Should
accommodations be made to the Spanish Language curriculum in order to enhance
the learning of native Spanish Speaking students?
Challenges in the Classroom
The challenges are unique,
due to the nature of the curriculum. In a Spanish class, for example, the
teacher faces the challenge of teaching the IEP and ELL student, the high
achievers, the low functioning student, and finally, the native speaker of Spanish
student.
Teaching the native speaker of Spanish always seems to be
the most serious challenge in a Spanish class. There is a tendency for
this type of student to be bored and frustrated with the pace and demonstrate very low proficiency in Reading Comprehension, New
Vocabulary Acquisition, and Writing. Also,
these students bring a negative attitude to the Spanish class. They act
like the teacher does not know what he or she is doing. This negative attitude has become a concern for
many teachers, as the foreign language curriculum does not have accommodations
for the native speaker of the language.
Some schools offer a Spanish for Native Speakers program.
According to the Department
of Public Instruction of Public
Schools of North
Carolina, the teacher must be either a native speaker of the language
or have a high proficiency level. Finding a teacher that has the appropriate
training to teach these classes is very
difficult. The teacher needs to understand that these students
come from a home where the parents work two jobs. In most cases, these
students don’t have a father figure, they share a house or apartment with three
other families, or they might speak an indigenous dialect with their family
members. The teacher also needs to understand that these students speak colloquial Spanish, which is very different
from the standard form that is taught in
a classroom. Other students that are Hispanic were born and raised in
this country but although their parents speak to them in Spanish at home, they
don’t speak the language very well. According
to research, these students are considered to be heritage speakers.
Finally, the majority of these students come from Central America where they lived in small villages in poor conditions. Teachers also need to understand that the Spanish Speaking student does not have the same resources that a regular Spanish student may have, such as cell phones, I-pads, and computers.
How can we encourage a love of learning in these
students? In order to engage these
students, we need to make some adjustments to the Spanish Curriculum to accommodate the Spanish Speaker in our
regular Spanish class. What type of accommodations can be made? There are many resources for the
native Spanish speaker that allows the teacher to differentiate the material being covered in class. Please look at
our Forum and Accommodations page for ideas and resources.
