About… Walk a Mile… Background Strategies Tips Theory Further Points

About the Teachers in the ESL & MT Department

The Department in the Secondary School is currently staffed by 5 members who are all ESL specialists with a wealth of experience from schools around the world. Staff members also speak at least two other languages. Currently some 33 Mother Tongue languages are taught by 40 native speakers.

Our teaching qualifications have included courses in First and Second Language Acquisition, Bilingualism and Second Language Teaching Methodology which has enabled us to respond to the needs of the varying types of ESL students. In addition to a specialized training in ESL, many of the teachers also hold post-graduate degrees and also teacher-trainer certification for ESL in the Mainstream and Language and Literacy. This in-house expertise is often called upon to train new and veteran teachers at VIS. We are proud to once again offer ESL in the Mainstream in September 2006.

In March of 2006, one of the ESL teachers wrote about her experience as a German Second Language learner which is very similar to what an ESL student is likely to go through. It is reprinted here with permission; however, some names were changed to guarantee anonymity.

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Walk a mile in an ESL student’s shoes….

By Anna Yuen

It has been a long time since I have had to learn a new language. I can honestly say that when Thursday rolls around, there is a feeling of anxiety…Is she going to ask me something? Will the others laugh? And I do secretly hope that the others were too busy to do their homework!

Our ESL learners, I am sure, feel the same way. A new country, a new school and two new languages! If any of you teach little Mikey in grade 6, you will remember how he would just stare at us with his big round eyes! He did not speak a word. He’d look around the classroom, write something in his notebook, pack up and leave but he would not know where to go! Feelings of anxiety, frustration, and sadness accompanied his silent period. Now, six months later, the silent period has long gone and he is just chattering away with confidence.

Eleven of my colleagues and I are taking the Beginners German course and I find myself and several others walking in Mikey’s shoes. We want to understand every word and learn the language quickly but what is the teacher saying?

Vee hi sen zee? Mine nama ist ….

There are differences between adults and children learning languages. We are learning German in English whereas our students are learning English and learning to learn in English which is certainly not an easy task for all. We may never achieve a native-like Austrian accent, we may be more inhibited but there are advantages in being an adult language learner. Research has shown that adults learn more quickly because our cognitive systems are more developed than in adolescents. With the teacher, we already share English as a common language that we can use when seeking clarifications. Unfortunately, I do not speak the 68 different languages of our students so communicating with the Beginners can be a real challenge. Next, we only have to sit through 90 minutes of German while our Beginners spend the entire day (315 minutes) overloaded with English and overwhelmed by it. Finally, as adult learners of a foreign language, we have possibly discovered how we best learn. When asked a question, one participant said, “I need to see it! Where is the question written?” Students cannot and do not answer their teachers in this way, possibly because of their lack of language and or cultural background.

Perhaps it has been a while since you were on the other side of the desk learning a language. How quickly we forget what mental and emotional states our ESL students are in when they arrive at our school. Taking this German class forces me try on Mikey’s shoes but more importantly forces me to re-evaluate my own teaching. So the next time you teach, remember, over 76% of our secondary students do not speak English as a Mother Tongue so visual aids, repetition and a smile can be extremely helpful.

I think the teacher said there was homework. If I don’t get around to doing it, I can just say I didn’t understand because Ich spreche nicht, nein, kein Deutsch!

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Information for Teaching Staff: background to issues of instructing ESL students

Research has consistently shown that ESL students require at least five years to catch up academically in English. Students may be conversationally fluent in English in everyday contexts within about two years of starting to acquire English. There are two main reasons why it takes longer for ESL students to catch up in academic as compared to conversational skills:

1. Academic language—the language of subject matter (e.g. science, math), literature, magazines, etc.—is fundamentally different from conversational language. As students progress through the grades, they encounter far more low frequency words (primarily from Greek and Latin sources), complex syntax (e.g. passives), and abstract expressions that are virtually never heard in everyday conversation.

2. Academic language is what we try to develop among native English-speaking children who come to school fluent in conversational English. Therefore ESL students must catch up to a moving target. Native speakers of English continue to develop their academic language abilities throughout their schooling.

Underachievement derives from many sources and simply providing some first language (L1) instruction will not, by itself, transform students’ educational experience. Successful programmes will create contexts of empowerment for students and teachers.

The development of literacy in two languages entails linguistic and perhaps cognitive advantages for bilingual students. There are close to 150 research studies carried out since the early 1960s that report significant advantages for bilingual students on a variety of language awareness and cognitive tasks.

Significant positive relationships exist between the development of academic skills in L1 and L2. These cross-lingual relationships provide evidence for a common underlying proficiency that permits transfer of academic and conceptual knowledge across languages.

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What we can do - strategies

1. Active engagement with reading and writing is crucial if ESL students are to catch up academically. Books are the virtually the only place where academic language is reliably found.
2. It is essential that teachers maintain the cognitive challenge with ESL students and not lower cognitive and academic expectations as a result of students’ temporary inability to fully express themselves in English. If ESL students are to catch up with their peers, they must be operating at their cognitive maximum.
3. Teachers can encourage ESL students’ participation in cognitively engaging activities by increasing the contextual support that is embedded in the instruction. There are two basic ways of increasing contextual support to ensure that ESL students receive sufficient comprehensible input:
   1. Actively relate the content to ESL students’ prior knowledge, interests, motivation, and culture. Build background knowledge through brainstorming, discussion, demonstration, etc. The more students already know, the more they can understand, and the more they understand, the more they learn.
   2. Modify the input to make it more comprehensible. To do this, use graphic organizers, cooperative group and pair work, hands-on concrete demonstration, explicit instructions, peer tutoring, technology support (e.g. word processor spell checkers, thesaurus, dictionary supports, etc.). (Adapted from J. Cummins).

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The following ‘tips’ are based on observation of a mainstream class with a video camera:

• keep ESL students at the front of the class
• repeat key words and expression - LOOK AT the ESL students whilst doing so. Make sure they are looking at the teacher - this is important
• give commands and requests in simple English; not too many “would you minds”, etc.
• if another student gives an answer, make sure the ESL student has focused on that answer if it is worth hearing. Repeat it, or have it repeated for the sake of his/her comprehension
• allow time for ESL students to find the page, get started on their exercise books, etc. (This is not an automatic procedure; it is difficult for them to do two things at once!)
• remember that while many teachers speak clearly, and writing on the board, etc., is satisfactory, the ESL student gets lost in the maze of idiomatic expression that can crop up in class
• in many subject areas the keeping of a specialized mini-vocabulary book is useful (and checked for accuracy by the teacher)
• although under pressure from the clock and the syllabus, teachers should make it an aim of each lesson to put even simplified “Yes/No” questions to ESL students to try to encourage participation; this is particularly important as many ESL students commented (as it was being explained that there was a drive to help their cause in school) that they were too shy to ask questions
• ensure that the board is clean - just clearing a space in the middle of the jumbled writing of a previous teacher’s class is confusing. Language learners need clear models
• rather than address ESL students in a class directly as “the ESL students” it is better to ensure their names are known (before the class) and address them individually (otherwise there is the danger of reinforcing the attitude of “in” and “out” groups)
• make sure worksheets and diagrams are clearly presented, preferably typed (some teacher’s handwriting is hard to decipher)
• use suitable voice and language control; i.e. do not speak too fast, do not mumble; whatever dialect the teacher has, make sure he/she speaks clearly
• arrange the class so that ESL students are next to a helpful native speaker.

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More theoretical considerations

All teachers need to be aware of what is involved in educating children in an international school, with the complex background of other languages. For example, many teachers will regard as ‘dull’ a child who after two years of learning English is still somewhat behind other (monolingual) children in the class, though it has been clearly shown that between 5 and 7 years (on average) are needed to attain grade norms in L2 cognitive and academic skills. Therefore a child who makes considerably faster progress than this could very well be regarded as ‘gifted’.

Children who add a second language (i.e. English) to their repertory of skills at no cost to the development of their mother-tongue are known as acquiring additive bilingualism. On the other hand, subtractive bilingualism is where children’s L1 skills are replaced by L2 (i.e. English). In some cases such children fail to develop adequate levels of literacy in either language. This happens for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the feeling from the peer group of students and teachers that English is the language that really matters, whilst their mother-tongue is really not important. The power and status relations between the minority and majority (English speaking) groups affect their learning ability. It has been shown that bilinguals mature earlier than monolinguals in certain important areas of language acquisition (Albert & Obler), which is not at all surprising when one considers that bilingual children have been exposed to considerably more ‘training’ in analysing and interpreting language than monolingual children.

Thus the assumption that bilingualism per se is a cause of ESL students’ academic difficulties is clearly refuted. It is rather the failure to develop students’ mother-tongue for conceptual and analytic thought that contributes to ‘cognitive confusion’. When students’ mother-tongue proficiency is strongly promoted by the school programme, the resulting bilingualism appears to entail some subtle linguistic and possibly cognitive benefits. Although this creates a dilemma for international schools (with the many languages involved) it is important for all concerned to understand the situation. Prior to the 1960’s it was common to see bilingualism as a negative force in children’s development, almost as a disease; this led to educators and researchers making minority children’s bilingualism the scapegoat for their academic difficulties.

Instead, it is particularly important to communicate effectively to them that their bilingualism is a special achievement to be valued and developed.

Cummins (1984, 2000) proposes that teachers ‘empower’ bilingual students, and not ‘disable’ them. One way in which this can be done is by teaching appropriately. Current language learning theory shows clearly that students learn more thoroughly in an ‘interaction’ oriented classroom where the material being taught and learnt is in a ‘context-embedded’ situation. Thus a student will learn more easily by observation of a thermometer’s response to hot and cold, and working with small groups of students, than if the teacher is standing at the front of the class ‘delivering’ - e.g. explaining the meaning of gravity with no ‘peg to hand the language on’, no overhead transparencies, no real communication.

Thus there should be a genuine dialogue between student and teacher in both oral and written modalities; there should be guidance and facilitation, encouraging the student to learn, rather than control of student learning by the teacher; there should be encouragement of student-student talk in a collaborative learning context, encouragement of meaningful language use by students rather than correctness of surface forms; there should be a conscious integration of language use and development with all curricular content rather than teaching language as an isolated subject; there should be a focus on developing higher level cognitive skills rather than factual recall.

This applies to all subjects, including Math. A recent conversation with a Math teacher revealed that he frequently asked students to tell him in words what exactly they were doing (in the way of resolving Math problems). Much language can be elicited in this way. He also said he moved around the room, sat in a student’s place, with the student at the “teacher’s” desk, to encourage greater communication and understanding of the student’s role in the classroom.

Some teachers may find threatening the role changes implied by the suggestion that they relinquish the security of a graded and sequential curriculum in order to permit students to become more actively involved in regulating their own learning. However, research and practice show that by creating more interactive ways of teaching, by getting more involved with the students in the class instead of standing or sitting at the front talking at the students, we will be ‘empowering’ ESL students and enabling them to do better.

In the classroom we should be “empowering” students, helping them to add a language and a culture, not “disabling” them by letting them see their primary language and culture being replaced by the dominant culture. From the pedagogical point of view there should be a genuine dialogue between student and teacher in both oral and written modalities. The teacher should see his role as one of guidance and facilitation rather than control of student learning. There should be encouragement of student-student talk in a collaborative learning context. Encouragement of meaningful language use by students is more important than correctness of surface forms (this will come later). There should be a conscious integration of language use and development with content from all the curricular subjects alongside language teaching and other content as isolated subjects. Teachers should aim at focusing on developing higher level cognitive skills rather than factual recall, and task presentation that generates intrinsic rather than extrinsic motivation.

In short, it is not only up to ESL teachers to ensure that ESL students progress well and produce good results in the English language. A school should have both a curriculum suited to the needs of the students, and a mechanism for sensitizing all staff to the necessity of teaching more along the lines of a reciprocal-interaction model, with context-embedded material, rather than a transmission model where the ESL student will not be able to fulfil the role of a “negotiator of meaning” (in the sense that all children are, as they acquire language, almost as a by-product of meaningful interaction with adults).

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Some further points

Remember that if learning has to take place because of external compulsion, the student may only attempt to reach the minimum level required. Some students at VIS are in Vienna unwillingly (because their parents have been posted here), would rather be back in their own country, and do not see why they should learn English.

The emotional climate of the classroom is important. Anxiety above a certain level is an obstacle.

Learners between 11 and 15 acquire grammar (but not pronunciation) more quickly. Evidence suggests that efficiency in L2 learning increases with age - younger learners are only superior in pronunciation skills.

Errors have been seen as signs of failure; - they should rather be seen as normal stages of development. Learners will feel less anxiety and teachers should have more tolerance. If teachers don’t correct errors there will be a beneficial effect on the classroom atmosphere and on motivation.

Learning occurs more easily if there are positive attitudes towards the second language community.

A relaxed classroom atmosphere with cooperative relationships encourages the ESL student.

Learning a language (first or second) is perhaps more complex than any other learning task that most human beings undertake.

Language is not simply shaped by external forces; it is creatively constructed by the child as he/she interacts with those around him/her.