Generation 1.5

The first workshop I attended at the TESOL Convention, "Supporting Your Non-ESL Colleagues Who Teach ESL Students," considered some of the characteristics of Generation 1.5. As its name suggests, this group is made up of students who fall somewhere (culturally and linguistically) between first-generation immigrants and second-generation children born in the States. Most of the time they are found in mainstream classrooms in public schools. While the U.S. may be the only place that members of Generation 1.5 have ever called home, they are raised in linguistic enclave communities.

The notion that the term "English language learner" can mean many different things, and reflect a broad range of very specific needs, is pretty basic. But in my view, this isn't always obvious, and it isn't always recognized.

Consider the student who comes to the U.S. at age 10, who is literate in her native language and has already received some English instruction in an academic setting. The challenges she faces will differ from those of a native-born child who has no accent but is encountering academic vocabulary and language for the first time at school--and who will likely never achieve full proficiency in his native tongue.

Because of this, the workshop presenters stressed that true proficiency cannot be measured by how fluent students sound or by how long they have been in the country. To understand what ELLs really need, we must first consider where and how they are encountering the type of language that is required for school.

The text below is from this handout provided at the training:

Several linguistic and socioeconomic factors make the acquisition processes of Generation 1.5 different from that of typical English learners:

1. They acquire much of their English through informal oral/aural interaction with friends, classmates, and co-workers (very often community dialect speakers) through interaction with English-dominant siblings and members of the extended family, and of course passive input from radio and TV.

2. As oral/aural dominant they may not notice nonsalient grammatical features, and thus these features never become part of their language repertoire. (They may use incorrect verb forms, word forms, confuse count/non count nouns, plurals, articles, prepositions, etc. Example: don't see the difference between "confident" vs "confidence")

3. In their speech they rely heavily on context and other pragmatic features of discourse rather than syntactic and morphological specificity. (Use body language, intonation, facial expression etc. to make themselves understood. Communicating in writing may be frustrating because lack these cues. Proofreading is difficult--may not be able to "hear" mistakes.)

4. They become highly proficient communicators, but face difficulty when confronted with academic writing tasks that demand a high level of grammatical accuracy.

5. Oral/aural learners generally lack the "meta-language" and grammatical terminology necessary for understanding explanations of their grammar errors. (So when teachers talk about progressive verbs or gerunds, for example, student may look blank.)

Greetings from TESOL

If you're familiar with Teachers of English as a Second or Other Language (TESOL), a global association for English language teachers, you probably know that TESOL's annual convention has come to Boston. Each year, the convention attracts about 8,000 people from around the world and offers amazing professional development opportunities.

I'm so grateful to be attending this time around and have a full week of courses lined up. The convention itself runs from Wednesday-Saturday, but pre-convention classes run all day on Tuesday as well. Beginning next week, I'll be posting summaries and highlights from the workshops I'm attending, so stay tuned.

Getting organized

As part of our study of the Six Traits of Writing, my students and I have been working on organization. This trait, which focuses on the structure of writing, is actually made up of several smaller sub-skills:

* Writing strong introductions, hooks, and leads
* Balancing creativity with formula
* Pacing & sequencing
* Use of thoughtful, interesting transitions
* Writing satisfying conclusions
* Creating strong & satisfying titles

As always, The Writing Fix has some great online resources. If you're looking for a strong intro sentence, try this prompt generator. At the click of a button, the site generates lines like these:

* He tried to remember who had talked him into this.
* I cared what she thought, so when she dared me I knew I was in trouble.
* She had been warned, but now it was too late.

To teach this trait, I've mostly been sticking with Vicki Spandel's series on the Six Traits, but I've also found this list of transitional words and phrases quite helpful.

Know What I Mean?

Since good writing involves the use of specific language, I want my students to have a rich vocabulary of precise words. But as those of us who work with advanced ELLs know, it can be difficult to determine how much a student actually understands.

I recently came across a site with a great description of what it really means to know the meaning of a word. The text below is excerpted from Vocabulary Ideas Compiled by Deb Smith:

What does it mean to know a word?

Stage 1: Never saw it before.
Stage 2: Heard it, but doesn’t know what it means.
Stage 3: Recognizes it in context as having something to do with _____.
Stage 4: Knows it well.

[A]n individual’s knowledge about a word can also be described as falling along a continuum. We suggested the following points on such a continuum.

• No Knowledge
• General sense, such as knowing mendacious has a negative connotation
• Narrow, context-bound, such as knowing that a radiant bride is a beautifully smiling bride, but unable to describe an individual in a different context as radiant.
• Having knowledge of a word but not being able to recall it readily enough to use it in appropriate situations.
• Rich, decontextualized knowledge of a word’s meaning, its relationship to other words, and its extension to metaphorical uses, such as understanding what someone is doing when they are devouring a book.

Cronbach wrote in 1942:

• Generalization: The ability to define a word.
• Application: The ability to select or recognize situation appropriate to a word.
• Breadth: Knowledge of multiple meanings.
• Precision: The ability to apply a term correctly to all situations and to recognize inappropriate use.
• Availability: The actual use of a word in thinking and discourse.

What it means to know a word is clearly a complicated multifaceted matter, and one that has serious implications for how words are taught and how word knowledge is measured.