Influential Factors Of English Language Learners

“What it takes for English Learners to Succeed?” is an article written by Jana Echevarria, Nancy Frey, and Doug Fisher that illustrate concepts that will allow English Learners to become fluent in English. The purpose of this article is to discuss four accessible teaching practices that will allow English Learners in U.S. classroom to become academically successful and attain fluency in English. To clarify, the authors use access, climate, expectations, and language instruction as the practices that will eliminate education inequality and enable students to be able to fully participate in rigorous course work without excluding English Learners. Ultimately this provides an approachable school reform, creates additive integration of multicultural perspective and approach and lastly brings a way for language diversity to be seen in the classroom.

Recently, as the schools in the United States become more diverse in cultures, the needs for new English learners to learn the basic of English and grow in fluency has expanded. Nevertheless, a major of English learners receive insufficient education and have low achievement at school. Therefore, the approach of the schools for English learners might not be sufficient for them to unchain themselves from the boundary of differences in language and culture. As a result, the article “What It Takes for English Learners to Succeed” from Jana Echevarria, Nancy Frey, and Doug Fisher provides a guideline for teachers to help their English learners by using the four practices of “Access, Climate, Expectation, and Language Instruction.” The four practices can be divided into two categories. Access, climate, and expectations focus on educational settings, while language instruction focuses on teaching contents.

Disproportionality, in special education, is the overrepresentation or under-representation of a particular population or demographic group relative to their presence in the overall student population (Ralabate, & Klotz, 2007). There are many factors thought to contribute to disproportionality: cultural differences, lack of appropriate assessment strategies, socioeconomic status, race, and gender (Kanaitsa, 2010).

In Article review 3, the results showed that “associations between race, education, and IRPP are important because they were the main causes of the differences in the disability rates.” (Fuller-Thomson, 2009)

Disproportionality is something that plagues schools all over the United States. “Disproportionality is defined as the “overrepresentation” and “underrepresentation” of a particular population or demographic group in special or gifted education programs relative to the presence of this group in the overall student population (National Association for Bilingual Education, 2002).”

In the United States, there has been an increase in in the number of children from Spanish speaking backgrounds. The English Language Learners, commonly known as ELL’s, are being placed in Special Education without being properly tested for a learning disability. However there are a large number of ELL’s with learning disabilities in elementary grades that truly have a learning disability and are over looked. Many school districts have problems placing ELL’s. As a result these students end up in special education whether they have a learning disability or language impairment. Teachers are also indecisive when dealing with ELL’s. Most teachers recommend that ELL’s

Over the past decade, several researchers have released evidence proving a bias in standardized testing towards minority students. In this paper I will argue in favor of those supporting the idea of a bias in standardized testing. A bias in standardized testing would not only effect the students it is biased against, but the public and other students as well. This is why it is important that we take the time to educate ourselves with the evidence provided. In order to make a decision as to whether or not standardized testing is indeed biased, we must educate ourselves on the amount of test preparation the test requires, as well as how it is created.

The reality is that each Asian American student’s background is different. While some students may come from well off families; others may come from other situations such as refuges where education isn't easily accessed. Students from well off families have the resources and opportunities to learn English which assist them in falling into the “Model Minority”. At the other end are the children who come from poorer families or bad situation and aren’t given the opportunity to learn English. Due to the “Model Minority” theory these children aren’t given the same chance to succeed as their peers, in terms of what other ESL children are offered. All of this contributes to the child’s educational equality given in the United States. In instances where the child requires assistance due to language barrier, “the high expectations of their peers, teachers, and parents contribute to their higher rate of mental illness” (Poon-McBrayer, K. F, 2011). Due to this the theory of the Model Minority, a lot of Asian American students fail to get the assistance that they need which can be frustrating to a child. This creates “invincible barriers” which is an injustice to Asian American who are unable to get the equal educational help they

Decades of research have documented the biases in standardized tests when it comes to students of color and culture. Cultural bias is an expression that means certain cultures are not given an equal chance to succeed in society because of an unfairness, prejudice, or partiality. Cultural biases involve practices and rules that put some minority groups at a disadvantage. In the public school systems, minority children are more likely to do poorly on state tests than the non-minority students are. A study by Jay Rosner in 2002 showed that sample questions, which were answered correctly by more African-American students, were not chosen for use in the tests. Although in the recent year’s test makers have attempted to discuss the concerns about test bias by establishing review committees to search the test for bias. Significant problems stay in the content of the

The United States has always been considered a “melting pot”, but how true is that statement now? While there is growing diversity among the population of the United States, the different people may not be blending together as well as they should. Many people are unaware of how many students are English language learners. According to authors Katharine Davies Samway and Denise McKeon, the largest growing group of students in our country is the language minority students (2007). There are many negative ideas that people have regarding those students. However, those students deserve a quality education as much as native English speaking students. The responsibility to provide this falls on the families, the government, and the teachers of those students.

56) which becomes a problem for tests like the SAT and many IQ exams because they test things that aren’t specifically taught in a classroom (things that every student that takes them learns in a controlled setting). In choosing what items should be placed on a test from an innumerable number of sources that every student may not have equal access to in their everyday environments, test makers are making the likelihood of bias within their tests extremely high. Methodological bias comes about when “a test assesses mastery of some skill or body of information using a technique or method that underestimates the competence of one group relative to another.” (1998. 56). Some argue that an example of this is when African-American students perform worse when the tester is White but, beyond the Stanford sampling, there is not enough real substantial data for sociologists and educational researchers to put any stock in this theory. Lastly, prediction bias is when a test is meant to predict a student’s future performance. In the case of the SAT, White students tend to outperform African-American students (in regards to cumulative college grades) with the same SAT score. Jencks says that this doesn’t mean that the test is biased against whites but, rather, that they have other advantages besides test scores. Jencks also makes a strong case for the removal of the SAT. Jencks believes that using a test that covers the material learned in secondary school rather than a test like the SAT where all you have to do is go through a manual would be a much better indicator of a student’s performance in college. Testing secondary school material also ensures that the students will have a solid foundation as they must actually gain a deep understanding of the material they

In an effort to gain useable and positive feedback from English language learners, teachers must use ongoing assessments. Whereas standardized tests only give information on students during a certain part of the year, ongoing assessments will allow teachers to monitor students’ progress throughout the year. Informal assessments are very beneficial in monitoring the progress of students. One type of informal assessment is the use of role playing. During role playing, students are given opportunities to speak in English dealing with different situations. This assessment will let the teacher observe how well the student is comprehends the scenarios and how they respond to them. This type of assessment is effective because it allows students to put the English language into use increasing their English

Families besides providing for the basic necessities such as food, shelter, and clothes for their children, they also pass on cultural and educational values onto their children. According to the American Psychological Association, an important factor in poverty is a family’s socioeconomic status (SES) is often measured as a combination of education, income, and occupation. It is commonly thought of as the social position or class of an individual or group. Socioeconomic status in families is a key factor that influences quality of life for young children and their families. Low socioeconomic status is linked with lower education, poverty, and poor health. Proven studies show that low socioeconomic status is connected with higher levels of emotional, behavioral difficulties, and hostility. Socioeconomic status is proven to create achievement differences among children from low income families from those who come from well off families (Children, Youth and Families & Socioeconomic Status).

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