Interviewing a former ESL student

Hello everyone! 

Welcome to my 2nd Vblog post. In this entry, I interviewed my friend Katie, who was an ESL student in FBISD in 2nd-12th grade. Katie’s home language is Chinese, but the first language she ever learned was ASL due to her hearing loss. The language she is most comfortable with is ASL. English was a difficult language for Katie to learn due to her hearing loss.

Due to Katie’s hearing loss, she was non-verbal until 2nd grade. When she was in 2nd grade, she began the ESL program at her elementary school, which was Pull-Out English as a Second Language Instruction. This model is commonly used in elementary schools, but Wright mentions, “. . . students miss out on instruction in their regular classrooms when they are pulled out” (2019, p. 113). Katie did feel like she missed out on important things, like independent reading time. She also felt different than the other students and felt she was being separated from her classmates.

Although the pull-out program made Katie feel different, there were aspects of it that were very effective. Color coding words and morphemes really helped Katie understand English, and it’s a strategy she still uses today. Identifying inflectional suffixes (-es, -ed, -s) was the most difficult. Her teachers had to really enunciate the ending sounds for her to hear. Spelling also played a big role in her learning English, which can still be challenging due to her hearing loss.

By the time she was in 5th grade, Katie was advanced high for speaking, reading, and listening. Although, for writing, she was stuck at the advanced level from 4th-12th grade, and never became advanced high. Wright states, “. . . most get stuck at the intermediate and advanced levels, often for several years” (2019, p. 95). Katie started to feel confident about her English abilities by the time she was in 4th grade, but really felt the most confident by 10th grade since she was out of speech therapy. Even though she exited speech therapy, she still had to do a lot of practice.

Katie is now a student teacher at the University of Houston in her first semester. Being a student teacher, she can see first-hand what it’s like to work with ESL students and can compare it to her own experience of learning English. Something she wishes her teachers would’ve done differently is focus their instruction on phonics and decoding, rather than just giving her the word and telling her what it is. Katie doesn’t recall learning phonics at all in Elementary school, and she wishes she had. She also would’ve liked to have more independent reading time in the general education classroom. She believes this would’ve helped her better develop her reading and writing skills.

Interview link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R1edGYNoDJTxOefwL8qkLzJP26tHm_LC/view?usp=sharing

Citation:

Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Third Edition. Philadelphia: Caslon, Inc.


Comments

  1. Stephanie,
    I enjoy hearing stories of a positive experience in public schools from others. Your interview shows how much environment plays in a student’s life. “Pulling” out a child away from a classroom hurts a chance at an inclusive environment with her classmates and in turn her learning and development. Those independent opportunities for her to show mastery could have happened. I can imagine that hearing loss posed challenges before she came to FBISD but Wright states …” students deserve dominant or privileged ways of knowing (Wright p. 20).” Even though she learned many things from being “pulled out” maybe she could have advanced faster than she did in elementary. What a blessing for her to become a teacher and I can’t wait for what she does for the future for her students, families, and schools.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Madison,
      Environment really does play a huge role in a student’s life! I always think about how I want my classroom to be inviting and home-like for students, but as teachers we also have to take into consideration how any student would feel being taken out of that comfortable environment with their peers. I imagine it would make anyone feel different, just like Katie mentioned. Perhaps a program like “In-class English as a Second Language Instruction” would’ve benefited Katie more because, “the students do not miss anything in class by being pulled out” (Wright, p 114). I as well look forward to the impact she’ll make on her students.
      Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Third Edition. Philadelphia: Caslon, Inc.

      Delete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Stephanie, I really enjoyed your interview with your friend, Katie. She shared some great experiences about her ups and downs of learning English as a second language. One of the things that stuck out to me was how she felt uncomfortable in her elementary classrooms due to being taken out of the classroom so often. Although, she did not favor this, Wright (2019) states that “Younger students receive a much greater amount of instructional time in the K-12 educational systems to learn a language (eg., 6 hours a day, 5 days a week) than the typical adult learner, who may receive only a few hours of instruction a week.” (pg. 52) Though she might not have liked it, it has been proven to be beneficial in her language development.
    Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Third Edition. Philadelphia: Caslon, Inc.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Alex,
      Knowing that Katie felt different than her peers stuck out to me too because it made me stop and think about how other ESL students might feel the same way if they’re in the pull-out ESL program. Even though the pull-out program is a “commonly used model,” Wright (2019) mentions it has its drawbacks, such as “students miss out on instruction in their regular classrooms when they are pulled out” which is what Katie faced (Wright, p. 113). Although there are drawbacks, there are also benefits, such as students being “much more active, engaged, and vocal during their ESL time” (Wright, p. 113).
      Wright, W. E. (2019). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice. Third Edition. Philadelphia: Caslon, Inc.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VBlog #1