Talk:Foundations and Assessment of Education/Edition 1/Foundations Table of Contents/Chapter 4/4.6.1

Reader Responses
(Please post your Reader Responses below this line and make sure to include your four tilde)

I chose this article because it was an unfamiliar subject. Everything else, gifted students, ADHD students, gender issues…I have discussed and studied in-depth during my bachelors degree. I could have put my finger on what code switching really was, but it was necessary for me to read the article to gain a better perspective. After reading, I do have a more detailed understanding of the issues involving these types of students. It makes perfect sense and was well defined. Considering the diversity of our population, specifically the Hispanic population, it is necessary for educators to be able to teach language effectively to these types of students. We need to make sure we properly address the issues of code switching without offending or embarrassing. This topic really goes hand and hand with teaching bilingual students, as that is where most of this problem originates. It still amazes me that we are not teaching second languages as a necessity early on in our curriculum. The rest of the world teaches more than one language and I feel this will eventually stress our capabilities in the global markets. Although that is a whole other debate, I believe students and teachers would be better prepared for code switching students if they really understood what it was to learn another language. A whole other debate though! I will say, the article was informative but could have addressed more specifically certain instructional methods for these types of students. Abitt002 (talk) 18:45, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

As I read this article I had so many memories coming to mind. I found the article interesting and funny at the same time. Great information about the topic, the concept of language switching is very well explained. As a bilingual person myself I have committed many of the examples shown in the article. Over time learning both English and Spanish at the same time it has facilitated the movement of language to language during conversation. I do find that many teachers are not equipped to understand a student that can speak multiple languages because of the code switching. Teachers should also know the language they are teaching to the "T". It is very important that the teacher knows the language very well so that he or she can be an instrument of perfecting the knowledge of the language to the student. I think that even though it is not mandatory for teacher to be bilingual, that they should at least try to learn another one. This way they would be able to better understand what the struggle is for multilingual students. Bpenn005 (talk) 00:52, 12 July 2009 (UTC)