Article Review

An Article Review: Teaching Multilingual Learners Across the Curriculum Jennifer Henderson RED 4043 Content Area Reading September 22, 2011

Article Review Spack, R. and V. Zamel. (2006). Teaching Multilingual Learners Across the Curriculum: Beyond the ESOL Classroom and Back Again. Journal of Basic Writing, 25 2). Retrieved June, 9th, 2011, from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/EJ759702.pdf

Summary

In their 2006 article, Teaching Multilingual Learners Across the Curriculum: Beyond the ESOL Classroom and Back Again, Vivian Zamel and Ruth Spack emphasize the importance of teaching strategies and procedures, with an emphasis in writing, used in ESOL classrooms in all content area classes. This article is a study done with college age ESOL students in mind and they describe how all students will benefit from using cross curricular teachings. In the first part of the article, they give an introduction to the type of ESOL students that attend college. Followed by a section entitled, Student Perspectives: Obstacles and Opportunities, which involves the struggles and expectations of ESOL students. A third part, Faculty Perspective: Errors and Changed Expectations, warns teachers and instructors about common classroom strategies that fall flat. Language Acquisition Across Curriculum, the next part in the article, shows how students learn languages and incorporates the importance of writing. And the final part of the article, Back to the Future of the ESOL Classroom, emphasizes the investigation and exploration of students work by their teachers, in regards to writing. Zamel and Spack explain that the time of life that a student may be in, the cultural background they were raised with, and the previous educational experience that an ESOL student has had makes a huge difference in how successful they are in immersion classrooms in college. According to the article, Students differ in their linguistic proficiency levels, opportunities to communicate in English, attitudes toward the language, and learning styles (p. 126). Because of all these differences, generalizations about a group of students would be impossible to make and depending on each different student the style of teaching an instructor may use could make or break them. The struggles and expectations of ESOL students vary, according to the second section of the article. The research was done for this project thru

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a series of surveys, interviews, journals and case studies to gain the ESOL students real opinion on their experience as a college student and the academic needs that they may have. In this research, specifically the longitudinal case studies of Smoke and Sternglass, it was found that the students knew they had struggles but were nervous that their work would be discredited or not counted at all. The students were very appreciative of the teachers that did not grade their work for correct grammar only but also for the effort that they put in. A definite struggle this research uncovered was that the students tend to feel lost because of the pace set by the teacher and the use of large words and expressions. One ESOL student wrote in a survey [The students] all speak with these big words and phrases that make me keep silent most of the time during the lectures. (p.129) The third part of the article centered on teachers. It basically stated that some teachers in the study thought that the intelligence of an ESOL student was directly proportionate to the students usage of English grammar and language. Most that the research showed that they changed their mind on that point because of how creative and free thinking some of the ESOL students were when they were not bogged down with the ridged rules of grammar. Instructors were encouraged that they can help students learn by building on students understanding, viewing students contributions as valuable to the work of the course, seeing students struggles as a mark of learning in progress, offering students multiple opportunities for rehearsing unfamiliar tasks, and providing meaningful feedback and guidance in response to students work. (p. 134) Learning how humans acquire language is what the fourth section was about. It states that teachers can do one of two things; they can help ESOL students to speak or stay silent. It all depends on their methods in the classroom. One way that this article gives to encourage speaking and learning English, is by learning how to write. It states, Writing is basic to learning.(p. 139) It emphasizes the importance of being able to first write what they think before they say what they think. The final section in the article further gives information on the importance of writing but specifically writing in English. It states that writing in English, can be very freeing for an ESOL student and gives many firsthand accounts of how writing in English changed these peoples lives. One student wrote I played with English words with more ease when I was writing, which was quite different from the way I used to labor in Chinese writing. I turned

Article Review into another person when I was writing in English. Amazingly, learning English altered my concept in writing as well as myself as a writer. (p. 144)

Connections

I found quite a few connections to our curriculum in this article. Specifically in chapter three, I found a writing strategy called mental composition. (p. 81) In this strategy, an ESOL student is encouraged to think about what they are going to write before they have to worry about getting it down on paper. I thought this hands on approach to the information brought up in the article section, Language Acquisition Across Curriculum was very helpful. Also, later on in our textbook there is a section for integrating reading and writing, in this they give suggestions for struggling adolescent learners. I believe ESOL students would qualify in this description. It says that schools are encouraged to help at-risk readers with crosscurriculum writing assignments. (p. 283) Also, they encourage breaking off into smaller groups and having abbreviated assignments.

Reflection

I found this article very informative and I agreed with it on many accounts. In such ways as, teachers having to change how they view ESOL students. They are intelligent people with so much potential. They need more help with organizing and finding information but they are just as capable as others. Also, I agree that all students would benefit from ESOL teachings. I think slowing down a bit and trying to be clearer in the information given are great things. Giving writing assignments before an assigned reading would help all students to understand the information read. I have a few reservations and some confusion about how much this article was encouraging writing in a language that is barley known to an ESOL student but I think the emphasis wasnt on the writing so much as how the writing will encourage the learning of the English language. The article states, It is instructive, in fact, to view each classroom as a culture in its own right, with its own language practices, norms, and conventions, in order to understand the dynamic interplay between learning and context. When

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the classroom culture is conducive to learning, students can make progress. (p. 138) The thing I most agree about from this article is that if the teacher is willing to change how they view and do things, then their students will thriveall their students.