Spanish speakers can help non-Spanish speakers
In my Conversational Spanish class for culinary arts students, I take the Spanish speakers and have them lead a group of non-Spanish speakers and go through exercises on the workbook. I often will switch out the 'leads' so that students can listen to different accents of Spanish speakers in the classroom. We discuss words and phrases that you will hear in the kitchen (minus the cursing and bad words of course).
Students find it informative and fun when I do exercises like this because it also helps them with their Spanish plus get to know the people in their group.
~Louis
WOW! talk about a light bulb going off for me. I teach dental assisting and I have spanish speaking students that are bilingual but their strength is in Spanish which isn't as desirable in an upper class dental practice. I am going to implement in the clinic setting the Spanish speaking students to do the assessing of the dental problem and then the deliver the post operative instructions to the patient. This will be done in a role play setting for those students that are English speaking only so they can begin to learn the words in Spanish! Thanks for this forum opportunity. Not much response from others on this but I think it is a verry helpful forum, I look forward to your thoughts.
Hi Jason!
I totally agree with non-English speaking students are most benefited from working with English speaking students. We must be careful; however, that is enough understanding of the languages that they can communicate enough to successfully accomplish the assignment.
Good job!
Jane Davis
ED106 Facilitator
The ability to spend time on a subject to be mastered, as well as break it up into groups can also aid in a situation like this. I have found that the best way a student can show mastery and further reinforce their knowledge and learning is by teaching the subject matter themselves. It is great to have groups present ideas and polished work after the information has been taught initially. The students also tend to understand each other in a way most teachers have a harder time with simply because of our invisible barrier that is our title and position.
I agree! English speaking students absolutely help Spanish speaking students illustrate/understand information. I also take advantage of having a diverse classroom by brushing up on my own Spanish speaking skills!
Louis, I work in an institution that routinely conducts international classes in the US and ocerseas. We taught courses in 21 countries last year. We use English as our primary language, but hire instructors with different language capabilites, contract on an as needed basis, teach with interpreters and translators. We recently invested in a system that allow near simultaneous translation. We try to pick the best approach to meeting student needs rather than a one size fits all. We have seperate courses for our instructors for using interpreters and translators. Joe
I really like the approach of letting students with different accents display their "version" of the words. As a non-fluent part time Spanish speaker I would feel less intimidated if I was given examples of differing pronunciation. Great practice!
