Degoberto Dominguez looked at the chalkboard and carefully copied the Christmas message as a letter. Then he started all over again. Dominguez’s letters and those of other adult English as a Second Language (ESL) students are on their way to Iraq for American military personnel to receive before Christmas. He arrived from Mexico about 15 months and has realized the importance of learning the English language. Less than a month ago, Dominguez enrolled in the ESL class at South Aiken High School, which meets Tuesday and Thursday nights and is taught by Joan O’Briant, a retired Spanish teacher, and her assistant Muriel Fitzgibbon.

ESL students Ericka Cordejo, Alyssa Aceveda and Roland Kasper have a much better command of English. Cordejo came to the United States 16 years ago and lived mostly in New York before coming to Aiken three months ago. She wants to practice English and learn to write it better so she can help her three children, who are in the public schools, with their homework. Switzerland native Kasper has studied English since childhood, as it is compulsory in Swiss schools. He arrived in Aiken three months ago to begin an executive position with Rieters Automotive. “I think as long as I have no regular training, I would make no progress,” Kasper said. “I am happy to write these letters to the soldiers. I have heard some have no relatives.” (more…)

search for : English as a Second Language, ESL

Maranda Alcala coordinates the United Nations — that’s what some staff at Salish Ponds Elementary School call it. Alcala is one of two full-time English language teachers at the Fairview school, where about 35 percent of students are learning English as a second language. She teaches a combined class of 45 first-, second- and third-grade students in an extra large classroom — one of her own innovations. They use songs, dance, reading, writing and chants to learn the foundations of English.

Alcala, who was honored by the U.S. Department of Education for her work with ELL students earlier this year, said she has seen a clear change in the Reynolds district’s program. “Eight years ago, we knew we had these students, but we didn’t know exactly how we were supposed to serve them,” she said. “It’s nice to see the shift from just ‘doing something’ to having a curriculum, materials and teaching strategies.” (more…)

search for : English language teachers, ELL students

By day, she’s Miss Hall. By night, she’s Shareka Hall, a 22-year-old single BYU student. Hall will participate in commencement exercises for the McKay School of Education on April 27, 2007. Until then, it’s daily math exercises with her third-grade class. “YOU DON’T GO around announcing you’re an intern,” she said. “My students don’t know. When I take a day off in April for graduation they’ll figure it out.” To keep up with swelling student enrollment — more than 10,000 new K-12 students each year — some Utah schools are turning to college interns like Hall to take charge of their chalkboards.

According to data from last year’s Deans’ Education Colloquium, from 1998 to 2003 Utah colleges of education recommended an average of only 3,604 graduates for licensure and placed an average of only 2,453 in Utah classrooms each year. Approximately 32 percent of these graduates are still teaching in Utah schools; the rest have moved to other states or have changed careers. Egan, who will moderate this year’s colloquium, also noted that the increase in ESL students will create another obstacle to overcome. “The question is not only will we have the number of teachers that we need, but are we going to have the kind of teachers we need?” he said. (more…)

search for : ESL students

Help wanted: Receptionist for growing school. Ability to speak English and Spanish preferred. That’s basically the job description devised by Foley Elementary Principal Bill Lawrence last summer. He found the perfect candidate — Nancy Quezada Hunter, who speaks Spanish and English — to help bridge the communication gap between English-speaking staff and Spanish-speaking parents. “Sometimes, I come in at 7:30, and they’re here waiting for me; maybe a parent wants something translated for a teacher,” said Hunter, who was born in Mexico and arrived in the Mobile area in the 1960s.

Welcome to south Baldwin County, where the growing Hispanic population is transforming the landscape for school communities. They are hiring bilingual staff, helping some families find shelter and, perhaps most important, joining with civic leaders to rapidly expand English-training classes — English as a Second Language, better known as ESL — to reach entire families. The county school board recently approved spending $30,000 to refurbish the upstairs of an old Methodist church, situated adjacent to Foley Middle School at Pine Street and U.S. 98, for an ESL classroom. The program at the facility will target adults for night classes, and it’s a partnership between the school system and the South Baldwin Chamber of Commerce. (more…)

search for : Ability to speak English and Spanish preferred, Hispanic, English-training classes, English as a Second Language, ESL

The ability to speak a second language is in steep decline. But does it matter? After all, English is now the lingua franca, spoken widely from Berlin to Beijing, Paris to Tokyo, not to mention New York and Sydney. That seems to be what the British now think: they are voting with their tongues, no longer embarrassed by being monolingual. It has always been the same, but now it is even more the case.

We ought to feel extremely uncomfortable about this. We are happy to boast about being a country with a strong sense of the global, about London being one of the world’s great global cities. Our leaders increasingly see fit to lecture the ethnic minorities on the need to integrate, including of course the need to speak English. What about the need, though, for Britain to integrate with the rest of the world? It is not good enough to expect everyone else to speak English: at root it remains a deeply arrogant attitude. Far from demonstrating our worldliness it is testimony to our parochialism. Earlier this week, the IPPR published a very interesting report about the growing numbers of British now living abroad. The most popular destinations by far remain the English-speaking countries, but even when they go to Spain, for example, the failure of the vast majority to integrate – especially their failure to learn Spanish – remains striking. (more…)

search for : speak English, English-speaking countries

While in China as part of a volunteer teaching program, Newfolden resident Alice Sather (center) heard someone calling her name. It was her student Michael Lam. She teaches him piano, and last year, she served as his fifth grade English as a Second Language teacher in Thief River Falls. For the past two summers, Newfolden resident Alice Sather (back row, center) has taught English for a month at Haining Haigao Senior High School in Haining, Zhejiang, China. Sather taught there through the Global Language Villages Program.

Most students have had English one, two, three, four or five years by the time they have entered the immersion program, Sather said. In her first year of the program, she taught the students who have had the least amount of English lessons. Last year, she taught the students who have had the second least amount of English lessons. Most of Sather’s students were between the ages of 13 and 15, and they probably already had one or two years of English. It may have been difficult for them to understand what was going on in their classes. “They have to speak, write English. All activities are done in English,” said Sather. “We also teach American culture.” In the course of their English lessons, the students learn about such things as American vacations, family structures, homes and food. (more…)

search for : China, English as a Second Language teacher

“Que pase en el otoño?” Most kindergarteners would scratch their heads and look at you funny if asked that question, but the 15 students in Rosina Pearsall’s class at Snow Hill Primary School will tell you that leaves change colors in the fall. And they’ll do it in Spanish. “Que colores?” Pearsall asks, which colors. “Amarillo,” yellow, one student exclaims.

As part of Greene County Schools’ Los Puentes Dual Language program, which teaches students Spanish and English through total immersion, Pearsall and her class spoke only Spanish on Thursday. The program — which translates to “bridges” — is the county’s unique way of approaching education for students who speak English as a Second Language (ESL) and parents of English-speaking students who want their children to speak a second language fluently. (more…)

search for : Spanish and English, English as a Second Language, ESL, English-speaking students

Like many teachers, Ramon Jones has adapted to teaching students who speak multiple languages. The La Grange Elementary second-grade teacher routinely uses hands-on activities and pictures to help students with vocabulary and concepts. He also pairs native English speakers and students who speak English as a Second Language (ESL) together for class work, play and other activities.

“Teaching ESL students isn’t a huge challenge. Sure, it’s something: It’s a barrier if they don’t know any English,” Jones said. “But I’m up to the challenge.” State and federal law requires public schools to educate all students, regardless of language barriers. In recent years, No Child Left Behind has placed significant importance on educating students identified through testing as Limited English Proficient (LEP) by measuring schools on LEP students’ performance on state tests. This year, North Carolina added 14,000 LEP students, bringing the state total to 97,000 students. Most of that growth can be attributed to the growing Hispanic population. Between 1990 and 2004, 57 percent of public schools’ enrollment growth came from Hispanics. (more…)

search for : English speakers, English as a Second Language, ESL, Teaching ESL student, Limited English Proficient, North Carolina, Hispanic populatio