Blog 3: Interview with Mrs. Ray
Video Link: https://youtu.be/pu2b4QAjvk8
For blog 3 I interviewed Mrs. Rays, a fourth grade teacher at Velasquez Elementary. I loved talking to her and getting to learn about her experience with ESL students. As she talked about the ESL students in her ELA class, I could see how passionate she is as an educator and in helping her student's succeed. Mrs. Ray has a mix of intermediate and advanced ESL students in her class with the exception of a beginner ESL student who moved from China at the beginning of this school year who barely knew any English.
Mrs. Rays's discussed how her students greatest challenge is using appropriate grammar, which causes most of her students to sometimes be afraid to speak up in class because they are afraid of making grammatical mistakes. She tries to encourage them to not worry too much about grammar when conversing or writing, to focus more on the getting their message across. Interestedly, research is in agreement with her findings. Producing grammatically correct phrases and sentences is a common struggle for many ESL students because syntax rules vary across different languages (Wright, 2015, p. 33). I think that its important that the students make mistakes so they can learn from them and grow as English language learners.Wright states that learning happens through trial and error (2015, p. 62). I love how Mrs. Ray encourages them to remain motivated and keep trying.
To help her students she used different strategies such as mentor sentences, sentence stems, and turn i talks. For her mentor sentences she used familiar texts to help students build confidence when they are writing. Sentence Stems allow her students to not feel as overwhelming by worrying about how to start their writing. Lastly, she pre-teaches vocabulary so students are familiar with vocabulary during the lesson so they have terminology to use verbally. Teachers can aid their ESL students in learning new words instructionally or naturally by being aware that vocabulary acquisition mainly occurs in context and subject matters that of interest to students (Wright, 2015). She remarked how these strategies are helpful to all her students, not just her ESL students.
However, for her beginner students she tries to expose him to as much group discussions as possible so he can at least become familiar with some basic vocabulary words and be exposed to conversation in full sentences. She makes sure that when interacts with his classmates he asks questions to verbalize what he is trying to communicate. Learners learn a language through communication so classrooms should be filled with authentic and meaningful communication (Wright, 2015, p. 62)
When I asked her how her knowledge of sentence structure, grammar, and cognates aids her in helping her students with language issues arise, she discussed how her strong understanding of grammar allows her to target specific weaknesses of her students like past tense verbs or commas so she can make sure to address these issues. She used mentor sentences that target the areas her ESL need to work on.
Mrs. Rays's discussed how her students greatest challenge is using appropriate grammar, which causes most of her students to sometimes be afraid to speak up in class because they are afraid of making grammatical mistakes. She tries to encourage them to not worry too much about grammar when conversing or writing, to focus more on the getting their message across. Interestedly, research is in agreement with her findings. Producing grammatically correct phrases and sentences is a common struggle for many ESL students because syntax rules vary across different languages (Wright, 2015, p. 33). I think that its important that the students make mistakes so they can learn from them and grow as English language learners.Wright states that learning happens through trial and error (2015, p. 62). I love how Mrs. Ray encourages them to remain motivated and keep trying.
To help her students she used different strategies such as mentor sentences, sentence stems, and turn i talks. For her mentor sentences she used familiar texts to help students build confidence when they are writing. Sentence Stems allow her students to not feel as overwhelming by worrying about how to start their writing. Lastly, she pre-teaches vocabulary so students are familiar with vocabulary during the lesson so they have terminology to use verbally. Teachers can aid their ESL students in learning new words instructionally or naturally by being aware that vocabulary acquisition mainly occurs in context and subject matters that of interest to students (Wright, 2015). She remarked how these strategies are helpful to all her students, not just her ESL students.
However, for her beginner students she tries to expose him to as much group discussions as possible so he can at least become familiar with some basic vocabulary words and be exposed to conversation in full sentences. She makes sure that when interacts with his classmates he asks questions to verbalize what he is trying to communicate. Learners learn a language through communication so classrooms should be filled with authentic and meaningful communication (Wright, 2015, p. 62)
When I asked her how her knowledge of sentence structure, grammar, and cognates aids her in helping her students with language issues arise, she discussed how her strong understanding of grammar allows her to target specific weaknesses of her students like past tense verbs or commas so she can make sure to address these issues. She used mentor sentences that target the areas her ESL need to work on.
Hey Nadia!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed watching your blog! Mrs. Rays seems like such a knowledgeable individual. I really enjoyed her insight into the ELL classroom. I really liked how she talked about strategies that could be used in the classroom in order to accommodate the ELLs. Sentence stems are something that my mentor teacher uses in her classroom and I really do think that students are better able to express themselves with the use of sentence stems. She explained how she focused on grammar a lot in her writing class. Wright(2015) states, "For ELLs, producing grammatically correct phrases and sentences can be a major challenge because the rules for syntax vary across languages"(p.33). Mrs. Rays talked about the importance of speaking for learning to take place. Specifically when she talked about the Chinese student. She said it was important for him to have interactions with the other students even if it was just brief. According to Wright(2015), "...oral language is important and it is the most often used mode of communication, but we tend to spend the least amount of classroom instruction time helping ELLs develop it"(p.151). Oral communication is an important skill and I think it is awesome that Mrs. Rays is reinforcing that in her classroom! Thank you for sharing!
Wright, W.E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon, Publishing. Second Edition.
I agree that the use of sentence stems are very helpful, not only for ESL students but for all students to help guide them when they get stuck and do not know how to they can begin the writing process. . Like you mentioned the grammar rules for different languages can be very different. The rules for sentence structure are different in urdu than english. In English you follow the subject, verb, and object sentence structure, but in Urdu you follow the subject, object, and verb sentence structure. For example in English you would say I am here and she is there, but in urdu this would translate into I here am and she there is. It is understandable why ESL students would struggle with learning the syntax rules of English. Errors in syntax are common in the beginner ESL students ( Wright, 2015, p. 33).
DeleteHi Nadia
ReplyDeleteI'm very enjoyed watching your blog! From your interview with Mrs.Ray, I have learned a lot about bilingual teachers and those strategies she has been used in her classroom. I can relate to Ms. Ray's student when she mentioned how the students had the greatest challenge is using appropriate grammar. When I was first learning English, even right now syntax is the hardest part and is really easy to make grammatical mistakes. Just like our textbook said, " For ELLs, producing grammatically correct phrase and sentence can be a major challenge." (Wright, 2015, p. 33). I think as a future teacher we should always remain motivated and try our best to help our student out, even with the challenges part. Thank you for sharing this great interview video :)
I can understand why grammar can be such a struggle for ESL students because they are so many different aspects of grammar that consists of so many different rules. I feel like it can be confusing for any kid. For example in English we use inflected endings like jumped and jumping. Many languages do not have inflected endings in their grammar rules, but rather use a free morpheme or different word to represent the number or tense of a verb ( Wright, 2015, p. 32).
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