Today many teachers tell parents that it’s all right to speak the family's native language at home, especially if the parents know little English. They give this advice because they know that students who live in homes in which only English is spoken miss many lessons that parents can give in the native language. When the family’s native language is used in the home, the children will learn things that they can’t learn easily if the family speaks only English in the home.
Stages of ESL Learning
In her article “How Children Learn a Second Language,” Linda Halgunseth described her childhood experience with learning English. The author wrote that when she was two years old her teacher advised her mother to stop speaking English at home, believing that speaking the child’s native language at home was slowing Halgunseth’s English learning. Halguneth’s experience highlights the importance of making a connection between the home and classroom so that parents can be informed about the best ways to help their children at home and at school.
It is helpful to consider the four stages that ESL students go through when they are learning English. Halgunseth listed these in her article:
- The student continues to speak the native language at school even if no one understands her.
- ESL students realize that teachers and children don’t understand their first language. They speak little and use nonverbal language.
- The children begin to speak English, but only in short sequences of words or phrases. They may repeat the same words that others use.
- They begin to express their own thoughts, and make their own sentences. These may not be grammatically correct, but their ability to write and speak complete sentences gradually improves.
Using the First Language at Home
In his article, “The Importance of the Mother Tongue,” Paul Shoebottom wrote, “…children will learn English much more effectively if they continue to develop their first language at the same time.” The author writes that skills learned in the mother language transfer easily to the second language. Some skills that can easily be transferred from the first language are:
- the ability to guess the meaning of a word from the context
- the ability to decide if an unknown word is essential to comprehending the text or if it can be skipped
Mother Tongue Concepts
Some other concepts that children learn more easily when they are allowed to speak the native language at home are:
- behaviors acceptable at home and in public
- empathy for others
- cultural differences
- culture and traditions of the native country
- family values
- how to perform certain tasks, including household tasks like washing dishes
- how to perform personal hygiene tasks like bathing, brushing teeth
Using First Language as a Learning Tool
Teachers use many tools to help ESL students learn social and academic English as quickly and easily as possible. They know they should speak slowly, use pictures, group students with the same first language together, and many other strategies to help ESL students learn social and academic English. They understand that ESL student learning often progresses through four stages. The ESL student’s first language is another tool that helps the student learn as quickly and easily as possible.
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