So Now What?

In the course of this blog we have explored the language-culture relationship and its intertwined nature: one affects the other they are not mutually exclusive. But what tangible effects will these language and culture influences have on us as teachers? A lot more than most people think.

Lets focus on strategies that, as teachers, we can use to help our English Language Learner students succeed in our classrooms. The road to learning English is a bumpy one, and students are not always provided sufficient support in their venture into the English language and culture, so as teachers let’s do out part to even out a few of the bumps with the help of this YouTube advice:

Excerpted from the One Child, Two Languages in Action Professional Development DVD featuring Patton O. Tabors and Mariela M. Páez

Now for my advice:

Isms do not translate:

If you find yourself in my particular boat, the one where we tend to put our foot in our mouth by speaking in English that ain’t quite English, then you need to listen up: Isms do not translate.

When we tell students we need them to finish their warm-up lickity- split some might get the point—to finish quickly—but even some native English speakers may spend more time thinking how weird you are for using the phrase lickity-split rather than focusing on the assignment they need to finish. And an ELL student might be even further confused, wondering where the lollipops are we’re supposed to be sharing (true ELL student story).

English is Special:

And I do mean that in the special sort of way. We have one of a select few languages that use gender-neutral nouns and verbs; this can be a stumbling block for a lot of ELL students. And to further complicate the situation English is chockfull of homonyms (don’t get too impressed English majors, I had to Google that word). Imagine you’re taking a math test, an easy math test, like from 3^rd grade:

“Juan goes to the grocery store with $2 dollars worth of quarters in his pocket. If apples cost 25 cents a piece and Juan buys 3, how many quarters does he have left?”

Now we’ve got a few things going on here: but for sake of staying on topic let’s focus on the word left. Native English speakers know what the question means: how many quarters are REMAINING? But would an ELL student have the same intuition? Left also means the opposite of right so your ELL students could be completely baffled by why you want to know how many quarters (what ever those are) that are in his left pocket.

Scientific Symbols are Culturally Influenced:

What a great leeway into symbols holding no meaning. In the word problem Juan has quarters to spend at the store. If you’re unfamiliar with the US monetary system then you haven’t the slightest clue what a quarter is, let alone that its worth $0.25.

Also, in America we write that price as $0.25 but in Peru it’d be written $0,25. Sometimes comas are periods and visa versa in different cultural symbolic systems. The number 3,001 would be written as 3.001 in Peru. So keep a close eye on your ELL students’ responses to your questions. Don’t mark a big X until you have established if they don’t understand the symbol or the math.

And America, man are we stubborn. We’re one of the LAST countries in the world who aren’t using the metric system. In fact, most higher-level education systems IN America have been forced to switch and teach in the metric system for self-preservation’s sake (almost all Physics, Chemistry, and other sciences use Metric) to be able to compete in this global workplace.

If your chemistry lab were to instruct a student to “pour a cup of water into the beaker” they may be wondering what size cup they should use. Their little sister has a small cup, but they drink out of a medium sized one and their mom uses the biggest cup at the dinner table (also a true ELL student story). Make US Standard System references clear to your ELL students by writing, “pour a standard cup of water.”

To wrap up things up: just be clear and concise.

When working with ELL students don’t use 10 words when 5 will do. Think about your word choice in problems you assign, revise any that might hold potential ELL pitfalls. And finally consider an English-miss learning as a possible culprit to a wring answer before you assume the student can’t do the work.

And to prove that learning takes place at all ages, here's a video of ELL adult students in Cali

As they say in Peru: Chaufa

(And Chaufa, to keep with the theme, can either mean a Chinese food eatery or goodbye…I’ll let you decide)

Time to Think

A little over 7 years ago, as I sat at a large table with 4 other students in Mr. Quackenbush’s AP Physics class discussing Einstein’s Theory of relativity and the Time-Space 4-dimensional structure concept, my brain exploded.

There I was nodding my head along with the other students trying desperately to get the hamster in my brain back on the wheel and understand what he was explaining to us. I found out a few years later that of the 5 of us, 4 had no clue what was going on and their hamsters were just as lost as mine, but I’ll explain that in a second.

For a little background for all your non-science and math people on what the heck Einstein was thinking: let’s say you’ve got a twin. You stay behind on earth while your twin goes in a super awesome high-tech space ship that can travel close to the speed of light to visit Pluto and frolic in space for a while. Here on Earth, they’re gone for a very long time; you get old, get wrinkles, and finally get that senior discount at the grocery store you’ve always dreamed of. Upon your twin’s return they don’t look a day older than the day they left however many years ago. Why’s that? Well in that super fancy space ship time didn’t pass as quickly as it did back here on earth, so what seemed like forever to you, was just a few days to your twin. Your mind has now been blown AND you hate your hypothetical twin—well that stinks.

Now, back to that one kid (oh how we hated him for kicking our butts on the AP test), why was he able to understand this concept better than the other 4 of us were? Turns out Native Americans think about time differently that English speaking Americans. (check out this cool article by Guy Deutscher for more info)

To us, Americans, time is a VERY important part of our culture—we even have jokes about how you need to be 15 minutes early everywhere or else you’re late. Our schedules depend on time: when we’ll do this, how long it takes to get there, how much time to save up money to buy what ever we need. Time, in its finite intervals, define our lives.

As Jerome Kills Small states in the audio file, in his Native American culture time does not work that way--to them time is not measured like it is for Americans. He explains the concept of reliving memories. While an American might see an old man sitting down under a tree as a person who’s wasting time, he sees a man who’s mind is traveling 100 miles per hour down memory lane. He is completely immersed in his memories and oblivious to what is going on around him. Therefore in his environment time stops, but in his head he’s revisiting times that have already occurred.

This is why the concept of time as a 4^th dimension was so easy for my friend to understand—his mind ALREADY worked that way. He understood what Einstein was talking about, differing situations with differing time intervals/conceptions because it was a part of his culture. All the while my brain was trying desperately to wrap itself around a concept that was foreign to me. In my mind, time isn’t variable, it’s fixed, and my Timex watch tells me so.

So what implications does this difference in perception of ideas have for us as educators? Well for one: just because something makes sense to you as an educator, or to a few of your students, don’t assume everyone single student has the same ease of understandings. When in doubt, spell things out.

Additionally it’s good for educators to understand that students bring unique perceptions on the world into our classrooms. If we had given our Native American classmate 10 minutes of class time to explain how he views time, or have given him the chance to explain how he was thinking about time there’s a possibility it would have clicked with me and maybe (just maybe) I would have passed that modern physics class I failed in college.

Just some thoughts to ponder.