Krysta (Rubio) Belliston and Professor Ray Graham, Teacher Education

In this generation, the demand for education has been steadily enforced year by year. Since English is an internationally spoken language, parents and children alike want to improve their eligibility and employability through an English-language education. Guatemala does have some programs for students to learn English as their class curriculum, yet this is offered mostly to the children in the city. Also, I noticed that many of these programs lack English educational resources, and they rely largely in the grammar-based (direct instruction) approach, based mostly on writing drills.

Through some research and preparation classes I took, I learned that it is essential for elementary-grade students to first build on experiences, and then make connections to language. This will help students build rich vocabulary based on language experience and reading-writing connections. In this manner, we can more fully increase the vocabulary of Second Language Learners (SLL) which, in turn, will increase comprehension and fluency. Thus, with a language experience approach, elementary schools and teachers expend relatively little of their scarce monetary resources and SLL can produce superior gains in their English-speaking abilities.

I taught 50 students from ages 8-14 in an after school program I set up with a rural Guatemalan community. Although the parents of these children speak Katchikel as their native language, these children grew up speaking Spanish ever since they can remember. In addition, most of the students did not have any English background based on an informal question-answer discussion I led on the first day we met. (With the exception of those that had vague knowledge of the numbers and colors in English). Thus, I used the Total Physical Response Storytelling (TPR-S) approach to teach English. Using this method of teaching, I rely “on the learners pre-existing knowledge of the world and uses gestures, actions, pictures, and objects to demonstrate how one can talk about it in another language” (Cantoni, 1999). This type of approach starts off as teacher-only instruction and modeling, where the teacher models the way words are used. Then, participation is encouraged and the teacher responds to “the content of their messages rather than their grammatical accuracy” (Cantoni, 1999). All the while, the Vygotsky pedagogical principle of scaffolding is used. This implies that the teacher helps the student perform a task that cannot be performed without help at first. Gradually the teacher can let the students do it on their own until they can work independently.

To begin, I administered a vocabulary pre-test based on a random selection of 60 English vocabulary words extracted from the 140 words that are targeted in a series of 7 lesson plans I prepared. Then, each child was tested on their comprehension, fluency, and ability to define the words. Although comprehension and defining a word might be alike, they differ in many ways. For example, a student may comprehend that yellow is a color, but they may not be able to define what color that is. Thus, it is essential to test comprehension and denotation of a word.

Furthermore, fluency tests the speed, accuracy, and prosody of oral reading. In this case, we were looking for the students to try to sound it out using as many sounds and expressions as needed. The ratings of the three categories mentioned above are in a scale of 0-3, with 3 being the highest score the students can get for one word. (Note that each word has a valued of 3 points each; thus, all 60 words give me a total of 180 points. This is how I got the averages and percentages of each category for each student). Out of all my students I only administered the test to 34 students, whose parents signed the informed consent I sent home.

After collecting all my data, these were my results for the vocabulary pre-assessment: The class averaged about 22.29% in comprehension, 67.37% in fluency, and 18.32% in their ability to define a word. I realized that most of the students scored high on fluency because they were able to segment words and use Spanish cognates when reading a word. However, this did not mean that they comprehended the words they were reading. As a matter of fact, the students only comprehended words that are Spanish cognates, such as banana, orange, etc. Furthermore, I noted that no gender performed better than another, it just depended on how much educational background the students had as a whole. For the most part, the parents and students valued education, but they just do not have the means to support their education after grade 6. Nonetheless, after 7 lesson plans I was able to observe some great improvements. The students did learn so much more compared to the results of the pre-assessment. Unfortunately, due to some uncontrolled circumstances, I was not able to administer the post-vocabulary assessment. Therefore, the post results rely heavily on my observations of their progress. The students performed 30-40% better in comprehension, fluency, and definition of the word by the end of the 7 lesson plans.

Overall, Second Language Learners (SLL) need to be exposed to words through reading and speaking so that in turn, they are able to write with comprehension, fluency, and meaning (Dressel, C & Kamil, M. 2006). Thus, comprehensive input affects how well a student will learn. This is because by having a foundation on a child’s perspective of the world, we as educators are building a foundation for their language development. It is first necessary for SLL to grasp the concept “beyond the here and now” and have “environments that support the language and literacy development” (Dickinson & Tabors, 2002). Then, they can better understand grammar rules and mechanical adjustments in their oral, reading, and writing development.

References

• Cantoni, G.P. (1999). Using TPR-Storytelling to develop fluency and literacy in native american languages. Louisville, KY: Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED428927). 4,6.
• Dickinson, D.K., & Tabors, P. O. (2002). Fostering Language and Literacy in Classrooms and Homes. Young Children. (pp. 10-19).
• Dressel, C & Kamil, M. (2006). Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the national literacy panel on language minority children and youth. Lawrence Erlbaum Asscociates: (pp. 199, 209). Mahwah, N.J.