In Woods Chan's class at a High School in California, students chat with each other in Spanish.Arabic(阿拉伯语) and Mam, a Mayan language from Guatemala. The students have only been in the US for a few weeks or months. Many students were from different countries last year. Woods Chan became concerned when she started hearing the Spanish-speaking students laugh when their classmates spoke Mam or Arabic.
Woods Chan came up with an idea. She asked her students to take turns teaching a little bit of their home language each day. Students taught their peers(同伴) how to count from 1 to 10, how to introduce themselves and how to say basic phrases or words like, ""Cool. "Then, they recorded themselves saying those phrases in short videos and wrote vocabulary words on the whiteboard.
Woods Chan saw the difference in her students. She said they grew more confident after seeing their own language on the whiteboard and hearing it in the videos. They started making friends with each other across cultural lines. Other students who were not in that class would come in and see something written in Mam on the whiteboard and say, "Hey, that's Mam! I speak Mam!”
The project also helped students understand their peers better. Orlando, a 17-year-old student from El Salvador, said he never knew Arabic or Mam even existed before he came to the US and heard his classmates talk. Now, he thinks it would be good for all students in his school to learn a little of their peers' home language. "When I first got here,”he said in Spanish, “I thought, ‘No one talks like me. I'm the only one,’ and I felt alone. Now, I don't feel so bad anymore.”
Knowledge of other languages can help Woods Chan's students beyond the classroom, too.Languages like Mam are becoming more and more common in the US. Some Oakland graduates have gone on to become Mam-English interpreters(口译员)to help fill a lack of interpreters in all kinds of settings.
【小题1】What made Woods Chan think of the idea?| A．Her students making fun of another's language |
| B．Her students hardly using their home language. |
| C．Her students being interested in learning a new language. |
| D．Her students having difficulty communicating with each other. |
| A．Angry but accepting. | B．Excited and proud. |
| C．puzzled but supportive. | D．Relaxed and creative. |
| A．It made him feel less alone at school. |
| B．It encouraged him to get a job as an interpreter. |
| C．It helped him understand his home language better. |
| D．It enabled him to work better in foreign language classes. |
| A．School is not the only place to learn. |
| B．All her students are language teachers. |
| C．She responds to her students' needs quickly. |
| D．Language is not a barrier to communication |
