what does is really take to make a English Language Learners experience successful?
During my practicum I did not notice a large number of English Language Learners in my school… well that was simply because there wasn’t. Out of my whole school there were only two girls on a Japanese exchange program. They were the only 2 Japanese students in the entire school of about forty percent white, thirty percent brown, and another thirty percent aboriginal student population. It was no shock that these girls often went overlooked. Their english comprehension was fairly good but their communication skills were sufficiently lacking between them and their peers, and them and their teachers. Just because these girls understood what we were saying to them, did not necessarily mean that they were fully immerse in the language. What needed to be done? If comprehension skills were there, is that not successful language building? of course not. To communicate in a foreign language does not only take a great deal of learning and comprehension, but it takes a great deal of confidence also. Unfortunately I believe that sometimes we, as teachers, tend to overlook building our students confidence in order to communicate. Not only do we have to concentrate on the scaffolding, and the academic language our students are using, but we also have to be aware of the confidence building it takes to truly communicate. Im hoping when I return to my school I can spend some time with these two girls and encourage focusing on their confidence levels in order to build language and communicate.