Can WL and ELA Be Brought Together?

2 thoughts on “Can WL and ELA Be Brought Together?”

1. Sean Lawler

   October 2, 2020 at 2:34 pm

   I serve as an ESL teacher, to a small extent, in my current Spanish teaching job. So, I teach 3 classes of non-heritage Spanish, 2 classes of heritage Spanish, and I’m picking up a kinda .5 class which will be an ESL class for a couple of students in my small school that really need additional ESL support. This article is very timely for me. Thanks Ben!

   You talk about the dangers of going out of bounds towards the end of the article. Now that you’re a non-targeted teacher, as am I, your views on going out of bounds have changed, right? I see it as, well, as long as their is some sort of visual support for the language that you are using, and so long as you know that the messages you are communicating are compelling enough (just enough… we don’t have to be Kevin Hart-like funny) then the language we use falls within bounds.

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2. Ben Slavic

   October 2, 2020 at 2:42 pm

   Yes and I really like the way you described NTCI in the second paragraph above. It’s spot-on. Anyone who reads that paragraph might finally grasp what we mean by non-targeted.

   This:

   …as long as their is some sort of visual support for the language that you are using, and so long as you know that the messages you are communicating are compelling enough, then the language we use falls within bounds….

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