"Hunger of Memory" - My reflection

Hunger of Memory - Richard Rodriguez 

Autobiography

Reflection:

I am white. I grew up in a white town with tons of white kids and white teachers. Everyone spoke English. Spanish class is the hardest class i ever had to take, yet the Spanish i was learning was basic stuff like "hello, goodbye" and tons of other standard words that a Spanish speaking two year old would probably know. Yet, it came so difficult for me to obtain it all. They say that English is the hardest language to learn. I grew up speaking it, so hindsight its easy. 

When a Spanish speaking student is transferred to a "white" school, they are thrown into classes that it is expected of you to know how to speak English. The teacher isn't going over easy words such as "hello" and "goodbye" they are more concentrated on proper grammar and pronunciation. This would be very difficult for a young child to adapt to. They don't know what is being said and their social life is little to non-existent. It is sad. I never had to experience this, nor did i know anyone going through the difficulty of learning English, until my first year of college. 

There was a lady in one of my classes. She was in her 30's and moved to America from Puerto Rico. Her English was bad, and it was very hard for her to obtain knowledge on environmental science (the class we shared together) when she was simply trying to understand what on earth the teacher was saying. It seemed impossible. We were put into groups, and i was with her a few times. understanding her was hard, and having her try to understand me seemed harder. It seemed like a lost cause, but she pulled through the class somehow and barely passed. I felt sorry for her and the struggle she had to go through to get a barely passing grade. 

It is important for children needing to learn a second language to have the ability of having bilingual classes. It gives them a fighting chance to be able to learn. How could someone possibly learn is they cant even understand what is being taught. Its pretty pointless to have a child sitting in class and not understand a word being said. The class should only be done if it will "help the sheep", if not its a lost cause. Bilingual classes are important to young children learning another language!

http://esl.about.com/od/esleflteachingtechnique/a/lesson_format.htm

The article above shows basic steps teachers should consider while teaching English as a second language. For all of us studying to become teachers, this is a good article to look at as it shows formats of lesson plans for those learning english as a second language. 

I posted the picture above because this is probably how some children feel as they enter English speaking classrooms. It must be a scary, bad feeling.