Arizona's Language Requirements for Teachers

The Arizona Department of Education has decides to evaluate all teachers teaching ESL (English Second Language) classes to determine if their English is accented and grammatically correct. If these teachers are deemed to use incorrect grammar or speak with heavy accents, then they will not be allowed to continue teaching ESL classes. This measure, predictably, has been linked to broader anti-immigrant sentiment in Arizona, particularly to the recent law mandating local police to enforce federal immigration laws. However, a recent article in the Wall Street Journal goes into more depth. The Arizona Department of Education is simply choosing to reevaluate teachers on rules that are loosely mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. NCLB requires students who are learning English to be taught by "fluent" English speakers, but it leaves enforcement and specific requirements to state boards of education. What has really happened is not an instatement of a law, but a reinterpretation of established laws and a drive to interpret them.

The WSJ article highlights the difficulties of these requirements on some school districts in Arizona. In the 1990s, teachers were actively recruited from South American countries in order to provide high-quality Spanish-language instruction. In 2000, Arizonans voted to have all classes in public schools be in English. These teachers were then required to switch their languages of instruction. Many school administrators are now faced with having to fire or reassign some of their most experienced teachers because of their accents. Also, as the article points out, determining fluency invited arbitrary decisions. However, it would also seem that the Arizona Board of Education has the interest of its English language learners at heart. It seems logical that students would learn English best from a native speaker.

However, a study recently conducted in Israel calls this seemingly logical assumption into question. It found that across subjects matters (not only in language learning), students actually processed information faster when the person who they were learning it from someone who shared their accent. Though the study does not seem large enough to conclusively determine this, - it had fewer than 100 participants - it does suggest that our presumptions of who makes the best teacher for an English language learner may be wrong. Assuming that teacher and student both had similar accents and that the teacher was using correct grammar, her/his accent might actually be a aid rather than a hindrance to students learning a language. It would be interesting to see further research in this area to see if the findings of the Israeli study are confirmed. Also, though students may immediately find it easier to understand someone with their same accent, the study does not study long term impacts of having learned a language from someone with a similar accent versus somebody with a native-speaker's accent. Perhaps in the short term it is easier to learn from somebody with a similar accent, but this similarity may also impair one's eventual ability to understand native speakers.

References:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703572504575213883276427528.html?mod=WSJ_WSJ_US_News_5

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/learning/accented-teachers-may-be-bette.html