English Learners Outside the Classroom: The Effects of Participating in Extracurricular Activities

Recommendations and/or Lessons Learned

It was very valuable to hear from the students’ recommendations that can be implemented to help students feel less anxious to participate in extracurricular activities with the hopes that they will improve their English skills and will feel part of the school culture faster.

One recommendation made by one of the students was to have regular announcements in both English and Spanish since 86% of the students at this high school are Hispanic, which makes it the largest group in the school. Some students might not be aware of sport tryouts because they cannot understand English, if announcements are given in the most common languages spoken by the students, the message will have more reach.
Since the main reason students are staying away from participating in extracurricular activities is the fear of not being able to understand directions, one recommendation is to create a volunteer program of bilingual students willing to translate for their teammates. The couch/advisor will pair the volunteer helpers with the English Learners so they can receive information until they feel prepared to communicate on their own. At this school there are already incentives such as school gear and raffles. Volunteer bilingual helpers can also get some of those incentives and get community service for future college applications. This idea can alleviate students’ fear to participate in extracurricular activities and can provide them with an easy transition into school participation. A final recommendation will be to try to hire more bilingual coaches and assistant coaches since the number of English Learners is very high and these positions will benefit students in high need.

Limitations

The small sample size of this research study is a limitation. Only three students were interviewed to represent three different groups of English learners. One student was selected to represent ELs who were born in the United States and have attended school since kindergarten, and now is reclassified. One student represents the group of students who arrived about 2-3 years ago and are at an intermediate level of English development. Finally, the last student represents the newcomer group; the students who have arrived in the country less than a year ago. Since the researcher used narrative research and the time to conduct the interviews was limited, it was best for the study to limit the participant to only three students.