“I would just sit there. I felt disconnected, isolated, scared and shy, timid, intimidated.”
This is a quote from Sevillano describing her experiences as an eight year old ESL child. The quote describes the feelings and experiences of a child for who English is a second language receiving no help in school.
Why should we care?
•Estimated that by 2020 50% of schools will be composed of language minority children
•We live in a multilingualism world and need to be aware of the best way to educate those learning a new language
That is why I feel English as-a-second language learners should be provided with greater assistance in education, mainly through bilingual education

What are the terms we need to be aware of when discussing ELL students?
•ESL which is short for English-as-a-second language learners
•LEP which stands for limited English proficiency
•One option for education is bilingual education. As Domenico Maceri discusses in the Denver Business Journal Article titled The Pros of Bilingual Education, bilingual education focuses on teaching children the subjects – Math, History, Science, etc – in their native language while they are learning English. After a few years of this they are transitioned into English-only classrooms. Bilingual education is also sometimes referred to as dual language education.
•English immersion is another educational method. Ofelia Garcia elaborates on immersion in her article “Bilingual Education is Beneficial” from Newsday. She discusses what immersion fully entails. Immersion is simple English only classes for all children.

What is immersion and why is it not as effective as bilingual education?
•Immersion is a very rigid view of educating children. It is not flexible.
•Immersion does not accommodate the needs of the learners and it is not inclusive of the learners’ differences. All of these are components which our American education system is based on. The American Education system strives to include those who are different which is clearly displayed in a ruling on special education children. It is currently a law that special education children need to be place in the least restrictive environment. This means that special education children are to be placed in an environment as class to a regular classroom as possible while still receiving aid. Why? Because that is where they learn best, where they are interacting with peers and learning from each other.
•It is also proven that English immersion programs are ineffective as demonstrated by the 50 percent of Latino or Hispanic students who do not pass the California High School Exit Exam.
• As researched by Kenji Hakuta a professor at Stanford University, research has not conclusively proven that English immersion raises test scores.
•Another problem with English immersion is that it does not recognize the need to simultaneously learn content area material.
• According to Jeff MacSwan who wrote an article “Schools should Employ Bilingual Education” for the Arizona Republic.
•I do not know about you but I have a hard enough time trying to learn science, I could not imagine trying to learn science in Spanish. That is the experience of children in full immersion programs – they are not learning anything because they do not understand.
•A final consideration in why English immersion is not the best way to educate ESL children, immersion is forcing the child to replace the native language with English. This is very backwards thinking particularly because most schools now require students to have taken several credit hours in another language. Why do schools make students learn a new language? The answer is simple. We live in a multilingualism world. We are a global economy and we need to know how to communicate with those in other languages. So why force a child to stop learning one language, to learn another, to later on have that child relearn their native language we made them stop learning?

Why is bilingual education the most effective means of teaching ELL students?
•Bilingual education allows ESL students to maintain their native language. This is very critical because it is important in the world we live in. Also, it is most likely their parents do not speak English. Allowing an ESL child to continue to learn both languages allows them to communicate with their native country.
•By using bilingual education as the means to educate we are not forcing assimilation. Bilingual education allows ESL children to keep part of the culture from which they came. The American Education system should not again force children to give up their culture to learn as was done with Native American children.
•Bilingual education also allows children to continue to learn the content area material they need to while also learning English, this way they are not falling further behind in the content areas. Bilingual education is a solution for students underachieving in school and feeling segregated.
•Resources on Bilingual Education

Where else do we see accommodating students in education?
•The American Education system has coined a new term, culturally responsive teaching. This means that teachers need to be aware of the different cultures represented within their classroom- children with gay parent, Hispanics, Polish, children who are below the poverty line, etc. – and include those children in their classroom. The classroom is a place to make kids feel safe not alienated. This concept relates to this speech because teachers need to be responsive to the ESL students.

Who are E.L.L. students?

Problems ELL Students Face

You think today is just like any other day. You walk into your English class ready to take your test, only something is different. Your test is in Spanish! How well do you think you would do on that test? Well unless you are pretty fluent I'm guessing you aren't going to do very well. This analogy can describe how many ELL students feel. ELL(English Language Learners) face many road bumps when trying to learn the english language. Some of those road bumps are:

- -Many ELL students start at different levels. This makes it extremely difficult for a teacher to teach a classroom of students the same thing if they are not on the same page. This would be like trying to teach an 8th grader the same info as a 4th grader.

-- People assume that just because ELL students do not do as well as their

peers they are slower or less intelligent. This stereotype has damaged the

progress these students can make.

--The cultural difference also has a massive impact on the learning process.

Growing up and being raised here in America we acquire certain understandings & knowledges we probably don't even realize we have. As you

have probably heard the saying "the little things count". Well they defiantly do! It's hard for people new to learning the english language to be taught these

"inside" things.

--History can also play a role in an ELL students difficulties. When someone references George Washington we all know, he was the first president of the United States. Most fifth graders could tell you that. However, a student who is

not from the U.S. can not be expected to know this.

I think it may be hard for those of us to understand exactly what it is like for an ELL

student, so I have included a post from a young woman named Akemi Ota a foreign

exchange student from Japan. She gives us a little bit of insight into the world of an

ELL student. You can see her photo posted above left.

Here is what Akemi has to say:

"I studied English for almost nine years in Japan, but when I arrived America I was surprised about how poor my English speaking ability was. I had studied English for so many years, but I didn’t take any special speaking lessons. So I was always feeling nervous about hearing and speaking English, and I was almost crying when I took the first ESL writing class.

There were so many fluent speakers while I couldn’t even understand what teacher was talking about. My grammar skill is quite good, and I always got first grade in that writing class. But once teacher asked me to mention my opinion, I felt very uncomfortable and I said to myself, “Oh, gosh! I am such a dropout here… please help me!! How come they mix students like this?”

Although I still feel uneasy about my listening and speaking, I no longer think the mixing of ESL students is wrong, rather it can be helpful to English learners. Getting used to it is the only one way we can learn the language. I made a lot of friends in ESL class, and I often talked to them about my country, life, future dreams and so on; also we sometimes share the same feelings about how English frustrates us or how hard it is to get used to the U.S. Especially when we talk about homework, I can help them in grammar things, meanwhile I can practice my speaking. We can encourage each other.

That was really my biggest help. Meeting people who have different abilities and values enriched my life, and mixing of students makes English study more fun!"

Teaching ELL students is not impossible and with patience and understanding

we will make more progress each and every day :)

Neill, M. (2005). Assessment of ELL students under NCLB: Problems and solutions. 28 October 2009.<NCLB_assessing_bilingual_students_0.pdf>

Teaching Concept Strategies

Teaching English Language Learning students is not an easy task. However, there are multiple strategies to help such students succeed.

First, we must understand the different sides of language.

Language is a social skill; the purpose is mainly communication. Children need to communicate in order to build relationships with other children through interaction and by participating in the youth culture of sports, games, television and other varieties of media. This goal can only be met by placing the child that does not have English as their native language by placing them in an English language-rich environment or school where for six hours a day they receive constant language skills to succeed. The skills these English language learning students are developing are called Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills or BICS.

Language is also an academic skill; the language kids need to succeed in school is different from the oral language skills they use in social context. Even students with a high level of social skills may lack critical language skills for learning academic content. Social language, or BICS, involves such abilities as retelling stories, describing experiences, narrating activities or offering personal opinions. The language of the classroom makes conceptual demands that are beyond BICS talk. In the classroom, students are asked to do abstract and cognitively complex assignments such as comparing and contrasting, analyzing, justifying, evaluating and classifying. These classroom language skills are known as Cognitive Academic Language Progiciency or CALP.

Types of Learning Strategies

•Metacognitive strategies are those involved in thinking about learning which can be something that deals with planning and organizing learning such as using an assignment notebook to write down the homework for tonight or dealing with self-monitoring and self-evaluating learning such as discovering strategies that best work for you.
•Cognitive strategies involve practice activity which promote deeper understanding and an increased ability to apply new knowledge. Activities include making connections between English and the students native language, creating graphic organizers and condensing notes to study for a test.
•Memory strategies consist of any technique that helps rote recitation of language which are simply to recall elements without any attempt to understand the material completely. A Mnemonic is a memory strategies that often students create themselves such as "I before E except after C" or the "tricks" of a multiplication table. English language learning students can even use their native language to create mnemonics.
•Social strategies are those when the learner works with one of more classmates or simply learns from the surrounding environment which become more fun for the student. Such activities involve working in pairs or doing homework with a friend.
•Compensation strategies are used to make up for something that is not known or immediately accessible from memory. As English speakers we use this strategy regularly in conversations by using phrases like whatchamacallit or thingamajigg by replacing words which we can not find the meaning for currently.

All students need to use a variety of strategies however English language learners in particular will learn more effectively from using strategies in combinations.

Teaching Content Using Textbook Strategies

• Use textbooks as aids; they are a resource to help students understand the information in the text.
• Teach students how to use the contents and index: a simple technique is to give a group of students a list of topics and have the note the page number(s) in the text where information is given.
• Preselect and preteach vocabulary before assigning textbook work to the students.

In general, textbooks are a good resource aid to help English Language Learning students.

There are also many resourceful websites that can be used to find activities that will help benefit the students. For example Everything ESL not only provides not only helpful tips, but lesson plans and even a page to to "Ask Judie" or post questions and get a response from professionals. Also Free English Teaching and Learning is a website that offers many tules for both teachers and students.

There are also websites available to access information for specific subjects. English Language Learners in Math is a great resource for those who are having troubles teaching this specific subject.

Reiss, Jodi. Teaching Content To English Language Learners: Strategies for Secondary School Success. White Plains, New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005.

Accomodations for E.L.L. Students

With all the words in the enlish langauge don't you think E.L.L. Students should receive some accomodations on their standardized testing. Illinois is among four states that don't allow for any accomodations what so ever. When taking a test as an E.L.L. student it is not only a test of their mathmatical or scientific knowledge, but also their english reading and comprehension. This is an unfair disadvantage.



As this graph clearly shows there is a discrepantcy between native speakers and their E.L.L. counterparts. The E.L.L. students are clearly not all below the marks of the native speakers, but they they experience a language barrier in testing situations.

Registered methods of Accommodating E.L.L. Students in standardized tests are:

Linguistic Simplification
Use of Dictionary or Glossary
Native Language Testing
Reading Aloud
Extra Time

Simplification
As a test accommodation, linguistic simplification, refers to the process of decreasing the linguistic complexity of the test to make the meaning more accessible to the student, without changing the meaning of the text. This accommodation confronts the issue of understanding the test. In many cases a test taker is limited by his knowledge of the language as many tests use ambiguous language with high vocabulary and using many synonyms that are not at the base of understanding the language.
With use of the simplified vocabulary it has been shown that a test is not “dumbed down” and it does in fact raise ELL test scores. The only problem is that ELLs showed no more improvement than non-ELLs did on the same test. The fact remains that linguistic simplification has promise as an accommodation for math and science testing.

The Use of Dictionaries
The use of dictionaries and glossaries is an accommodation meant to help ELLs with understanding language that has not been learned due to their level of English knowledge. The reference material used in testing this accommodation was designed to help students comprehend without providing clues that could reduce the validity of the test.
This method has a lot of concerns revolving around the validity of the test. Having the definition to a word can compromise a test. This is where designed dictionaries have been implemented rather than general English dictionaries. Designed “customized dictionaries” are heavy with the use of synonyms rather than definitions. Also, bilingual dictionaries are used. This method is yet to be tested along side with the provision of extra time which could greatly increase scores. Extra time would allow the students to access the dictionaries as much as they need to without the pressure of using the dictionary while on a tighter schedule.

Native Language Testing
Native language is an interesting provision for ELL students. It provides them with dual language testing material or oral directions from a proctor. This method hasn’t been proven to help ELLs. This is because they receive instruction in math in English rather than Spanish so when the language is switched on a test it is less helpful than one might expect. The one exception where native language testing is helpful is when implemented with new ELL students. Those who have just recently made a switch from their native language can really be helped by this dual language text.
Other than the new ELL student native language testing has an adverse effect on test scores. This brings up a necessity in ELL testing. Each student must be tested to see how much or little accommodation is necessary to be helpful.

Reading the Test Material Aloud
Reading the test material aloud is used as a means of letting students hear and see material. This accommodation started as a means for the blind and dyslexic students to be tested. In that case there is no written text just the oral instruction by the proctor. However in the ELL format they have both. It allows students to connect verbal clues along with textual clues because much of the first steps of language comprehension is done verbally before textually.
This method hasn’t been as extensively tested as some others and for that reason the validity as a an accommodation is yet to be determined.

Extra Time
Extra time works under the belief that if language poses a problem for students they may not be able to take all items on the test under careful consideration in the time allotted. Although extra time does stand alone it is mostly used in conjunction with other accommodations. Extra time may not be used for tests which are based on completion of speeded completion. It has been proven that extra time does not unfairly give advantage to ELLs, but it does show more results than reading the test material aloud and native language in some cases. It is also a good accommodation when paired with others as it lets students use their other resources more efficiently.

Overview
ELL students having to take a test that is in a second language must be recognized as a disadvantage. I believe that that should constitute some sort of handicap. However, before being allowed some sort of assistance with test taking a pretest should be administered to test what level a student is at before taking the test because it would be unfair to give a 6th year ELL student the same accommodation a brand new one unless their English aptitude were indeed on the same level. It’s a touchy subject to call being bilingual a disadvantage in test taking, but it is and appropriately students should receive some sort of accommodation.




Lessow-Hurley, Judith. Foundations of dual language instruction. New York: Longman, 2000. Print.
State Assessment Policy and Practice for English Language Learners A National Perspective. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. Print.

What can we do to make things better for ELL students?

There are a couple companies out there with lessons and strategies to better assist ELL students such as Millmark Education,.

It is suggested that in the beginning of ELL student's time in U.S. schools should have short periods of small group or "pull out."

*Create a classroom that fosters the students development*

• accept the limited use of English
• celebrate the student's culture
• give them extra instruction time
• if possible, allow ELL students to use oral assessment instead of written
• have access to books of multiple reading levels
• engage them in conversation and give them opportunities to talk with peers
  

*Ways to better assist in content areas and strengthening vocabulary:

• notebooks of concepts of each content area
• have them keep sketchbooks
• word walls for each specific content area
• use math manipulatives
  

Ideas for helping ELL students on standardized tests:

• allow them more time
• practice with vocabulary in the classroom
• create a test specific for ELL students

**The key to creating a safe and supportive environment is to have an open mind and positive attitude about helping ELL students.**

**Be supportive of students. Leave prejudices at the door. Encourage development in ELL students just as you would for a student with special needs.**

http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/chat/chat124.shtml

Solutions for ELL Students

Good solutions and tips for teachers who have ELL studnets are the following. Getting to know your student (outside the box information), ask what their native country was like, and most importantly give praise to the students. What I learned through reading the a guidebook to theory and practice, was that teaching an ELL student is much like having your student like it is your own child. Their should be a little bit more of "care" to the ELL students. Many of the ELL students are coming from a totally different culture and of course a different language.

Not only are you teaching the students the requirement of the district board, but you are teaching the English culture, taboos, and just tips that the students should know living in a different culture.

But the key of becoming an ELL teacher, is providing a playful, joyful, and loving environment for the students. There can not be any sort of bias or being impatient with the student. A good small harmless thing a teacher could do, is to use a token method. To teach the new students some cultural taboos, using the token method is a good form to use. Every human no matter what culture, knows the token system. For every good act the students does you reward them with a token. At a certain time, the students could trade their tokes for prizes. Dual language teachers have to constantly provide a fun and entertaining environment to fuel the ELL students in which they feel hungry to learn more of the english culture. Not only is learning English important, but what is more important is teaching the foreign students taboos they may not know.

Bibliography

Gunderson, Lee, 1942-revised 2007- ESL (ELL) literacy instruction: A Guidebook to theory and practice.

youtube video called Billingual ELL students and stratigies @ http://www.youtube.com/