Abstract
In the course of Exploring Social and Cultural Perspectives on Diversity, a course required for all students of education major, to enhance the teaching of the concepts of multicultural education, and the differentiation of culturally responsive strategies, the author as teacher educator and her students as teacher candidates supplement movies in this course conceptualizing pragmatics, semiotics and aesthetics into literacy education by inviting students of diversity to watch movies, talk about movies, write movies, and act movies. Pragmatics is the study of how language is used for communication in various social and cultural contexts; semiotics is the study of signs like languages, arts, music, dance, drama, films, and paralinguistics which includes the nonverbal communication signals, etc., that human created to mediate the world; and aesthetics is the artistic stance that learners take for responses to literacy experiences. The purposes of this study are multi-functional: to develop the multisensory acquisition of five literacy skills in thinking, listening, speaking, writing and reading in a pleasant and authentic discourse setting. Both students from diversity and mainstream cultures acquire natural language for social interaction. Based on research, most students from diversity need two years to develop the social language, while needing five years to obtain the academic language. The results from this research reveal that audio-visual approach in terms of movies fosters students’ cultural awareness, expedites English as second language acquisition for social function toward academic success and globalization.
Highlights
The author explored the second language acquisition process of students from diversity, whose first language was not English at the urban school district in Georgia, US, for four semesters when she supervised teacher candidates’ practicum from Pre-K to 4th grade
The author observed that most K-4 students from diversity rarely asked questions or answered questions in the classroom, but kept smiling. Those students were very active when they played with their Spanish-speaking peers in the playground during recess or lunch time, while they had little interaction with their English-speaking peers
One new classroom teacher complained to me, “They have been in the U.S for more than two years, but they did not pass CRCT’s!” (The Criterion-Referenced Competency Test designed to measure students’ performance in reading, English/language arts, mathematics, science and social studies in Georgia)
Summary
The author explored the second language acquisition process of students from diversity, whose first language was not English at the urban school district in Georgia, US, for four semesters when she supervised teacher candidates’ practicum from Pre-K to 4th grade. The author and the teacher candidates employed “movies” in the after school program and found that movies expedited the ELLs (English language Learners) social language and benefited them for academic success too. The author observed that most K-4 students from diversity rarely asked questions or answered questions in the classroom, but kept smiling. Those students were very active when they played with their Spanish-speaking peers in the playground during recess or lunch time, while they had little interaction with their English-speaking peers. One new classroom teacher complained to me, “They have been in the U.S for more than two years, but they did not pass CRCT’s!” (The Criterion-Referenced Competency Test designed to measure students’ performance in reading, English/language arts, mathematics, science and social studies in Georgia)
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