Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners

An Introduction to Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners

by Manka M. Varghese

In this article, I aim to provide an overview of some of the critical information that teachers in U.S. public schools would find helpful to know about their students whose first language is not English. I first provide a synopsis of the nature of today's immigrant student population, and then summarize some of the major legal guidelines for teachers to be cognizant of in relation to these students. In the last two sections, I look at some programmatic options for teachers to be aware of, and finally some specific strategies and resources for teachers to consider when planning their instruction.

In recent years, there has been a rapid increase of students in K-12 classrooms who are designated as Limited English Proficient (L.E.P.) or English Language Learners, ELLs, as they will be referred to in this article. From 1997-2000, ELL student enrollment grew by almost 30% (Kindler, 2002) and state educational agencies reported that in the 1999-2000 school year, almost 10% of all U.S. school children were classified as ELLs.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, nearly one in 12, almost 4 million public school children, received special assistance to learn English in 2001-2002. Many school districts have 50 or more languages represented although more than 90% of immigrant students are from the following language groups: Spanish, Tagalog, Chinese and Hmong.

Although the United States has always been a land of immigrants, the nature of immigration in the recent past is markedly different from early waves of immigration (Suarez-Orozco & Suarez-Orozco, 1995; Gibson). Most importantly, the "new immigrants," people who have immigrated since the 1970s, are people of color, coming from Central and South America, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. There is also a greater range in terms of languages spoken and in educational level, social class, economic capital represented in this groups. Perhaps paradoxically, many of today's immigrants are more likely than their native born counterparts to have family members who graduated from college and also more likely to have not graduated from high school themselves.

What is also dramatically different at present is the nature of employment trends in the U.S., where there are fewer manufacturing jobs and more service and technology-related jobs, which in turn require skilled labor and a college degree. Therefore, immigrants of today face a job market which requires higher educational accomplishments than their earlier predecessors. It is also important to note that one third of ELL students were born in the United States (and therefore, were not recent arrivals) to families in which English is not regularly spoken in the home (Fleischman & Hopstock, 1993).

As we all know, all teachers are responsible in a moral, ethical and legal sense for all their students, including their ELL students. But often, many teachers ask what the specific legal requirements are that their school districts and schools must meet in relation to these students. These students, like all others, are protected by Title VI (of the Civil Rights Act), stating that "school systems . . . (are) responsible for assuring that students of a particular race, color, or national origin are not denied the opportunity to obtain the education generally obtained by other students in the system" (quoted in Lyons, 1990, p.70). A section of the U.S. Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOC), the federal agency responsible for interpreting and enforcing Title VI, adds that states are mandated also to protect and help students "overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs."

The protection and assistance for students whose first language is not English were legislated through the landmark case of Lau vs. Nichols (1974), where a class-action suit was filed by the parents of Chinese speaking students in San Francisco Public Schools who stated that their children were not given equal educational opportunities because of the linguistic barriers they faced.

From this court case and several subsequent ones, three specific guidelines need to be met by all school districts: i) all ELL students need to be identified and assessed throughout their educational program, ii) a program of specific instruction, based on sound educational research, needs to be provided for these students, implemented effectively, and evaluated after a trial period, and iii) parents whose first language is not English must have all documents which are sent home translated into their native language.

One of the major complaints of advocates for ELL students has been that these guidelines are not specific enough, especially the fact that there is a lack of a mandate for the specific instructional approach that schools and districts must follow. Other legal specifications that are important to know about are those passed in the Plyer vs. Doe case (1982) where the following was ruled: i) public schools were prohibited from denying immigrant students access to K-12 public education, ii) immigrant students residing in the United States cannot be denied resident status by public schools solely on the basis of their immigration status, and iii) making inquiries that might expose the undocumented status of a student or the parents is prohibited.

Since there have not been specific mandates concerning the type of instructional program or approach, the natural question to ask is what programs are available and which program has yielded the best results for ELL students. The six major program types (e.g. ESL, two way bilingual education) can be found in August & Hakuta's (1997) seminal summary report on research on ELL students, although it is important to keep mind that often these programs are implemented in a hybrid form. Critics and advocates of bilingual education have reviewed these programs to prove either the strength of ESL or bilingual programs.

In a recent study by Thomas & Collier (2001) on studies involving over 24,000 language minority children, these researchers found that children bilingual programs (maintenance and two way) had the highest academic and English language achievement. In general, ELL students who have the highest achievement in both these areas are students who come from a higher socioeconomic status, are literate in their first language, and have had high quality exposure and instruction in English, their primary language and in academic subject areas.

August & Hakuta (1997), in the same report mentioned above, also review the research on characteristics and optimal conditions in schools and classrooms rather than on program types, which can provide us a list of "best practices" for schools and districts. These practices are stated as the following:

A supportive school-wide climate, school leadership, a customized learning environment, articulation and coordination within and between schools, use of native language and culture in instruction, a balanced curriculum that includes both basic and higher-order skills, explicit skill instruction, opportunities for student-directed instruction, use of instructional strategies that enhance understanding, opportunities for practice, systematic student assessment, staff development, and home and parent involvement. (August & Hakuta, 1997, p.171)

Teachers can be involved in attempting to make their schools more like environments described above. In their classrooms, they obviously must provide a meaning-based, context-rich and cognitively demanding curriculum. An example of this can be found in a recent piece published by the American Educational Research Association (2004), on boosting academic achievement of ELLs in terms of literacy, where the following critical components of reading instruction for these students are provided:

1) Explicit instruction in word recognition through phonological awareness, practice reading, phonics and frequent in-class assessments.
2) Explicit instruction in skills that are needed to understand text, such as vocabulary building in context, strategies to aid comprehension, academic oral language.

Other specific guidelines that would be useful to attempt to adopt are provided in this section. One of the major understandings that practitioners and scholars have reached is that ELL students cannot be provided special assistance only in the English language. They must be provided assistance also in acquiring subject-specific knowledge in several ways. It can be done with bilingual education (subject specific knowledge through their primary language), with richer and more sustained collaborations between content area teachers and English language specialists so that pullout classes do not only focus on decontextualized skills and language. Many content area teachers need training in making language and content more accessible to ELL students (as with SDAIE specifically designed academic instruction in English.) It can also be done by training these teachers in Sheltered English through a more comprehensive program called the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, S.I.O.P. See resource list at the end of the article.

Teachers must also be aware that learning another language, especially becoming academic competent in it, is a lengthy process, that can take from 7-10 years (Cummins, 1981a, Cummins 1981b), as compared to conversational proficiency in a language which can take from 1-5 years. The rationale behind this is that academic, decontextualized language or content offers few clues for learners and is therefore much more difficult to learn.

This is especially true for students who start this process in the later grades (Collier, 1989; Cummins & Swain, 1986,) for students who are not literate or academically skilled in their first language, and for many who come from war torn countries. Therefore, the process for learning a second language is generally idiosyncratic, and dependent on different variables, which need to be considered.

Teachers must attempt to provide ELLs with explicit instruction in different strategies for gaining academic competence – cognitive, metacognitive and social (Chamot & O'Malley, 1992). For example, when asking students to write a summary, teachers (even content teachers, such as Social Studies or Science) cannot assume that students will know how to write a summary and must either teach them the necessary steps to write a summary or collaborate with an English language specialist to accomplish this.

Finally, the classroom and the environment must be a welcoming place for students and their families. Implicit rules must be made explicit. The cultural and linguistic resources that students come with (especially with the involvement of parents and community partners) must be integrated and celebrated in the classroom. A last word of caution for teachers is that although this issue has been framed mainly as a "language" issue, we must always remember that the education of linguistically diverse students is always situated in larger issues about immigration, distribution of wealth and power, and the empowerment of students. It is thus essential for teacher professional development to encompass knowledge, skills and dispositions to meet the needs of ELLs.

Since this article is only a brief introduction to meeting the needs of English Language Learners, I conclude by providing a list of useful resources for teachers and other practitioners to look up as a "starter kit". These resources are divided into books, professional associations, and web sites.

References

American Educational Research Association. (2004). English Language Learners: Boosting Academic Achievement. Essential Information for Education Policy, 2(1). Washington, D. C. : Author.

August, D. & Hakuta, K. (Eds). (1997). Improving Schooling for Language Minority Students: A Research Agenda. Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press.

Chamot, A. U. & O'Malley, J. M. (1992). The CALLA Handbook: Implementing the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach: Reading. MA: Addison-Wesley.

Collier, V. (1989). "How Long? A Synthesis of Research on Rcademic Achievement in a Second Language." TESOL Quarterly, 21(4), 617-641.

Cummins, J. (1981a). "Four Misconceptions about Language Proficiency in Bilingual Education." NABE Journal, 5(3), 31-45.

Cummins, J. (1981b). "The Role of Primary Language Development in Promoting Educational Success for Language Minority Students." In California State Department of Education (Ed.), Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework, (pp. 3-49). Los Angeles: Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center.

Cummins, J. & Swain, M. (1986). Bilingualism in Education. New York: Longman.

Fleischman, H. L. & Hopstock, P.J. (1983). Descriptive Study of Services to Limited English Proficient Students. Arlington, VA: Development Associates, Inc.

Gibson, M. A. (1997)." Complicating the Immigrant/Involuntary Minority Typology." Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 28(3), 431-454.

Kindler, A. L. (2002). Survey of the L.E.P. Students and Available Educational Programs and Services, 2000-2001 Survey Report. Washington, D.C.: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition and Language Instruction Educational Programs. Available at http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/policy/states/reports/seareports/0001/sea0001.pdf

Lyons, J. J. (1990)."The Past and Future Directions of Federal Bilingual-Education Policy." In C.B. Cazden & C.E. Snow (Eds.), Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science : Volume 508. English Plus: Issues in bilingual education (pp. 66-80). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Suarez-Orozco, C. & Suarez-Orozco, M. M. (1995) Transformations: Immigration, Family Life, and Achievement Motivation Among Latino Adolescents. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Thomas, W. P. & Collier, V. P. (2001). A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students' Long Term Academic Achievement. Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellent.

Resources

Books:
August, D. & Hakuta, K. (Eds). (1997). Improving Schooling for Language Minority Students: A Research Agenda. Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press.

Davies Samway, K. & McKeon, D. (1999). Myths and Realities: Best Practices for Language Minority Students. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Ovando, C. & Collier, V. P. (1985). Bilingual and ESL Classrooms: Teaching in Multicultural Contexts. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Peregoy, S. F. & Boyle, O.F. (2005). (4th edition). Reading, Writing, and Learning in ESL: A Resource Book for K-12 Teachers. Boston, MA: Pearson Education Inc.

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (1997). ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 Students. Alexandria, VA: Author

Professional associations:
Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, T.E.S.O.L
National Association for Bilingual Education, N.A.B.E.
National Association for Multicultural Education, N.A.M.E.

Websites:
TESOL: www.tesol.org
NABE: www.nabe.org
Center for Applied Linguistics, www.cal.org
Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence, www.crede.ucsc.edu

About the author

Manka M. Varghese is an assistant professor in Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Washington, College of Education in Seattle, WA. Her areas of specialization are language teacher education and sociolinguistics. She has published in journals such as Applied Linguistics, Journal of Teacher Education. Her co-edited book, Bilingualism and Language Pedagogy, published by Multilingual Matters will be out in September, 2005.

Contact info -
Manka M. Varghese
University of Washington, College of Education P.O. Box 353600 Seattle, WA. 98195-3600
Phone: 206 - 221 4796
Fax: 206 -685 9094
Email: mankav@u.washington.edu

©September 2004 New Horizons for Learning
This area of the website supported by