Teaching Multilingual Children-Collier

Hayley Dias
Teaching Multilingual Children - Virginia Collier
Reflection/Hyperlink

Reflection: While I began reading this piece of text, it really made me think about how children who are bilingual are educated. Also, with my service learning project starting this week what I will experience with the children. I am in a Kindergarten classroom environment where most of the children speak and understand english as there second language. I can relate to these children in a small way coming from a Portuguese Heritage and back round, the only difference is that my second language is Portuguese. I was taught by my grandparents.

Being bilingual has gave me a bigger opportunity and is a great thing to have. While in my in service learning project I want to make these children feel confident for who they are and to never be ashamed of having a second language because of there culture. Collier supports this very well in her thoughts on how educators teach multilingual children.

 

One Guideline, Collier says "Be aware that children use first language acquisition strategies for learning acquiring a second language." (127) Children use phases to understand what they are learning it is what gets them through the acquisitions of being bilingual. Most of the techniques are used from patterns they use to simplify the word they are trying to use. Children who are younger are much different because teachers try an help them focus on one thing an then help them identify there own learning style. Collier also states, "Children acquiring a second language will self correct their own utterances over time as they progress though the various stages of life." (128)

Another point that Collier discusses about how children and there parents have a certain kind of speech an talk to each other using there kind of phrases. Collier begins with telling us how teachers an educators try using the "Caregivers Speech" while teaching the child in his or her classroom. They follow the six features of this. Learning this all the whole conversation of this all is the connection between conversation and communications. But also, Collier refers to how social and emotional affects take on children feelings while trying to learn with the struggle of learning english as a second language in school, while at home the are speaking there language with family and there relatives.

I have attached this video that really summarizes how Teaching Multilingual Children in classrooms. It helped me understand more about the learning process for these children.

The next guideline I enjoyed reading about Collier states, " Teach the standard form of english and students home language with an application of dialect differences to create an environment of language recognition in the classroom." I feel as this begin one of the strongest guidelines because the child can feel comfortable and be he or she while learning. It helps them progress in there education. Applying this helps the classrooms standards reach awareness for learning and encouragement for the children.