What are the strategies spanish teachers use to teachers use to teach writing spanish as a second language to motivate advanced level spanish students in a public High school?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 

Literature Review

Methodology

Findings

Discussion

Implication/Question for further research

Work cited 

Introduction

As an educator, I believe that it’s really important for students to learn a second language. Teaching or learning a second language is not only about grammar and pronunciation. It’s about community, culture, communication, comparison and connections.  Learning to write English as second language was hard for me but I had classmates, teacher, and family that supported and motivated me to learn the English language culture. I agree with Saville (1984), who said, “Matering the vocabulary of a second language enhances students comprehension and abilities in reading, writing” (p. #). Teaching writing as a second language is very challenging task, because of the syntax, linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural factors. Its also important that to know that high school students in NYC have a to take a foreign language Regent’s test to graduate.  Our job is prepared them and to make learning fun and interesting to have successful students.

Now we are living in a diverse country where we have many different languages.  The population of New York was 19.7 million in the year 2014(citation).  The New York City area represents the largest Hispanic population of any city in the United States with a population of 2.3 million Latinos according to the 2010 census (citation). Bronx has the largest community of Hispanic with approximately 748,438 Hispanic people.  Queens has 625,016, Brooklyn has 506,552, and Manhattan 410,681 Hispanic people.  The Hispanic population is growing every year and the Spanish language has become as important as well as the culture.  This is one of the reasons I want to teach Spanish as a second language: because I want different types of cultures, traditions and beliefs.  According to my research, there are twenty-one countries where the official language is Spanish (citation).  We have twenty-one different flags, and all sorts of cultures and traditions to learn through Spanish as a foreign language. 

I want to be successful teacher and have the ability to meet my student’s needs.  I am interested in exploring this research question:  What are the strategies Spanish teachers use to teach writing Spanish as a second language to motivate advanced level Spanish students in a public High School? I focused on the strategies a Spanish teacher uses to teach writing as a second language and why they use those strategies.

Every teacher and administrator from any educational department would benefit from this research project. I would help us create new curriculums, new standards, higher expectations from teacher and students.  It would also help us meet the need and interest of all the students that are interested in learning a second language.  It would personally help me create new lesson plans with new standards, activities and projects and also ask myself why I am using A or B strategy.  The students would have a greatest benefit because based on the results of the research project, teacher would take on consideration and make all the changes that they need to make based o the students needs.  

Literature Review (I am going to rewrite this part)

The art of writing Spanish as a second language te abre las puertas to another world.  According to L. E. Sarmiento with S. A. Vazquez 2010, they create a Family history-writing project. The students would have the opportunity of writing a journal in Spanish and opened their heart to express their fears, anxieties, frustrations and his desires. The use of Spanish played a significant part in expressing their innermost feeling and thoughts.  Sergio wrote his journal with a confession to his parents and used a lot of metaphors and help Sergio heels his wounds that he had since he was little boy. Sarmientos also mentions the “Reading students’ writing helped me connect with their thoughts and experiences, but other times I was unprepared for their revelations.”  I personally think it’s a great project.  Most of the students do not have a great communication with their parents.  By writing its one way the students can express emotionally. According to this article the teacher had interesting stories, which means that most of the students were writing on their journal. The teacher had the opportunity giving feedback on every students writing. Her goal was practicing more writing and I believe that by practicing writing it make us better writers.  While Barkaour (2007) thinks that “Writing is one of the most difficult skills that second-language (L2) learners are expected to acquire, requiring the mastery of a variety of linguistic, cognitive, and sociocultural competencies. As many teacher attest, teaching L2 writing is challenging task as well.” It’s a challenge for us teacher and it would be for the students.  We need to challenge the students and push them beyond their knowledge.  We have a lot of students that have strong potential I have seen it, in my fieldwork. I would never forget a young girl that was from Bangladesh.  Her goal was to learn Spanish it was challenge, by the time she was on the senior year she was on AP Spanish.   Writing a second language in a se is like learning math it’s step by step.  

Technology and a Spanish class are two different objects, however we can take advantage of it. Most of students are involve in technology and we have to motivate them and find strategies by writing e-mail, create a blogs, have a written conversation on line to a native speaker, games or sites that help students become more effective on learning to write on a second language. Armstrong (2008), create a blog for her students to practice writing  and she is encouraging Spanish teachers to use more technology to keep the students motivated and enjoy learning second language.

I really liked using blogs for class because it was always accessible anywhere on campus. I found it easier to complete the assignments online and where I had easy access to dictionaries and other reference books. I also found it easier to be creative and write about the numerous topics because the community blogs were not graded. I was also willing to attempt things that were more difficult in these community blogs for this reason. I think it has increased my confi- dence in my writing because we have been putting directly into practice the grammar we have been learning in class in our own time and through various topics without worrying about grades. But I also think that the practice in the non-graded community blogs made the graded personal blogs better, because it was then easier to focus on the topic for the personal blog and write more directly out of our heads instead of have to look up every other word in a Spanish dictionary. Overall, I enjoyed using weblogs and often viewed others [sic] personal pages. (Armstrong,  2008, page 247).

Methodology

Methods

The methods for this research project are qualitative. The qualitative methods allow me to observe the class and have informal and formal conversations, interviews, and surveys.  I began by observing the class and having an informal conversation with the teacher and students because I wanted the participants to feel confortable and safe to share their honest opinions.  Interviewing and observing the group method would help me find out, What are the strategies Spanish teachers use to teach writing Spanish as a second language to motivate advanced level Spanish students in a public High School? 

Participants 

I would be working with advanced Spanish level students and a Spanish teacher that has thirty years of experience.  I went for the first time to observe the class and I did not gather a lot of information from the student or the teacher. I spoke to the teacher and I asked her if I could observe one specific group of students who were having a hard time academically.  He liked the idea and he also gave me the six names of the students. I would be observing the teacher Mr. Junior and six students which are Xavier S., Amanda R., Roberto G., Carlos K., Hailee G., and Jovi D.  Their parents were born in the

United Stated but their grandparents are from Colombia, Haiti, Ecuador, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. They consider themselves as Latinos, even though their first language is English. These students are not really engaged in the class.  They are absent frequently and are having difficult writing in Spanish as a second language. Xavier S. likes to play soccer as well as Carlos, Hailee likes to shop on the weekends, Amanda stays home all day, Jovi and Roberto spend all weekend playing video games.  Most of the students that I am observing are interesting in going to college but they are not sure if their parents can afford it.

Setting

My research will take place in Manhattan Center for Mathematics and Science (MCSM), in advanced level Spanish classroom.  This high school was built in 1982 and it is in the Upper East Side neighborhood known as the East Harlem.  David Jimenez is the current Principal; he graduated from the City College of New York.  MCSM serves 1588 students in ninth to twelfth grades. The high school has from ninth grade to twelfth grades.  Every high school has a goal that describes what the principal, teachers, and staffs are willing to do for the students. The MCSM mission is “to provide a challenging academic program that enables students to complete for admission to selective, four- year, post-secondary institutions.” This shows that every student is important and they will be prepared for college.  MCSM also provides a Bilingual Education for students that just came to United States and are learning English as their second language. All of the students have an opportunity to learn a foreign language that the high school teaches. Those languages been offered Chinese  I-VI, French I-VI, Spanish I-VI, and Spanish for native speakers and AP Spanish. Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics has diversity in the student population, which means we have a lot to learned from their cultures. According to the MCSM there are 57% Hispanic, 19% black, 19% Asian and 3%White. The classroom door is cover with colorful paper and it has a sign saying Bienvenidos Amigos. The classroom has thirty chairs but there are only twenty-two students and the teacher. The walls are covered with student’s drawings, writing, vocabulary, and a list of the book or short stories they have read.  The teacher has four dictionaries from English to Spanish. As I walk inside the classroom I could see the teacher’s rules.  The students worked really hard to have their work on the wall. With this groups of student I would see how and why the teacher uses his strategies to motivated them write in Spanish as a second language.

Data Collection

I used the methods of interview and observation to collect data for my research project.  I introduce myself to the class and told them that I was doing a research project base on learning to write in Spanish as a second language.  I was grateful and thankful to work with the teacher and the class.  I wanted to obtain the parental consent but the teacher said that it was not necessary as long as I do not used their real names and do not publish the research.  In my first observation I was sitting in the back of my room observing the students and taking notes on what I saw. For the second, observation, I was observing the specific group I was going to work with.  The third observation I will focus on the specific group and the teacher. At the end of the class I will interview the teacher. I also gave the group of students a questionnaire and four out the six students answered all the questions. The rest of the group left two or three answers blanks.  I gathered a lot personal information that helped me comprehend the students’ weaknesses in learning a second language and focusing on writing.   My questionnaire for the teacher had like twelve questions but I decided to break it up into two questionnaires. All the questions were open-ended questions. I also had the opportunity see the students writing. 

Data Analysis 

  In analyzing the interview and the questionnaire, I was surprised by the students and the teacher.  The results made me think outside the box.  The Spanish teacher uses a lot of strategies to motivated students write in Spanish as a second language.  Comparing the student’s questionnaire and the teacher questionnaire I discovered why the teacher has to use two or three strategies per day to motivated the students to write in Spanish.  According to the information I gather. The students did not have any interest on learning the Spanish language. The teacher’s goal was not to get the students to love the language. She wants the students to learn the Spanish language and feel confident in writing, reading and comprehending the language.