As a rule of thumb, individuals feel comfortable in situations where they feel welcomed and valued, comfortable about taking risks, successful, respected, and free to express their opinions and desires — an environment they feel they belong to. The conditions are not different for language learners. Teachers need to first attempt to lower students’ affective filters and create a learning community in the classroom before they can attempt to teach content. How can they do that? Below are some ideas.
- Learn how to pronounce students’ names correctly.
- Express a warm, friendly, and caring attitude towards students.
- Value their participation in the learning process, even if it is through nonverbal responses.
- Make instructional accommodations to facilitate SOESOL students’ learning.
- Invite parents to become partners in the teaching of their children.
- Incorporate aspects of the each child’s culture into the curriculum.
- Learn about each student’s native culture and a few utterances in his/her native language.
- Create an inclusive learning community in the classroom.
- Use a variety of instructional strategies to meet the diverse needs and learning styles of the students.
- Establish equal eye contact with all students.
- Provide opportunities for equal classroom participation for all students.
- Vary group composition so that students can work with all students in the learning community.
- Periodically change the physical arrangement of the classroom to emphasize different student-student interactive patterns.
- Maintain open channels of communication with students.
- Attempt to make home visits to have a more holistic view of the learner.
- Make the school community aware of some unique characteristics of the students’ cultures through bulletin boards or other resources.
- Make suggestions for bilingual materials that can be added to the school library.
- Share the success and progress of second language learners with the school community.
- Adopt a multicultural teaching approach.
- View diversity as an asset for learning and not an obstacle.