Nogales
Originally uploaded by MikeJonesPhoto
In my previous blog I discussed the legal background of the case before the United States Supreme Court. Nogales, Arizona borders Mexico. Its school district is mostly Latino students who speak Spanish at home, with neighbors, and in the playground at school. They attempt speaking English in class only when class is in session. The plaintiffs argue that the state and district are in violation of the federal law specifying that students must understand the language of instruction or they are not receiving an equal education with native speakers. The Defense is arguing they have improved and are doing much more than they did a few years ago to help the Spanish speakers. One complaint that the plaintiffs make is that the district has not supplied any trained teachers with a clear curriculum to address the needs of their non-English speaking population.
What might a curriculum look like? Before we talk about training teachers we ought to thinking about what we are training them to do and how to best address a specific population. This population in Nogales consists of almost each and every classroom where Spanish is the first language of the children. That is important to keep in mind because theories of Second Language Acquisition sometimes appear to be in isolation of how a particular group, in a particular situation, acquires a second language.
In the 1970’s, research on First Language (L1) Acquisition determined that children develop and evolve in their language development, becoming ever closer to adult speech. A key assumption is that children think and form hypotheses about language and do not simply parrot adults. Throughout the ‘80’s, Second Language (L2) researchers followed the lead of L1 researchers and found certain similarities as well as wide variations in L2 acquisition. For example, in English, some researchers found that aspects of L2 sound development followed L1 sound development, but there was a wide variation in tense development. In the 1980’s, Stephen Krashen developed the Monitor Model, which is a good example of how the psychological and cognitive view of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) came together to form the more or less contemporary theory. It is still widely accepted among primary and secondary educators. Krashen asserts that children and adults acquire a second language by receiving extensive amounts of “comprehensible input.” This is defined as input slightly above what the learners use to produce, but the learner understands what he hears. Krashen, like the linguist Noam Chomsky, emphasizes what happens next within the learner’s head (he uses phrases like “conscious learning” and “unconscious acquisition”). While it is somewhat of a fine distinction, Krashen is concerned more with SLA as a matter of “input” rather than social interaction. That is, Krashen, like Chomsky had done with the ideal first language learner, concentrated primarily on mental processes rather than social interaction. I believe this is a fault in his theory.
As with Chomsky, for Krashen, learning a language tends to happen as a rule-governed creative process. There are certain necessary steps one goes through with L2, just as Chomsky had long ago argued with L1. There are certain teaching consequences that follow. If interaction has limited impact on students, why correct? That is, indeed, Krashen’s position and he argues consistently and at length that a teacher should make, for example, no grammatical corrections of a student. Students do learn to use language in actual situations where they “negotiate” meaning with others. Classrooms should be organized so that students have a great many opportunities to talk and the teacher is a facilitator helping with task-oriented projects as well as other group projects. A teacher is a guide but stays mostly in the background, although certainly in charge of activities and following curriculum.
What has any of this to do with training the teachers in Nogales? I’m afraid not a whole lot of Krashen’s advice is followed. Where is the input to come from if not from the teacher alone? There is little chance for a child to become fluent (let alone accurate) in L2 if the child only hears the language in the formality of a classroom. If a teacher breaks the students up into groups for some version of cooperative learning without a strong overview, in which language do you imagine they will cooperate?
The first and most important point for parents and educators to understand is that the process of learning a second language is very gradual. In the best of circumstances, five years tends to be about the minimum time it takes for a child to be completely fluent in L2. There should, however, be continuous development that doesn’t happen in a haphazard way. That being the case, I would like to make several suggestions for a situation such as the children in Nogales find themselves.
It is not realistic to expect, for example, a fourth grader in Nogales, who speaks only Spanish outside the classroom, to study the same content materials a native speaker learns in the fourth grade. However, through theme-based, integrative teaching, the class in Nogales can introduce and reinforce concepts from mathematics, social studies and other areas. There does have to be group work, but closely supervised. To develop communicative ability, students have to be able to speak to one another in English. The language in the classroom has to be put to use. Content adds a certain amount of intensity to learning which significantly affects language acquisition. The instructor needs to make use of conceptual explanations through graphs, charts, and illustrations. In other words, an instructor in Nogales needs to be more direct in teaching than in Krashen’s imaginary school because more emphasis must be placed on interaction. Krashen doesn’t imagine a school where there is no interaction other than teacher interaction.
I envision a classroom in which a teacher must be trained in the use of realia and visuals, involving the children in hands-on learning, making examples very vivid, and making any context clear and meaningful to the student. The teacher should try and draw on the children’s past experience from the curriculum and make use of rephrasing and repetition. The instructor must create situations where children can use the language in problem-solving ways in different situations. In the general curriculum, children learn to classify, categorize, predict, estimate, graph, and compare in different ways. In Nogales these activities can be made to parallel the regular curriculum at an easier level and then a trained teacher knows how to use these activities as a bridge towards the regular curriculum. This effort takes solid teacher training, commitment on the part of teachers and administration, and great patience on the part of the parents. Parents must be met with regularly so that they understand what the school’s philosophy is and how their child is doing.
– Dr. Paul Schneider, Director of Teacher Education Programs, WAL