MULTILINGUAL CHILDREN

By: Collier

Connections


"TEACHING MULTILINGUAL CHILDREN"

According to Collier, teaching, multilingual children is exciting but, also challenging.  As politicians sometimes think, if limited English proficient students can converse with their monolingual English speaking counterparts, then these English leaners can compete with them on an equal footing.

http://www.multilingualchildren.org/getting_started/tensteps.html

This is wrong and not that easy.  There is a difference in spoken English and academic written English.  Monolingual English speakers don't have to translate from a students native language to English which is sometimes at odds with local English.  Also, for the non English speaker, it might take up to about five years to be conversant in academic spoken and written English.

Politicians always speak their minds on this difficult issue and, probably, they are not to be blamed because they are not in the classroom with these multilingual students.  There is a connection between Collier and Delpit.  Delpit believes that students can learn the codes of power to succeed in mainstream America.  And also teachers should be encourage and adapt to students background, culture and language styles.

As the writer indicates, "Natives like conversation proficiency generally takes students two or three years to master.  It is not as intellectually as demanding as school or academic language". 

The writer uses one Dominican native who came to America and was working at Domino's Pizza.  Suilo was able to have small conversation in the store and was able to pick up on gestures when dealing with customers.  But Suilo had trouble answering the phone because it required a little more knowledge and understanding of the English language.  This makes it true that, there are many people out there who are proficient in the spoken English but don't have proficiency in the other aspects of English.