Before beginning this class, I have to say I honestly did not think much about teaching English to students that are not EFL students. This has to do with a few different things, for starters, I am not getting a TESOL endorsement, but rather I am just an elementary education major without any endorsements. With that being said, I have never really had to think about teaching English to students who do not speak the language as their first language. Another major factor of my lack of thoughts on teaching students who do not speak English as their first language I believe stems from my personal upbringing in my school.
I attended a Catholic private school from kindergarten until my senior year. In these thirteen years of schooling I did not have any fellow classmates who did not speak English as their first language. The first time that I was exposed to students who did not speak English as their first language was not until my junior year of high school in which we had two foreign exchange students for half of the academic school year. Although English was not their first language, since they were seventeen years old they had been studying English in their countries of Germany and Korea for almost ten years, so it was not necessary for the teachers at my school to teach them English, nor would there have been time for them to do so.
Being that I went to a Catholic private school, there was not a lot of diversity present, so this is why I was never in a classroom where we would practice English vocabulary words. I also did not have friends that spoke another language. I believe this ultimately lead me to be blindsided to the whole ESL element, because I was not exposed to it.
When I am to become an elementary teacher, there will be times when I will be faced with helping students with the English language, students in which do not speak the language as their first language. This class will help me to know how to effectively teach students in a way I have never thought of teaching before.
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