learn or reach her full potential. "Although limited resources and the challenges of learning English may impede opportunities to learn, ELL's can learn and reach the highest levels of academic achievement" (Wright, 2015, p. 15).  Herminia did not let her circumstances get in the way of her success. She had never been in a car before yet came to the United States in a private plane without knowing even one word of the English language. She faced her fears and kept her goal of learning the language close to her heart. She is now a fluent English speaker and was able to give back to the community by being a translator for the Save The Children organization. She graduated high school after only being in the United States 1 year where all of her classes were spoken in English the entire time. Even with limited resources, she was still successful just as Wright said was possible.

Something that helped Herminia be successful was her teachers. She said her teachers took a great interest in her and even spent time with her outside of the school to get to know her better and support her. "Teachers need to know the following about each student: (1) language and literacies used at home; (2) ELP level; (3) educational history in the home country and in the United States; (4) length of time in the United States; (5) reason for immigration; (6) number of siblings; and (7) parent's educational history, employment, and proficiency in English and other languages" (Wright, 2015, p.23). Wright mentions all of these important things that teachers should know about their students and Herminia's teachers proved that this is an important factor in helping the ELL's. They got to know her and believed in her so they knew what ways to help her and it resulted in her success.

Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.

Entry 1: Self-introduction video

According to Wright, “An English language learner (ELL) is a student who is in the process of attaining proficiency in English as a new, additional language” (Wright, 2010, p. 1). ELL’s come from different countries all over the world and are becoming more common in American public schools. As a teacher, it is very important for me to recognize this growth of ELL’s in the classroom and understand what my responsibility will be as their teacher. “The ways educators choose to view their ELLs affect the ways they organize teaching and learning in their classes and the ways administrators structure programs in their schools and districts (Wright, 2010, p. 2). While I am nervous to have ELLs in my classroom with the fear of not giving them the best education they deserve, I know that the more research I do and the more tools I have for teaching ELLs the more confident and successful I will be. Having a positive outlook is key. With a positive outlook I will organize engaging and meaningful learning opportunities for my ELL students.

One of the problems in defining and identifying ELLs is “determining when an ELL has attained enough proficiency in English to be redesignated as fluent English proficient” (Wright, 2010, p. 3). I can see how many students fall short of the help they need by being pushed out of the program because of passing one English proficiency test, but still needing the additional services they were receiving. This transition from ESL classes to general education classes is huge and this is where I hope to be a support system for those students coming into my classroom.

Blog Entry 1: https://youtu.be/sgelBhauflg