Dear all,


I think some very important issues are being discussed here. Forgive me that I am not a practising ESOL or EAL teacher, but I taught EFL for six or seven years and spent one year teaching ESOL in Birmingham. (Enough acronyms for the moment?!)


To me, teaching ESOL did not involve creating a multilingual classroom as such or spending time on different languages. Rather, it involved acknowledging that students knew, and had a great deal of fluency in, other languages, and allowing them to draw on, talk about and use this. So, a starting activity for a beginners' class would be for students to call out all English phrases that they already knew. When learning a new grammatical phrase, students would discuss whether the same construction existed in languages they knew and share examples (and the same for new vocabulary). Usually, the talk around this would be in English, so that everyone in the group could understand. And another activity with a more advanced group was for them to collect and share interesting, unusual or unexpected phrases that they heard or saw, including instances when English was being mixed with other languages in various ways, as well as regional uses or creative language.


I think it depends on the students, but I agree with the comment that it is good for language learners to feel that they have valuable (other) language resources and experiences they can bring to the classroom and usefully share, even if they are struggling with English. I'd be really interested to know if this resonates with any of you. 


Best wishes,


Caroline



From: ESOL-Research discussion forum and message board <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Shaun Gurmin <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 03 February 2017 07:23
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Fw: ESOL-RESEARCH Digest - 1 Feb 2017 (#2017-27)
 
Hello and thank you all for your responses,

James, I canīt attend the event as I am teaching English in China; perhaps we will meet at another time and place; Kamila, yes I agree that multilingual activities/tasks could be engaging in an ESOL class.

Di, I have some points about your response:

Yes, I agree in quality over quantity, but I think it takes a leap of logic to come to the conclusion then that we should spend a quarter of an English class on high quality English activities (however you may define that), then the remaining three quarters on Afrikaans, Gujarati and Swahili.

Even if it were feasible, we must ask ourselves:

Is this what the students want and need? Given the option, we shouldnīt cover what we think they need, but what they say they want and need.

If we consider the pass rate of courses, for example the GCSE English pass rate which as of last year was A*-C of 60%, would it be wise to split the allocated English teaching time by a third or a quarter in order to create a multilingual classroom? If teachers are struggling to get 6 out of 10 students to pass a 1-2 year English course, how do you expect them to pass if it were multilingual? Maybe teachers should just hit the big red button on their chests and boost the quality of their teaching?

My final point on quality is this, letīs ask the question, which would produce a greater quality of teaching and learning: 3 hours of multilingual classes, 20mins each of English, Spanish and Italian classes per class, or 3 hours of monolingual classes, English, Spanish and Italian. It could be interesting to test, but there is a lot of evidence out there already regarding the importance of focus for the production of quality. My guess is Leonardo Da Vinci didnīt paint the Mona Lisa while chess boxing.

Best regards,

Shaun.

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*********************************** ESOL-Research is a forum for researchers and practitioners with an interest in research into teaching and learning ESOL. ESOL-Research is managed by James Simpson at the Centre for Language Education Research, School of Education, University of Leeds. To join or leave ESOL-Research, visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ESOL-RESEARCH.html To contact the list owner, send an email to [log in to unmask]