Stages of Second Language Learning

The article "Stages of Second Language Learning" talks about the five stages that students typically go though in order to learn a second language. They said that it takes five to seven years to move through these stages. After looking at the stages, I wonder, it takes a long time for these stages, some more than others. Why do you think that this happens?

Reading through this article relates back to the learning stages of elementary students (in spelling and reading) that I learned in my education classes the past two years. The stages are comparable to those of second language learners and taken roughly a little less time to learn. I know that during the younger stages, it takes a lot longer for students (who already know English) to learn how to identify words and make sense of their sounds. It was interesting to see how it usually only lasts about a year for each stage leading up to the 'continuous language development'. Also, the stages that I have already known for English speakers takes place at a younger age, while the second language learner stages can start at any age.

I can understand that the 'continuous language development' stage can last five to seven years. Looking back in high school, I was in a pretty diverse school compared to my elementary and middle schools. Here there were a decent amount of Hispanic language speakers. Even at the high school level and growing up in New Jersey, they still had a hard time pronunciating and using correct grammar. I now understand why it can take so long in attempt to perfect the English language, but it is still never perfect. English is one of the hardest languages to learn, and as we get older, it is harder to retain information and learn another language.

New Focus on Writing & Reading

In the NCTE Inbox article "New Focus on Reading, Writing" located in The Boston Globe, educators are now stating that they are attempting to try and incorporate literacy in all subject areas. After elementary school, the general public believes that all students should be able to successfully read and write; however, this is never the case. "After fourth grade, students are not longer learning to read, they're reading to learn". Instead, teachers are now bringing more literacy into the classroom in other subject areas besides Language Arts. I've always found it hard to incorporate literacy into math classrooms, except for reading word problems, so how can one successfully apply that?

The article talks about a teacher, Ken Mills, who is observed discussing all types of mathematical problems. With this, you do not know how one can use reading and writing with talking about numbers, variables, slopes, etc., but it can be done. Through observation of Mills' classroom, the students are shown jotting notes down in the columns of their papers and outline every step explicitly that is needed to solve the original problem. This is seen as a "new system of note-taking" in order to improve literacy across the country.

Last semester in my math education class, my professor talked about a similar idea. She had the class explain the way they solved the math problem by writing out our steps in order to solve. Although it did take a longer time to do rather than just write out the numbers, it allowed us to work on explaining ourselves in a written way and then verbally explaining it as well. I think that this way of incorporating English into math classes is a great way to link both subject areas. Reading and writing is everywhere, not just in English classes. By using it throughout different subject areas will hopefully help improve students' literacy.

Plumb, T. (2009). New Focus on Reading, Writing. Retrieved April 15, 2010, from http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2010/04/08/expanded_reading_writing_classes_lead_to_gains_in_all_subjects_educators_say/

Responding to Student Writing

Responding to student's writing is a process that is commonly done several times throughout the week in the classroom. Teachers take their students' writing and read over it in attempts to have them revise it or to grade it. However, many "teacher's comments can take students' attention away from their own purposes in writing a particular text and focusing that attention on the teacher's purpose in commenting". Why is this seen as being detrimental to students' writing?

When I was in elementary and middle school, we had workshops where we would submit our rough drafts to our teachers to look at on certain occasions. My teacher would then write comments as to what I needed to change in order to make my paper flawless. Naturally, I would do as I was told and follow her instructions and score a higher grade on the final draft. What I never realized, until this article, was that the teacher comments do take away from the students' writing.

From the article by Sommers "Responding to Student Writing", she explains how influential teacher's comments are to students and how they have the ability to change the voice of the text. As she states, "After the comments of the teacher are imposed on the first or second draft, the student's attention dramatically shifts from "This is what I want to say" to "This is what you the teacher is trying to say". Students' final drafts are rarely that way that they originally intended them to be. Teacher's need to be careful as to how they respond to student writing by working with the student to make corrections, but not change the intent of the writing piece itself.