http://www.netc.org/focus/challenges/ell.php
After I made a comment about ELL useful site I became interested in ELL. I wanted to learn more about ELL. When researching, I found the site above had some key facts that every teacher and teachers to be should know. The quote used by Kathleen Leos of the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) said, "the role of every teacher in every classroom in the nation has never been more important than today." Teachers are always underpaid, but the fact that society does not realize is that we ~ the teachers ~ shape the minds of tomorrow’s future. The government is starting to realize that early academic intervention is very important to the ongoing development of every individual student.
In the article, it stated some facts about ELL.
"Teachers of Spanish-speaking students who are learning English found that common visual language is effective in enabling students to transfer their patterns of thinking from Spanish into English. (Hyerle 1996)."
"Modifying the language of test questions (for example, to avoid jargon or unnecessarily complex sentence construction) can increase ELL performance by up to 20 percent (Abedi & Dietel, 2004)."
"Culturally congruent teaching methods and curriculum contribute to improved learning and outcomes, especially for bilingual and American Indian students (Reyhner, 1992; Stokes, 1997; Tannenbaum, 1996). "
These facts are very important to understand, reflect and to help improve the classroom. I was a little shocked about the quote on modifying the language test questions for ELL students. This is something teachers should do for all students. From my experience in college level classes, some exams I have taken are so complex; I have no idea what I learned. I believe having a test that is simple and is understandable to all students will be more effective than making the test complicated. The point I’m trying to make is that teachers should make questions as simple so to find out if the student understand the material that was taught.
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I also found some very interesting information in this site. In the past 10 years, the ELL population has grown by 65%. ELL students receive lower grades, are judged by teachers as having lower academic abilities, and score lower than classmates on standardized tests, especially in the areas of math and reading. I agree with the statement Catherine made about some college exams being complex. This past semester I took EDUC 3000-curriculum evaluation and learner. The teacher I had didn't teach us anything; instead he divided the class up into groups and assigned us each a part of the chapter we were discussing for that class period. After we discussed the sections in groups we shared what we reads about with the rest of the class. When it came time for the midterm we were told that we would be tested on 10 of the vocabulary words that we had discussed in the first 8 chapters. That turned out that we had to study 400 definitions because that's how many we had discussed in the first 8 chapters. Honestly I didn't learn anything in this and I felt that it was useless to try to memorize that many words.
The website also discussed that teachers and administrators need to draw from a range of research-based strategies, pedagogy, and instruction to help support ELL students. Motivation can be increased by making positive connections to others. An important idea that was discussed again was the relationship between family and school. Students do better academically when their families are involved in learning. Incorporating student's culture, families, and communities into the curriculum is another way to make important connections between family and school.
Making education meaningful for ELL students includes both modeling and explicitly teaching school routines, linguistic and social norms, and academic behaviors that are valued and appropriate in American schools. This relates to the activity that we did in class. Some gestures that we as Americans use may mean something entirely different in another culture. What sounds easy in theory is difficult in practice. We can begin by learning background information of our students and their learning styles.
This article somewhat explains my personal experience. 10 years a go when I moved to US I was a senior in High School and besides being completely confused I knew very little English. Math was my strong subject only because I did not need any writing or spelling other then using universal language of numbers. For other subjects I was allowed to work with my ESL teacher (usually on the tests) who would help me understand questions and rewrite them so I can get a full understanding of what I am being asked to do. In case that ESL teacher was not available to work with me I stayed in the classroom where teacher never even approached me or asked if I needed help, or even tried to assist in any way. What bothered me the most is the fact that I was unable to do work to my full ability and show that I am not any less intelligent then the rest of the class. I was an honor student in Europe and in one day became someone who could not understand the language let alone take a test. What gave me an incredible motivation was when one of my teachers told me that it is okay for me to fail and stay beck one year, and that I should not worry if that happened. In my eyes failing was a disgrace and somehow pushed my self to graduate. To this day I have no idea how I did it, nor what my GPA was. To refer beck to the article; I fully support the idea to assist students in understanding complex vocabulary as some are even difficult for English speakers. I am pleased to hear that teachers are held more responsible in providing essential help, however I find that it can be overpowering for one teacher to handle 20-30 kids while spreading themselves thin between special ed. and non English speakers. Students should be allowed to take tests in ESL rooms or with the assistance of the ESL teacher in the regular classroom. To this day there are schools with one ESL teacher or non at all. Colleges can offer scholarships for those who wish to teach ESL and enroll in that program, and schools must rethink how many teachers they need. Also, some students are fortunate enough to have a friend of the same origin who is more fluent in English and can assist with translations. A team work makes the learning experience that much more enjoyable.
This is definately a usefull site to learn more about ESL/ELL students. I became very interested in this subject matter last semester while doing a paper on dual immersion. Which is a different form of teaching english as a second language and it is statiscally known to be more effective than the average ESL classes. I was an ESL student in the first and second grade, therefor I know how important it is for teachers to accommidate students as myself. As a student teacher I have ran across classrooms with ELL students that are not recieving the proper education. Many students are still being pulled out of the classrooms, segregated so they can learn the english language and losing the out the material that their classmates are learning. In the end you learn the language but you are missing out on so much material in the other subject areas. Unless you have a dedicated teacher that will do her job correctly and teach the subjects and the english language you loose out on a lot. I feel that as our multicultural population continues to grow it is inevitable and our resposibility as future teachers to make sure we know more about how to teach our ELL students.
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