The first part of chapter 2 discussed dialogic learning in a community. Vygotsky says that "Development of thought and language occurs on the social plan or in community before it occurs independently or individually" (49). I believe social interactions and learning in a community are important parts of second language acquisition. As it is explain in the section, the desire to communicate successfully within the community helps to motivate language learning. This comes naturally for a young child because it is their natural instinct to develop a first language and learn to communicate. I believe having that desire to communicate within the community is a huge motivator to learn a second language. Immigrants want to be a part of the community and learn the language around them. When I went to Mexico and was able to use the Spanish language for the first time outside of the classroom, I was motivated to continue learning and put even more effort into the second language.
Also, Jim Cummins' framework for empowerment of language minority students is a good concept. Many of the schools in central Illinois promote a subtractive model of second language acquisition rather than an additive because of lack of funding and lack of support by the community. Unfortunately with this model, students are encouraged to lose their home language, which is a part of their identity. Instead, like Cummins proposed, programs should be geared toward appreciating and valuing all cultures by encouraging the development of the native language along with the second language.
As a first grade teacher of ESL students, I really related to the article “Breaking Them Up, Taking Them Always:” ESL Students in Grade 1 by Kelleen Toohey. I understood the teacher’s seating arrangements of the students because like she said, it is great to have children in groups so they can talk and collaborate. I like my classroom to be set up in groups; however, due to behavior and other factors, sometimes it is necessary to separate students. This was one example of how a teacher managed her classroom, but we have to treat each group of students differently according to the student’s needs and what the final goal is. Sometimes it is important for students who speak the same language to work together and other times it is important for students with different language backgrounds to work together. This is the same for high and low level students. In my classroom I placed the high reading level students in the same group and low reading level students in the same group so that we could work on specific skills for them to improve. Either way, the most important thing is that all cultures and languages are valued and appreciated, and the lack of this is the problem in our schools today.
I think it is important and agree in your statements of how communicating socially or within a community is a huge motivator for learning a language. We as humans have a desire to connect with others and to communicate. Put in a setting with speakers of that language, we sort of naturally wish to speak it too, in order to communicate to other speakers and to understand what messages they are saying. Especially for a young child, they are still learning about different elements in a language, so it is still difficult to learn about rules, etc. So, imersion is definitely important in learning a language, particularly for someone at such a young age, as your first graders.
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