1. Cultural and linguistic diversity consists not only in adherence to certain traditions or usage of different languages. It is the discrepancy in the overall perception of the objective reality that can affect students’ performance greatly. First of all, a teacher should reflect on such diversity to establish solid relationship with his students and better understand them. Moreover, such comprehension helps to enhance the progress of students. Versed in students’ cultural peculiarities, teacher can find the most appropriate example to explain some notions and the most effective approach to each student. An interest to his cultural background as well as family involvement makes student more confident and helps to cope with the cultural and lingual barriers. Provision of new terms in both English and native languages would also make teaching more fruitful and easier for students.
2. BISC or Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills is a set of language knowledge acquired in about two years necessary for everyday communication. It includes simple notions to express common thoughts in daily life learned through interaction with friends and schoolmates. It is sufficient for early stages of study, but appears to be inadequate beginning from upper elementary school. Meanwhile CALP or Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency comprises more refined and complex vocabulary for academic purposes. Thus, it is acquired in five to seven years and may include terms unfamiliar even in one’s native language. It is very important to discriminate BISC and CALP since good communicative skills don’t indicate academic language knowledge. So the teacher neglecting improvement of CALP, considering that a student has excellent BISC, may fail at language teaching, as far as this student would be unable for the further academic progress due to the lack of academic language skills.
3. Writing notes in order to communicate with the parents of a student is not the best solution, especially when this student is a representative of another culture. The parents may not know English sufficiently to respond or their cultural perception of communication may differ. A better option is to address the student to find out some information about his family and then invite the parents for a personal conversation. Creating friendly environment (e.g. home settings) would eliminate parents’ confusion. If they don’t speak English, the teacher may hire an interpreter or a person capable to translate the conversation, but the student should never been involved as the negotiator. The teacher also may learn some words in the student’s native language to facilitate communication with the family and show respect for its cultural background.
4. To become more culturally responsive and meet the diverse needs of the students Mr. Stone should make an investigation into the ethnicity they have came from. This should be made in different ways. For example, the teacher may offer to write a composition on the customs and traditions. He also may suggest an alternative role-playing activity, such a organizing something like a “Culture Day”, enabling students to present their national languages, costumes, dishes etc. Such attention to their culture would …