Dual-language classes in Texas stir debate

Source: Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN — Here's the plan: Put young children who struggle with English in a classroom with English-speaking students and teach in two languages.

Soon, both groups of children will become bilingual and bi-literate with the youngsters helping each other develop two languages, say supporters of the dual language immersion program.

But others are balking at the experiment that Texas lawmakers approved this spring, contending it's turning classrooms into laboratories.

With House Bill 2814, legislators created a six-year pilot program that will test a dual language plan in up to 10 Texas public school districts and 30 campuses.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4952081.html

This sounds like it would set up these students to be successful in both languages. Why not ask for volunteers and see what happens. I bet the classes would be completely filled very quickly.

Children seem pick up other languages more quickly than adults. I'm not a language or education expert but it makes sense that the interactions within a mixed group would speed the process.

As long as the children are no more than eleven years old, I'd say this program has a good chance of succeeding.

It's amazing how quickly young kids can pick up foreign languages. My two cousins recently came down from the Midwest. Their mother is Chinese, and she asked my parents and me to speak Chinese to them. After a few days, they could understand a surprisingly large amount of spoken Chinese. They weren't able to respond in Chinese, but they responded correctly in English to our questions.

And how will this effect test scores that determine funding?

How much material will be taught if every single lesson has to be repeated in two languages?

Where is the incentive for a child to learn a second language if they know that eventually a lesson plan will be explained to them in their native tongue?

I know it sounds like a good idea but my wife is an elementary school teacher in Phoenix and I can't begin to recount the number of times she has come home frustrated because some parents will enroll a child a quarter of the way through the school year and the child speaks no English. Then she and her fellow teachers are held to task or blackmailed by the state government at the end of the year when test scores aren't up to par. They have so much money invested in English as a Second Language curriculum out here it would make your head spin.
There was a plan to do this in some Phoenix public schools a few years ago. The TEACHERS shot it down because they pointed out that the students who don't speak English need to get all the English they can get at school... that means pretty much NO Spanish at all. Because when they go home at night, all they speak is Spanish.

lived for some years in south Texas which (in the area between San Antonio and the Rio Grande) has a Mexican population whose ancestors have lived there for generations. They often speak Spanish at home but are fully bi-lingual. The "Anglos" in the region are often bi-lingual too. I think that's an ideal situation, but I guess the problem is with the children of recent immigrants - and as you comment indicates it can be complicated by the politics of school administration.

and it looks like Spanish is going to be it

that is because they didn't teach him in a bi-lingual environment. Imagine if he had been given the opportunity to be taught in the dual media of english and gibberish. Think of what he could have achieved instead of becoming the catastrophic failure he is today.

Anything past Spanish II, but I wanted to keep studying, and so did another student so they made a Spanish III class for us and put in the Spanish and Mexican exchange student, and we all learned lots. In fact, I got to describe the 69 position in Spanish because the Mexican student and the other American Spanish III student (both named Monica) didn't know what it was, and from the redness of their faces after I was done, I did a good job. :)

TlalocW

It is a great program. It is amazing to see english speaking students speaking and reading in spanish by the 2nd and 3rd grade. By the time they reach high school, they will be able to continue taking Spanish or another language. It will help them learn math and computer programming languages.

Epically if we are going to be an empire... How else can we control the slaves


<sarcasm off>

It seems to me there would be a LOT of lost class time until both sides became fluent in the other's language. That could take years.

If the students were adults you might have a point. Children are language SPONGES. No need to deal with fossilized mental structures. It's truly a wonder to behold!

They have a dual language elementary classroom in an urban school in our neighborhood. Those students out-perform (on standardized math/English exams) all the urban schools on a regular basis. Not sure why. Perhaps because it's voluntary, so that selects for certain families who can find out about it and jump through the hoops to get into it, and who are invested in their child's education - but also perhaps because language training is intellectually stimulating and the students are highly engaged. Not sure how it works elsewhere.

I've had opportunities to work with children in Chinese and Spanish immersion classes in San Francisco. I think there is a lot of self-selection on the part of the families, but the kids don't seem to have problems switching back and forth between languages. I had one 2nd grader from the Chinese immersion school who was born in Mexico and was learning her 3rd language!

The teachers, who are at least bi-lingual, speak only the immersion language in front of the children. It gets comical when they ask me a question I don't understand: they haul me off out of earshot of the kids and whisper conspiratorially to me!

He is taught half the day in English then the other half Spanish. He is in kindergarten and writes in both languages in his journal. He is reluctant to speak but sang every word of a spanish folk song from the back seat of the minivan the other day with a cute little accent. He loves it. He told us the other day he feels like he is getting browner because he is learning spanish. I hope he sticks with it all the way through high school. Our daughter is starting pre K and is going to go in as well.
There are kids that started this program 8-9 years ago that are fluent in both and thriving.

Does anyone know of anywhere that has similar systems?

For a class I was taking I needed to observe ESL and bilingual classes. We visited a few schools. I'll describe what bothered me in the bilingual class, essentially what they're discussing in Austin.

I watched all the native speakers of English speak English every chance they could, and the native speakers of Spanish speak Spanish all they could. 5th grade class. They segregated themselves by *language*, not by race.

During the English portion, the Spanish speakers were quiet. When they did try to answer, they answered in Spanish much of the time and some other kid translated, with a thick accent and poor English. During the Spanish portion, the Spanish speakers answered and the English speakers were quiet, with the same problem in speaking Spanish.

"Important" subjects were in English: science, math. History and geography were in Spanish. The writing teacher was in the back going over the last essay: 90% of the people she needed to counsel about the English-language essay were Spanish speakers.

The English speakers had rudimentary Spanish; their Spanish was not good enough for 5th grade. Most of the Spanish speakers could not follow the math or science. When they swapped papers to have their colleagues grade them, in the English language portion 90% of the errors were in the Spanish-speaking group (they self-segregated). And the reverse for the portion in Spanish.

The Spanish-speaking kids' parents were ecstatic at their progress; they could do school work at the 2nd grade level in English, which guaranteed them bad grades in 5th grade, but the parents were sure that would get them into college. And the English-speakers' kids were likewise ecstatic, their kids were "multicultural" and knew important things like folk songs and could write like a 1st grader in Mexico. Woo-hoo.

Then there were the immigrants from non-Spanish speaking countries. After a year in school they knew little English, little Spanish, and weren't always sure which language a word or an ending belonged to. These kids were severely wronged, and since they were neither English- or Spanish-speaking, they had no political supporters in the great game of education spoils, and were treated simply as trash if they went to the "wrong" schools.

I went into the classroom thinking that if we couldn't homeschool him, such a school would be great. But after watching it and seeing that the school got reasonably bad grades, I decided no, and felt sorry for the 2-3 kids who were swamped by having two non-native languages foisted on them at once.