Making the grade
Foreign language students, families
get the help they need to succeed

By Christie Pool
Most people agree today's children are learning at a more accelerated pace than students of yesteryear. Knowing this, imagine a five-year-old child heading to her first day of kindergarten without the ability to speak or communicate to her teacher because she has yet to learn English.
At Jasper Elementary, approximately 40 of the school's 500 students are learning English as their second language. As curriculums expand, these students must work hard to keep up with their native-speaking peers.
Though Spanish is by far the most spoken language of ESOL (English as a Second Language) students, language teacher Traci Buckingham said there are five different foreign languages represented at the school. They are: Tagalog (Philippines), Korean, Ukraine and Urdu (from the India/Pakistan region).
According to the 2000 Census, nearly one out of every 10 Georgia residents ages five and older speaks a language other than English at home. In Georgia schools, there are over 35 major languages represented, not counting dialects. The Georgia Department of Education estimates over 68,000 K-12 students are English language learners with 80 percent of these being Spanish speakers.
Because of state funding limitations, all of the county's elementary-aged ESOL students are bussed to Jasper Elementary where the county's one foreign language teacher spreads her time among them, developing individually-based curriculums to help them learn as quickly as possible.
"I go from basic sounds with the little ones to the language
learners to high intense vocabulary," Buckingham said. "There are also some that start out with hand signs: stop, sit, bathroom. It can be very basic. If I have a newcomer to the group who is in third to fifth grade their needs may be very different because they need to learn the language very quickly. For them I teach them survival language."
Buckingham said by that age, students desperately need to learn the language to be accepted by their peers and also to keep up with the more challenging curriculum.
"One of my main tactics is to teach them to read really before they comprehend what they are reading. I teach them phonics and that way they can participate with their classmates. Even if they don't understand it right then it will come. Slowly but surely," Buckingham said.
Buckingham said she has a Korean student who is now reading on grade level but has had difficulty because of our colloquial language. Buckingham said students from Korea and Russia who are learning English often have a more difficult time because of the dissimilarities between their native tongue and English. Those languages, for instance, are not based on the Roman alphabet so there is an added element in learning.
One tool Buckingham utilizes to teach English is recording books on tape. Buckingham spends time taping several books so children can take them home to hear the words and simultaneously see them on the page. She said parents also benefit greatly from this service.
"It's a little labor intensive but I'm seeing great results. It just gives them that extra help they need," she said.
Buckingham said often times the parents of foreign-speaking students don't have the skills needed to assist their children at school.
"It's not that they don't want to help their children, it's that they don't have the ability," she said. "The tapes are working for them too."
Buckingham said she had one parent who used the tapes to learn, along with her son, lists of Dolch Words. These are the 220 most common sight words in the English language and, beginning in first grade, children are required to memorize them.
Research tells us that it takes seven years for a second language student to fully reach their academic potential but Buckingham said she sees remarkable gains with her students.
"Sometimes you see a greater gain in younger students like kindergarten because they are not bombarded by the same level of academic vocabulary that our older students are. I have had past students who have been in the country for as little as two or three years who are named as finalists in writing contests and, not long ago, a former ESOL student became the county spelling bee champ. At that time, I believe she had only been speaking English for about four years," Buckingham said.
For her part, Buckingham speaks several languages but has found speaking her native tongue is better for students.
"Knowing several languages has been a benefit for me," she said. "But really, I use this as a tool for communication with parents not students - unless it is an emergency."
Buckingham said she wants students to feel no matter where they are from and what they speak, they are on equal ground with her.
"If I translate for the Spanish students, it would be confusing for the Korean student who is sitting there and listening. They assume I am speaking English and will try to repeat it. So my personal belief is that it is better for me to speak English so they learn that is the vocabulary for school."
Buckingham advises students to keep their culture and language alive in their homes.
Korean-born student Hayoung Moon, 10, came to Jasper Elementary School last year. She said initially things were difficult because none of the English words she was trying to learn were the same as any words in her native tongue.
"In Korea they start learning very simple English words in third grade but it is very different from how it is spoken here," Moon said.
Moon said the hardest thing for her was leaving her two best friends at home to come to the United States. She said at her old school, there were no school buses and students had to walk to get to school. Aside from the size of the schools - Moon's last school in Korea was much larger than JES - other differences abound.
"The lunchroom was different. We ate in our classrooms and the students had the jobs of giving food out," she said.
Nine-year-old Lupita Lomeli said students at her former school brought their lunch to school every day and ate outside. A typical Guadalajara classroom, she said, has around 32 children compared to Moon's former classroom of 64.
Moon said she has the most difficulty with social studies. Buckingham said that was typical because of the large amount of vocabulary involved.
"If you work real hard and study for one hour every night you can remember it," Moon said.
A Ukrainian student, 11-year-old Bogdan Cline, said he too found the English language very different from what he had been taught in previous classes.
"I was shy to come into my first American classroom," he said. "In Russia they did have some English speaking classes but the teacher would say a few English words and you would take the book home and study from it."
Middle and high-school-aged children do not have the same advantages that younger students have when trying to learn English. When these older students enter American schools, regular classroom teachers are required to find ways to meet their needs without the assistance of an ESOL teacher.
"A lot of times computer software programs wind up assisting these students," Buckingham said. "The difficulty of the vocabulary is a hard thing for non-English speaking kids to come in and face that level of curriculum (in upper grades)."
Buckingham said she feels the Spanish-speaking population in Pickens County is very different from larger, metropolitan areas.
"We don't have a very transient population," she said. "The rule of thumb is that if they come here, then they are here to stay. They have roots, they have family whereas in larger metro areas they move around for jobs and for housing. Here there is no employment and no mass housing."