“Overall, the pervading gloom of the research published between 1980 and 2005 on L2 students in secondary school suggests that, except for relatively rare cases noted above, in many instances L2 students and the schools they entered were not ready for each other” (Leki et al., p. 27).
I find this comment interesting, and at the same time, disturbing. Why? Because it speaks to the pervasive ideologies that continue to manifest themselves within the educational institutions in our country, as well as in society as a whole. Why are the schools not ready for L2 students?
Chapter one in Leki, et al., provides an overview of a variety of myths and teaching strategies that researchers “debunk[ed]” during the 1980s and 1990s. A few of these included: 1) the belief that “L2 writers must learn to speak before learning to read or write”; 2) the idea that “children should each work to develop their writing abilities and texts individually”; 3) “encouraging (or forcing) children to function in only the target language instead of making use of L1 borrowing or code-switching strategies” (12). In addition, the chapter highlights more recent research which has focused on “how writing develops in biliterate children and how being bilingual affects literacy development in both languages…of their differences, with the differences viewed as advantages rather than as deficits” (14).
Chapter two focuses on some of the problems faced by L2 learners in high school. I noticed some of these problems when I completed some practicum hours at a high school in Peoria during the Fall of 2009. Many of the students were older than the average students of their grade level; for example, two female students who had recently arrived from Vietnam were ages 20 and 21, and despite their extremely low proficiency level in English, they were placed in 12th grade because of their advanced ages. Several juniors were 18 already, and they knew that they were “too old” to be in the eleventh grade, but they needed to learn English, so they stayed in the ESL class, albeit somewhat reluctantly.
In my opinion, some of the concerns the students had regarding their placement in the high school ESL classroom were valid. There was such a wide range of proficiency levels in the class that it reminded me of a one-room schoolhouse from the early 1900s. In this type of situation, it is a challenge for both students and teacher to negotiate an atmosphere that is conducive to real learning. The students I observed seemed, for the most part, to be teenagers that wanted one thing most of all: to be themselves without being marginalized, to be able to navigate the halls of this American high school without feeling that they could never quite measure up to the “regular” students, who didn’t have to have special help to use the English language. I noticed that the teacher, who was not a native English speaker herself, contributed to the attitude problems of some of the students by her words and her actions. I was confused to observe that some of the assignments that she gave amounted to copying the itinerary of the day’s activities into the student’s “journal,” but then sometimes the assignments seemed very communicative and group-oriented, resulting in projects that displayed a lot of creativity, imagination, and skill.
I understand the frustration felt by many of the students in that ESL class; it truly seemed to be a room in which they were “stuck,” and doomed to spend most of their days until they could hopefully perform well enough (or get old enough) to “con” a diploma out of the school district. I used the word “con” because even the two Vietnamese girls (I should say “women”) got a diploma at the end of the year. Obtaining that piece of paper did not imply that they could use the language much better than they could when they had arrived in this country, however. But at least they knew a few words of English, and could perhaps continue to learn more as they entered the working world.
The message from the Lam article seems to be that if we expect L2 learners to become literate in English by attending ESL classes in school we (and the students themselves) will probably be disappointed. Instead, by helping students find things that they are interested in, and can pursue on their own, teachers can equip students to find their own ways to succeed in learning the language, and become more actively involved and interested (!) in their own education. Almon, the student in the article, became a better writer by spending lots of his own time on the Internet, communicating with e-pals through email and internet chat, as well as creating web pages. Lam attributes Almon’s success to “actively acquiring, and also actively reproducing, the many discourses and narrative roles in the English networked electronic environment” (475). And, even though the English he acquired was “the global English of adolescent pop cultures rather than the standard English taught in ESL classes” (476), this language learner found that he could express himself “much more easily” (468) due to his electronic interactions with others and his experiences of creating web pages on the Internet.
What can we, as teachers, glean from this example? For a long time, I have thought that if a teacher can provide students with access to interesting and useful materials, such that the students can see a rationale or purpose to an activity, they can teach themselves, and even figure out what they need help with and discover who to ask. This type of student-centered and student-directed learning seems more likely to “stick” and to be “acquired” than more formal, traditional types of teacher-centered instruction.
Sources:
Lam, W. (2000). L2 Literacy and the Design of the Self: A Case Study of a Teenager Writing on the Internet. TESOL Quarterly. 34:3, 457-482.
Leki, I., Cumming, A., & Silva, T. (2008). A Synthesis of Research on Second Language Writing in English. New York: Routledge.
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