Language Acquisition Proposal

I found it interesting that of the three ELL teachers interviewed, only one had a personal ELL experience. This teacher teaches at my middle school. She moved here from Poland when she was nine years old. She didn’t know any English besides basic words like colors

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.

This school has a high population of ELLs with a significant number of migratory/mobile students. About fifty are Spanish students, and about four times that many who are not Spanish speaking. As a program specialist, I would have to ask for more information about these other language groups and other missing information. Are there multiple students in each grade level speaking the same language or are many isolated without any same-language peers? Are there any translators available for the other language groups? We must remember that ELLs outside of the Spanish-speaking world often face even more isolation than their Spanish-speaking peers, and their needs are just as great, maybe greater. What state is this school in, and are there any supports from the district in the ELL arena, like translation services?

R1 expressed concern over the lack of research with the specific ELL students that he/she works with and the difficulty of educational gaps with those learners. R1 did not further explain what educational gaps are challenging, if the challenges are language specific or possibly due to other learning difficulties. R2 partially echoed R1’s difficulty of an educational gap by explaining his/her concern with a lack of students’ English language knowledge when entering class. R3 reported the challenges were communicating with parents that have no English language skills. R3 did not state any challenges with educating ELL students. R3 further explained that the difficulty is when a translator is not available to assist, which may mean there is a lack of support in the respondent’s school and/or school district for ELL services. Lastly, R4 stated that there are no challenges in educating ELL students as long as they are taught with lots of visual aids. R4 did not further explain if visual aids are the only tool necessary for success or any other reasoning for why no challenges

In this self-contained third grade classroom in DeSoto County, the classroom language policy is that all primary instruction of all subjects is completed in English. All assignments are completed in English in their entirety, unless specifically modified by the Classroom Modification and Accommodation Plan for ELL Students as set forth by DeSoto County Schools ELL department. Students who score a level 4 or 5 on the ELL language assessment (formerly WIDA, now LAS LINKS) will receive all instruction and assignments in the same manner as their typical peers. Students who score a level 1-3 will receive accommodations and modifications based on their abilities. These include, but are not limited to: extended time to complete assignments, oral responses in lieu of written responses, limited multiple choice responses, no true/false assessment, fewer items required, partner-learning with an English proficient peer, assignments read to students as needed, and small group testing. Newcomers are assigned a bilingual English proficient partner to assist with any transitioning and translation needed.

ESL teachers will have ACCESS for ELLs® data that informs us how language learners communicate in the four domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It is difficult to modify the cornerstone task prior to knowing the students in your classrooms, as students arrive with a wide variety of backgrounds which will impact their needs in the classroom. Some students may have an interrupted educational experience, some may be able to speak conversational English, and others may not have experience with English at all. Even students with the same language proficiency may have different instructional needs. Newcomers will certainly require more intensive scaffolding. Your ESL teacher has the experience and expertise to determine appropriate supports to meet diverse student language needs.

The decision on the case positively affected the educational system. For example, this is the reason why school directs are required to provide equal opportunities for English Language Learners (ELLs). To help ELLs overcome the language barriers, school districts started implemented instructional programs such as English as a Second Language (ESL), Bilingual Education, and English Structured Immersion (ESL). Most importantly, teachers are offered professional development regarding instructional strategies for English Language Learners. Thus, ELLs are given adequate resources that enable them to receive an appropriate

According to the OCR, goals for ELLs should relate to goals established for all students throughout the district. School districts are encouraged to consider the population they apply to, the level of expected performance, when the performance should be achieved, and how the success of ELL students will be measured. Ultimately, the goals established should address both content area classes and English language development all while being complying with New York State regulations. Programs for students with limited English proficiency must include the following: (1) constructed from a sound educational theory; (2) sufficiently supported to result in program success; and (3) regularly evaluated and revised, if necessary. To create an effective program, school districts should consider both educational goals and acquisition of the English language. In addition to goals that address the targeted population’s needs, an ELL plan also needs to be comprehensive and detailed so all school personnel is able to comply with the plan with little guidance. Districts are required to revise their ELL plans if a program fails to demonstrate achievement of the goals established. If goals are not established, an ELL plan’s success is measured if students are participating in classrooms and demonstrating progress with English language development.With the responsibility of establishing ELL program goals being left up to the districts, variations of achievement criteria differ within and across

Numerous theories try to explain the process of language acquisition. These theories fall into one of two camps. The environmentalist (or connectionist) theory of language acquisition asserts that language is acquired through environmental factors (Halvaei et al. 811). Theorists in this camp believe that a child learns language by gaining information from the outside world and then forming associations between words and objects. The nativist (or rationalist) approach, on the other hand, asserts that it is innate factors that determine language acquisition. Noam Chomsky, often described as “the father of modern linguistics”, falls into this camp as he believes that speech is the result of hidden rules of language that are hidden somewhere in the brain (Rahmani and Abdolmanafi 2111). Steven Pinker, a colleague of Chomsky, is a renowned psychologist, cognitive scientist and linguist who discusses his own theories on language acquisition in his book Words and Rules.

The survey asks “is a language other than English used at home?”, “Does the student have a first language other than English?”, and “does the student most frequently speak a language other than English?”. The second requirement involves an ELL Committee, a team comprised of ESOL teachers, a home language teacher, parents, guidance counselor, social worker, and other educators’ responsible for putting together and determining the eligibility of a student for an ESOL program. The third requirement is the ELL Student Plan which is a written document that identifies the student’s name, instruction by program, including programs other than ESOL, amount of instructional time, date of ELL identification, and assessment data used to classify as ELL. Each student must have their own individual copy of a plan. The forth requirement is English Language Assessment that is required in areas of listening comprehension, speaking, writing, and reading. The fifth requirement is Classification and Reclassification where students classified as ELL continue to receive instruction until such time as the student is reclassified as English proficient. The sixth requirement is Post-reclassification Monitoring where the performance of the students who have been exited from their ESOL program must be reviewed to see if any patterns of continuing performance appropriate for tests and other assessments.

As an English Language Learner that I still am, I have encounter through my path many barriers that could have prevented me from over achieving and gotten this far in my career. Now I reflect back as I see young English Language Learners in schools that struggle but don’t give up thanks to such an amazing effective teachers that have dedicated their time and effort in helping ELLs achieve academically. I believe in providing now a classroom fulfilled with hope, care, over comers, respected with equality for all cultures and different backgrounds. My fluent Spanish to English translation could possibly be a challenge when not knowing to translate a specific word but will learn and do anything that is at my reach to get my message across. I hope to establish a classroom that provides the support for all students specially the ELLs that are my main focus to be working with. By providing appropriate visual prompts around the room, allowing ELLs to sit with English speakers, providing activities that are structured to support student-to-student or group interaction, and establishing an environment that has certain rules and routines to follow, I will be supporting ELLs as well as the other students. I will at no time discriminate against other cultures or different background beliefs.

Language acquisition is the study of how language is learned. There are two different ways to study language acquisition: by observing and describing. There is a clear difference in the way that adults and children speak. "Children do not perfect their native pronunciation for several years, but they establish crucial phonological patterns in the early months that serve them for life" (Herschensohn 29). Phonology is the study of the sound patterns that occur within languages. By studying phonology, you can pinpoint patterns within speech to understand the processes a child uses when speaking.

Throughout my life I have encountered and worked with adults that come from different native backgrounds. Many of them come to America in search of better opportunities. As a result, they come with their first language mastered and now they must learn a second language. America continues to be the destination of immigrants around the world. Millions will continue coming here even by risking their lives. This paper is very important, as an educator I will consistently meet families and students learning English. It will also help me further understand difficulties L2 learners face allowing me to tackle these problems with

An ESL (English as a Second Language) program is established to provide students with the vocabulary and grammatical structures needed for both school performance and everyday living. This will help learners to be able to access the society in which they find themselves in to be normal and easy to go by.

In today’s society, it is essential that one knows more than one language to be very well qualified in acquiring jobs. However, learning a new language is not an easy task. One must be dedicated and be fully immersed to be fluent at it later on. There are certain grammatical rules that exists in one language but not in the others. Grammatical gender, for an example, is present in various languages around the world, including German. In the other hand, there is the English language which does not possess the use of gender grammar, specifically definitive article “the” and indefinite articles “a/an” in English, and “der/die/das” and “ein/einer/ein” in German. Der/ein is the gender grammar for masculine words, die/einer for feminine, and das/ein for neutral. However, these article could change depending if the sentence is describing the noun being presented is either genitive, dative, or accusative, turning them to either des/dem/den or eines/einem/einen. Despite such complex article rule, German and English are both Indo-European languages that have several cognate words, which could be beneficial for English speakers learning the language.Another interesting idea is whether bilinguals of English and Tagalog, which is an Austronesian language, would have such limitation in being fluent to the third language because of the article rules. It would be interesting to see if