Teach English in Ande Zhen - Chengdu Shi

Learners of English living abroad, whether residing in a non-native speaking country for work or study, will face stressors that will be brought into the regular classroom, as well as the ESL classroom. These stressors will dramatically impact learning, especially during the initial adjustment phase. Many of the non-native English students I have worked with have been students coming to the United States as foreign exchange students, or students being sent to private American schools for the sole purpose of being submerged in English. Most of my students have been upper elementary or middle school ages, and all have been Asian, generally Chinese or Korean. Over the years, I have come to acknowledge, expect, and warn other teachers of this lengthy, at least three week, adjustment period that is needed in order for the student to be successful in his/her English acquisition and function to the best of his ability in regular and ESL classrooms. Students new to the United States are faced with immediate physical, emotional, and mental issues that require a teacher’s extension of grace and understanding, and it may be up to the ESL teacher to be an advocate for these students in their regular classes. A non-English speaking student new to the United States will have immediate physical challenges. With China’s time being almost exactly opposite of the Unites States, a 13 hour difference in most cases, they experience a physical upset and exhaustion beyond the typical jet lag that tourists face. Their days and nights are reversed. Quality sleep may be elusive, and inevitably, they will get sick with a cold or stomach issue. It seems these students aren’t given many, if any, buffer days between landing at the airport, and landing in the classroom. They experience fatigue, illnesses, insomnia, and even adjustment to new temperatures and foods, which all affect them physically. Students away from their native country will have emotional difficulties that will affect their classroom participation and learning. They are homesick, the culture is unfamiliar, and housing, food, TV, and even the weather remind them they have landed on a strange planet! Feelings of loneliness abound, as everyone around them is speaking a foreign language, and they feel left out of conversation at lunch, hallway banter, and they don’t get the jokes, and even may feel the jokes are about them! They are fragile emotionally, cry easily, and often don’t engage as they aren’t planning on staying! Students studying abroad will at first be mentally overwhelmed in their classroom, and not be able to work up to par. Due to the snowball effect of lack of sleep, homesickness, and being inundated with so much unfamiliar stimuli, they may not score well on placement tests. While they thought they knew quite a bit of English, they can’t recall it, are unable to employ any receptive skills, and often just shut down. I had an 8th grade boy from China one year, that experienced all these issues, and that year, he was the only student in the class until Christmas when two other Asian students arrived. He hit the ground running, got a miserable cold, and while I knew he was a very bright student with a considerable amount of English training prior to coming to the US, could not seem to grasp anything I was trying to teach him. He appeared to be uncooperative and have a bad attitude. One day soon after he had arrived, I could not get him to respond to me at all, and I soon saw his lip start to quiver. I suggested he look over the story and excused myself to use the restroom, in an attempt to not embarrass him. When I returned a few minutes later, he was sound asleep, and I allowed him to sleep for the rest of the 90 minute class. No learning was going to take place when his basic physical and emotional needs were not being met. Teachers of other subjects, such as history, have a considerable amount of material to cover, and when EFL learners are peppered in a regular English speaking classroom, understandably, cannot stop to explain the language. EFL students love to come to ESL class, as they know the teacher’s one goal is to help them acquire English! They can have success in their ESL class, feel freer to ask questions, often about other subjects, and are more confident in their attempts to speak in English. For example, in the aforementioned student, several teachers were shocked to know that this student could even speak English, as he had never attempted to in their classes! As his ESL teacher, I was the only adult in the building he would talk to. Sometimes the ESL teacher ends up offering encouragement, consolation, and even acting in the role of mother to these younger students, and almost always, advocating on their behalf in meetings with the regular classroom teachers, pointing out these stressors that students new to the United States face in their academic classes. In summary, all teachers, but especially ESL teachers, need to recognize these very real life and classroom stresses faced by non-native English speaking students coming to the United States. Students are dealing with extreme physical exhaustion and their bodies adapting to a new climate, different foods, and a total change of routine. They miss their home, family, and everything familiar, and they find it next to impossible to focus or grasp new material, especially as it is all in English. Teachers need to expect these stressors in students’ lives, realize they are a normal part of the adjustment phase, and do all they can to help these students take care of their physical and emotional needs first, in order to be able to be receptive to new material in the classroom.