Socio-Cultural Factors Affecting the Quality of English Language Learners.

Vygotsky proposed that children’s development is affected by their culture and social interaction. He also suggested that children are not born with knowledge but they gain it through their social interactions with peers and adults; he does not rule out the importance of biological processes but proposes an interdependent relationship between biological development alongside social activity and cultural interaction.

“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.

The proposed research is designed to analyze one of the major issues in contemporary education which is the educational achievement gap between ESL (English as a Second Language) students and native English speakers. The research is designed to study the lack of effort from school officials to integrate cultural needs of minorities in their education which enables them to succeed as much as others. The focus of this study is to compare the academic opportunities between ESL students and native English speaker students and said opportunities affect their academic success. Participants will be 100 siena students 50 ESL and 50 native English speakers. Participants will take a survey in which they will provide information about their educational experience in middle school and high school and how said experiences affected their educational achievements in a negative and/or positive way.

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.

Lev Vygotsky believed that social and cognitive development work simultaneously to build and evolve on one another. He believed that social, cultural and personal experience cannot be detached from each other and many things influence the way children learn and develop, not just their own experiences, thus Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory. Vygotsky’s ideas were and remain controversial as he had no specific training in psychology or children’s development. His preeminent contribution to children’s development is his recognition of the value of progressing knowledge by means of interaction with educators, peers and family (Mooney, 2000, p. 83). The major ideas of Vygotsky’s theory are scaffolding and the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Scaffolding is a process Vygotsky described as the framework or temporary support for children’s learning. In order for scaffolding to be beneficial, it must be responsive to the child’s needs (Coon & Mitterer, 2013, pp. 106-107).

The approach is based on the idea that an individual’s activities occurs in a cultural context and can be best understood in their historical development (Kagitcibasi, 2012). Vygotsky developed this theory with the intent of coming up with a way to explain human behavior. The theory examined various subjects including the psychology of art, thought and language; and also focused on education of students with special needs. Vygotsky believed that caregivers, parents, peers, and culture at large play an important role in developing an individual’s higher order functions. There are various modern time interpretations of this theory with one focused on explaining human development. In this context, the sociocultural theory explains that learning is a social process and the society makes a significant contribution to individual development. The theory states that learning is based on interactions with other people and once this has happened, the information is then incorporated on a personal level (Hutchison,

Vygotsky 's Sociocultural Theory explains the interaction between the cultural and historical facts. There are three different theories that Vygotsky 's uses which are : matching, zone of proximal development and scaffolding. Matching is based of the child’s culture. Zone of proximal development has three different components the role played by culture, the use of language and the child’s zone of proximal development. This development shows what the children can accomplish independently and potentially depending if they received guidance along the way. Scaffolding is apart of learning, in the beginning parents’ are there too hold your hand and provide for you. When you get old enough parents let go and let you figure out life on your own.

Using Vygotskian theory, by providing tools such as language and materials (ex, multicultural crayons) serve as a mechanism for transforming meaning to the world around them. In addition, the zone of Proximal development is enhanced, where children learn through their experiences and use their knowledge in social settings with different peers. In the zone of proximal development, adults serve as models and children learn through interactions. In this research, the study investigates the relationships among their peers through social interactions a way to understand how children interpret racial and ethnic differences in their

The English Language has been in existence for many years. This is thanks to many early conquers who spoke the language. As a result, today English is used by “at least one out of every seven human beings around on the globe” (Lederer 216). With that many speakers, the reality in Lederer’s words that “half of the world’s

A pioneer of the sociocultural approach was psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934). L. Vygotsky believed that children’s learning and development is strongly influenced by child’s culture and how children develop and learn can be different from culture to culture. He proposed that children, in order to learn, need to be supported by other people. For example, teachers and peers, who already gained particular knowledge.

The sociocultural theory was developed by a theorist named Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky was born in 1896 and was from the former Soviet Union. He was a psychologist who had an abundance of ideas and put them into many theories and writings. Although Vygotsky died from tuberculosis at the young age of thirty-eight, his most prominent work was done in a short period of ten years. When he died in 1934, the Soviet Union held most of his work and it was not until about 1960 that his work was translated into English. Currently in the education field, Vygotsky’s main work on the sociocultural theory is getting a lot of attention.

Lev Vygotsky has had increasing influence on the practices of early childhood professionals. (Morrison, 2009). The work of the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky provided the grounds for the use of sociocultural learning theory. Vygotsky

Unlike Piaget’s Cognitive Development Theory, which stresses that cognitive development was expected to mature through self initiated discovery, Lev Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory places greater emphasis on the influence a child’s culture, social factor, and language. Meaning, Vygotsky believed a child learns more from personal interaction with in his/her culture, rather than through individual experiences of chance and random. Social interaction with one’s culture plays a tremendous role in the cognitive development of an individual. Culturally specific tools and language, taught and passes from generation to generation, are perceived practice for one’s survival in social

“According to the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, from the 1997-98 school year to the 2008-09 school year, the amount of ESL learners enrolled in U.S. public schools increased from 3.5 million to 5.3 million, a 51% increase” (WeAreTeachers Staff). The number of international students is very hide in that country “the percentage of students ages 5-12 who speak a language other than English at home has doubled since 1980” (Shi, Steen 64). In our days, around 200 dialect are be spoken in America (WeAreTeachers). “According to the 2013 American Community Survey (ACS), Spanish was the most common home or first language, spoken by 71 % of ELL students, Chinese was second with 4%, followed by Vietnamese 3%, and French/Haitian Creole 2% ” ( Top Language 1).

     “In the world were over seven thousand languages have exisisted, one language had become dominate. This dominant language is English.” “In the majority of countries throughout the world speak English as their second or first language, no longer just America or England.” English has taken many forms, American English, the Queen’s English, Australian, Canadian English, and several others. Even American English has taken several types of English, Jersey English, East Coast English, West Coast English, Southern English, slang English, and Ebonics. All of these languages have major variants between them, but are all of them are still understood aboard. Without English the world couldn’t operate,