“ In the past, when we wrote incorrectly on the chalkboard, the students didn’ t know but now they notice our mistakes!”
“ I cannot leave chalk on the table during the lunch period because students use it to write stories on the chalkboard. When I come back to the classroom, they call me to listen to them read what they wrote and that takes up class time. I did not teach them those stories; the stories come from their own ideas.” 1
MTB MLE students learn to understand and speak the official school language. At first, students listen and respond( no speaking) to their teacher’ s commands in the school language to do specific actions. Examples:“ Walk to the door.”“ Pick up a book.”“ Point to the tree.” Teachers follow a careful plan that introduces new vocabulary and new sentence constructions in“ small steps” that never make students feel frustrated or afraid. Quite the opposite--students have fun as they learn new words and new sentence constructions.
Lahu student listens as the teacher says a word in the school language and points to the matching thing in the picture.( Thailand) © Foundation for Applied Linguistics, Thailand
When they are ready, teachers encourage the students to begin talking in the official school language. At first they respond to the teachers’ questions with single words. Then they respond in short sentences. Their teacher continues to help them take“ small steps” in learning and as a result, they are confident in using their new language. Parents laugh when they tell teachers that their small children come home from school and tell them commands in the official school language!
Students begin reading and writing the official school language. When students have begun to develop fluency in reading and writing their MT and when they have learned the
1 Translated from an article in www. isranews. org March 2010
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