Teaching English As A Language

As our nation shifts towards a more culturally diverse population both educators and families have to find a common ground to ensure that English Language Learners are academically successful. All stakeholders must carefully consider the social cultural impact on an ELL education. The process of raising bilingual learners take more than a language a school and a language learned at home. The transition must have a purpose and a goal.

Over the last decade or so, important legislation has been implemented to positively ensure fair and equal access to a quality education for English Language Learners (ELL). Change did not happen without there being obstacles to overcome. There were many overturned cases that initially sought to strip English Language Learners of their basic rights to an education. Yet, there would eventually be legislation instituted to help alter the course.

What is the language that most kids are taking throughout their elementary, middle, and high school years? Some would guess French and German, but most would guess Spanish. In today’s world more people than ever speak a romantic language. Some would argue that by learning the basics of Spanish, that allows you to be able to travel and communicate with anyone who is able to speak a romantic language. Others may argue that choosing a specific language that a child desires to learn is more valuable. Spanish should be the only language taught in schools due to the repetitiveness that is instilled within the children, and the commonness of the language itself.

Characteristics: These are learners from ages 3 – 21 who are enrolled, or preparing to enroll in a school. Typically, they are not born in the USA or, their native language is no English. They may be Native Americans or Alaska Natives, or some other outlying area, where English is not used often enough such that it greatly impacts English proficiency. They may be migratory where the environment has a dominant language other than English. Such students have difficulty speaking, reading, writing, or understanding English, which may deny the child the ability to meet a proficient level of achievement on State assessments, ability to successfully achieve in a class where instruction is in English, or the chance

Is it really necessary to have English as the official language? U.S has been trying to find the answer for this question for a long time. And they still didn’t come up with an answer. Presently, there are 23 states that actually wanted to have English as the official language. And it’s still not enough. I agree that there are some benefits for having an official language but we should also consider the disadvantages that are more than advantages.

When I teach students I always look at the student as an individual and want to make sure that they are able to get the information that is presents. I have a preschool classroom that students are presented with safe and welcome environment to learn in. Everyday there are many layers of scaffolding that takes place. We go over routines and schedules both verbally and visually. We have pictures of what should be done in each routine during the day. Example of what to do when students enter the classroom to what to do after they are done with lunch. These are basic ways that the classroom is setup to help ELLs adapt to an unfamiliar setting.

While educators struggle with different methods on how to approach homework, three articles embedded within the November 2008 issue of the English Journal provide various techniques in order to create an environment conducive to learning. In this environment, students should be to express their ideas freely. Through these ideas, the homework assignment is able to exhibit some type of intrinsic value to the individual student. Personal connections to the course material being taught gives the assignment a significant purpose. With each meaningful and significant assignment, the students can treasure the lessons learned towards their development of analytical skills. However, in order for us teachers to ensure that each one of our students receives

Many popular theories of second language acquisition have been analyzed throughout history. The socialization of L2 learners, their present emotional state that is present at the time of acquisition, as well as the comprehensible input and output with the use of scaffolding play a major role in second language acquisition. Kirsten Hummel states, “The one most effective way to increase L2 competence was by exposure to ‘comprehensible input’.” (Hummel, 2014, p. 73) Let us also not forget the importance of written expression as well as reading comprehension with these L2 learners. Each plays a role in language development. However, I believe that to acquire language one must use a variety of techniques that work together to create a balance within the learning environment. Furthermore, all L2 learners acquire language differently and so using a variety of resources that are based on the ability of each student is neccesary. There are many theories that have been developed by highly qualified experts in the field of linguistics. However, I will address those areas that I agree with as I present my personal theories on second language acquisition.

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.

As we know, the traditional English Language Teaching (ELT) often comes in many varieties, but is often characterized by the teacher spending quite a lot of class time using the board to explain things-as if ‘transmitting’ knowledge to the class(Scrivener, 2011, p14). The teacher’s role according to Scrivener has been put forward into three categories.

As we know that learning English in India it is gradually becomes very important due to century as well as techno-age is concerned. We all knew that English is taught either as Second Language or Target Language. It is very difficult for student-beginner who recently starts to learn English language as foreign language. One of the vital and pivotal pivot roles of learning Foreign Language is to open the treasure hidden in the literature of a particular language. To reveal such treasure one needs to be mastered in different methods of teaching the foreign languages. This makes easy full for learners to learn foreign language. If we want to understand different method of teaching foreign language things linguistically we can understand it as “A method in linguistics and language teaching determines what and how much is taught. The order in which it

Actually, I haven’t felt so happy about my English skill (Ok, my weakness is more when speaking but is not usually when writing). I did not have to afford difficulties when responding to the quizzes. The strong bases I learnt, as a ELL and a MODL teacher provided well results and the Folse chapter, give me the opportunity to go further in terms of different kinds of ELL issues.

Before an EMI period in the 1980s, Content-based Instruction (CBI) and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) were the well-known approaches to teach subject contents through a second or foreign language (L2) in western countries. CBI is an approach to L2 teaching that focuses on the target language and content (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche, 1989; Crandall & Tucker, 1990). Swain and Johnson (1997) pointed out that CBI is most often associated with the genesis of language immersion education in North America in 1965. They