Teaching ESL Students at Least 3.5 Million

¶ … Teaching ESL Students

At least 3.5 million children every year are identified as possessing limited English proficiency and require additional support before they are mainstreamed into the regular classroom environment (Miller & Endo 2004: 786). Approaches to ESL instruction run the gamut from total immersion to fostering a largely bilingual approach to education for this group of students. The two typical program approaches are that of a transitional bilingual education (TBE) versus a structured (sheltered) English immersion (SEI) program. In TBE, students are instructed in their native language and slowly transitioned to English, and are mainstreamed within 2-3 years to an English-only environment. In the SEI model, all instruction is provided in English immediately, with no accommodations (Tong 2009). A "major challenge that schools face under the pressure of the landmark No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 is to prepare ELLs with native-like English proficiency through various instructional models so that these ELLs will be able to participate competitively in academic and social events"(Tong et al. 2008). The debate on how to educate ESL students is often ideologically charged, thus it is important to conduct an overview of the research on what actually seems to 'work' with students, versus the approach which satisfies a particular agenda of how American education 'should be.'

According to Miller & Endo (2004), the typical duration of an ESL program or support system is one or two years before a student is entirely left to 'sink or swim' in a class alongside of native English peers. Yet current language research indicates that 5-7 years of education in a language is required to reach full academic proficiency (Miller & Endo 2004: 786). This means that students will be constantly playing 'catch up' with their peers without proper academic support. They note that many studies show considerable benefits for students who continue to be bilingual, and advocate a bilingual approach to ESL. Students should not be penalized for transitioning into their native language every now and then, and teachers should make accommodations when needed, such as simplifying higher-level vocabulary when teaching complex scientific or historical material (Miller & Endo 2004: 790). This ensures that ESL students can keep pace with their native language peers without falling behind in other academic subjects.

It is also argued that bilingual education that does not demonize the student's first language as 'dead weight' and encourages the retention of two languages also reduces the cognitive dissonance students experience when acclimating to a new culture as well as to a new language. Students may be reluctant to learn English if they feel it is a betrayal to their parents at home, who still speak a foreign language (Miller & Endo 2004). The ability to remain grounded in their native language eliminates some of the discomfort that can result with frequent 'code switching' between their original language at home and total immersion in English at school. The instruction that children receive in schools as well as the language can be quite Eurocentric in terms of the concepts and history on which it focuses, and also upon the approach. Many students from other cultures feel uncomfortable with the informal, contentious style of American education which places a greater emphasis on open-ended questions and class debate, and this exacerbates the difficulties they experience in transitioning to an English language-only mainstream classroom.

The anecdotal evidence supporting a gradual bilingual transition of Miller & Endo (2004) is contradicted to some degree by one study by Tong (et al. 2008) who conducted a two-year longitudinal survey 534 Hispanic English-language learners in kindergarten and first grade in different programs. "The comparison between the two groups receiving typical practice suggested that students in the SEI-T (English-only group) had a higher initial level of English oral proficiency…than TBE-T students in the bilingual classrooms" (Tong et al. 2008). Tong's research supported the idea that greater gains overall occurred when students were exposed to academic English as early as possible in the 'sheltered' programs which deploy English in an immersive format, versus the slower traditional program.

However, the value of these findings remains controversial. First, there is the contention that being bilingual, over the long-term, can be helpful for students and that bilingual students' brains even show an enhanced ability to be neurologically adaptable (Willis 2008). Some also argue that having a goal of transitioning a student out of being bilingual is fundamentally a violation of the child's right to inhabit two cultures (Waters 2001). Also, the efficacy of the immersion program vs. The less intensive approach was based upon student performance in the third grade, not over the course of the student's long-term educational careers.