Teaching ELL Students to Read
Romanian children learn to read
Originally uploaded by operation.blessing
Even native-English-speaking children have trouble shifting from informal playground English to Academic English. Academic English involves relating a single event to other events, discussing events of long ago, making comparisons, justifying a choice, knowing different forms and inflections of words, and modes of expression specific to one discipline or another. At some point the student has to be able to read and write in academic language.
It shouldn’t be any surprise that second language learners typically score an average of 35 percentage points fewer on federal and state standardized tests than do native speakers. They are taking the test in a second language, which every ESL teacher should try sometime. Further, in 1990, 1 in 20 students was a second language learner in our classrooms and last year an average of 1 in 9 students was a second language learner. 80% of these are Spanish speakers and about 8% speak an Asian language. Over 80% of the Spanish speakers – most born here – live in poverty and are at-risk students. Only 11% of the Asians fall into that category.
The most topical issue in the learning process is the response to the question: How should we teach these students to read? Reading skills transfer in youngsters. In general, most researchers find that if the first language reading is improved, those skills transfer to the second. Similar findings occur even if both are taught simultaneously. Though it is counterintuitive to some, teaching simply in the second language (i.e., English) tends to slow down learning according to contemporary research. This is a controversial matter and if taken to a vote, sadly research generally loses! I refer teachers and others to Colorín Colorado to glance at research.
There is another issue, however. What if a student is not literate in his or her first language and no teacher is literate in that language and so it cannot be taught even if there is a literate form to the language? In an ELL Endorsement candidate’s practicum class recently, I observed some migrant children from Mexico who spoke Mixteco. Depending on the linguist you read there are between a dozen and 60 Mixtec languages and there are about 400,000 people who speak this family of languages and each language is quite different from the others in the family. Even here there are helpful websites such as www.native-languages.org/mixtec.htm
From gathering information, the teacher can create a reading assignment in English, initially making use of phonics so the children learn the basic sounds of English letters. From there bring in realia (museums are very helpful in letting teachers borrow material), and create stories that touch familiar environmental and cultural themes for these students. Since you have no first language to operate with, you can at least teach reading in an environment that is familiar. While I know of no studies here, anecdotally I have seen this work to a much better degree than when a student is asked to decode and when the student decodes the student still makes no connections in the world. Working with cultural and environmental items that are familiar builds a cognitive system which leads to reading and not simple decoding.
- Dr. Paul Schneider, Director of Teacher Education Programs, WAL
November 21st, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Dr. Schneider,
Thank you for the tips to teachers in your article. I have been doing a lot of thinking about how I would help beginning ELL students get their initial bearings in English. I am fluent in Spanish, but speak none of the indigenous languages spoken in Central or South America. The tip about finding culturally relevant materials will help students to: 1) get a context for their reading, and 2) give them the opportunity to become acquainted with each other’s cultures. After reading both this article as well as your article on ELL Teachers and the need to find a balance in teaching methods in the ELL classroom, I feel that a teacher should be able to draw from various methods. Since individuals have such diverse learning styles, it stands to reason to me that teachers should vary their methods.
Just a quick note about where I am coming from before I close: I left a 20 year career with a major airline to begin work on an education in teaching. I became certified in June 2008 through SPU to teach Spanish and German on the high school level, and then decided later last summer to pursue my endorsement in ESL/Bilingual at WAL. I have so much enjoyed all my classes at WAL and have seen myself grow in confidence in front of a class. The experience I gained in writing lesson plans and teaching them to my peers has made me feel a lot more confident about my first year of teaching next autumn. Thank you so much!