2/8 Readings

References: Cary, Chapters 4 and 5

Chapter 4, "How do I get my reluctant speakers to speak English?" focuses on a very important issue in the classroom; how will a silent student affect the entire class? It can be a very difficult thing for a class to deal with. If a student does not want to speak, then that will certainly affect the other students in the class and they may not want to speak as well and then you pretty much have anarchy on your hands. Of course, as teachers we do have to consider that students go through a Silent Period during their language acquisition process, but we have to know where that tends to begin and end and when it is appropriate to be concerned with their silence in the classroom. In Cathy's class, she had all native Spanish speakers and the chapter focused on how she got these students who were very scared or hesitant, to speak English in different contexts. Some of them were somewhat proficient while others "spoke a few word of English now and then, but only if directly encouraged by the teacher or a classmate" (pg. 53) which definitely tends to happen in the ESL classroom. They will not speak unless spoken to.
I think Cathy is a very enthusiastic and energetic teacher and she definitely tried her very best to find what interested her students, and then try to get them to talk about it. With Erica, she knew that she was interested in music and tried to have her talk about CD's, and when she came to the one with the violin on the cover, it was finally something she could relate to. I thought it was great that the teacher had her bring in her brother and do a little concert for the rest of the students, and then after that give a vocabulary lesson on music. It combined music and language and helped students make a connection to language in that context. With Gustavo, she knew he loved soccer and tried to get him to talk about soccer, but he did not seem to want to talk about it as much as she thought he would. She thought that talking about soccer would be "a good and handy route to English speaking" (pg. 55) and had the student teach the class about soccer, but that still did not seem to work which totally surprised me, but once she talked about the fact that it was mostly physical and did not require as much language she thought it would. Obviously, a teacher has to consider what is going to be best for a student and it was definitely a good idea to have him teach the class and give him some authority over his language, but we do have to remember to think things through and think about what the consequences of that authority will be, along with the makeup of the class.
I like very simple little analogies to things I am learning about, and this statement stuck out to me, giving students "time to talk and a reason to talk" (pg. 58) in the classroom. I think as teachers it is definitely a trial-and-error process and we have to learn more about our students to give them reasons to talk in the classroom. We have to give them multiple and varied opportunities like Cathy did with the plays, teaching a soccer lesson and listening to music. We have to delve a little into their personal lives to get through to them, and above that, when they are talking, let them talk. Give them the opportunity to speak or they will be hesitant to speak.

Chapter 5, "How do I make a difficult textbook more readable?" I found to be surprisingly emotional and how the students responded was even more thoughtful than I thought it would be. In Karen's class, even though she had a very diverse makeup, she was able to get through to them through her own personal experiences and storytelling. I thought it was really cool that she acted like a tour guide for the textbook, "her job was to lead students through the text chapter, pointing out the interesting and important sights along the way" (pg. 67) as well as pointing out important pictures and objects that would get the students talking or add to discussion. I think it is important how Karen used a lot of hand gestures and exaggerated facial expressions to get the point across to her students and I loved that she could laugh at herself. It takes a lot to develop a humorous rapport with your students, especially those in the ESL environment because they have a harder time understanding comedy and irony in the second language. I know I definitely do with Spanish; I am reading Spanish literature right now and it is really difficult to detect a joke or sarcasm when I am reading solely just to understand the text and understand the main plot points.
Karen, when talking to her students, uses a lot of summarization and paraphrasing to help get the point across for a difficult textbook; she says, "the text says in conclusion can gives us the important information in a few words" or "the middle is growing fast...the lower, the people with very little money..." (pg. 68) as she pulled bills out of her pockets, giving them that visual representation of the idea. Even though they were more advanced students, they still need that concrete evidence to understand the topic. The idea of money spurred some very interesting conversation within the class where they talked about their different societies, who was a farmer in their family, leading Karen to say, "So good schools and good jobs help people change social status?" (pg. 69) and I feel like the fact that they got to that point in the conversation was impressive for the students. I think that Karen did an excellent job in setting very high expectations for her students and facilitating that within her classroom.
When she was given a difficult textbook, she did not want to throw it away and sometimes some of us do not get that choice. Most of the time, schools require us to use a textbook and we just have to live with it, even if we do not like it whatsoever. I think Karen was really good at working around the difficult material and words with her use of paraphrase and summarization, along with her visuals and movements. It leads into the discussion of the pros and cons with having a textbook; if it is a great textbook and has a few flaws, we can work around it, but if the textbook is not beneficial to the student we have to work very hard to alter some activities and make them more relevant or useful to student life.