VBlog #1




I grew up knowing only Spanish, English was my second language and I did not learn it until I began going to school. I feel like I was able to learn the language pretty fast and I would consider myself to know the language well. I can speak, read, and write both in English and Spanish but I don’t think i’ll ever stop learning about the English language. Sometimes when I speak you can hear an accent when I pronounce certain words, which is why I believe teachers should try their best to help out their ELL students in order for them to be proficient in a timely manner. It is shown that “as a language teacher, you share responsibility for helping your ELL students develop their proficiency in English and their ability to use oral and written English for academic purposes across content subjects” (Wright, 2020, p.59). I think that practicing the language is key in learning English, in order for students to accomplish this “all teachers must have an understanding of theories and research related to how students develop proficiency in a new language” (Wright, 2020, p.50).


Being bilingual in my opinion has been very beneficial since it has helped me in my everyday life. For this reason I emphasize the importance that “individuals develop and use their languages for different purposes, so they do not develop identical strengths in each language” (Wright, 2020, p.41). Having a good source of communication between both students and parents will make this process easier in my opinion because although I am bilingual, not everyone learns the same way or at the same time. In my future classroom I will be very careful to meet every student's needs since I know that my ELL’s are not all on the same stage and therefore require different instruction, accommodations and even activities. “When teachers know their ELL’s language, literacy, content, and culture strengths and needs…they can determine what is likely to be challenging about a particular activity, lesson or unit for those students and select appropriate instructional and assessment strategies (Wright, 2020, p.66).



Comments

  1. Summer FunchessJuly 19, 2022 at 9:55 AM

    Hi Jaquelin! I really enjoyed listening to your experience of learning English as a second language. Although English is my first language I completely agree with your statement about not thinking you’ll ever stop learning about it – I feel like I learn something new regularly! Being bilingual I really feel like you have an advantage as a teacher to really understand and help your students whose first language isn’t English. Especially since as you stated your classroom will be student centered. Taking the time to get to know your students is an important part of helping them learn. When teachers know their students and their backgrounds, Wright says, teachers “can provide appropriate instruction, activities, and opportunities for meaningful interaction to help their students continue to make progress in developing proficiency in English and in the content area” (Wright, 2019, p. 67).

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    1. Jaquelin AlvarezJuly 19, 2022 at 4:48 PM

      Thank you Summer for your comment!! Being bilingual is an advantage like you said but all teachers are language teachers. Of course we will have ELL's in our classroom but we should also pay attention to the other students who are also learning. "Teachers must know enough about the structure of language to speak and write so their students can understand them, and they must be able to understand what their students are saying" (Wright, 2020, p.30). It is important to keep in mind how we as teachers speak and what type of words we are using to ensure that our instruction is appropriate and understandable.

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VBlog #2

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  For this vblog I interviewed someone who learned English as a second language mainly through the help of the education system. Her first interaction with English began at home since she had older siblings that spoke it but her actual learning journey initiated once she entered school. My interviewee's native language is Spanish and she expressed that when she started to learn the English language she needed the help of her teachers in order for her to understand what she needed to do. "When teachers make space for translanguaging, they purposefully leverage students bilingualism for learning" (Wright, 2019, p.99). I think this is a very important quote that emphasizes the idea of providing support to bilingual students regardless of whether or not we are ELL teachers. When telling me how she learned English, she mentioned that her teachers would give her books to read and then she would have to write about what she had just read. Her teachers would use this as a way to ...
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