English Language Learners
Essays

Bilingual education is changing because of the practical and theoretical demands put upon teachers today. Bilingual education is being reevaluated, and there is a demand that teachers incorporate more academic concepts into the syllabus, to ensure that students are prepared for the technologically-focused modern workplace. ESL students are also being taught in a more holistic and experiential manner, even while teachers strive to prepare them for standardized tests.

A content-focused approach to reading and writing instruction with this student. The ationale for this choice was based predominantly on the student's continued frustration and embarrassment about his difficulties with making progress in fluency in English. The goal was to embed specific language development strategies into content that the student would find engaging and respectful (i.e., content that most 10th-grade boys would find of interest). Content-focused approach. Chose baseball as the content area and based the student's reading, writing, and math goals on that topic. Many highly successful baseball players speak English as a second language, which the student found intriguing and empowering. As a sport, baseball highlights the individual personalities, characteristics, career and game statistics, and history of the game. In other words, this is a content-rich area that lends itself well to reading about players and teams, and writing opinions about player's skills and attributes—basically those characteristics that make them valuable players—and why players get traded. In addition, the promise of interesting math problems about baseball players is very rich. Because the student already had an understanding of the sport of baseball, fundamental background knowledge was not a difficulty. Further, by using interesting and age appropriate content, I was able to avoid the pitfall of simplifying the content instead of the language.

Literacy-based curriculum for students who speak English as a first language is a proven method for developing high levels of linguistic fluency—children are seen to acquire language skills quite readily with these techniques. Moreover, as strong language skills develop, they transfer into writing and reading. For students who are native English language speakers, working on literacy skills and practicing English in verbal, auditory, and written modes helps them to become fluent speakers, readers, and writers of English. However, this same approach to teaching students has not been demonstrated to work well with all English Language Learners. In fact, some programs using this approach devolve into the strategy that teachers just need to continue instruction according to this format until the students who are English Language Learners reach their performance targets. Nevertheless, the research literature on literacy development indicates that this uniform approach to instruction does not achieve desired level of language acquisition and academic performance in diverse societies, such as that of the United States. What the research does indicate, however, is that the cultural background of students is relevant to their learning styles. The differences among children and families carry over into the classroom, creating a unique mosaic of learning styles and cultural experience. Approaches to academic learning environments that are invitational and inclusive provide a promising foundation for achieving high levels of success for all students. Educational programs that articulate meaningful ways to include parents and families in their children's schooling are also able to consider and address the diversity that is based on economic and, perhaps, even health-related issues. A number of ethnic-based educational programs have found that student performance is enhanced when the cultural considerations are integral to the curriculum and the instruction. Culturally sensitive curricula and instruction have been shown to improve student engagement—a condition that is robustly related to academic performance. While ethnic-based educational programs are increasingly recognized to have academic and social benefits. Policy makers are taking the position that inclusive educational programs that work deliberately to reduce marginalizing students of different racial and ethnic backgrounds also do a better job of engaging students in academic learning—and the students' levels of success in these programs indicates a strong positive relationship between academic performance and inclusive, culturally-sensitive educational system.

Hernando County and NCLB: Mandate for Drastic Change

Special Needs Assessment: A Review of Recent Literature on Testing Students with Special Needs

Advantages and Disadvantages of Alternative Assessments

According to Echevarria et al. (2005), "Each year, the United States becomes more ethnically and linguistically diverse, with more than 90% of recent immigrants coming from non-English speaking countries." The dramatic…

There are many different facets of early child literacy that pedagogues must take into account when teaching this subject. One of these is the innate correlation between the reading and the writing process. Additionally, teachers must create the proper classroom environment and scheduling to make this work efficiently well.

There are many people who learn English either as a second language or under less than ideal conditions. One group that struggles with this is Aboriginals, since they often find that the domains of development they use are different from what is seen with more standard learning. This paper addresses Aboriginals and English language learning, in an effort to examine how they can best be taught.

¶ … teachers address English as a second language must be considered. Traditionally, teachers of English as a second language (ESL) have used grammar exercises in an effort to teach children how to speak, read, and…