Module 2

Module 2

This week has flown by! Can’t believe we are already in week 2! Chapter 5 for me really stuck out for me this week. I enjoyed reading the developmental aspect of languages and cultural differences. Bilingualism and the ages of speech milestones. What I liked reading regarding milestones was with 5 year olds and 6 year olds the sentence length is about 5-6 words and their vocab is about 10,000 words. This shocked me because at the school I aide at I sometimes get pulled to substitute teach if the position has been failed to be filled. In the kindergarten class at my very EL dominated school, I noticed that the American kids are relatable to these statistics but the EL students sentences are limited, their words are no where near 10,000 and some can barely write. Is this because they didn’t go to a proper pre-k? Is this because school isn’t that important at home? Is learning a second language crippling their abilities to form sentences?

I firmly believe in the benefits of bilingualism. According to page 180, higher degrees of bilingualism are correlated with increased cognitive abilities in such areas as concept formation, creativity, theory of mind, cognitive flexibility, attention and executive functioning, and understanding that printed words are symbols for language (Kemper, Saalbach, & Hardy 2011)  On page 183 the book discusses Myths and Truths regarding EL students. “Learning English as a second language takes 2-3 years for oral and 5-7 years for academic language use.” This is so amazing to me, how precious those little kindergarteners are and how their brains must be on over-drive! But they will benefit from it later in life!