Beers Chapter 8

This chapter makes me think of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycr5z48qTFI.

(I'm not sure how to post a video, but this is Jim Carrey speaking Korean in his movie Yes Man.)

Anyway, there was something ironic to me about having to read this chapter for today. In Dr. Kash's linguistic class, we had this same conversation about how to teach the students that don't speak English. His idea was to learn their language, which is good in theory, but totally unrealistic. As teachers, this is definitely a problem we need to think about. How do we address the students that don't speak English as a first language, especially if our school does not have the staff to have an ELL teacher.

I loved several of the ideas the book presented. The one that really sticks out in my mind is the idea that as Americans, we are open-minded enough to try ethnic foods and go to foreign places, but when it comes to our students, we have certain expectations and our prejudices come out. We need to be able to look past stereotypes enough to help our students the best we can regardless of what they look or sound like.

One of my favorite ideas was centered on the idea of students writing in English at the beginning of class, and then speaking to other students in English as a kind of warm up exercise, so they feel better prepared when it comes to actually speaking in class. I also liked the idea that sometimes ELL students need to work with native English speakers sometimes too. It just shows how, as teachers, we need to not only open our own eyes to erase prejudice, but to erase prejudices to our students. Foreigners are not going to stop coming to America any time soon, and we need to be as prepared as possible for helping these students to the best of our ability.