How to Assess Language in the Social Studies Classroom

been paid to the language and academic needs of English as a second language (ESL) students in the social studies classroom. In the most recent review and one of the few written on social studies texts and instruction, Short (1998) found that ESL students do not receive the language and academic support they need to master the abstract vocabulary and difficult reading and writing assignments that are endemic to social studies. In spite of the lack of recent research into the language demands of social studies, recent textbook series have responded to pressure from schools around the country to address the needs of ESL students. In a review of six teacher’s annotated editions of high school U.S. history textbooks published between 1995 and 1998, which included Boyer (1998); Danzer et al. (1998); Downey, Giese, and Metcalf (1997); Drewery and O’Connor (1995); Mason et al. (1997); and Ritchie (1997), we found that publishers have made good progress in addressing the needs of ESL students. All but one of the texts contains varied suggestions for accessing the content and providing background or the prior student knowledge assumed to be held by most students. Activities such as teaching suggestions that include cultural background activities, Spanish language editions, vocabulary exercises, the use of audiotapes, and heterogeneous grouping were common in the texts. Still, there is much work that must be done. To succeed and function independently in an English-only classroom, an ESL student must reach a level of competence that Cummins (1979) termed Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP). According to Cummins, CALP concerns the ability to express in writing higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. That ability is interdependent with the first language. Students who enter the classroom without having developed higher-order literacy skills in their first language spend from five to seven years gaining those skills in their second language. Given the fact that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation requires that ESL students enter mainstream classroom work within three years, few students will enter a social studies classroom with the necessary skills. After three years of ESL, most students will have achieved Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS). Students at that level can ask and answer simple factual recall questions, converse about personal experiences, and describe the events in their lives, but their reading and writing skills may be extremely low. The disparity between ESL students’ current level of language development and the language demands of the social studies classroom presents a difficult situation for social studies teachers. Even those who are knowledgeable in the most effective techniques for ESL instruction find themselves forced to assess students who have learned a great deal orally but have not had the time to develop the cognitive academic language proficiency needed to succeed in class. Written assignments, for instance, which require students to compare and contrast two figures in history or to evaluate the actions of a particular group, are very common but represent a difficult challenge for students who have not achieved CALP because such an assignment calls on students to How to Assess Language in the Social Studies Classroom