October 27

Module 2, Building Language Awareness was a great follow up from our discussion last Wednesday. It is very interesting that traditional aspects of language, such as grammar, are once again holding an important place in teaching English as a second language. Grammar is being brought back, but in a different light. Instead of memorizing grammatical forms and constructs through drills and rote learning excersizes, it is now important that we teach grammar through activities that include authentic materials that will teach students these grammatical forms in a variety of contexts. I thought the activities in the video were good because it gave the students an opportunity to relate an American history lesson to their own personal histories, and the use of real brochures to plan a trip was a good tool to show students certain grammatical functions in a certain context.

What is diversity? To me, to you, to American society? Why do we have to put a label on people in order to deem certain cities, schools, and classrooms "diverse." The very first page in Ann Johns' article, Linguistic Diversity and Instructional Practices says, "...in many parts of North America, the "African American" census category now includes a growing contingent whose families have just arrived from Somalia or Ethopia in eastern Africa, students very different from the young people descended from West Africans who were forcibly brought to the United States in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries." This is so very true. What makes us categorize ourselves into the White, African American, Hispanic, and Asian categories? It is clearly being based on race - skin color, the shape of our eyes, hair type - IT'S LUDICROUS! This should inspire us as teachers to embrace diversity in a different way than society is telling us to. Each of our students comes to our classroom with his or her own sets of challenges, family life, linguistic abilities. Realizing this may be key to helping our students find themselves and success.

As Johns explores the "Hispanic" group of students' discrepencies between BICS and CALP, I am reminded of the students that I have been observing over the last few weeks. It is amazing how certain students can be so talkative and social - sometimes I think why are they even in ESL? - but when we sit down to read an excerpt from the textbook or work on writing a spatial order paragraph, the student is at a loss for words. This happens across cultures, races, categories, whatever you wanna call them, but it is certainly interesting to explore the differences between 1st, 1.5, and 2nd generation immigrants from a certain country. Of course the opposite is found as well. There is one student in a beginning class that I am observing that rarely ever speaks, and yet when you look at his writing, it seems that he should be in a much higher level. His CALP is great, but his BICS needs practice. In this article, we also see the importance of distinguishing between different varieties of English and what our students know and have been taught or introduced to in the past.

I love that Johns offers solutions to this ever present struggle to embrace diversity and help all of our students achieve success. Getting to know your students is obviously the first vital step. I have seen my CT's methods, and I am very encouraged by her openness with her students. She seems to serve as more than just a teacher to her students, which is really important for children who may be so lost in every aspect of the word.