As I have gone through the journey of learning about how to engage EAL students in the literature classroom, I have goen through many books that present many similar ideas. If there is one thing that all of these ideas have in common, it is that to properly teach EAL students you need to have a good relationship with your students. While this is not exclusive to teaching EAL students (it should be true when we are teaching anyone), but there are certain applications that can be used with EAL students.
One of the ideas came from Nancy Commins and Oflen Miramontes Linguistic Diversity and Teaching (2005). The book attempts to give advice to teachers about ways that they can engage EAL students in any class, not only English. The idea I am writing about in this post deals with grouping students based on their language capabilities. Commins and Miramontes point to three groupings that teachers can use, which are groups of native speakers, heterogeneous groups of first and second language learners, and groups of only second language learners. Each of these groups have certain necessities, but can also bring problems as well.
Native Speakers: This group is described as the the “easiest and most comfortable instructional setting” (151) for teachers to work in. This is because in this setting both teachers and students are fluent in the language of instruction (151). Now, it is important to point out here that when “native speakers” are spoken about, the authors are not necessarily speaking about English. They are talking about students being ale to learn in their native language. So, if a student’s native tongue is Hausa (a widely spoken language in Nigeria), the student would be able to spend some of their day learning in that language.
Obviously, this sounds fantastic in theory, but has limitations. At this point your grouping is limited to the languages in your classroom and your school. It is completely feasible that there would only be one speaker of a certain language in your classroom. What do you do then? How can you make sure that this student is getting time to learn in their native language? At this time, teachers move into the second group, the very common heterogeneous groupings of native and second language speakers.
Heterogeneous groupings: The grouping of heterogeneous groups provides the biggest challenges for teachers. At this point, are trying to balance the needs of their native speaking students with the needs of their second language learners (152). Also, in this style of group additional language learners may be much less vocal than native English speakers, as native English speakers may out compete others in whole group question and answer sessions (152). This could potentially make additional language learners feel that they are a lesser part of the class and not wish to participate further in the class.
However, this group also provides opportunity for EAL students. The opportunities come from EAL students getting “authentic opportunities to communicate in English not available in other settings” (152). This is very important if students wish to become fluent in English. It is easy to understand that a good way to learn a language is to have authentic conversation with people that are fluent in that tongue. However, EAL students need additional time to practice vocabulary and grammar specific to English. At this time, teachers can utilize second language learner groups.
Second Language Learner groups: These types of groups are where teachers are only working with EAL students in the language the students are wishing to learn, in this case English. It is important to note, “students might not understand all of their instruction and … teachers will … need to use strategies to make instruction more understandable” (152). Though teachers will have to use different strategies, in these groups students “can focus on their English language learning without having to complete with students who are already proficient in English” (152).
This strategy has an obvious advantage to both the students and the teacher. In these groups, teachers can see where their EAL students are at, and provide them supports in a smaller setting. Students may feel more comfortable sharing their struggles with English in such a setting, as they will be able to talk to their teacher one on one about their struggles. This type of teaching is most likely to be found in something like an EAL tutorial class.
The interesting part I have found about going through some of the different strategies for teaching EAL students is that it is exactly the same as someone teaching any language course. I think, at times, English teachers forget that we are lanugage teachers. We get lost in the literature that we are teaching, or how we are teaching students to write stories, and we forget that some of our students still need supports to learn the language. It is at this time that we need to us techniques that are used in a Spanish or French class. We may need to slow our speech so students can digest the language more clearly. As well, we may need to provide more visuals in the class as we are speaking so students can understand our lessons. It is for this reason, that it may be useful for those of us who wish to become English teachers to try and reach out to other language teachers to see what they are using in their classroom.
Commins, Nancy L., and Ofelia B. Miramontes. Linguistic Diversity and Teaching. Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 2005. Print.
The book can be found on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Linguistic-Diversity-Reflective-Conditions-Schooling/dp/0805827366
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