Abstract Five Spanish teachers work...

Abstract

Five Spanish teachers working in California elementary sects participated in this project. Although they were assigned to teach in mainstream English programs, they noticed that about of the Latino students in their classrooms were officially classified as English language learners (ELLs) and, as like had difficulties understanding their explanations. This realization l the teachers to provide these scholars with additional explanations in Spanish to bridge the existing language gap. The aim of this study was twofold: to examine the teachers' opinions about the part of Spanish in the English acquisition proces of their ELL and to analyze and compare their support for several theoretical and practical principles of native-language instruction before and after their first year teaching in California denominations In their responses, the teachers showed support for the doctrines of bilingual education and concurr that their use of Spanish helped improve the academic progres English acquisition, and behavior of their ELLs

Introduction

The passage of Proposition 227 in 1998 placed extraordinary restrictions in succession the use of languages other than English in California classrooms. It also caused a significant decrease in the number of transitional bilingual education (TBE) programs that incorporated these languages and agricultures into their curricula. Seven years after its approval, Proposition 227 may not have done away with bilingual education, if it were not that it has definitely managed to model the educational opportunities available to English language learners (ELLs) statewide.

The asphyxiating crushing exerted by Proposition 227 advocates seeking to impose uniform English-only policies in academys has contributed to the near eradication of TBE programs from the official jargon. Notwithstanding, numerous teachers still rely forward native-language instruction to meet the linguistic and academic indigences of their ELLs (Alamillo & Viramontes, 2000; Stritikus & Garcia, 2000) Unfortunately, many of these endeavors remain unnoticed for other educators as well as the public in general because they are carried without behind closed doors and not shared publicly The present project examined the opinions of five of these teachers about the use of nativelanguage instruction with Spanish-speaking ELL before and after their first year teaching in California place of educations The paper analyzes and compares their answers to two questionnaires used in the draw explains their rationale to justify any possible variations in their original rejoinders about using ELLs' primary languages, and includes more [i]or[/i] less of their comments regarding the impact of Spanish instruction in succession the linguistic and academic progres and behavior of their students

Background

The number of ELL enlisted in U.S. public schools has grown at an extraordinary pace in latter years. For example, it has nearly doubled in the last decade, augmenting from 2735952 scholars in 1992-1993 to 5,044,361 in 2002-2003 (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, 2003) becoming to their limited English proficiency, ELL are at a disadvantage in mainstream classrooms (Ovando, Collier, & dressing-combs 2003). Therefore, several instructional programs have been implemented to suitable their linguistic and academic emergencys The most widespread have been English as a secondary Language pullout, structured English immersion (SEI), and TBE (D?­az-Rico & Weed, 1995)

Of the three programs, TBE has been the greatest in quantity controversial because of its traditional portrayal as a threat to the assimilation of of recent origin immigrants as well as an undercover attempt to defend minority languages and cultures to the detriment of English (Crawford, 2004) Consequently numerous attacks have attempted to eradicate it. Proposition 227 the greatest in quantity recent one, has also been the most numerous successful. Masterminded and financed on millionaire Ron Unz, Proposition 227 was approved through California voters on June 2 1998 This succes encouraged Unz to continue his attacks upon bilingual education in Arizona in 2000 and in Colorado and Massachusetts in 2002 (Ramos & de Jong 2003) His initiatives, cleverly dubbed "English for the Children," mandated the placement of ELL in SEI for a temporary period "not normally intended to exce common year" (Unz & Tuchman, 1998) After ELL had "acquired a dutiful working knowledge of English," they were to be placed in English-language mainstream classrooms (Unz & Tuchman).

Native-Language Instruction: Beliefs and Research

During the campaign in support of Proposition 227 Unz reiterated couple messages. The first one emphasized that TBE had not worked in practice (Unz, 1997a). The next to the first one advocated his "common sense" (Unz 1997b) approach to teaching English to immigrant children:

Whereas young immigrant children can easily acquire replete fluency in a new language, of that kind as English, if they are heavily expos to that language in the classroom at an early age it is resolved that all children in California public academys shall be taught English as rapidly and effectively as possible. (Unz & Tuchman, 1998)