Second Language Learning

I learned a lot on this trip about what it is like to try to learn a language in an environment where you have very little context and do not speak the same language as your teacher.  The picture I put with this post is a great example.  I am fairly certain that the idea is to pair the statements and responses but I doubt I could make one correct pair on my own.  I do not know what most of the statements or responses are.  We also did not go over this slide in class.  It was just put on the screen and never acknowledged.

I did not find the activities we did at the end of each day helpful because they were not genuine interactions.  I learned very little from these activities because I spent the whole time just trying to figure out the basic idea of what was going on.  In contrast to this struggling through interactions out in the community really made things click.  Even through the language barrier I had a much better idea of what was going on through context.  This was the same for reading.  I often had to look up at least part of the sentences in our homework book to have an idea of what it was saying.  When we were out in the real world context again played a large roll in my understanding.  I was able to read signs and other printed material much easier.  One of the Spanish instructors even noticed and commented on the difference in my understanding.  I feel this is because I was truly immersed in what I was learning.

Another benefit to real interaction verses the staged ones in class was my ability to use Camborne's conditions of engagement and demonstration.  Engagement was important because outside of the classroom my learning was based on trying to get needs met.  I was trying to ask questions or otherwise communicate with my host families.  Another example was interactions with businesses and their employees.  My part of these interactions required me to demonstrate my learning through exchanged dialog. I was also more willing to take risks in the real world than I was in the classroom.

There was an exception to the difficulties I felt in the classroom which was when we would just have conversations with the teacher.  This was another example of genuine interaction.  We would discuss what we had done with our mornings or where we went for lunch.  I felt like I knew what we were talking about.  Also this was a time when there was not an expected response so if I needed to fall back on English or Google Translate it was acceptable.  These were all easier uses of Spanish because  I was putting Halliday's functions to use.  This did not feel true for the most of the classroom time.

In the more rigid part of the lessons I often did not know what parts of language they were trying to teach us.  This made it difficult to follow along.  I also struggle with English grammar so trying to figure out the Spanish counterparts was exceptionally difficult when there was no explanation beyond the term.  This was only compounded when we were trying to learn Spanish only parts of speech.

I felt very unsupported with most of the teachers typically refusing to even try to use English.  Every, I do mean every, time this happened I thought about what it must be like for students who come to the US and do not speak English.  Not only are they trying to learn a language but they are trying to learn content at the same time in the unknown language.  When teachers refuse to use any of their native language students have little chance of keeping pace with their peers.  The same goes for families who are trying to support these students.  If teachers do not try to meet families who speak little to no English somewhere in the middle the families cannot fully support their student.

This experience has caused me to contemplate and work on developing a plan to provide as many real experiences for my ELs as I can.  This would include real world printed material such brochures and flyer.  Also finding ways to set up genuine conversation inside and outside the classroom.  When it comes to content materials key information and instructions should be provided in both languages.  I do not have a full plan worked out yet but it is something I will be gathering more information on.