Thread: English immersion for Spanish-speakers

English immersion for Spanish-speakers

By Robert Gillchrest
October 19, 2008

School districts in south San Diego continue to be challenged by the need to meet their annual progress goals under No Child Left Behind. For several years they have relied upon teachers credentialed with Certificate in Language Acquisition Development, or CLAD, and bilingual CLAD course work, and since January of this year, Certificate for Teachers of English Learner course work. While these have proved to be helpful strategies for assisting English-language learners, they have yet to produce the results necessary for schools and school districts to maintain progressive results each spring when the Standardized Testing and Reporting tests are taken.

Perhaps it is time to consider a slight variation of a former program initiated nearly three decades ago that proved successful in California.

In 1979, several school districts throughout the state began a program for English-speaking kindergartners who were taught in Spanish only. All lessons, books, written materials and conversations with teachers would be done in Spanish. This was done with the knowledge that young children can learn multiple languages easiest. And they did. By the third grade, these children were quite fluent in Spanish, the same as any child of the same age in a Spanish-speaking country.
If that idea worked for English-speaking children being raised in English-speaking homes, why not do the same for Spanish-speaking children being raised in Spanish-speaking homes? Except this time the language they would be immersed in would be English.

This language obstacle is the primary reason so many elementary schools and school districts (e.g., San Ysidro) are not meeting their annual progress goals.

These schools accommodate their large Hispanic populations by giving instruction in Spanish, and when necessary, because of the presence of non-Hispanic children, in English. This accommodation does more harm than good because all the tests are in English. Administrators are scrambling to get their scores up by any means possible – and their efforts are still proving incapable of achieving this.

I can only assume that for some reason they feel that immersing their pupils in English would be detrimental.

Such fears are unnecessary. The children won't lose their ability to converse in Spanish. They will use it at home, they will use it on the playground, they will use it on the telephone, they will use it in the notes they pass to their friends and through text messages. But once they set foot inside the classroom, they should be required to do all their work in English and all their conversations in English. The earlier this is begun, the more successful it would be.

Pupils would not only be required to speak English in the classroom, all their contacts with adults on the campus would have to be in English, too. A visit to the school office, a visit to the nurse, a visit to the principal's office would have to be carried out in English. Parents, however, would not be required to use English in their interactions with school officials. This would reverse a practice on the part of adults who prefer to converse in Spanish rather than English to accommodate the students. This is a hindrance, not a help, to the students.

Administrators and teachers who do not force their students to learn in English do the pupils a disservice and will see their schools' test scores continue to lag behind improvement goals until the schools are taken over by the state or federal government.

While no school board wants to be thrown out and have its authority removed for not meeting annual goals, it will happen unless boards change and require English immersion from all pupils, teachers and administrators.

I've taught English in the South Bay for several years. My most successful Hispanic students were those who had a good grounding in English from an early age. The earlier, the better. Their test scores proved the success of their learning English years before they reached high school. Their vocabulary was better, their written sentence structure was better and their comprehension of written materials was more quickly grasped.

Success for the South Bay school districts can be summed up in two words: English immersion.

Gillchrest, who lives in San Diego, has been an English teacher since 1993 and holds credentials in California and Hawaii. He is a substitute teacher in the Sweetwater Union High School District and previously taught 11th-grade English classes at Sweetwater and Chula Vista high schools. He has also taught in the San Diego Unified School District.

Administrators and teachers who do not force their students to learn in English do the pupils a disservice and will see their schools' test scores continue to lag behind improvement goals until they are taken over by the state or federal government.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib ... 9gill.html

My niece was an exchange student in Germany for one year. She studied German for six months before going but got really good at it while living there. She learned it so well she came back speaking English with a German accent!!

Gillchrest is right. And kids from kindergarten need to be immersed in English. To a child it comes naturally: Spanish at home, English in school. And if grandma or grandpa only speak Portugese, a child that young will also instinctively know what language to speak to them. It's very important to communicate when you have that overarching need for a cookie!

If these students want to succeed, they must learn English. Business world-wide is conducted in English, not Spanish.

English-immersion was the way I learned and I didn't "forget" my Spanish. Anyone who believes that you will forget your birth language is a fool!