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Language and Power

“Under the proposal, the time students spend with a certified ESL teacher would be cut from three periods a day to one period a day for beginners, and to no time at all for intermediate and advanced English learners... leaving content teachers to provide both language and content instruction...Rather than guaranteeing that students work with trained ESL teachers, the new regulations allow for ESL students to be in any classroom in the school as long as the teacher collaborates with a certified ESL teacher outside the classroom...We would never suggest that children be taught science by a history teacher who is in close collaboration with a certified science teacher.” (p. 1-2)

I am honestly appalled by this. The first question that came to mind was, are all teachers trained in both their content and ESL? I assume not. Also, it is surprising to me that what they are proposing will have no direct interaction between the ESL teacher and the student, they will only interact between the ESL teacher and the student’s content teacher. How does that help the student? 

Aria by Richard Rodriguez

“They do not seem to realize that there are two ways a person is individualized. So they do not realize that while one suffers a diminished sense of private individuality by
becoming assimilated into public society, such assimilation makes possible the
achievement of public individuality.” (p. 38-39)

Rodriguez argues that as a society, bilingual students are taught that they need to erase their first language in order to fully learn the second.

Teaching Multilingual Children by Virgillia Collier

“Don't teach a second in any way that challenges or seeks to eliminate the
first language. Instead of eradication, the most popular view among linguists and bilingual educators requires the teacher's conscious recognition of"bi-dialectism." This
position affirms the importance of home dialect and its appropriate use within
the community in which it is spoken while at the same time students are taught
the standard variety...” (p. 227)

This quote goes directly against Richard’s story in “Aria.” In his story, he and his family tone down and nearly silence their Spanish language in efforts to become better English language learners. However, I agree with Collier that we need to teach these languages together, not eliminate the first language.

All three texts argue that we need to teach students English while also paying respect to their first language rather than erasing the first language.

Enjoy this article for some more content!
 


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