Program models for teaching english language learners

Some research related to language of instruction for ELs has been limited by selection bias because the preferences of administrators, teach-. Box lists factors that need to be considered in interpreting findings from studies that compare one type of program model with another, while Box summarizes a case study of one K DL school.

This section reviews the research on instructional methods intended to develop oral English proficiency in ELs. The committee defines oral language proficiency as both receptive and expressive oral language, as well as specific aspects of oral language including phonology, oral vocabulary, morphology, grammar, discourse features, and pragmatic skills August and Shanahan, There is some theoretical basis for this definition.

Oral language differs from written language because of the differences between the physical nature of speech and writing. Speech provides auditory information, while writing provides visual information; speech is temporary, while writing is permanent; and speech has prosodic features rhythm, stress, and intonation that writing does not Schallert et al.

The committee also includes multiple aspects of oral language in one construct because recent empirical research indicates that all the frequently tested oral language constructs including phonological awareness cluster together, at least until about grade 3, when there is a split between lexical and grammatical features Foorman et al. Findings from this research appear to indicate that children learn words and patterns for combining words from the same social interactions.

The words are analyzed, recognized, and stored as phonological patterns, but they are associated with information about co-occurrences that give grammatical information e. The committee focused on oral language proficiency as a construct because of its important role in content area learning for ELs August and Shanahan, ; Saunders et al.

Evidence for its importance comes from the effect sizes for literacy outcomes for ELs compared with English-proficient students. In a review of the literature on literacy development, the effect sizes for EL outcomes were lower and more variable than those for English-proficient students exposed to the same literacy interventions, and sizable positive reading comprehension outcomes for ELs across the studies were relatively rare August and Shanahan, , p.

The studies in this review measured phonological awareness, oral reading fluency and accuracy, receptive and expressive vocabulary, listening comprehension, grammar and syntax, and other linguistic features. Interventions had to focus wholly or in part on developing oral language proficiency and also had to include outcome measures of oral language proficiency. Other parameters for inclusion were that studies focused on students in grades K who were learning English as a second language in the United States or other countries where English is the national language.

The committee drew on studies located through systematic database searches of peer-reviewed journals using keywords for the parameters of interest; on intervention studies reported in previous syntheses that focused on instructed second language learning e.

The committee found very few studies that met these parameters. Most studies that focused on instructed second language proficiency cited in previous syntheses Dixon et al. Some studies focused on developing these skills in ELs but did not measure these constructs as outcomes e. It is important that future intervention studies focused in part on oral language development measure it as an outcome.

From the very limited available research, the committee draws tentative inferences about the kinds of instructional practices that are beneficial for promoting oral language proficiency. Before reviewing findings related to promising practices, it is important to note that while some of the studies included in this review encouraged the kinds of classroom discourse that are aligned with new language proficiency standards e. Across the studies included in this review, explicit instruction in oral language components was found to be beneficial; it led to students acquiring these component skills to higher levels relative to students in the control groups who were not exposed to the interventions.

ELs in the primary grades who were struggling readers benefited from instruction that developed their phonological awareness skills e. In one study Vaughn et al.

The promising practices in these studies provided practice in phoneme discrimination, phoneme segmentation, and blending. Explicit in-depth vocabulary teaching was beneficial for developing vocabulary knowledge and skills. For example, two studies that focused on kindergarten children Crevecoeur et al.

The Crevecoeur et al. It found that the multimedia support had a positive effect on vocabulary acquisition for ELs but had no such effect for students who were English-proficient. Several studies focused on text-level skills such as listening comprehension.

Narrative skills were measured by the number of words and mean clause length in stories children told based on slides that represented the story plot. A second study conducted with kindergarteners Solari and Gerber, found that instruction in summarizing text, identifying the main ideas in text, recalling textual facts, and making predictions and inferences resulted in improvements in listening comprehension Solari and Gerber, A third study Greenfader et al.

Language skills targeted. The students in the treatment group outperformed those in the control group who did not receive the intervention on the California English Language Development Test, a standardized language proficiency test used throughout California. Findings from this study also indicate that ELs with the most limited abilities at baseline benefited the most.

A fourth study Tong et al. A multifaceted approach was used that included daily tutorials in intensive English, storytelling and retelling that emphasized higher-order thinking skills, and a teacher-directed academic oral language activity.

ELs in the intervention developed oral language proficiency indexed by measure of expressive vocabulary as well as listening comprehension at faster rates than students in the control groups.

A fifth study Scientific Learning Corporation, was successful in building the auditory comprehension of elementary school ELs who were identified as at risk through Fast ForWord, an adaptive computer training program that uses games to train acoustic reception abilities and improve semantic and syntactic skills. In a sixth exploratory study, high school ELs who participated in listening strategy instruction Carrier, showed significant improvements between pre-and posttests in discrete and video listening ability on assessments that measured discrete and video listening skills.

Several themes emerge from the above studies that are consistent with previous reviews of instructed second language acquisition Ellis, ; Saunders and Goldenberg, First, as noted above, specialized instruction in components of oral language proficiency led to better outcomes for students in intervention groups compared with controls.

Second, in most of the studies, oral language components were taught explicitly. Third, while this was the case, in these studies the language components were taught in language-rich environments such as read-alouds of narrative and informational texts e.

Finally, efforts were made to address the specialized needs of ELs learning content in a second language. Reviews of instructed second language learning Dixon et al. Several of the studies cited in the previous section provided structured opportunities for ELs to engage with English-proficient speakers e. In one study Greenfader et al. Speaking is important because it generates feedback, forces syntactic processing, and challenges students to engage at higher proficiency levels Johnson and Swain, ; Saunders and Goldenberg, It also generates more input, and substantial differences in the rate of second language acquisition are related to the amount and quality of the input students receive Ellis, Some evidence suggests that for peer interactive activities to be effective, they must be carefully planned and carried out Saunders and Goldenberg, The relationship between interactional feedback and second language learning has been an important focus of research.

One study Ammar and Spada, provides evidence that corrective feedback is beneficial. This quasi-experimental study investigated the benefits of two corrective feedback techniques—recasts and prompts—for 6th-grade ELs in Montreal acquiring English Ammar and Spada, One group was a control group, one group received corrective feedback from the teacher in the form of recasts, and the third group received corrective feedback from the teacher in the form of prompts.

All three groups benefited, but the experimental groups benefited the most. An interesting finding is that high-. A second study Mackey and Oliver, explored the effects of interactional feedback on the language development of 22 ELs in an intensive ESL center in Perth, Australia. The children ranged from ages 8 to 12 and were from a variety of L1 backgrounds. The children carried out communicative tasks in dyads with adult native English speakers.

The experimental group received interactional feedback in response to their non-target-like production of question forms. That is, in the interaction and feedback group, children were engaged in tasks that provided context for the targeted structure to occur e.

The child learners asked whatever questions were necessary to carry out the task, and the native speakers answered their questions and asked their own when necessary. Interactional feedback, including negotiation and recasts, was provided to the child learners.

The control group carried out the same tasks as the interaction group but did not receive feedback. Results showed that the experimental group improved more than the control group in terms of question formation.

While research cited at the beginning of this section August and Shanahan, suggests that oral language development is important in helping ELs succeed in text-level literacy skills e. One study Saunders et al.

In a third study Tong et al. ELs in this study outperformed control group students who did not have a separate block of time. It should be noted that this additional time block was only one component of a multifaceted approach to developing oral English language proficiency in ELs. While the research reviewed here indicates that additional time dedicated to developing oral language English language proficiency is ben-.

In interpreting findings from the studies reviewed above, it is important to keep in mind that factors other than the instructional method itself influence the acquisition of oral language proficiency in school-age ELs see Chapter 6.

These factors include individual, family, and teacher characteristics e. The committee controlled for some of these factors by focusing on children who are learning English as a second language in countries where English is the national language.

American education is characterized by its localism—there are nearly 13, school districts in the United States. Available studies typically do not identify district factors that will help educators serve their ELs more effectively Coleman and Goldenberg, This section describes two district-wide efforts that.

In one district, a mainly English approach was used; in the other, ELs were instructed bilingually. The first district example is the Sanger Unified School District.

By , Sanger was one of the most improved districts in California David and Talbert, This increase was almost double the state gain. That meant shared responsibility—.

To sustain the effort, the district had to rely on growing its own leadership capacity within the ranks of the current educators who had been immersed in the work of the district and who understood local conditions. Educators also were engaged in a developmental process and sought support from colleagues and administrators for improving their practices. The success of this approach, which involves presenting information, modeling, checking for understanding, guided practice, closure, and independent practice, convinced the district that this was a suitable strategy for ELs requiring language support.

The most important aspect of this instructional strategy was its insistence on students working with grade-level appropriate materials rather than materials geared to their current level of English proficiency.

The argument was that ELs would never reach grade-level proficiency levels, let alone exceed them, if they were taught using lower-level materials. To implement this approach required teacher-directed instruction with guided and independent practice. An important element of this approach was that English language development support was provided according to proficiency levels during a specially designated English language development period each day; the main differentiation in these leveled classes was the degree of instructional support and scaffolding rather than the use of leveled materials.

Additionally, the response to intervention approach the district had in place for its special education students was expanded to provide additional support for students, including ELs, who required more assistance than could be provided through regular instructional activities.

Intensive instructional support was provided to students in small groups defined by need rather than by such categories as EL or special education. Students who needed help to strengthen decoding skills, for example, were grouped together for targeted. The rebirth of the Union City School District began with a 1-year reprieve from the state to set things right Kirp, By school year , 95 percent of all students in the district had achieved proficiency proficient plus advanced both in English language arts and in math, and the high school had achieved a percent graduation rate.

Twenty-four percent were designated ELs, and 95 percent were from low-income families, as indicated by participation in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

The curriculum redesign team reviewed the research on teaching and learning and insisted on one curriculum for everyone. Students at varying levels of skill and language proficiency worked on projects in groups at learning centers. Differentiated support was provided in these small groups according to need. For the district to succeed, collaboration was necessary. A culture of caring and mutual respect was established among administrators and teachers at all levels, among teachers within schools, between teachers and students, and between educators and parents.

Teachers recognized that in addition to instructional support, the children needed understanding, patience, and emotional support. They provided support that helped initially disruptive and uncooperative students gradually advance academically and take responsibility for helping fellow students in need of academic and emotional support. The adoption of a new district-wide common curriculum and a pedagogical approach that allowed students to learn at their own pace was not an easy or quick process.

Kirp , p. The following promising practices emerge from the school and district profiles described above:. This section describes the ways in which families engage with schools, the opportunities associated with involving families in the education of their EL children, and state and district practices for meeting these challenges.

In the middle and high school years, parent-teacher conferences and communications to families continue, but family roles evolve from providing direct support to encouraging their children to value education, having high aspirations for postsecondary education, and being engaged in classrooms and school activities see the vignette in Box Additionally, the level of family engagement tends to decline as students move from the elementary grades to the succeeding levels of their education Epstein and Sheldon, Part of this decline is explained by long-standing school policies and beliefs that as students grow older and more independent of their families, family activities to support classroom learning are less important than they are in elementary school.

However, families of middle and high school students can be advocates for their. Research indicates that engagement of families, including both English-speaking families and families of ELs, is associated with positive student outcomes, such as higher grades and test scores, higher language proficiency, better social skills, increased high school graduation rates, and enrollment in postsecondary education Ferguson, ; Henderson and Mapp, ; Lindholm-Leary, Notably, immigrant parents in particular place a high value on the education of their children Cooper et al.

Despite the potential benefits of family engagement, results from a national survey among families of K students indicate lower rates of family engagement in school among EL than among English-speaking families Noel et al. Among students with English-speaking parents, 77 percent had parents who reported attending a regularly scheduled parent-teacher conference, compared with 69 percent of students who had parents either one or both of whom spoke another language Noel et al.

Similarly, 78 percent of students with English-speaking parents had parents who reported attending a school or class event, and 45 percent had parents who volunteered, compared with only 62 percent and 29 percent, respectively, among EL families. Barriers to family engagement for EL families include the misguided perception by school personnel that the families of ELs are disinterested in the education of their children Ramirez, ; Shim, ; Souto-Manning and Swick, ; Xiong and Obiakor, There are also practical barriers to parent involvement in school activities, including time constraints due to work schedules, transportation, child care, and the scheduling of meetings or events during times when families are unable to participate Best and Dunlap, ; Rah et al.

In addition, schools may not be able to provide translation for the variety of languages spoken by families of ELs, especially those spoken by a small number of families Tucker, Some parents perceive that their education or proficiency in English is insufficient for them to assist in the classroom and may also find it difficult to communicate with teachers and school staff Lindholm-Leary, ; Shim, ; Westrich and Strobel, ; Xiong and Obiakor, see Box Further, immigrant families may not understand a school system that is different from their own experiences in their countries of origin and may fear involvement because of their undocumented status Panferov, ; Souto-Manning and Swick, ; Tarasawa and Waggoner, ; Waterman and Harry, EL families also report receiving less communication from their schools relative to non-EL families.

In the same national. Similarly, 59 percent of the total number of students, both in English- and non-English-speaking households, had parents who reported receiving written communications specifically about their child, compared with 46 percent of households without English-speaking adults.

For all families, regardless of language background, both the school and the family require knowledge and skills to build positive relationships Mapp, ; Mapp and Kuttner, A recent review of 31 studies on family engagement 3 found that a welcoming environment encourages family-school partnerships Ferguson, Providing information on how to navigate the school system, hiring a parent-community liaison capable of communicating with the families of ELs, providing adult education.

The use of technology in the form of texting educational messages to parents has also been shown to be an effective way to provide families with regular tips to support the language development of young children in their own languages Loeb and York, At the state and district levels, findings from a state survey Education Commission of the States, indicate that states use a variety of levers to promote the engagement of families that include ELs.

Conclusion Syntheses of evaluation studies that compare outcomes for English learners ELs instructed in English-only programs with outcomes for ELs instructed bilingually find either that there is no difference in outcomes measured in English or that ELs in bilingual programs outperform ELs instructed only in English.

Two recent studies that followed students for sufficient time to gauge longer-term effects of language of instruction on EL outcomes find benefits for bilingual compared with English-only approaches.

Conclusion Despite the potential benefits of family engagement in schools, results from a national survey indicate lower rates of family engagement in K schools for English learner EL families relative to English-speaking families. Conclusion Case studies of districts and schools that demonstrate their effectiveness in educating English learners ELs find that such districts and schools are led by superintendents and principals who foster a common commitment to high expectations for all students; invest in teacher collaboration and ongoing, focused professional development; implement a coherent instructional program for students; attend to the needs of ELs who are struggling to meet grade-level expectations; and engage families and communities.

Alfaro, C. Steps toward unifying dual language programs, common core state standards, and critical pedagogy: Oportunidades, estrategias y retos. Association of Mexican-American Educators, 8 2 , Ammar, A. One size fits all? Studies in Second Language Acquisition , 28 4 , August, D. Qualitative studies of classroom and school practices. August and T.

Shanahan Ed. The impact of an instructional intervention on the science and language learning of middle grade English language learners. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 2 4 , Furthermore, some schools might not have enough funding to pay for continuous training that is recommended for the Sheltered Instruction model.

This model is effective with ELs from primary to secondary school because home languages are seen as instructional tools not barriers to learning. Students who learn in the United States do need to learn English to be successful and participatory members of society, but English proficiency can still exist alongside home-language mastery.

The home language is seen as a tool to develop critical thinking and communication skills. Dual Language programs work best when there are enough faculty members who are bilingual in English and the target language. Unfortunately, this pool of teachers is quite small. It does not work for a school that serves students who speak a variety of languages, which characterizes most schools districts in the U.

The effectiveness of instructional program models is a hot topic, but also a controversial one because they are connected to resource allocation and political persuasion. But instead of presenting them as effective or ineffective, I like to consider how inclusive is the learning experience for ELs. Inclusive means that the ELs are:. I understand that each school has a different set of circumstances and that schools have to construct the model that works best for them. Two-way bilingual programs Also called developmental bilingual programs, these group language minority students from a single language background in the same classroom with language majority English-speaking students.

Instruction is provided in both English and the minority language. Students serve as native-speaker role models for their peers. Two-way bilingual classes may be taught by a single teacher who is proficient in both languages or by two teachers, one of whom is bilingual. Sheltered English or content-based programs These group language minority students from different language backgrounds together in classes where teachers use English as the medium for providing content area instruction, adapting their language to the proficiency level of the students.

They may also use gestures and visual aids to help students understand. Although the acquisition of English is one of the goals of sheltered English and content-based programs, instruction focuses on content rather than language. Jump to navigation Jump to Content. Children from families in which English is not the language of the home represent a rapidly increasing percentage of students enrolled in U.

Language minority students can be found in schools across the country, not just those in large cities or in areas near the U. All schools must be prepared to meet the challenge of an increasingly diverse student population, including many students who are not proficient in English.

The effectiveness of various program models for language minority students remains the subject of controversy. Although there may be reasons to claim the superiority of one program model over another in certain situations Collier ; Ramirez, Yuen, and Ramey , a variety of programs can be effective.

The choice should be made at the local level after careful consideration of the needs of the students involved and the resources available.

ESL programs rather than bilingual programs are likely to be used in districts where the language minority population is very diverse and represents many different languages. ESL programs can accommodate students from different language backgrounds in the same class, and teachers do not need to be proficient in the home language s of their students.

This is generally used in elementary school settings. Students spend part of the school day in a mainstream classroom, but are pulled out for a portion of each day to receive instruction in English as a second language. This is generally used in middle school settings. Students receive ESL instruction during a regular class period and usually receive course credit.

They may be grouped for instruction according to their level of English proficiency. This is a variation of the pull-out design, bringing students together from several classrooms or schools. The resource center concentrates ESL materials and staff in one location and is usually staffed by at least one full-time ESL teacher. All bilingual program models use the students' home language, in addition to English, for instruction. These programs are most easily implemented in districts with a large number of students from the same language background.

Students in bilingual programs are grouped according to their first language, and teachers must be proficient in both English and the students' home language. These are designed to help children acquire the English skills required to succeed in an English-only mainstream classroom.