Chapter 8 Response

I think that people (not so much teachers, but everyone else) need to be more considerate to English Language Learners. English is probably one of the hardest languages to learn because of all of the stupid rules we have (rules that don't seem stupid to native speakers). Take for instance, silent letters. How do you expect someone who's native language is Chinese to understand that the p in phone is silent and the "ph" makes an "f" sound? I think that people who are not ESL teachers or who are not bilingual need to understand that learning a new language is hard. Most everyone in the United States has had to take at least one course in another language to graduate from high school or college, or both. The native English speakers need to remember how hard it was trying to learn Spanish (or French or German or whatever other language might have been offered) and think of how hard it must be for someone from one of those countries to learn English. I know from my experience, I always had to hear things in English and learn the concepts in English before I could even remotely understand what I was learning in my Spanish classes. It's the same thing that happens to the people trying to learn English. These students to be put with patient teacher who is willing to go through the English language just as painstakingly as a Spanish teacher goes through the Spanish.

I've had many friends go through an ELL class and they have all loved them. My friend Talitha, who is originally from the Philippines, went through an ELL class when she moved to Illinois when we were in eighth grade. She has said to me before that she probably did not need to go through this class because she had been instructed in English as well as in Tagalog while in the Philippines. Even when we had first met, I couldn't even tell that she came from another country. She speaks English just as well as anyone else I know, and she can speak Tagalog just as fluently. It's fun to watch her at home because her parents do not speak as much English (even though they are fluent enough to get by), so Talitha will switch from talking in English to me to talking in Tagalog with her parents in an instant. Both of her parents and her other older family members (aunts, uncles, etc) have heavy Filippino accents, but Talitha does not have an accent at all. It is interesting to me that the book states most ELL students are afraid to speak outloud in English because of their accents, yet my friend (who is not afraid of anything, really) does not even have an accent when talking in English. (I can sometimes hear it when she is talking with her parents, though.)