Emerging English Learners

ELL stands for English Language Learners and are often students from countries which do not speak English that come to school to learn not only the regular content that a school teaches but also the English language. One of the many issues teachers face in helping students learn the content in class is the challenge of integrating the students’ native language along with the content of the lesson. Studies have shown that “3 years of exposure to English is not long enough for all individual ELLs to catch up to their monolingual peers for all subdomains of language” (Paradis, 2016). To properly teach ELL students both content for subjects as well as the English language teachers need to help integrate English and the students’ native language

For teachers, I believe they are lacking in having efficient data, practices, and resources. These three categories play an essential role in educating, evaluating, and caring for ELL students. Communication is a huge factor when it comes to instruction in the classroom. In the past research has shown poor communication between teachers, students and families. Schools often lack in providing differentiated methods and tools to teach ELL students. Schools in the past have failed to offer the correct assessments that were needed in order to diagnose each student's needs and measure their individualized learning standards. Educators can easily become frustrated because there is such a wide range of English learners. This means academic levels are different and the educators have not received the proper training or instructions on how to correctly educate ELL students.

The class is a mainstreamed first grade co-teach class of 34 students and two teachers. There are 16 females and 18 males that included 12 active English Language Learners (ELLs) (5 females, 7 males) and five Level 5 (proficient) students. The 12 ELL students represent five languages—Spanish (7), Chinese (1), Chin Burmese (1), and Arabic (2), Brazilian Portuguese (1). Eight of the twelve students tested at Level 1 on the WIDA language proficiency scale.

There can be several different reasons why an English Language Learner can have troubles comprehending the English language. Poverty can play a huge role when in explaining why many English language learners have the troubles in mastering the English language. The State testing has varied throughout the years, along with the degrees of assessments and progress. Teachers also need constructive feedback to properly assess their own progress. The increase prescription of ADHD medication can also be a factor. Programs like SLADI in effect that pulls ELL’s from mainstream classrooms to focus on advanced grammatical structures of the English language; all in which, have been unsuccessful in aiding the student to acquire mastery within the English language domains of reading and writing. Comparing a personal experience I had dealt with wasted school year time, regarding an ELL student, involves a teacher being out of touch with her student and giving inappropriate leveled work. All of these issues work hand in hand. The ultimate goal is to teach literacy and to reach proficiency within the English language.

English language learners and partnerships with families, communities, teacher preparation, and schools is an article within the Handbook of Urban Education written by Ana Christina Dasilva Iddings, Mary Carol Combs and Luis C. Moll which focus on creating partnerships with families, communities, teacher preparation and schools to help English Language Learners become more successful in school.

In the Early Advanced Stage, English Language Learners are able to communicate well and have good comprehension of information. The teacher should provide various ways for students to engage in realistic writing and speaking opportunities. (Vogt & Echevarria, 2008)

In recent decades, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in the diverse population, especially with English-language learners in the education system. English-language learners are students who are unable to communicate fluently or learn effectively in English. These students come from a non-English speaking home or background and require specialized instruction in the English language and their academic courses. Educators use a number of terms when referring to English-language learners, limited English proficient (LEP) students, non-native English speakers, language-minority students, and either bilingual students or emerging bilingual students (York, 2008). As

Hill, J.D., & Flynn, K.M. (2006). Classroom instruction that works with English language learner. Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

English Learners (EL) are any students that are learning a second language and being introduced to the English language. They can affect education

The mere reference to the label given to students acquiring the English language potentially sparks debate amongst educators, policy makers and researchers. The federal government refers to these students as Limited English Proficient (LEP) students. This identification references the deficiencies the student may have rather than to identify the diversity and gifts that the student may possess. Such labels set premature limitations of the student and predisposes the student to limited rigor in instruction. Educators and researchers reference the same subgroup of students as ELLs, establishing the understanding that with sufficient support, increased rigor and cultural understanding, students will succeed.

English language learners are students whose first language is not English. Consequently, ELLs have lower reading ability levels compared to non-English learners (Begeny, Ross, Green, Mitchell, & Whitehouse, 2012; Ross & Begeny, 2011). In addition, different ELL categories exist: long-term ELLs, migrant ELLs, and transnational ELLs. Long-term ELLs are United States citizens who have been enrolled in American schools since kindergarten; however, these students are classified as limited English proficient because they have not successfully acquired English during their elementary years. Furthermore, transnational ELLs move back and forth from their native country to the United States; therefore, the constant move between countries inhibit

All students must receive what is known as a home language survey upon entering a school to identify what primary language is utilized in the home. Based on the responses received students will be given an English Language Assessment. Federal laws states that “School districts must have a system to determine the language spoken in each student’s home and to objectively identify students who need language support services due to their limited proficiency in speaking, reading, writing and understanding of English” (Abedi, 2004). Many states follow the federal guidelines for classification of student who are ELL while other states follow their own procedures while ensuring they follow the protocol outlined by the Federal laws. It is important to understand that not every ELL require the same amount of support. The school should then create a program for the student to address any deficiencies that the student has and help them to reach goal of becoming proficient in English. The school must also make sure that students have adequate staff in place and materials to accommodate the students individualized needs. These plans should also be evaluated periodically to evaluate the standards and student’s progress and make modifications to the plan if needed. There must also a clearly defined exit criteria for each

In this country good command on English is most important to communicate but most of the students from Saudi Arabia are not good in English. As a result it becomes difficult for them to communicate with non-Arabic speakers’ comfortably. This implies that learning also becomes difficult for these students as lessons in the institution are also offered in English. In that capacity, our organization embarks on giving English lessons to the members that helps them in getting better in English language. The classes for the same are held at the Islamic centre after the ordinary school classes every evening. Amid the initial couple of days or weeks after the landing of new students in the institution, providing this administration is ordinarily exceptionally troublesome as we are compelled to go about as translators to the students, particularly those with no information of English whatsoever. I learnt from my own experience at the organization as a Saudi student that the new students face issues in both communication as well as written English. They are neither capable of pronouncing English words nor writing these words in a correct way. It results in making communication extremely troublesome. Accordingly, I customize my lessons to focus on pronunciation and sentence development and on composition as well. Students are given a lot of reading material for pronunciation and

Vocabulary plays a significant role in English as second language learning process. For the majority of English as Second Language(ESL) learners, the ultimate goal of learning the language is to understand (read and listen) and communicate (write and speak) with little difficulty and the lack of sufficient vocabulary may be the constraint of such goal (Folse, 2004). As the bedrock of English and as well as language, vocabulary also facilitates the development of other language skills: lexical richness leads to the progress in the use of language, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (Nation, 1994). Reversely, The improvement in such skills may enhance learners vocabulary size as the exposure to more learning materials improves the capacity to acquire new vocabulary. (The importance of learning vocabulary/ why vocabulary?)

ESL students are students that speak English as a second language. Presently, there is many different system to characterize this type of students (qtd in Shi, Steen 63). For example, they can be seen as “English Language Learners (ELL), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English Language Development (ELD), English Language Service (ELS), and