"Teaching Multilingual Children," Virginia Collier

Collier argues that teachers can properly teach multilingual students if they are careful in the manner in which they teach them and need to use the right tools from their "tool box." If the right tools are used, students will be eager to learn a new language and at the same time appreciate their very important home language and culture.

1. "People untrained in linguistics, particularly politicians, tend to believe that if limited English proficient students can converse with their monolingual English-speaking peers, then these English-language learners can compete with them on an equal footing. If it were only so easy! English-language learners who can chat comfortably in English do not automatically develop the academic language skills needed to compete."

During group activities in class, we are usually asked to find who the author is blaming. This definitely shows that at least part of the blame is being put on politicians. As I was reading this quotation, it reminded me of the article we just read by Kozol in which there were the quotations, "Why would you want to put so many people with small children in a place with so much sickness" and "The point is that they put a lot of things into our neighborhood that no one wants." Politicians are quick to be blamed for many problems in society. It is not possible for politicians to make everyone happy and that is why politicians have such a difficult job and are always under so much pressure. It is an easy solution to blame a politician, but maybe we should be trying to find other roots to the problem instead of pointing fingers.

2."Native like conversation proficiency generally takes students two or three years to master. It is not as intellectually as demanding as school or academic language."

This quotation captures what many students are doing in order to get by in the classroom and announcing that there is a difference between native language and academic language. Also included in this quotation was "This level of English proficiency in the U.S. context includes the ability to handle complex conversation (one might call it the ability to get along in the outside world) using contextual cues such as gestures and intonation from the other speakers, and situational cues to meaning." The reason why I liked these quotations is because I can relate it to an example in my life. It reminds me of a recent Domino's Pizza co-worker named Suilo. It reminds me of him because this quotation directly expresses how people can get by in the U.S. by being able to handle native like conversation proficiency but not academic language. Suilo, a Dominican, knows as much as he needs to about the English language know to work for Domino's and deliver pizza. He was able to have small conversations in the store and was able to pick up on gestures when dealing with customers. The only thing that Suilo had trouble with was answering the phone because it required a little more knowledge and understanding of the English language. By talking on the phone, it was impossible to pick up on gestures, and that was part of the reason he passed the phone onto me.
So, I think this quotation is important because I believe there are many people out there who are only proficient in native speaking because they have mastered that and are able to get by in America because of that. Some of these people may not have been challenged enough in school and had been allowed through the system not knowing enough academic English.

3. "Be aware that children use first language acquisition strategies for learning a second language."

I find this to be true in my life because I used English as a model when I learned Spanish in high school. The teachers know that we do this in order to learn, so, they set up the classroom in ways that show how it relates to English. Collier is presenting a model to all teachers of language that this is the number one thing to know when teaching students a second language. There is a great burden put on teachers of language because sometimes students will not be able to adapt and will become extremely frustrated. While this is happening, Collier still presents ways in which teachers can keep the students interested and eager to learn. These are key aspects in her article in which teachers and students learn together and from each other.


This was pretty tough to read and I found myself going back to re-read many sections. I found a few ways in which this article related to our class and the articles we have read. I observed a connection between Collier and Delpit when Collier says, "One must teach in two languages, affirm the cultural values of both home and school, teach standardized forms of the two languages but respect and affirm the multiple varieties and dialects represented among students in class, be a ... on and on." I think these "standardized forms" is something Delpit would agree with so that students can learn the codes of power to succeed in mainstream America. Furthermore, Delpit would agree that teachers should also encourage and adapt to students background, culture, and language styles. So, I see a similar argument between these two authors.
I found an example from this article that related to our classroom discussion of equal versus equitable. "On the false premise that English oral competence is all that an immigrant child needs to compete with native English speaking peers, too many ESL or other English-language learner programs fail to provide a literacy curriculum for their unique needs." Being equitable to these students would mean that these unique needs were acknowledged. Immigrant students usually speak their native language at home and are put at a serious disadvantage when placed in schools when children native to America have already had a head start at learning English at home.