English Language Learners Essay

In order to be effective and affective educators we need to understand how the new culture will affect them and why. Educators must understand that children are always affected by the perceptions and cultural acceptance of their parents. Parents can choose to assimilate or isolate themselves in the new community. This move is detrimental in the ELL attitude towards their new cultural surroundings.

English learners are currently the fastest developing student population in schools today. This makes it extremely important to provide these students with the programs and services they deserve. Providing a strong education for ELL students is what I personally believe to be an asset in America’s future. Today there are many challenges I believe teachers and students face when it comes to instruction and assessments.

Hispanic ELLs students will be tested on their reading and on phonemics. The teacher will give the test to students individually because the teacher needs to hear the student read. The student will be given a book based on their reading level. The book will contain a picture and small amount of words. The picture is a way for students to make connections with the words, but there will be times where the student will not able to make the connections. Pictures are a visual for students so they could associate vocabulary words (Vacca-Ricopoulos & Nicoletti, 2009, p. 70). Once the student starts to read the book the teacher will use a timer to determine how long it took the student to read the book. Once the reading part is over, the teacher will ask the students questions regarding the book. The teacher will have a graded formatted sheet and that sheet will contain information based on the student’s reading capacity and understanding of the book.

The large school district in this study is located in the suburbs of New York City. The problem is ELL students are underachieving in reading and writing on state assessments when compared to non-ELLs in this district (NYSED, 2014b). Based on New York State’s Blueprint for English Language Learners Success (NYSED, 2014a), school districts have to ensure that all teachers can teach ELL students, and address diverse learning needs, such as cultural, linguistics, and socio-economic status, including students with disabilities. In addition, this problem impacts classroom teachers who may be highly qualified to teach content areas but may lack training in addressing the diverse learning needs of ELL students, which might include bridging cultural and language barriers (NCTE, 2008). Teachers need to be prepared to address the problem of underachievement for ELL students.

I had an opportunity to meet the ELL teacher who is responsible for educating ELL students in the district. She allowed me to observe her teaching a couple of students at Brighton Elementary School. The teacher informed me that she teaches ELL students using Scholastic books and a Scholastic app. Additionally, the scholastic app is usually used to help students replace missing words in a sentence, assist students with pronunciation, punctuation, & comprehension. While I was observing her class, the students would click on a word and the computer would pronounce the word for them. This is a really good way for students to learn how to pronounce words accurately. I also observed her using several strategies to facilitate these students’ understanding of English as a second language, for instance, she mentioned one strategy for capital letters “you step on gas” and another for periods “you brake”. Another strategy that she uses when teaching them to write sentences is “Mr. Space”, which is the size of a Popsicle stick, and it allows the students to put appropriate spaces between each of their words. The students are required to take a test at the end of the year to measure their progress. Students are supposed to show growth and progress and this data is communicated to the student's parents.

The two lesson plans I selected are the “The Achievements of the Sumerian Empire” and “The English Settle America” to evaluate. Yes, both lessons connect new subject matter in ELLs background, with their experience and prior learning. Special activities build vocabulary related to specific content as well as to general academic language. ELLs at the beginning of language proficiency level because they are just learning English language at this level will listen and comprehend at this stage. Background knowledge all ELLs students have learned about the world. Both lesson plans use shared pairs group learning, for instance; the teacher will ask students to discuss and ask students for assistance. Yes, academic vocabulary addressed will allow

Language plays an important role in communication by bringing people together and enriching their relationships. Language can also alienate those who do not speak it properly, or at all, from those who do. The essays, Mother Tongue, by Amy Tan, best known for her book, The Joy Luck Club, and Se Habla Espanol, by Tanya Barrientos, delve into the many powers that language holds. These essays reflect how by not speaking a language in proper form and by not speaking a language at all, affects the lives of the subjects of the stories.

The data collected from the students’ assessment showed they had a high level of comprehension in using the essential literacy strategy which has been the focus of the learning segment. The assessment is directly related to what the students have been learning throughout the learning segment. The students d had multiple opportunities to practice the essential literacy strategy throughout the learning segment. The first section of the assessment which was the matching of the text features with their purposes was directly related to the learning task they had to perform in the lesson one relating to the learning target “I can match text features to their purposes.” The written response section was directly related to the related skill the students’

This chapter focuses on the versatility of the ELL within our classrooms. There are a couple points that are highlighted within the article, but the main focus seemed to be around assessment of the student and the instruction. Those were two components that defined how the student would be instructed to get the best outcome for improvement in English proficiency in literature and language. Although each ELL student has their own unique pattern, they may align with a general profile characteristic, which can lead the teacher in the general direction that will hopefully best fit the need of that student. Then the instruction process is just as tedious as the assessment, but is necessary for the student to continue advancing within their classes.

In the 2014 film Reading to Learn: English Language Learners in Grades 4-6, Dr. Nonie Lesaux and Delia Pompa discuss the current challenges that English language learners, as well as their teachers, face in the

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

If I was a second-grade teacher preparing a lesson plan around reading comprehension, the ELA/ELD standards would influence the type of work I would have the students complete. After reviewing second grade standards, the students should be able to read, analyze, interpret, and understand the complexity of the English language. There are three primary premises; using English purposefully, interacting in meaningful ways, and understanding how English works. By using the standards, I would assess the student’s ability to read and interpret the text. The second-grade student should be able to give me details about stories they have read. In order to formally assess the students reading comprehension I would pick appropriate material that is suited

I really enjoyed reading your post. I was hoping to find an article that gave the statistics regarding ELL in today’s classes, but I liked the article that I found and stopped looking. I agree with you and both the article and textbook concerning the different methods in which ELL students learn best. Oftentimes, there are challenges when conducting reading assessments on ELL students. According to Tompkins (2014, p. 89), “they’re learning to speak English at the same time they’re learning to read”. This limits what they can read because they may or may not know the words in written English. Another challenge to assessing ELL students is that “their knowledge of English phonology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics is limited and their

English is an international language which is used officially all around the world. Anybody who wants to make connections with the world we live in should learn English. I had English language classes in my secondary and high school years. I also took some private English learning courses throughout summers in my country, Turkey. However, I could not improve my English effectively as all Turkish students in Turkey. I fully agree that English will be learned most efficiently in the boundaries of an English-speaking country not in the home country because of some cases. Therefore, I came here, USA, to learn English better after graduation from my university.

The growing influence of western powers in the south-east region, including Thailand, made it inevitable for the people to interconnect with outsiders. Moreover, the impact of “World War II, Anglo-American economic, technology, scientific and cultural activity has come to dominate the world as the whole, as a result, English has become the primary global lingua franca (Darasawang, Reinders, & Waters, 2015, p. 2) ”. The teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL) in Thailand has initially started from the mid-19th century and it still plays the predominant role in Thai education nowadays. The national English curriculum made a major paradigm shift in mandating English as a compulsory subject in schools and universities. The English teaching method was influenced by western educational ideology of ‘values system’ or ‘classical humanism’ where knowledge is seen as a set of revealed truths possessed by the teacher whose task is to pass it on to the learners (J. L. Clark, 1987cited in Darasawang, Reinders, & Waters, 2015).Thus, the dominant teaching method has been ‘grammar translation’. Todd (2005cited in Darasawang, Reinders and Walter, 2015, p.3) stated that