Carlos

As I reflect on the report of the National Literacy Panel with the focus on Language-Minority children, there was a lot of information that I have experience personally. One of the aspects that I found very interesting from the report is that there is not a lot of research done with language minority students, even though we live in a melting pot. Listening to Diane August in the podcast, it cleared some of the confusion I had while reading the actual report. First, language minority students are not the only ones whose language skills are low. August talk about socioeconomic status being a factor. Yes, reports show that the majority of language minority students do come from low socioeconomic neighborhoods. However, native language speakers who also come from these types of communities adapt to these dialects and also have a hard time developing English literacy skills. I have in my class three students who are language minority students, I could say that these students do perform and have better literacy skills that some of my EO’s. We know that every student is different, they are not cut with a cookie cutter. Catherine Snow points out, and I agree completely, that understanding individual differences is very important. Every student comes from a different background. Where some families do value education and others don’t. I see it every day in my classroom, there are the students who have plenty of home support and other don’t. There are language minority students who are literate in their first language, become literate in a faster rate than those students who are not literate on their first language. They use the skills to “transfer” from their native language to the societal language. This is the case for Spanish speakers because they use the same characters in both languages. However, languages like Chinese or Arabic, do not share the same characters, making it harder for those students to transfer what they know about language. For example, words like hamburger can be transfer from Spanish hamburguesa or Hello and Hola sound and look the same. I was a language minority student and most of the findings fit my experiences as a student. I did not come from a low socio economic community. However, I was literate in my first language. I have a strong support at home. I personally like learning and tried to excel in my classes. Even though I was 14 when I first started school in the United States, it did take me about two years to master the language enough to be taught in the popular language. As August explained in the podcast, it took longer for me to acquire adequate comprehension and writing skills. Reflecting on my experiences as a teacher, all students are language learners. There are different dialects that might not necessarily fit language minority students. In the South they have different dialects. Now we have Ebonics. We as educators have to look at a student, listen to the student, and learn about the student in order to be able to differentiate their instruction that feed his/her needs. Carlos' Thoughts