Setting the Foundation for Working with English Language Learners in the Secondary Classroom.

Abstract In many schools, an increasing number of students are learning English as their second language. Secondary teachers are faced with the challenge of teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) with little or no training. This article highlights ideas and strategies that teachers can incorporate to make their instruction more effective in meeting the academic needs of ELLs. Currently, one in five students in the U.S. comes from a home in which a language other than English is spoken, and the percentage of children whose first language is not English is expected to grow to 40% of the K-12 population by 2030 (Crawford, 2000). Despite increasing numbers of English Language Learners (ELLs) in K-12 classrooms, many teachers have little preparation in meeting the needs of this population. Only 12.5% of teachers in the U.S. have received 8 or more hours of training to teach ELLs (National Center for Education Statistics, 2008). Darling-Hammond (2006) reported that the majority of teachers from exemplary teacher education programs who were surveyed rated themselves as "less well prepared" to work with ELLs (p. 65), and Reeves (2006) found that over 81% of the secondary teachers she surveyed believed they received inadequate training to work with ELLs. The purpose of this article is to assist secondary teachers by providing an overview of concepts and strategies related to teaching ELLs and by highlighting ideas for working with ELLs at the secondary level. Secondary teachers should keep expectations high for all students but must be particularly aware of their expectations with regard to ELLs. They must keep in mind that ELLs lack proficiency in English, but they are not cognitively limited. Although second language acquisition mirrors first language development (Hakuta, 1986; Krashen, 1982; McLaughlin, 1990), there is a critical difference. The English of secondary level ELLs may sound like that of four year old children, but their ability to understand academic material in their first language is decidedly not at the pre-school level. Therefore, challenging ELLs to think critically is vital to their academic success and second language development. Stages of second language acquisition Many secondary teachers have misconceptions regarding the length of time needed to acquire English. Reeves (2006) found that over 71% of the secondary teachers she surveyed believed that ELLs should be able to acquire English within 2 years of enrolling in United States (U.S.) schools. Students may acquire social language within this time frame, but academic language generally takes over 5 years to develop (Cummins, 1 994). It is important to bear in mind that comprehension precedes production in both social and academic language. Generally five stages of language acquisition (Krashen & Terrell, 1 983) are discussed in the literature. Given individual differences, the period of time a student takes to pass through a particular stage varies greatly, and because language acquisition is an ongoing process, stages may overlap. Understanding English language learners' levels of linguistic proficiency assists teachers in becoming more competent at differentiating instruction to promote linguistic and academic achievement. Silent/Receptive/Pre-productive In this stage, ELLs are primarily taking in language input, building their oral comprehension skills and their ability to infer meaning from context clues. If they attempt to communicate, they are likely to do so nonverbally. As students progress through this stage, they provide one word responses and can answer "yes" or "no." Students at this stage should not be pressured to speak until they can do it on their own. Early Production Students at this stage continue to build upon the skills acquired earlier, but they also begin to communicate verbally using short phrases rather than single words, and they develop greater ability to extract meaning from utterances directed to them. …