English As A Second Language

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

This paper will discuss the ESL students and the programming that must be implemented in order to have an effective contributing outcome. ESL students are defined as people whose first born language is not English. However, not all ESL students are immigrants, according to Alberta Education (2007) there are two main groups of ESL learners; Canadian – born and the second is termed as Foreign –born.

It is essential to understand English language learners’ needs because ELL students face the combined challenge of learning all the academic content as other students, while also learning the language of instruction. With the rapid growth in the size of the ELL student population in the U.S., teachers who are effective recognizes ELL students unique academic needs, unique background experience, culture, language, personality, interests and attitudes toward learning for the purpose to adjust, or differentiate, their instruction to meet students’ needs.

ELL continue to rise year after year. In EDUC 628, the class delved into the rise of ELL in America and how the best teaching methods to approach each learner with. Every ELL student is unique and has different learning process. Although the semester covered a wide variety of topics ranging from dialects to teaching methods, every module served its purpose in providing a framework for future ELL teachers. Learning about how to teach ELL was significant to me because when I first entered the school system in America, I was placed into ESL and I have gone through the process of many of these teaching methods. EDUC 628 main focus was preparing students whose goal in the future was to educate ELL. The articles and readings assigned in the class provided a funds of knowledge going into each new lesson. Coupled with the readings, hands on activities such as the mini lessons and designing lesson plans provided each student with experience that will reflect on their teaching abilities in the classroom. In my paper, I will be provided a step by step synthesis of what was learned and accomplished every week along with a brief summary of the readings. I will probe deeper into the modules and lessons that piqued my interest the most and that also challenge my mindset.

Within this paper we will take a brief look at the Language Acquisition Principles and how they work on the behalf of ELL students. We will see how these principles can be applied within our own learning environment. There is much information from Walqui article that gives a brief overview of ELL students and how things looked in the past for these students. Now that times has change we will see how educators can make the requirements for ELL students better and more effective for teacher and students. Hopefully, as we look at ways of changing learning for our ELL students we must remember that every student learns differently. Even if you follow the principles from

students today seem to only do the minimum in the class and get the grade that will

The most important thing a teacher can do before asking students to make up questions is to activate their prior knowledge of what you are teaching. There are a number of ways to activate a student’s prior knowledge by using graphic displays for the students to visualize and make that connection.

Echevarina, J., Vogt, M., & Scott, D. (2013). Making content comprehesbie for english learners: the slop model. (Ex: 4th ed.). Allyn con& Ba. DOI: www.mygcu.edu

What have you learned so far and how does it connect to your classroom experience.

With the immigration population increase comes a language barrier increase. Therefore, English as a Second Language (ESL) tools in the classroom is essential. ESL was established in the 1970s when children of many mother tongues, crowded classrooms due to the immigration increase (Tomkins, G., 1981, p.

Of the SEI strategies and ELL teaching strategies researched this lesson plan addresses the following. First, it states the language objective clearly states what the students will be to do during the lesson. Secondly, it states, on the left hand side of the lesson plan ways to incorporate students’ background knowledge, and one the many ELL

The ESL scales have been developed to help teachers clearly understand the level at which each non- English background student is working in all of the language skills; listening, speaking, reading and writing. These skills develop differently, at different stages and the role of the ESL scales is to identify the level and strategies needed to improve the student’s proficiency. “A knowledge of the ESL scales supports all learning areas and enables those involved in education to cater more effectively for students whose first language is not English.”(ESL scales,)

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

For me, learning a language is a complicated process. It is different from learning other subjects. It involves a lot of practices and follow up. When I talk about my personal experience, I would say that I have a rich experience in learning English as a second language. English was taught to me for ten years starting from grade seven till graduation from university. After graduation, I felt that I should improve my language skills. Therefore, I did a lot of efforts personally to increase my fluency. Until now I still learn the language. Indeed, learning a language takes a lifetime.