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.
ReplyDeleteGreat video Tori. Your boyfriend’s mother sounds awesome. I really admire her for leaving her hometown for the first time and going to the states. That is crazy! She mentioned that schooling was a little tricky at first but that she really learned her English in her Spanish class in Maryland. I found this interesting but not surprising. I would think this is where a native Spanish would really excel in their learning of English because they would be able to translate back and forth with ease to understand concepts more in depth. For example, let’s say that she was not able to understand a concept in science class. She could go to her Spanish teacher and ask them about the concept and the Spanish teacher would be able to explain it in English and Spanish. This would really help a second language learner. Stanford University published an article, “Six Key Principles for ELL Instruction” that states “Instruction leverages ELLs’ home language(s), cultural assets, and prior knowledge”. Essentially in order to have an ELL student reach their full potential an educator needs to be embracing their culture and the language that they speak at home. If an instructor understands this they can really be effective in teaching the ELL student, well anything really.
In this case, your boyfriend’s mother was able to use her Spanish teacher to confirm, support or even teach her concepts of the English language. Also she probably felt significantly more comfortable speaking with someone that understood her native language because if she got stumped trying to explain something in English, she could switch to Spanish and be able to get her point across.
Reference:
Stanford University.“Six Key Principles for ELL Instruction.” Six Key Principles for ELL Instruction | Understanding Language, 11 Jan. 2013, ell.stanford.edu/content/six-key-principles-ell-instruction
Jerome thank you for viewing my interview. I was not surprised that Herminia excelled in her Spanish class. Her Spanish teacher did help her with understanding the content in her other classes. "When teaching content areas to ELL's, teachers must focus on helping all students understand the concepts and helping ELL's learn the language necessary to communicate with others in accomplishing academic tasks related to the content-area concept" (Wright, 2015, p.265). I believe that once ELL's understand the content in their core classes in their native language, they can then transfer that knowledge to begin learning the English language. Her Spanish teacher really helped her by explaining concepts to her in Spanish making that transfer to English easier.
DeleteWright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language
Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.
Tori,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your video with your boyfriend's mom. Her story is very interesting to hear, and I really enjoyed hearing it. It broke my heart that she did not have a safe environment to learn. As Maslow states, safety is something that needs to be met before we are able to learn (Maslow, 1943). I also relate to her struggles because when I was learning to write English, I struggled with the "two, too, and to" as well. I am very impressed that she was able to graduate high school after one year of being in the United States. I would have just been very overwhelmed. She's a very inspiring woman, and I enjoyed this interview very much. According to Wright's book, I would believe that she came here she was at the Entering level and made significant progress during her first year here to graduate high school (Wright, 2015).
References:
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396.
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: Research, theory, policy, and practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing.
I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to have a word that is pronounced in one way be written in three different ways. "The NLP and the CREDE reports found a close relationship between ELL's oral proficiency in English and their ability to express themselves in written English (Wright, 2015, p.223). Once Herminia began using the different variations of the word "to" while speaking, she began to be able to write them correctly in sentences. This is why it is so important for students to constantly interact with English speakers so they can pick up on the usage of English words and transfer that new learned gramar to their writing.
DeleteWright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language
Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.
I definitely agree with you. It is imperative for our ELLs to have constant communication with students who are fluent in the language they are learning. I also believe that just teaching them the fundamentals, making sure that they understand those fundamentals, and then moving on is very important too. From my experience, interacting with English speakers also just helps them to understand what is socially acceptable in our society.
DeleteTori, you mentioned that the most difficult part of learning English for Hermania was learning Morphology. I found this point interesting because although I am not bilingual myself, I always assumed that morphology would be extremely hard for those who are not familiar with English, since many other languages do not have the same word structure as English. I think the fact that morphology is difficult to learn and the "rules of morphology differ across languages" is something teachers need to be aware of (Wright 32). Understanding how language varies in important when considering how translanguaging is utilized by students and how translanguging may affect how they are learning English. Students may be applying rules of morphology from one language to another, without even realizing that those rules do not apply.
ReplyDeleteWright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language
Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.
Lola, as an English language learner myself I also found learning Morphology very difficult. Because learning how to change verb tenses as a student at a very young age can be confusing. According to Wright (2010) not all languages have the same morphology. Even though learning the rule of the English language was hard I think what helped me is that I learned it at a young age. Sometimes even today I find myself reading sentences over and over to see if I added the correct ending or if I used the correct tense or not.
DeleteWright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2010. Print. First Edition.
I totally agree with you both, Lola and Shirin, that one of the most difficult parts of learning English is morphology. Even though morphology is not my most difficulty when I learned English as an ESL student (Phonology is the most struggle one I had because I had a hard time learning how to pronunciation English words correctly). I can relate to Hermania of how much difficult to say and write words with their correct forms, especially with single and plural nouns, the tense of verbs (present/past/future/present perfect/past perfect/…), the irregular verbs, or degree (fast/faster/fastest). In my language, Vietnamese, we do not have different tense forms for verbs, or plural forms for nouns like English. So, it was quite difficult for me to use the correct forms of the verbs and nouns in speaking and writing English at the beginning of learning English. My teachers helped me improve on this a lot. They were so nice and patient to correct me in a nice way whenever we were in a conversation or fixing my writing assignments. This is similar to what Wright stated, “Teachers can use their knowledge of how words are structured to help students understand how to change verb tense; how to make compound words, plurals and possessive, and comparative and superlative; and how to use contractions (2015, p.32).”
DeleteReference:
Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.
Thanks for sharing the interview video with your boyfriend’s mother, Ms. Herminia. She shared so many great things from her experience and I really enjoy listening to her fantasy story. I bet it was very struggled for her for being away from her family and her country to come to the USA at such young age. I came to the USA away from my parents and my sibling for the first time at the age of 16, so I can image how difficult it was for her being away from her family at the younger age. I inspired by her courage and dream of taking an opportunity to come to the USA to learn English and achieve her goal. As being an ELLs, I understand the difficulties she had been going through at the beginning stage of learning a new language, which is English. Because of the difference languages, it was hard for us to learn how to pronunciation English words and understand the morphology correctly. She has mentioned that her teachers were the one helping her the most to overcome these struggles. They encouraged her, gave her support, and provided assistance and feedback to improve her English through learning and socializing with them not only inside the classroom, but also outside of the classroom, like: bring her to their homes and let’s her be friend with their children. Similar to what Wright has mentioned, “Language socialization refers to the process by which individuals acquire the knowledge and practices that enable them to participate effectively in a language community (2015, pg. 58).” Wright also stated that, "effective teachers recognize and value the vast store of knowledge students have in their first language and provide instruction that enables students to draw on this knowledge" (2015, page 55). This is true in Ms. Herminia’s case, because she has mentioned that her adopt family loved to learn Spanish from her when she came to leave with them while she was learning English in the USA. I believe this encouraged and made she feel comfortable and welcoming when she first came to the USA. It is fun and interesting to learn that her new family and her learning new languages, Spanish and English, among themselves. I think it was useful and engaging when you have to use the new language in your daily life with the new family members, which force you to use the new language to get what you want. I believe it is an effective way to learn a new language in a short period of time.
ReplyDeleteReference:
Wright, Wayne. Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, 2015. Print. Second Edition.