How Culture Shock Affects ELLs

Don't underestimate the results of culture shock. The emotional upheaval of moving can be devastating to any child. These symptoms are compounded when the child comes from a different culture and does not speak English.

What is Culture Shock?

Newly arrived ELLS who act out in the classroom are probably suffering from culture shock. This is a term used to describe the feelings people have when they move to an unfamiliar culture. Immigrant children may become withdrawn and passive or they may be aggressive. The more different the new culture is from their own, the greater the shock. Newcomers have left behind family members, friends, teachers, and pets. They have lost their language and culture. Often they do not have the support of their parents who are in shock too.

Four Stages of Culture Shock

It must be emphasized that every child reacts differently to moving to a new place. New arrivals usually go through four stages of culture shock.

1.Euphoric or Honeymoon Stage

During this stage newcomers are excited about their new lives. Everything is wonderful and they are having a great time learning about their environment.

2. Culture Shock Stage.

The differences between the new and the native cultures becomes more apparent. Students feel overwhelmed at this stage. There is so much they do not understand about their new surroundings. They are frustrated because they can not communicate and are bombarded with unfamiliar surroundings, unreadable social signals and an unrelenting barrage of new sounds. Students suffering from culture shock may seem sleepy, irritable, disinterested or depressed. Some students may become aggressive and act out their frustrations.

Newcomers in this stage of culture shock need time and patience from their teachers.

3. Integration Stage.

Newcomers start to deal with the differences between the old culture and new. They learn to integrate their own beliefs with those of the new culture. Some newcomers will start to replace the old values with new ones. Others will begin to find ways to exist with both cultures. Many immigrant parents start to become alarmed at this stage. They do not want their children to lose their language and culture.

4. Acceptance Stage.

Newcomers are now able to enter and prosper in the mainstream culture. They accept both cultures and combine them into their lives. Some students will adopt the mainstream culture at school and follow the values of the home culture outside of school. During this stage many immigrant parents make it clear to their children that they do not want them to adopt the mainstream culture. This is because many immigrant students forget their native language and reject their culture.

Remember that students suffering from culture shock need time to adjust.

The importance of teaching social skills to ELLs

In my experience, we should not assume that English language learners will acquire socially appropriate language simply by being with English-speaking natives. ELLs need to be specifically taught social skills such as how to greet people, to give and receive compliments, to apologize, and to make polite requests. Students need to understand nonverbal language and proxemics. They need to be able to discover the appropriate voice tones, volumes, and language for different school settings.

The need for teaching socially and culturally appropriate language in social situations is evident every day in our classes. We have all had students who use the same language when speaking to a teacher that they would use when talking to a peer. I once had a beginning English language learners who had learned how to say "yeah, yeah, yeah" to friends during recess. He couldn't say or understand much else in English. Whenever I gave him directions, he would reply, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I had a difficult time making him comprehend that this was inappropriate language for a child to use to an adult. I finally taught him to say, "Yes, Mrs. Haynes" but I needed to have a translator explain why "yeah, yeah, yeah" was unsuitable for the classroom.

The same thing occurs when a second language speaker swears in class. An English language learners in my school used an "x-rated" expression in his third grade classroom. The teacher was understandably distressed and required that the student write an apology for homework. Even more upsetting to the teacher was that the student's parents did not take the infraction of school rules seriously. I explained to her that swearing does not have the same "shock" value in a person's second language as it does in their first. So the parents were not "shocked" by their child's use of this language. What is considered "shocking" or inappropriate language for the classroom must sometimes be directly taught.

Use role playing to demonstrate social English

I spend a lot of time teaching students how to give and receive compliments, to thank someone for something, to answer the telephone, to ask directions, and to make small talk. Role playing, teacher modeling, peer modeling, and video are all good tools for teaching these social skills. Have students learn how to observe their peers for models of correct behavior. Use real incidents that come up in your class. Have students practice saying "good morning" and "good-by" to their teachers and classmates right from the beginning. Encourage classroom teachers to set expectations for these behaviors. Classroom and subject area teachers need to learn about some of the cultural differences in manners and behavior. You don't want teachers to over-react when a student won't make eye contact or relates to other children by touching them all the time, or smiles at inappropriate times.

Giant Steps for ELLs with Nonfiction Writing

The biggest challenge when teaching writing to Gr. 4-12 new learners of English is that many of them develop their text in their native language and then try to translate into English. This translated writing is full of inaccurate verb tenses and unintelligible sentences. There are so many errors that editing becomes problematic for teachers. I feel strongly that it is better to help students avoid writing in English through the filter of their native language.

What problems do our students face when learning to write in English? First, their vocabulary is restricted and they limit themselves to words they know how to spell. Let’s examine the work of a 5th grade newcomer, Yimin, who wrote the following text in her mainstream classroom in response to the prompt: “If you were an animal, what animal would you like to be and why?”

“I like be eagle becas eagle birds king and he fly very up. They scard. When they baby, they take off they feather and they squek they claw.

How do we avoid the garbled writing that Yimin produced? I am convinced that English language learners write better if they begin with non-fiction reading and writing. Graphic organizers such as story maps, T-charts, and Venn diagrams help scaffold writing and provide students with language chunks that can be used in their text. If topics are developed orally, non-fiction vocabulary expanded and charted, and correct sentence structure modeled, student writing will improve dramatically. One way to achieve this is to teach non-fiction writing during writing workshop and to modify writing process steps for beginning English language learners. The topics used during this lesson should be taken from the students’ subject area content. I recommend the following steps :

Prewriting: You will need to spend a lot of time in this stage with new learners of English.

• As a follow-up to non-fiction reading, brainstorm and chart facts about the topic in sentence form. Have them read the facts from your chart orally. Strengthen the link between oral and written language.
• Keep a running list of content vocabulary. Review and practice the vocabulary every day. Speak and write facts in full sentences.
• Use graphic organizers to help students arrange ideas. ELLs will usually find it difficult to go from phrases to comprehensible sentences so complete the organizer with sentences, not phrases. Your students may not value this strategy if they have not used organizers to write in their native language so you will need to insist on it.

Writing: Have students practice writing from a story map, Venn diagram or other type of graphic organizer. Provide them with an organizer that you have written together on the non-fiction topic. This gives a beginning writer the language and structure that they need. Show clearly what should be covered in the writing and how it should be organized.

Editing: Don’t expect students who are not fluent in English to self-edit. They will not usually find their own mistakes. You will have to be more hands-on with the editing of non-native speakers and conference with them on a regular basis to discuss their works–in- progress. If you have your students peer-edit, they may be reluctant to share their work with native speakers. You may want to group beginners with more fluent native speakers. Give pairs a specific item to check. For example “Check the ‘s’ at the end of a verb if you are talking about one other person.” You may need to teach a mini-lesson about the item you want edited.

Revising: English language learners will not remember what to revise unless changes are clearly marked on their papers. Instead of writing “Add more information here,” write more specifically “Tell what eagles eat here.” If students are a part of the editing process, the revisions will be more meaningful to them.

Publishing: This is an important step. Help students develop a sense of audience by encouraging students to share their writing with classmates and family. Display work in the classroom and hallway or make classroom books.

I see my students take giant steps when non-fiction writing is introduced to beginners in writing workshop and steps are modified as shown above. Yimin wrote this piece on a forest animal in her ESL classroom.

“Eagle are carnivores. They live in forest. They eat small mammal, fish and snakes. They use eyes to see prey. They catch food with sharp talon. They are diurnal because they hunt in the day.”