Teaching a chore when students don’t speak English
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Without a common language, the process of teaching becomes infinitely more difficult. Such traditional methods as lecture become almost obsolete as teachers must find other ways to reach their non-English-speaking students.
“We use a lot of pictures, games and hands-on activities. We act things out,” said Marilyn McGee, English as a Second Language (ESOL) teacher at Warren County High School. “These students are just as gifted as American students. Teaching them just requires a different kind of effort, and a willingness to know that eventually they will get it.”
In any ESOL program, McGee said, the first words that must be taught are “school survival” words, like book, page, number and, very importantly, bathroom. As time passes, instruction moves toward speaking, reading and writing sentences, and then paragraphs.
A good deal of time must also be spent on pronunciation as some letter combinations in Spanish, the mother tongue of most of the county’s ESOL students, are often pronounced differently in English.
Repetition, said McGee, is key to every aspect of teaching English to non-speakers. And while this can sometimes try one’s patience, it is necessary and, in the end, very rewarding.
“I have a very gratifying job. I get to see students learn to speak. I can see measured progress from year to year and almost week to week. When they use their English skills and become successful in their other classes, it makes me very happy,” she said.
The school system’s ESOL program is what’s known as a pull-out program, in which students are pulled out of a regular classroom for 45 to 60 minutes of English instruction a day. This means that, for the majority of the school day, non-English-speaking students are inside regular education classrooms. Regular education teachers, who are not trained in bilingual education, must also find ways to teach these students.
Mari Anne Elliott, a first-grade teacher at Hickory Creek Elementary, has three Hispanic students this year. Having never taught any English language learners before this school year, she said she was a little anxious about doing so.
“It was frightening at first,” she said. “But the ESOL teachers here have helped me a lot, giving me pointers and ideas on how to modify what I teach.”
By school board policy, regular education teachers are required to modify their curriculum to better help the English language learners. On math worksheets, for example, Elliott said she will omit the word problems for these students. In other subjects she said she uses lots of pictures to emphasize her points. And always, she said, she speaks in short, basic sentences.
Regular education teachers, including Elliott, will also often assign these students peer tutors, or “study buddies,” who will help them keep up with what is being taught. From what she’s seen so far, Elliott said her Hispanic students seem to pick up her instruction at a very quick pace.
“They are very eager learners and that makes all the difference,” she said.