{"id":2908,"date":"2015-03-18T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/?p=2908"},"modified":"2023-05-20T07:47:27","modified_gmt":"2023-05-20T06:47:27","slug":"nurture-emergent-bilingual-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/nurture-emergent-bilingual-students","title":{"rendered":"Nurturing emergent bilingual students"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the motives for writing my new book called Second Language Students in English-medium Classrooms is to highlight the new focus on international school\u00a0students as bilinguals. We know that there are numerous reasons why maintaining emergent bilingual students\u2019 home languages brings benefits and many schools offer home language classes in some form.<\/h4>\n

Now, in many English-medium classrooms in international schools, the home languages of emergent bilingual students are recognised as a valuable resource.<\/h4>\n

The following brief list sets out some of the ideas and practical strategies that contribute to a \u2018language aware\u2019 classroom.<\/p>\n

Why should we develop\u00a0bilingualism instead of insisting on ‘English-only’?<\/h5>\n

When emergent bilingual students are encouraged to incorporate their mother tongues meaningfully into on-going classroom activity, they continue to value their home languages and cultures. This makes the maintenance of home languages seem more worthwhile and relevant.<\/p>\n

One of the benefits of a \u2018language aware\u2019 classroom is that emergent bilingual students feel able to celebrate their status as bilingual learners (as opposed to thinking of themselves as students \u2018who can\u2019t speak English\u2019).<\/p>\n

Students\u2019 mother tongues can be used effectively \u2018to clarify and support instruction\u2019 in an English-medium classroom (to quote a phrase taken from the EAL Programme handbook on the Bavarian International schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"How\n

How can we encourage emergent bilingual students to use their mother tongues productively?<\/h5>\n

There are several strategies involving the use of students\u2019 mother tongues that serve to underpin and reinforce their learning. These include:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Ensuring that prior learning in students\u2019 home languages is brought into use when introducing a new topic or skill. (e.g. science content, mathematics problems.) Knowledge of the general facts and overall concepts relating to a topic helps their later learning in English.<\/li>\n
  2. Encouraging students to use their home languages to search for references and examples that reflect their own history, geographical location and cultural landscape.<\/li>\n
  3. Using students\u2019 home languages alongside English as is found in \u2018interlingual\u2019 or \u2018translanguaging\u2019 classrooms. (Both these approaches are described in my book).<\/li>\n
  4. Encouraging students to include real-life input by interviewing their family and friends overseas in their home languages by means of Skype, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Finally, teachers are key players in creating an internationally-minded classroom where different languages and cultural references have a welcome place. They underpin this approach by talking about their own language learning development and their experiences as culture learners.<\/p>\n

    Do you use any other techniques for making the most of bilingualism in the classroom? Feel free to join in the discussion!<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Why should we encourage bilingualism in the English-language classroom? When emergent bilingual students use their mother tongues meaningfully in classroom activity, they continue to value their home languages and cultures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":9536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[854],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-content\/uploads\/pexels-alexander-dummer-1912868.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Krhd-KU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2908"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13329,"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2908\/revisions\/13329"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.teacherhorizons.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}