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Piper, T. (2015).

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Language, learning, and culture: English language learning in today’s schools.

Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu

Chapter 1: The Faces of Diversity
Chapter 2: Language, Learning, and Culture

Articles

Deng, F., & Zou, Q. (2016).

A study on whether adults’ second language acquisition is easy or not: From the perspective of children’s native language acquisition. (Links to an external site.)

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 6(4), 776-780. doi:10.17507/tpls.0604.15

This article provides information about the unique perspectives of adult learning in an English as a second language classroom and will assist you with your Who Are English Language Learners? discussion and your Understanding the Importance of Language Objectives assignment.
Accessibility Statement does not exist.
Privacy Policy (Links to an external site.)

Himmel, J. (n.d.).

Language objectives: The key to effective content area instruction for English learners. (Links to an external site.)

Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/language-objectives-key-effective-content-area-instruction-english-learners

This article provides information about using language objectives in an English as a second language classroom and will assist you with the Understanding the Importance of Language Objectives Assignment.
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Privacy Policy (Links to an external site.)

Lieshoff, S. C., Aguilar, N., McShane, S., Burt, M., Peyton, J. K., Terrill, L., & Van Duzer, C. (2008, March).

Practitioner toolkit: Working with adult English language learners. (Links to an external site.)

Retrieved from http://www.cal.org/caela/tools/program_development/CombinedFiles1

This document from the Center for Applied Linguistics will help you understand several components of helping adult ELLs learn English. This document will help you on the assignment.

1The Faces of Diversity

Jupiterimages/Creatas/Thinkstock

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this chapter you will be able to accomplish the following objectives:

1. Explain how historical patterns of immigration to the United States have shaped the current
English language learner demographic.

2. Explain how the changing demographic of English language learners in the United States
affects the education system.

3. Analyze the impact of the changing demographic of English language learners on classroom
teachers.

4. Explain why cultural sensitivity and understanding are important.

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Section 1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants

Introduction
The United States is and has always been a land of immigrants. Some of us whose parents, or
even grandparents, were born here tend to forget, but the truth is that unless our ancestors
were indigenous peoples, we are descended from immigrants. This chapter begins with a
brief history of cultural diversity in the United States from the European founders to the pres-
ent day. Emphasizing that the linguistic and cultural makeup of the population continues to
change, the chapter goes on to examine how the changing demographic of English language
learners (ELLs) in the United States affects the educational system as a whole and how it
impacts individual classroom teachers.

There is no doubt that our country and our schools are richer for the fact of our demography.
More diversity means more options. Whether in ideology, customs, foods, sports, or almost
everything that touches our lives, we are enriched by a multitude of perspectives. Over the
past few decades, as schools have seen their numbers of non-English speakers increased,
they have learned that the educational experience of all learners, whatever their language,
benefits when every learner has equal opportunity to learn. Because ELLs face the dual tasks
of learning academic content and a new language, schools have learned, and will continue to
learn, how to organize programs and curricula and to prepare teachers for the reality of the
diverse 21st-century classroom.

In recent years, additional pressure has been put on schools by an increased demand for
reporting and “accountability” as defined and mandated by government or school districts.
Already faced with declining resources and larger numbers of students identified as ELLs,
schools have scrambled to adapt not only for the sake of ELLs, but so that the benefits of hav-
ing a diverse school population can be fully realized. Their goal, ultimately, is that ELLs not
become long-term English language learners (LTELLs) for whom, too often, the academic
prognosis is grim. The purpose of this chapter is to begin the conversation about how educa-
tors can help to improve the chances of success for all English language learners.

1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants
We learned in elementary school social studies that the first European settlers to the North
American continent arrived in St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. Forty-two years later, the Eng-
lish settled Jamestown, Virgina, and immigration had begun to fuel the population growth
and geographical expansion that created the country we occupy today.

A Brief History of U.S. Immigration
People move from the land of their birth to other countries for a number of reasons. Politics,
climate change, natural resources, economic conditions, and personal opportunity all play a
role—and certainly have done so among those who have chosen the United States as home
for the past four centuries. Indigenous peoples would likely view immigration as beginning
with the arrival of the Spanish to St. Augustine, but historians generally consider those who
crossed the Atlantic before 1790 to have been settlers and not true immigrants. There were
approximately 1 million of these settlers, overwhelmingly from Great Britain, but the French,
Dutch, and Spanish were also represented. We cannot, however, neglect to acknowledge that

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Section 1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants

much of early settlement and immigration were involuntary when African citizens were
imported against their will to work, primarily on farms and plantations in the southern part
of the country. Although Congress passed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves in 1807 to
take effect in 1808, and further strengthened the law in 1819, the practice continued illegally
for many years afterward. At the time the U.S. Senate passed the 13th Amendment, abolishing
slavery in 1864 (final ratification in 1865), there were approximately 4 million slaves held in
a total population of approximately 31 million people.

Population Growth in the 19th and 20th Centuries
There was little immigration to the United States between 1780 and 1830, and in fact, there
was a great deal of emigration from the United States to Canada by those seeking better farm-
land and a closer alliance with the British crown. Nevertheless, the 19th century was a time
of immense population growth fueled by immigration. The factors that led people to cross-
migrate to the United States can be considered in terms of “push” and “pull” conditions. The
types of things that push people toward migration to another country include famine, war,
religious or political persecution, unemployment, and poverty. The types of things that pull
people toward another country are increased economic opportunity, religious freedom, fam-
ily unity, or cultural preferences.

Courtesy Everett Collection
Large numbers of European immigrants arrived in the United States in the years following
the First World War.

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Section 1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants

Crop failures in Germany, the Irish potato famine, and general political unrest in Europe lead-
ing thousands to seek a different life in the New World were some of the push factors that led
people to move to the New World. Some of the pull factors included the California Gold Rush,
the promise of new and cheap farmlands, and late in the 19th century, the Industrial Revolu-
tion. Moreover, when the invention of the steam engine led to steam-powered ships, crossing
the ocean became faster and cheaper. Improvements in farming techniques in the Russian
Empire and in Southern Europe in the late 19th century created larger, underemployed popu-
lations eager for a fresh start in North America, resulting in a migratory wave of Italians,
Greeks, Hungarians and Poles, and other Slavic-language peoples.

Where We Came From
In the latter half of the 19th century and up to about 1930, approximately 5 million Germans
arrived in the United States, most of whom settled in the Midwest. The Irish arrived in large
numbers between 1820 and the end of the century, mostly Protestant before 1845 and mostly
Catholic thereafter (Dolan, 2010). What push or pull factors might have influenced these two
groups?

In 1819, Congress passed an act that required the secretary of state to report annually on the
number of immigrants admitted. The pattern of immigration during subsequent decades is
illustrated in Table 1.1.

Immigration patterns were determined not just by the push and pull factors, but also by poli-
cies of the U.S. government. Notice that in 1880, there were 104,000 Chinese immigrants
reported by the Census Bureau, but after that, it is not until 2000 that we see the Chinese
represented in significant numbers. The dramatic drop after 1880 was the direct result of a
law passed by Congress in 1882, which specifically restricted the number of Chinese entering
the United States for ten years. Congress renewed the Act in 1892, and made it permanent in
1902. What motivated Congress to pass such a law? There is no definitive answer, but most
historians concur that it was in reaction to the perception, primarily in California, that the
presence of Chinese workers was driving down wages. This was the first federal law that
restricted immigration of a particular ethnic group, and the Chinese Exclusion Act was not
repealed until 1943 (Kanazawa, 2005; Cole, 1978).

Congress further acted to restrict immigration in 1917, when they voted to require all immi-
grants to pass a literacy test and banned all immigrants from Asian countries except Japan
and the Philippines. Four years later, Congress put a temporary quota on immigration, which
they made more restrictive and permanent in 1924. The later quota restricted the number
of immigrants to 164,000 per year and “fixed quotas on immigration from each country, bas-
ing the quota on percentage of people from that country who lived in the United States in
1890” (Constitutional Rights Foundation, 2013). Note that the 1924 law neither replaced nor
repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Eventually, these restrictive acts were repealed and replaced with more permissive legisla-
tion. In 1965, Congress set the country on course toward the more diverse population we
have today with the passage of the 1965 Nationality and Immigration Act. That act abolished
the quotas set in the 1920s with a new system that was only slightly more permissive. It did
abolish the earlier quota system but replaced it with a preference system that focused on
needed employment skills and family relationships in the United States. The 1965 act also
set the total number of visas to be awarded in any one year at 170,000, excluding immediate

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Section 1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants

Table 1.1: Top source countries for U.S. immigration, 1850–2000
(in thousands)*

Year/country 1850 1880 1900 1930 1960 1990 2000

Austria 717 305

Bohemia 85

Canada 148 717 1,180 1,310 953 745 678

China 104 1,391

Cuba 737 952

Czechoslovakia 492

Dominican
Republic

2,000

El Salvador 765

France 54 107

Germany 584 1,967 2,663 1,609 990 712

Hungary 245

India 2,000

Ireland 962 1,885 1,615 745 339

Italy 484 1,790 1,257 581

Mexico 13 641 576 4,298 7,641

Netherlands 10

Norway 13 182 336

Pakistan 724

Philippines 913 1,222

Poland 1,269 748

Russia/Soviet
Union

424 1,154 691

Sweden 194 582 595

Switzerland 13 89

United Kingdom 379 918 1,168 1,403 833 640

Vietnam 543 863

Total foreign born 2,176 6,965 8,452 11,008 6,937 8,588 18,817

*Countries without numbers did not make the top ten for that census year.

Sources: US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey; Decennial Census 2000 (see www.census.gov); Gibson, Campbell and
Emily Lennon, US Census Bureau, Working Paper No. 29, Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United
States: 1850 to 1990, US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1999 and the 2001 Statistical Yearbook of the Immigration
and Naturalization Service.

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Section 1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants

family members of legal U.S. residents. Without nationally based quotas and with the empha-
sis on family unification and employability, the 1965 act became the foundation for policy
that remains in place today. In 1990, Congress raised the total number of immigrants allowed,
revised the grounds for exclusion and deportation, and allowed temporary protected status
for residents of certain countries. The impact of the 1965 and 1990 acts has been profound:
The number of arriving immigrants doubled between 1965 and 1970, and then doubled
again between 1970 and 1990. In the last three decades, the foreign-born population of the
United States has tripled. During the latter half of the 20th century, immigrants began arriving
from many different countries than in the past, and the percentage of foreign-born residents
of European descent dropped from just under 60% of immigrants in 1970 to 15% in 2000
(Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2003). Moreover, over one-third
of the foreign-born population of this country arrived since 2000 (U.S. Census, Bureau, 2012).

Who We Are Today
We have seen how world events, as well as government action, have had a profound impact
on the demographics of this country. We are, today, a very different nation than we were 100
or even 50 years ago, and we are almost certainly different from what we will be 50 years
from now. According to the 2010 census, which provides data on reported ethnicity and lan-
guage, 41 million residents, or 13% of the population, were born outside the United States,
and approximately 44% of these people were naturalized U.S. citizens (Grieco, Acosta, de la
Cruz, Gambino, Gryn, Larsen, Trevelyan & Walters, 2012). See Table 1.2.

The census did not specifically ask about immigration status, but cross-referencing of data
from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship on naturalization reveals that approx-
imately 44% of the total foreign-born residents are naturalized citizens. Since the Census
Bureau does not ask questions about immigration status, there is no way of knowing how
many of the remaining immigrant population are authorized to be in the United States, but
for education purposes it does not matter. Public schools require evidence of residence, not
immigration status, and are required to provide education to all residents of their districts.

Country-of-origin data provide some indication of the languages spoken by the immigrant
population. Spanish remains the dominant minority language spoken in this country, although
it isn’t the only non-English language spoken in the United States today. Of the approximately
281 million residents (over the age of five) living in the United States in 2010, more than 55
million spoke a language other than English at home. Spanish and Spanish Creole accounted
for 34.2 million of these (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010), meaning that almost 21 million spoke
other languages. Table 1.3 shows how these languages are distributed in the population along
with the self-reported data of census respondents on their proficiency in English.

Looking closely at the data in Tables 1.2 and 1.3 reveals a very important fact: The num-
ber of immigrants is much smaller than the number who reportedly speak another language
at home. The number of the latter population reporting that they speak English “not very
well” is the more relevant number, and it may well underrepresent the actual number who
need English support. In recent decades, to accommodate students who need English sup-
port schools have changed and teachers have had to make adaptations. A good illustration of
this phenomenon is the story of a teacher named Ellen Rodriguez, who recently retired after
40 years. Her account begins in A Teacher’s Story: Meet Ellen, and continues throughout the
remainder of this book as a personal description of and reflection on change.

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Section 1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants

Table 1.2: Birthplace of immigrants to the United States, 2010

Country of birth Number (in millions)

Mexico 11.7

India 1.9

Philippines 1.8

China 1.7

Vietnam 1.3

El Salvador 1.2

Korea 1.0

Cuba 1.0

Dominican Republic 0.9

Guatemala 0.8

Canada 0.8

Jamaica 0.7

Colombia 0.7

Germany 0.6

Haiti 0.6

Honduras 0.5

Poland 0.5

Ecuador 0.4

Peru 0.4

Russia 0.4

Italy 0.4

Taiwan 0.4

Iran 0.4

United Kingdom 0.4

Ukraine 0.3

Brazil 0.3

Japan 0.3

Pakistan 0.3

All others (26 countries) 9.3

TOTAL 41

Source: 2010 U.S. Census

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Section 1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants

Table 1.3: Self-reported language proficiency level according to home language

Language spoken at home
Number of
speakers

Number who self-
rated their English
ability as less than
“Very Well”

Percentage who self-
rated their ability to
speak English as less
than “Very Well”

Spanish and Spanish Creole 34,183,747 16,120,772 47

French (including Patois & Cajun) 1,358,816 292,422 22

Italian 807,010 231,736 29

Portuguese 678,334 289,899 43

German 1,112,670 196,957 18

Yiddish 162,511 50,957 31

Other West Germanic languages 269,600 62,711 23

Scandinavian languages 132,956 17,474 13

Greek 340,028 90,360 27

Russian 846,233 430,850 51

Polish 632,362 274,693 43

Serbo-Croatian languages 273,729 115,165 45

Other Slavic languages 318,051 122,058 38

Armenian 220,922 98,041 44

Persian 359,176 137,765 38

Hindi 531,313 114,070 32

Gujarati 301,658 108,352 36

Urdu 335,213 102,364 31

Other Indic Languages 619,954 238,583 38

Other Indo-European Languages 417,706 157,533 38

Chinese, Mandarin 381,121 199,507 52

Chinese, Cantonese 437,301 273,402 63

Chinese, other 1,637,161 NA NA

(continued )

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Section 1.1 The ELL Population: A Nation of Immigrants
Language spoken at home
Number of
speakers
Number who self-
rated their English
ability as less than
“Very Well”
Percentage who self-
rated their ability to
speak English as less
than “Very Well”

Japanese 457,033 211,017 46

Korean 1,048,173 610,340 58

Mon-Khmer, Cambodian 182,387 98,764 54

Hmong 185,401 88,556 48

Thai 139,845 72,998 52

Laotian 147,865 74,772 51

Vietnamese 1,204,454 731,555 61

Other Asian languages 644,363 192,046 30

U.S. Census Bureau

Table 1.3: Self-reported language proficiency level according to home language
(continued )

A Teacher’s Story: Meet Ellen

Recently graduated from college, Ellen had learned about teaching English as a second lan-
guage and had taught many Spanish-speaking children as a student teacher. She found her
bilingualism very helpful and was certain that the education and experience she had had in
Los Angeles would serve her well. Shortly after graduation in 1971, however, she married a
classmate and traveled with him to New Hampshire, where he was to study medicine. Ellen
was excited to find a job teaching third grade in a school near Hanover, New Hampshire.
What surprised her was that except for the French teacher in junior high, she was the only
bilingual in the school where everyone spoke English—even the French teacher, most of
the time.

Ellen’s grandparents escaped a war-torn Spain, arriving in the United States with their young
son, Ellen’s father, in 1936. Later, he met and married Ellen’s mother, and the young couple
moved to southern California where Ellen was born and where she grew up speaking Span-
ish and English with equal fluency. “New Hampshire was a foreign country,” she said. “The
weather was cold, there were no palm trees, and the food was strange to me. The only thing
that was the same was the language, and then only half the same,” she said. Ellen enjoyed
teaching and cried the day she turned in her resignation. Her husband had finished medical
school, and they were moving to Boston for his residency. It was 1975.

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Section 1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools

1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools
For the purposes of our discussion here and throughout the book, we use the definition of the
ELL used by the Educational Testing Service, who considers the ELL as one who

• Is between the ages of 3 and 21;
• Is enrolled or preparing to enroll in an elementary or secondary school;
• Has one of three profiles:

• Was not born in the United States or speaks a native language other than English;
• Is a Native American, an Alaska Native, or a native resident of the outlying areas,

and comes from an environment where a language other than English has had a
significant impact on his or her level of English language proficiency; or

• Is migratory, has a native language other than English, and comes from an envi-
ronment where a language other than English is dominant.

• Has difficulties in speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language
that are so severe as to deny the individual one of the following:

• The ability to meet the state’s proficient level of achievement on state
assessments;

• The ability to successfully achieve in classrooms where the language of
instruction is English; or

• The opportunity to participate fully in society (Educational Testing Service,
2009).

In the last three decades of the 20th century, the population of ELLs in U.S. schools grew by
84% at a time when the overall student population increased by only 12%. In the first decade
of this century, the number of Latino children under the age of 17 grew by 39% (Pew Hispanic
Center, 2011). Today, in some school districts, Hispanic youth comprise a quarter or more of
the school population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010) and are the fastest growing segment of the
school population (Pew Hispanic Center, 2011).

The number of English language learners (ELLs) increased by 65% between
1993 and 2004, while the total U.S. school age population grew by less than
7% (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, 2006). The
more than 5.1 million ELL students comprise more than 10% of the coun-
try’s student population. Overall, Hispanics were much more likely to speak
a language other than English at home (76%) compared with non-Hispanics.
(Fenner, 2012)

Figure 1.1 illustrates how Spanish speakers are distributed in 48 states, and Table 1.4 pro-
vides more detailed information in numerical form.

The growth in the ELL population is a trend that can be expected to continue, although pos-
sibly not at the same rate. If it does continue at the same rate, the population of the United
States will rise to nearly 440 million by 2050, and more than 80% of that increase will be due
to immigrants and their U.S.-born children. Moreover, census data reveal that over 75% of
ELLs in elementary school and 50% in high school were born in the United States, many to
parents who had also been born here (Syrja, 2011); since English was not the language of the
home, they did not learn it as a first language.

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GAALMS

TN
NC

VA
WV

OH
PA

INIL

MI
WI

MN
ND

OR ID

NV UT

NH
MS

NJ
RI

FL
GAALMS
TN
NC
SC
VA
WV
KY
OH
PA
NY
INIL
MI
WI
LA
AR
MO
IA
TX
OK
KS
NE
SD
MN
ND
NM
CO
WY
MT
WA
OR ID
NV UT
AZ
CA
ME
NH
MS
NJ
RI

VTVT

68.12%–97.84%

36.63%–68.12%

21.21%–36.63%

10.52%–21.21%

3.97%–10.52%

>0%–3.97%

Counties

Section 1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools
FL
GAALMS
TN
NC
SC
VA
WV
KY
OH
PA
NY
INIL
MI
WI
LA
AR
MO
IA
TX
OK
KS
NE
SD
MN
ND
NM
CO
WY
MT
WA
OR ID
NV UT
AZ
CA
ME
NH
MS
NJ
RI
FL
GAALMS
TN
NC
SC
VA
WV
KY
OH
PA
NY
INIL
MI
WI
LA
AR
MO
IA
TX
OK
KS
NE
SD
MN
ND
NM
CO
WY
MT
WA
OR ID
NV UT
AZ
CA
ME
NH
MS
NJ
RI
VTVT
68.12%–97.84%
36.63%–68.12%
21.21%–36.63%
10.52%–21.21%
3.97%–10.52%
>0%–3.97%
Counties

Figure 1.1: Geographic distribution of Spanish speakers by county

This Modern Language Association language map shows where Spanish is spoken in the United States.
The darker colors indicate highest density of Spanish speakers. The interactive website map (http://
arcgis.mla.org/mla/default.aspx) shows where more than 30 languages are spoken in the United
States and where they are taught.

Source: Reprinted with permisson from Modern Language Association (MLA). Retrieved from http://arcgis.mla.org/mla/default
.aspx

The demographic trend in this country means that our schools are and will continue to be
places of ethnic and linguistic diversity. Helping teachers and schools to meet that challenge
is, in a very tangible sense, the purpose of this text. In Ellen, Ten Years Later, we see how the
challenge began for one teacher in 1985.

Although it is easily demonstrated that, on the whole, schools have not been optimally effec-
tive in teaching English to non-English speakers, it would be a mistake to assume that they
have failed entirely or that their shortcomings are the result of lack of care or effort. As we
shall see, schools have struggled to cope with a more diverse student population at a time
when curricular and accountability demands have been growing and resources have been
shrinking.

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Section 1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools

Table 1.4: U.S. States ranked by number/percentage of population who only
speak Spanish

State # Spanish only % Spanish only

1. California 4,303,949 13.70%

2. Texas 2,369,036 12.31%

3. New Mexico 158,629 9.39%

4. Arizona 435,186 9.16%

5. Nevada 162,301 8.76%

6. Florida 1,187,335 7.89%

7. New York 1,182,068 6.66%

8. New Jersey 483,069 6.15%

9. Illinois 665,995 5.77%

10. Colorado 202,883 5.06%

11. District of Columbia 25,355 4.70%

12. Rhode Island 40,403 4.10%

13. Connecticut 116,538 3.66%

14. Oregon 116,557 3.64%

15. Utah 71,405 3.53%

16. Georgia 246,269 3.24%

17. Idaho 36,459 3.05%

18. North Carolina 218,792 2.91%

19. Washington 155,374 2.82%

20. Massachusetts 162,908 2.74%

21. Kansas 67,973 2.72%

22. Nebraska 39,825 2.50%

23. Delaware 17,116 2.34%

24. Virginia 151,938 2.30%

25. Maryland 108,578 2.20%

26. Oklahoma 65,280 2.03%

27. Arkansas 43,535 1.75%

28. Wisconsin 76,697 1.53%

29. Indiana 84,355 1.49%

30. South Carolina 53,604 1.43%

31. Minnesota 61,817 1.35%

32. Wyoming 6,223 1.34%

33. Iowa 36,606 1.34%

(continued )

pip82223_01_c01_001-028.indd 12 6/30/15 2:10 PM

Section 1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools

Table 1.4: U.S. States ranked by number/percentage of population who only
speak Spanish (continued )

State # Spanish only % Spanish only

34. Pennsylvania 140,502 1.22%

35. Tennessee 64,378 1.21%

36. Michigan 100,689 1.09%

37. Alaska 5,801 1.00%

38. Alabama 40,299 0.97%

39. Louisiana 38,609 0.93%

40. Missouri 45,990 0.88%

41. Kentucky 30,842 0.82%

42. Mississippi 20,856 0.79%

43. Ohio 77,394 0.73%

44. New Hampshire 6,907 0.60%

45. South Dakota 3,999 0.57%

46. North Dakota 2,762 0.46%

47. Hawaii 4,960 0.44%

48. Montana 3,411 0.40%

49. West Virginia 5,728 0.34%

50. Vermont 1,407 0.24%

51. Maine 2,664 0.22%

Source: Statistic Brain Research Institute, 2012, Spanish speaking state statistics.

The growing numbers of ELLs put pressure on schools because they have to be taught English
and curricular content simultaneously, and they are an extremely heterogeneous population.
According to recent research, 57% of adolescent ELLs were born in the United States and the
remainder elsewhere (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010; Abedi, 2004, 2009). They all have different
levels of language proficiency, content knowledge, schooling, and citizenship status, not to
mention the socioeconomic variability that characterizes the entire school population. This
diversity can put pressure on school resources, but there are many other factors that increase
that pressure. Some of these include

1. Political pressure to dictate or change curriculum. Schools are sometimes forced to
add subject matter and change curricular materials without the benefits of more
time or money.

2. English-only legislation. California, Massachusetts, and Arizona have all passed laws
requiring that public schools teach entirely or “overwhelmingly” in English, thus ending
many bilingual programs and effectively mandating sheltered English immersion in
some instances (National Council of Teachers of English [NCTE], 2008, p. 4).

3. The emphasis on testing mandated by government and the punitive measures attached
to low performance. Many educators feel that standardized testing and preparing

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Section 1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools

for those tests constrain teachers in what, how, and how much they teach, and also
threatens their job security by holding them accountable for their students’ perfor-
mance on the tests. Moreover, at the school level, many schools with substantial ELL
populations feel the threat of sanctions if their ELLs do not learn “enough” English
within a prescribed period of time.

4. Implementation of the government-mandated standards as well as Common Core State
Standards (CCSS). While no teacher opposes high standards for their pupils, the
speed with which some states have adopted and implemented the CCSS has been
stressful for many. They feel that they do not have adequate professional develop-
ment to prepare them either for the curricular changes or for explaining them to
parents. They also fear that with the emphasis on the CCSS subjects, there is a risk
that noncore subjects such as art, music, and physical education will be given even
less attention, especially if a school needs to direct its resources to specialists in
reading and math to assist struggling students in these core areas.

5. The global downturn in the economy and employment. Fewer people paying taxes
means less money is available for public schools, and much that is available is
diverted to cope with the demands of pressures 1–3, above. Schools are closed, and
so classes grow with children being bused to more distant schools, changing both
the size and the sense of community in the receiving school.

6. Poverty, in general. Approximately 25% of U.S. children live in poverty, and the impact
of poverty on children’s ability to learn is undeniable. It is also more difficult for
schools to compensate, with school meal programs, for example, when their budgets
are consistently slashed.

Each of these factors has a profound impact on schools’ ability to educate effectively, but taken
together they can have a devastating impact, particularly on the schools’ resources. And yet,
creative school leaders find ways of reducing anxiety by engaging teachers and the commu-
nity in the process and the challenges of change. Teachers find creative ways to teach their
multi-level, diverse classes so that they are prepared not only for the formal assessments they
face, but also for school success.

A Teacher’s Story: Ellen, Ten Years Later

Shortly after they moved to Massachusetts, Ellen gave birth to her first child and took a break
from teaching. After taking off a few years to be at home with her children, she resumed her
teaching career in Chicago, where the family had settled when her husband began his new medi-
cal practice. It was 1985, and the world had changed. “I had had very little chance to speak Span-
ish for many years,” Ellen recalled. “My parents had died and there were no family gatherings
where English wasn’t spoken. I spoke Spanish at home with my children, or tried to, but once
they started school they were resistant, and I didn’t push them. Then I went to work in Chi-
cago.” There, she found more opportunities to speak Spanish, but when she met her fourth grade
class for the first time, she discovered that knowing Vietnamese or Korean might be more useful.
“What I learned very quickly,” she said, “was that I couldn’t rely on being able to communicate in
the children’s home languages. I had to communicate with them and teach them English without
knowing more than ‘hello’ and ‘good-bye’ and the words for a few food items in Vietnamese and
Korean. I was almost mad at the two Spanish-speaking children in my class because their English
was so good they didn’t need extra help! Two of the children in my first fourth grade class didn’t
speak any English and had never been to school. They had so much to learn. And so did I.”

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Section 1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools

Diversity and Resources
As noted earlier, even among ELLs of the same age and grade level, including those who speak
the same home language, there will be variations in language ability in one or more domains.
Some will come to school with excellent oral English but with little or no reading ability. Some
will come to school with good colloquial English but without the vocabulary needed for aca-
demic success, while others will be the opposite, possessing “book” English but with limited
communicative ability. This variability means that as classroom teachers work hard to diver-
sify instruction, they will need different, and thus more, resources because ELLs and their
families have the right to expect the same quality of education as every other child. Schools
may need smaller classes and more teachers, they may need more teacher assistants, and
they will certainly need a larger variety of teaching materials.

Unfortunately, there are severe constraints on the budgets of nearly every public school in
the country, constraints imposed by factors often beyond the school or district control. For
example, the implementation of the CCSS is expected to have an impact:

Given the current economic climate, funding new initiatives such as the
CCSS—that will require schools and states to develop and implement new
measures—may seem impossible. State and local leaders will need to strat-
egize to creatively maximize their current federal and state funding streams.

Federal funding under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) may
be directed to support CCSS implementation. For example, Title I funds may be
used to purchase instructional materials, such as curricula and textbooks; to hire
new teachers; and provide professional development on CCSS academic sub-
jects, such as math and reading. Title II, the main funding stream for teacher and
principal preparation and training, can be used to provide professional devel-
opment to teachers. Additionally, Title III may be used to provide professional
development for ELL teachers. (National Council of La Raza [NCLR], 2012, p. 11)

Fortunately, many of the costs of implementing CCSS are one-time expenses, and in addition
to the federal funds that can be directed to Common Core Implementation, some states, such
as California, have also made additional monies available.

Diversity and Accountability
The standards movement had its beginnings in 1983, with the report of the Commission on
Excellence in Education titled A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform. With
support from the federal government, reform bills were intended to provide coherent policies
to bring consistency to educational policy and practice and higher achievement for students.
The first major piece of legislation with these aims came with the reauthorization of the Ele-
mentary and Secondary Education Act in 1994. Then in 2001, Congress passed the No Child
Left Behind Act, which was intended to raise proficiency levels for all children.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB)
The most sweeping government-mandated reform of public education of the 20th century,
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) introduced standards-based education reform and required
states to develop and administer assessment measures for basic skills at select grade levels.

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Section 1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools

Significantly, the legislation specified punitive measures for schools that failed to meet their
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) targets. A school that failed to meet its AYP target for three
consecutive years would be required, for example, to offer free tutoring and other assistance
to struggling students. If a school did not meet AYP goals for a fourth year, then the school was
required to take “corrective action,” which might involve the introduction of a new curricu-
lum, extending instructional time, and the replacement of staff. Five years of failure to meet
AYP targets could result in a plan to restructure the entire school, and this plan would be put
into place if the school failed to meet its targets for six consecutive years. Another provision
of the law required districts to offer parents of children in schools that do not meet their AYPs
the option of sending their children to a non-failing school in the district.

The legislation also required states to provide “highly qualified” teachers to all children in public
schools, which was, no doubt, already the goal of every state and school district in the country.
What NCLB did not do was to specify a national set of standards or testing instrument for either
measuring teacher quality or students’ progress, leaving states on their own to figure it out. Some-
times what the states “figured out” did not assist the schools so much as to place additional bur-
dens on already-strained resources. The state of Wisconsin conducted a careful study of the costs
associated with mandated assessments and found that they added $34 to the annual cost of edu-
cating an individual student. While that may not seem a large sum, it represented approximately
$15 million annually for all students in Wisconsin. But that figure only represents the direct fis-
cal costs and does not account for opportunities lost, such as instructional time. The same study
made the point that when teachers are testing, they are not teaching, and that as a result, ELLs
lost an average of 7.4 hours of instructional time during the year (Zellmer et al., 2006).

A number of states had already embarked on an overhaul of education, and layering on addi-
tional federal requirements caused confusion, duplication, and sometimes produced contra-
dictory results. In Florida, for example, the state had already implemented an assessment
system, one that could be utilized under the terms of NCLB. The problem was that under
federal law, “schools were judged on the percentage of students who met specific goals each
year” while the state “took into account the progress of individual students from one grade to
the next when determining a school’s success” (Postal, 2012).

Since NCLB went into effect, states
have been required to implement
statewide assessment instruments
to establish the acquisition levels
of their ELLs. These assessments
are used to judge the effectiveness
of schools and, often, to determine
funding levels. While on the face of
it aspects of the NCLB legislation
appeared to direct needed atten-
tion to ELLs, in fact, the legislation
put increased pressure on schools
and teachers to achieve rapid lan-
guage acquisition. “Do it faster, do
it better” was the implied message.
Many districts, beginning in Califor-
nia, began to place ELLs in English

Tim Sloan/Getty Images
No Child Left Behind was the most influential
government reform of public education during the
20th century.

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Section 1.2 The Impact of ELLs on Schools

immersion or mainstream classrooms. Research indicates, however, that while immersion may
have an immediate impact and be effective in the elementary school, the gains disappear dur-
ing the middle and high school years (Jost, 2001). If schools do not have the resources to
continue language support, students whose language learning is subjected to such rushed
treatment are at greater risk of becoming long-term English language learners, and their like-
lihood of graduating high school diminishes. The effect is thus felt by the school district when
their schools’ test scores decline and they fail to achieve target graduation rates.

Although NCLB did provide some additional federal funding for implementing the required
assessments as well as funds for implementing particular reading and technology enhance-
ment programs, for many schools and school districts the money was inadequate to meet
the new requirements. As the late Senator Edward Kennedy, a sponsor of the original NCLB
legislation, stated: “The tragedy is that these long overdue reforms are finally in place, but the
funds are not” (Antle, 2005).

Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
According to the website of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, the mission of the
CCSS is to

. . . provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to
learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The
standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting
the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college
and careers. (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Coun-
cil of Chief School Officers, 2010)

In broad terms, the standards define core conceptual understandings and procedures (e.g.,
for mathematical computation or scientific inquiry) that children need at each grade level. As
of this writing, all but a few states as well as the District of Columbia, four territories, and the
Department of Defense Education Activity have adopted the Common Core standards.

If they are implemented thoughtfully and in consultation with teachers and community stake-
holders, the Common Core standards could be a vehicle for achieving educational equality for
ELLs. The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) agrees:

Setting common academic standards benefits everyone by raising standards
and helping all students achieve them. Specifically, the CCSS initiative holds
the potential to:

• Ensure that all students, regardless of ZIP code, income, race, or ethnicity, will be
taught to and held to the same, high standards that are aligned to college and work
expectations;

• Ensure that all students have access to high-quality educational content, supports, and
opportunities that research has demonstrated are essential to postsecondary success;

• Allow parents and caregivers to more effectively assess their child’s progress and
compare their child’s education with the education of children in other communi-
ties, states, and nations; and

• Free up resources to create high-quality and rich assessments that can accurately
and reliably measure the progress of every student.

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Section 1.3 The Impact of Increased Numbers of ELLs on Teachers

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) believes that the CCSS Initiative is
crucial to improving education for Hispanic students (NCLR, 2012, p. 6).

The developers of the CCSS acknowledged the importance of taking the ELL population into
account, but they did not provide specific directions for implementation except to provide some
very general guidelines and suggestions for implementing the standards with ELLs. The states
were left to figure it out on their own, but Stanford University stepped up to provide leadership:

Recognizing the need for guidance and resources in this area, Stanford Uni-
versity launched a privately funded initiative . . . called the Understanding
Language Project . . . to heighten educator awareness of the critical role that
language plays in the CCSS and the NGSS [Next Generation Science Standards].
(TESOL International Association, 2013)

The project emphasized the necessity to teach content and language simultaneously

. . . by focusing on such language constructs as discourse, complex text expla-
nation, argumentation, purpose. . . . According to the experts at the Under-
standing Language Project, ELLs’ success in terms of the CCSS requires a
different kind of collaboration at all levels, including students, teachers, site
and district leaders. . . . (TESOL International Association, 2013)

What was also left to the states when CCSS was introduced was a common set of English Lan-
guage Proficiency Development (ELPD) standards, but it soon became apparent that states
would need help in linking their existing ELPD to the CCSS. In September 2012, the Council
of Chief State School Officers released a framework to assist states in revising their standards
to comply with CCSS and NGSS. The Framework for English Language Proficiency Development
Standards provides guidance for schools and teachers as they modify curriculum and instruc-
tion to comply with the standards. How successful schools are in implementing and in winning
the support of the community and, particularly, teachers will depend on a number of factors:

• Schools’ ability to align Common Core standards with effective instructional
methods,

• Their ability to provide any needed professional development,
• The accuracy of tools used for assessing progress,
• Strategies to engage families and communities in the process, and
• Above all, effective teaching!

1.3 The Impact of Increased Numbers of ELLs on Teachers
Teachers are the heart of the school, and so it is impossible to think about or discuss the impact
of demographics and accountability movements without particular reference to teachers.
A teacher who began teaching in 1997 and was still teaching at the beginning of the school
year in September 2007, would have witnessed a 51% growth in the ELL population. During
the same period, the general population of students grew by only 7% (TESOL International
Association, 2013). Today, there are approximately 6 million ELLs in the nation’s schools,
which represents a 100% increase since 1991. The rising numbers, along with the diverse
languages and cultures these learners bring, place additional pressures on teachers, particu-
larly within the context of the squeeze on public funding to education and standards-based

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Section 1.3 The Impact of Increased Numbers of ELLs on Teachers

A Teacher’s Story: Ellen and NCLB

“I should have been an art teacher,” Ellen recalls thinking a few years into the implementa-
tion of NCLB. “They don’t have a standardized test for color or clay, and so nobody would
be judging me on how well my class did on state exams.” Ellen said that there were weeks
when she spent more time on teaching children to “bubble up,” referring to filling in the
circles on the test answer sheets and how to interpret and eliminate some of the answers
for multiple-choice tests, than she spent on vocabulary and reading. “And I had to forget
all about individualizing instruction—this NCLB thing is one size fits all,” she added. “I feel
like a cookie-cutter teacher—like I’m on an assembly line, and I don’t mean the queue wait-
ing to get into the auditorium.” When asked to explain, she said, “Part of it is the testing and
the test prep, but you know what the hardest part is? For years, I loved figuring out how to
reach each child—I like to think I wasn’t leaving any child behind. I loved to discover the
gifts each child brings and celebrate the progress they’d make. Now, they are all expected to
learn the same amount of the same things in the same time, and kids just don’t work that way,
especially the kids in this school.” Only about half of the children in Ellen’s school speak English
at home, and she assessed the reading level of her third-grade class as well below grade level.
“Some are barely reading at first-grade level,” she said. “But they all have to take the same tests
and be scored with everyone else. It’s not fair, and it’s got to be demoralizing for the kids, too.”

A Teacher’s Story: Ellen and CCSS

George, a recent graduate of a university teacher education program, completed his final
semester as an intern with Ellen Rodriguez. Their experience working together in her third-
grade class affected how each of them viewed teaching. One of their first conversations was
about the CCSS.

Third grade is the first year in which students write the state-mandated achievement test, and
George quickly observed that preparing her class for the test was occupying much of Ellen’s
time. He understood the importance of the test, but he didn’t understand her anxiety. She
pointed out that nine of her students, one-third, were second-language learners. “Are you wor-
ried that you’ll lose your job if your students don’t do well?” he asked. She laughed at that.

“I suppose that’s possible, but that’s not what worries me. I just hate the thought that they are
judged on the basis of a single test when I know that they have learned so much more than the

(continued)

reform. A few years into the implementation of NCLB, Ellen Rodriguez felt its impact, as we
see in Ellen and NCLB.

Given her experience with NCLB, it is not surprising that Ellen was skeptical about the state’s
adoption of the CCSS. Gradually, however, she began to change her views, in part because of
the influence of her teaching intern, as we will see in Ellen and CCSS.

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Section 1.3 The Impact of Increased Numbers of ELLs on Teachers

ELL Teachers and CCSS
There is no doubt that both NCLB and CCSS have had a profound effect on teachers of ELLs.
In order to bring assessment of ELLs into compliance with CCSS, many teachers will need to
refocus their approach to teaching. While they have traditionally focused on building vocabu-
lary and an understanding of English grammar (i.e., how sentences are structured), the CCSS
demand that they teach language and content simultaneously, focusing on language con-
structs such as discourse structure, text structure, explanation, and argumentation, as well
as sentence structure and vocabulary practice (TESOL International Association, 2013). In
order to implement this shift effectively, teachers will have to work collaboratively at a variety
of levels— with students and their parents, other teachers, school and districts, state officials,
and possibly publishers and funders. From teachers’ perspective, CCSS have wrought a whole
new way of viewing and doing the business of education:

Gaining a realistic understanding of students’ performance levels, meeting
students where they currently are, and raising them to new heights are the
tasks at hand and will require more intensive and time-consuming teaching
and learning than schools commonly provide now. Disadvantaged students—
often low-income students, students of color, English language learners, and
students with disabilities—were frequently held to a lower set of standards
in the past and will need the greatest focus. They are also the students who

A Teacher’s Story: Ellen and CCSS (continued)

test can show.” As they worked through the roles each would take over the upcoming weeks,
their conversation turned to the Common Core State Standards. “What do you think about
them?” Ellen asked.

George shrugged. “I think they’re a good thing,” he said. “It makes sense to have standards that
are the same from district to district and state to state.”

Ellen was skeptical. “You think so? That didn’t work so well with NCLB!”

“But that’s because NCLB just mandated ‘progress.’”

“Why do you think Common Core will be different?”

“Because it focuses on what is to be learned—content—and not just on measuring it. There’s
a difference.”

Throughout the term, George learned from Ellen many of the practical teaching techniques
she had learned over the years. She learned from him that past experience does not always
predict future experience, and that the Common Core might be useful in helping her to clar-
ify and measure learning objectives for all her students, particularly the English language
learners.

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Section 1.3 The Impact of Increased Numbers of ELLs on Teachers

benefit the most from well-designed schools that use significantly more and
better learning time for both students and teachers. (Farbman, Goldberg, &
Miller, 2014, p. 1)

Following the implementation of NCLB, some states adopted the policy of using standard-
ized test results to rate teacher effectiveness. Knowing that a standardized test cannot cap-
ture the totality of their impact on students’ learning, some teachers felt that they were
being judged unfairly. Predictably, the implementation of the CCSS raised the same fears,
but it is possible that the CCSS can be the impetus for improvements in teacher evalua-
tion. If school leaders and teachers cooperate in the curriculum revisions, setting of goals,
and overall planning needed for implementing and assessing the effectiveness of CCSS, then
there are opportunities to “build in” a teacher evaluation system that provides useful infor-
mation and tools that teachers need to grow in their profession. Several states are already
examining alternatives.

In light of less-than-successful past reform efforts the question is: How are
current reforms in teacher evaluation likely to affect the implementation of
the Common Core standards and assessments? The medical profession and its
notion of “standard of care” can be useful in considering this question. In med-
icine, the standard of care is a treatment guideline, be it general or specific,
which defines appropriate medical treatment based on scientific evidence
and collaboration between medical professionals involved in the treatment
of a given condition. A key aspect of this definition of standard of care is that
appropriate medical practice is based on scientific evidence.

When the notion of standard of
care is applied to education and
K–12 teaching, it points to the
need for all teachers to regularly
acquire new knowledge of con-
tent, pedagogy, learning theory,
and technology by participating
in comprehensive professional
development with the goal of
enacting appropriate and effec-
tive instructional practices that
will promote student learning.
(Youngs, 2013)

However they are evaluated, teachers
are critical to the success of the CCSS
and, more significantly, to their pupils’
success. For teachers of ELLs, the defin-
ing task is to locate the intersection of
their district or state standards for ELLs
with those set by the CCSS and then to
seek ways of helping their ELLs to reach
them.

Olivier Morin/Getty Images
Finnish school children, pictured with their
teacher on the second day of school, score
highest globally on tests of science, reading,
and math. Teachers are highly valued in Finland
where admission to teacher education programs
is very competitive.

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Section 1.3 The Impact of Increased Numbers of ELLs on Teachers

Identifying ELLs
Because both NCLB and CCSS set standards and timelines for ELLs to attain proficiency,
school personnel have had to develop procedures for identifying ELLs. They have had some
leeway in how they define the ELL population—some categorize as ELL only those students
receiving daily direct instruction in English, while others may include those who have moved
on to mainstream classrooms but whose academic progress the school continues to monitor.
Table 1.5 describes the variety of ways in which selected states designate English language
learners.

What all these tests have in common is an attempt to assess the degree to which a student
fits the definition of ELL given in this chapter and to provide some guidelines for grade-level
placement. Most are preceded by a Home Language Survey (HLS), which provides information
about the child’s home language as well as a rough indicator of English language exposure and
experience. Experience has taught educators in some states, however, to view the HLS with cau-
tion if not outright skepticism. California researcher Jamal Abedi discovered that parents may
provide incomplete or erroneous information because they do not understand the questions
on the survey, because they fear citizenship issues, or because they are concerned that their
children will not receive an equitable education (Abedi, 2008). Typically, the formal placement
tests attempt to measure proficiency in each of the four language domains: listening, speak-
ing, reading, and writing. Speaking proficiency in the Colorado English Language Assessment
(CELA), for example, is measured along a continuum from “speaks in words” to “tells stories.”
These tests are repeated annually in order to demonstrate progress from one year to the next.

While statewide tests are useful for teachers, the results of the assessments are frequently not
available before November, or even January, which means classroom teachers may have to find
another way to make an initial identification and make placement decisions. Many schools have

Table 1.5: Tests that states use to identify ELL students

Test States Other information

CELA CO

CELLA (Comprehensive English
Language Learning Assessment)

FL State test scores (grade four and up)

IPT AK, NC Observation (AK)

ACCESS WI, NJ

AZELLA AZ

ELDA AR

HILS + LAB-R NY

W-APT
(MODEL is the alternative in ME)

AL, ND, ME, SD Prior school records (AL)
Observation (ND)

LAS Links CT, HI, IN, MD Interview (CT, MD)
Prior school records (CT, MD)
Parental input (HI)

State-developed test ID, WA

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Section 1.4 Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

developed such instruments in order to monitor their students’ progress in each of the four
language domains and to guide teachers in their planning for instruction. It is important to
remember, when assessing ELLs for purposes of placement, that language proficiency alone
is an insufficient basis for placing students in the correct class or planning for their instruc-
tion. According to the National Council of Teachers of English, “ELLs will perform much better
if placed according to academic achievement rather than language proficiency” (NCTE, 2008,
p. 4). One of the reasons for this is that children are generally motivated when high expecta-
tions are established for them and when the curricular material is challenging and authentic.
In elementary and secondary students, the most effective teaching pairs language and content;
it makes sense, therefore, that placements be made and progress assessed on the same basis.
In Chapter 4, we will take up the matter of identification and initial placement in greater detail.

1.4 Cultural and Linguistic Diversity
Identification and placement of ELLs is only the first step. Creating instructional plans that take
into account their cultural norms, beliefs and values about education, and home language com-
petence is the larger challenge. A third-grade teacher in Miami with 22 children in her class might
have ten Spanish speakers, three speakers of Haitian Creole, and a Russian speaker, along with
eight who speak English. Further adding to the diversity, the English and non-English speakers
range in reading level from pre-beginner to grade three, two of the Spanish speakers are liter-
ate in Spanish but not English, and the
Russian child is fully literate in Russian,
a language with a completely different
alphabet and writing system. Planning
for this class is a challenge, one that
begins with establishing common goals
and a common approach. The overarch-
ing goals will be for the children to learn
the concepts and procedures appropri-
ate for third grade, and so the teaching
approach will be to teach language via
content. Still, it is obviously necessary to
modify the methods and materials, indi-
vidualizing them for each child’s needs.

Diversity and Differentiated
Instruction
Educating ELLs effectively “requires diagnosing each student instructionally, adjusting
instruction accordingly, and closely monitoring student progress” (Fenner, 2012). Teachers
use the results of their own as well as statewide assessments along with their knowledge of
each learner’s culture to develop a plan for differentiated instruction for their ELLs. Dif-
ferentiated instruction means that teachers adapt lesson plans and instructional materials
to meet the more limited language abilities of their ELLs in mainstream classes. These plans
include strategies for helping them develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills as
well as critical thinking skills. Throughout this book, particularly in Chapters 2–7, individual-
ized instruction in a variety of contexts will be discussed, with guidelines and examples.

Monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Thinkstock
Classrooms today are more culturally and
linguistically diverse than they were 50 years ago.

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Section 1.4 Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

Among the school population, both ELLs and children with English as their home language,
will be children with special needs. These children add more dimensions to the need for and
response to differentiated instruction as well as to assessment, as we will see in Chapters 8
and 9. Guidelines for developing and examples of such plans are included.

Cultural Awareness
One of the effects of the changing demographic described earlier is that teachers’ classrooms
are often filled with children with a variety of home languages representing a variety of cul-
tures. Understanding the children in their classes and helping them to be successful in learning
English and in school requires more than evaluation, placement, and lesson planning; it involves
at least some degree of cultural understanding. It is not necessary, and likely impossible, for a
teacher to understand all the nuances of all the cultures represented by the ELLs in a class, but it
is possible to be aware—aware of aspects of different cultures that might influence ELLs’ adjust-
ment to school and ability to learn. For schools to be harmonious and effective, school policies
and the teaching that occurs in schools must be culturally responsive. Culturally responsive
teachers play to the strengths of their students, using their cultural knowledge, prior experi-
ence, and performance styles to make learning more effective” (Gay, 2000).

The starting place for a discussion of culturally responsive teachers and schools is necessar-
ily with a definition of culture. Before continuing to read, take a few minutes now to write
down your definition or understanding of the term culture. Now, look at the box Definitions
of Culture to see which is closest to your own definition. Chances are good that your defi-
nition will resemble one or more of these because most cultural anthropologists and other
academics agree that culture is defined by a set of shared, learned knowledge, beliefs, and
values. What they do not always agree on is precisely which knowledge, beliefs, or values are
part of the definition. For our purposes it does not matter. More useful is the distinction that
Perkins (2011) draws between surface elements of culture and deep elements of culture.
Surface elements are those aspects of culture that we perceive with one or more of our five
senses. Such elements as food, holidays, or famous personalities are surface elements. In con-
trast, deep elements are those which require us to go beyond the observable and explore
the why of behaviors or values. Deep elements of culture involve modes of communication,
courtship and marriage beliefs and practices, gender roles, roles in the family and in society,
concepts of time, and ethics, to name but a few.

Definitions of Culture
Culture is the characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by . . . language, reli-
gion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts. Culture is communication, communication is
culture. (Zimmerman, 2012)

Culture. . . is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, cus-
tom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society. (Tylor,
1871, p. 1)

Culture is the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, inter-
preting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them. (Lederach, 1995, p. 9)

(continued)

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Section 1.4 Cultural and Linguistic Diversity

The transformation of schools into effective places for all children to realize their potential
is the challenge faced by nearly every school district in the country. In Chapter 2 and, indeed,
throughout the book, we will continue to explore the role that culture and cultural respon-
siveness play in helping ELLs to reach their academic and linguistic potential.

There is no doubt that teaching is a difficult job, with layer upon layer of responsibility, com-
plexity, and frustration. But it is also a profession that can be enormously fulfilling, and per-
haps even more so for teachers who are privileged to teach English language learners. We
conclude this chapter, as we will conclude most of the remaining ones, with the first of several
responses that teachers have given to the question “Why do you teach?” The first response is
from Gregory, and his story might well be titled The Navigator.

Why I Teach: The Navigator
Gregory has been teaching for six years in the same rural school. He taught fourth grade for
four years before being moved to second grade. He was asked the questions, “Have you ever
considered leaving the profession?” and “Why do you teach?” His response:

Sure, I’ve thought about it from time to time. When I first started teaching second grade,
it was a little overwhelming. I had three kids with special needs and a half dozen second
language learners, and only about half the class was reading at grade level. I was spending
a lot of time after school working with kids one-on-one or talking to colleagues about what
I might try. And the whole school was stressed out about the new Common Core standards,
mostly because we didn’t know much about what it was going to mean. So, yeah, I thought
about getting into something less stressful—maybe air traffic controller. But I stayed. I’m
still learning how to teach—probably always will be—but I like it because when I close
that door, it’s just 22 kids and me. Scary, right? Seriously, I’ve heard that some teachers
complain about how they are losing their autonomy in the classroom—you know, with this
whole accountability and standards push. But I don’t see it that way. It’s still mostly up to
me to figure out what to do. I mean, there’s a Common Core standard that says children
should be able to ask and answer who/what/where/when/why questions to show that
they understand the important parts of a text. That’s not exactly a roadmap, is it? It’s a
destination, but it’s up to me how to get there.

Definitions of Culture (continued )

Culture is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of
one category of people from another. (Hofstede, 1984, p. 51)

Culture is “an historically transmitted pattern of meaning embodied in symbols, a system
of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms.” (Geertz, 1973, p. 89)

Culture is to refer to the systems of knowledge used by relatively large numbers of peo-
ple.” (Gudykunst & Kim, 2003, p. 17)

Culture is “an integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of
the members of a society and which are not a result of biological inheritance.” (Hoebel,
1972, p. 7)

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Summary & Resources

Summary
Historically we are a nation of immigrants. Our recent history, in particular, has been one
of steady growth in the immigrant population when the non-immigrant population has
remained stable or even shrunk. As a result, ELLs are the fastest growing segment of the stu-
dent population in this country, and this trend is likely to continue. Virtually every state is
affected, and while Spanish is still the dominant non-English language spoken, it is only one
of many. ELLs are not a homogenous population—only 43% were born outside the country,
and wherever they were born, they represent varied levels of language proficiency, socio-
economic status, and educational experience and values. This diversity among such large
numbers of ELLs places pressure on schools and on teachers, pressure that is increased by
government mandates to measure achievement on standardized measures within a limited
time period. This chapter has discussed the implications of NCLB and CCSS on ELLs. In the
next nine chapters, we will revisit these implications in greater detail, as they affect how we
teach and how ELLs and all children learn.

Key Ideas

1. Patterns of immigration to the United States are a result of social, economic, politi-
cal, and personal factors both in the homeland and in the United States, but have
also been affected by U.S. law and policy.

2. Both numbers and countries of origin for immigrants have changed dramatically
over the last two centuries.

3. Approximately 13% of U.S. residents were born outside the United States.
4. Fifty-five million residents (over the age of five) speak a language other than English

at home.
5. Spanish is the dominant minority language spoken in this country, but less than half

consider themselves to be proficient.
6. The number of school-aged ELLs grew by 65% between 1993 and 2004, at a time

when the total U.S. school population increased by less than 7%.
7. The demographic trend indicates that our schools will continue to be a tapestry of

cultural and linguistic diversity.
8. A diverse population places additional pressure on school resources, but also pro-

vides a richness of community.
9. Although the CCSS may put additional pressure on schools, thoughtful implementa-

tion can help to ensure equal educational opportunity for ELLs.
10. Teaching ELLs requires a great deal of cultural understanding and respect.

Key Terms

English language learners (ELLs) Stu-
dents for whom English is not the home lan-
guage. Formerly referred to as ESL (English
as a second language) learners.

long-term English language learners
(LTELLs) Learners who have been enrolled
for more than six years and are not making
substantial academic progress.

English immersion (or structured English
immersion) Programs in which a signifi-
cant portion of the school day is devoted to
the explicit teaching of the English language
and in which academic content takes a sec-
ondary role.

pip82223_01_c01_001-028.indd 26 6/30/15 2:10 PM

Summary & Resources

Critical Thinking Questions

1. What impact did the 1917 law requiring potential immigrants to pass a literacy test
have on the makeup of subsequent immigrant populations? Does the United States
currently have such a law?

2. Look at the data in Table 1.3 paying particular attention to the fourth column. Note
that a higher percentage of Spanish speakers report a higher level of proficiency in
English than reported by either French or Italian speakers. What factors might help
to explain this difference?

3. In Section 1.2, the author states, “Another provision of the law required districts to
offer parents of children in schools that do not meet their AYPs the option of sending
their children to a non-failing school in the district.” What additional pressure does
this place on schools?

4. How do the punitive aspects of NCLB affect the ability of schools to retain their best
teachers?

5. What are the arguments in favor of requiring that Common Core State Standards be
met by all learners?

6. What current world events might serve as “push” factors for future patterns of
immigration?

7. How does a teacher become culturally aware?

Additional Resources
The U.S. Census Bureau is an excellent source of data about demographic trends and lan-
guages spoken in the United States. See
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/native_and_foreign-born_
populations.html

For a practical perspective on the Common Core State Standards, see the Center for Ameri-
can Progress site at
http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/CommonCore-reprint

English language proficiency develop-
ment (ELPD) standards Standards for
ELLs developed for and articulated in the
Common Core State Standards.

differentiated instruction The adaptations
regarding readiness level, language ability,
school experience, and learning style that
teachers make for individual students, provid-
ing different students with different ways to
learn language or content or to solve problems.

culturally responsive teachers Teachers
who “play to the strengths of their students,

using their cultural knowledge, prior experi-
ence, and performance styles to make learn-
ing more effective” (Gay, 2000).

surface elements of culture Aspects of
culture that are perceived with one or more
of our five senses, such as food, holidays, or
famous personalities.

deep elements of culture Aspects of cul-
ture that require individuals to go beyond
the observable and explore the why of
behaviors or values.

pip82223_01_c01_001-028.indd 27 6/30/15 2:10 PM

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/native_and_foreign-born_populations.html

http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/CommonCore-reprint

Summary & Resources

For a detailed analysis of the benefits of and details for implementing CCSS for Latino stu-
dents, but applicable for all schools with ELLs, see the National Council of La Raza (NCLR)
guidelines at
http://www.nclr.org/images/uploads/pages/Implementation_Guide

For various opinions on school reform and measuring teacher effectiveness, see
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2011/02/23/9167/essential-
elements-of-teacher-policy-in-esea-effectiveness-fairness-and-evaluation/
and http://www.susanohanian.org/show_research.php?id=446

For an account of the impact of the 1965 Immigration Act, see the Center for Immigration
Studies at
http://cis.org/1965ImmigrationAct-MassImmigration

For an overview and timeline of significant events affecting immigrants to the United States,
see Harvard University’s Open Collections Program site at
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/timeline.html

For an interesting take on school reform and teacher effectiveness, see
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/
what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/

For an excellent guide to resource materials on the history of immigration to the United
States, available through the Library of Congress, including information about the Common
Core standards, see
http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/
presentations/immigration/

Materials for teachers on the history of immigration can also be found at
http://testimmigration.crf-usa.org/index.php/lessons-for-teachers/72-history-lesson-2
.html

For information on culturally sensitive teaching, see
http://www.intime.uni.edu/multiculture/curriculum/culture/teaching.htm

pip82223_01_c01_001-028.indd 28 6/30/15 2:10 PM

http://www.nclr.org/images/uploads/pages/Implementation_Guide

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/report/2011/02/23/9167/essential-elements-of-teacher-policy-in-esea-effectiveness-fairness-and-evaluation/

Research that Counts

http://cis.org/1965ImmigrationAct-MassImmigration

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/timeline.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/

http://testimmigration.crf-usa.org/index.php/lessons-for-teachers/72-history-lesson-2.html

Learning Outcomes
By the end of this chapter you will be able to accomplish the following objectives:

1. Define and differentiate among the four domains of language.

2. Analyze why meaning might be considered the “fifth dimension” of language.

3. Explain the relationship between language and culture.

4. Define culture shock and describe how culture interacts with learning.

5. Analyze the intersection of language, culture, and content, and assess their influence on ELL
curriculum and teaching.

Language, Learning,
and Culture 2

DAJ/Thinkstock

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Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

Introduction
How do we know when a learner has truly mastered a language? Colloquially, we speak of
fluency, proficiency, and competency as though they are interchangeable. In fact, there are
slight differences, depending on the purposes for which the terms are used. For ours, they are
subtle:

• Fluency refers to the smoothness or flow of speech, oral reading, and writing. It is
the ease with which sounds, words, and phrases, are put together. Although the term
has particular significance in language pathology, for our purposes it refers to one’s
ability to be understood.

• Proficiency refers to an individual’s ability to speak, read, and write, with both
accuracy and fluency, in an acquired language. The term also has operational defini-
tions in standardized tests and measurements.

• Competency refers to the system of linguistic knowledge possessed by speakers of
a language. It is what the learner understands of the structure and vocabulary of a
language.

Mastery of a language occurs when a learner is proficient in speaking, reading, and writing
it—listening being a necessary prerequisite to speaking. It can be difficult for English lan-
guage learners to achieve equal competence in these four domains. Central to proficiency in
each domain is meaning; if learners do not understand the meaning of what they hear, they
will not remember it—they will not learn. Their understanding is embedded, at least in the
early stages, in their own experience of language and learning, that is, what they have expe-
rienced in their own culture. Some understanding of the cultural influences on language and
on learning is, thus, very useful for teachers. For ELLs, language and content are necessarily
taught simultaneously. Ideally, teaching language and content simultaneously, or language
through content, usually without translation, reinforces the learning of both. We begin with
a description of the four domains of language that must be acquired in order for a learner to
achieve fluency, proficiency, and ultimately, competency.

2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains
To succeed in school and to become fully competent in English, learners must acquire both
conversational and literacy skills. Doing so depends on their developing skills in listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. It is tempting to think about the oral and literacy skills as
related opposites—listening and reading involve decoding and speaking, and writing involves
encoding. But to characterize the four domains as related in these ways runs the risk of over-
simplifying what cognitive, linguistic, and psychological, processes are involved in each and
how they differ. In general, the productive skills (speaking and writing) are more difficult to
acquire than the receptive skills (listening comprehension and reading). Whether productive
or receptive, however, all four domains must be learned and they each present challenges for
the learner and the teacher.

Even though we can describe, and to some degree assess, each of the four domains indepen-
dently, they are in fact interlinked, particularly in the classroom. As Ellen Rodriguez learned

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Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

in A Lesson for the Teacher, proficiency in one or more domains does not imply proficiency in
the others.

The question for Ellen Rodriguez was how Mai’s strong oral language skills could be used in
teaching her to read and write. The first step in assisting Mai, as well as Quy and the Korean
twins, Ye-jun and Ji-woo, was to get an accurate assessment of English language proficiency.
Ellen Rodriguez had made assumptions about each child’s proficiency based on what she
had observed, but what she was observing was something different, more akin to acquisi-
tion level. Language proficiency levels refer to what a learner is able to demonstrate on
a formal language assessment, whereas acquisition level refers to a stage that a learner
achieves in the process of acquiring language proficiency. The former is the result of a mea-
surement, whereas the latter has been determined by researchers on the basis of obser-
vation of many children. Because the ability to function effectively in a language involves
competency in all four domains, describing the five levels of acquisition considers develop-
ment in each (see Table 2.1).

As Table 2.1 shows, four of the five levels of language acquisition could last longer than a
school year. To assess the progress students make in language learning, it would thus be nec-
essary to conduct proficiency assessments in each of the four domains. In 1985, there were
some such measures available to Ellen, but today there would be more, most of them used
statewide (Chapter 1). As we examine each domain, we also look at how to measure profi-
ciency in each.

A Teacher’s Story: A Lesson for the Teacher

Ellen Rodriguez was feeling a little overwhelmed that first week of school in 1985. She had
several ELLs in her class, with what appeared to be varying abilities. Quy, a boy from Viet-
nam, didn’t speak at all but appeared to understand her directions, which she was careful to
word simply and articulate slowly. The twins from Korea had a little more oral language than
Quy, knew the English alphabet, and could print their names, but neither the boy nor the
girl could identify more than a few printed words. These three children were going to need
a lot of individualized planning and teaching in her class of 23 fourth graders, and so she
was relieved when she first met Mai, also from Vietnam. Mai was a happy little chatterbox.
There were some slightly odd word choices in some of her descriptions, and occasionally the
question she answered was not exactly the one she’d been asked, but Ellen was confident
that Mai would need a lot less attention than the other three ELLs in her class. A month later,
she wondered how she had been so wrong. Mai’s oral language skills were impressive, but
she was struggling to learn the alphabet and could identify only a half dozen printed words,
one of them her name. Ellen Rodriguez had learned, first-hand, that proficiency in one or
two domains of language or the apparent ease of learning them do not predict proficiency
or success in learning the others.

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Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

Table 2.1: Recognizing the levels of second language acquisition

Acquisition
Level

Approximate
Time Frame

Learner Behaviors Teacher Prompts

Pre-production 0–6 months • Exhibits minimal comprehension.
• Verbalizes in single or two-word

utterances or not at all.
• Nods “yes” and “no.”
• Points and gestures.
• May communicate through

drawing.
• Has very limited vocabulary having

to do with basic interpersonal skills
(e.g., name, age).

• May communicate in home
language.

• Show me . . . .
• Where is . . . .
• Point to . . . .
• Circle the . . . .
• Who has . . . .

Early
production

6–12 months • Has limited comprehension.
• Speaks in fragments.
• Speaks in one- or two-word

sentences.
• Uses familiar phrases (e.g.,

greetings, leave-takings, language
for classroom routines).

• Uses mostly present-tense verbs.
• Can usually be comprehended,

but errors may hinder intended
meaning.

• Has a basic, but limited, vocabulary.

• All of the above,
plus

• Yes/no questions.
• Either/or

questions.
• Who?
• What?
• When?
• How many?

Emergent
speech

1–3 years • Demonstrates good
comprehension.

• Produces simple sentences, usually
with correct word order.

• Grammatical errors.
• May have pronunciation errors.
• Uses predominantly past or present

tense.
• Demonstrates understanding of

content-area knowledge.
• Misunderstands jokes or irony.

• Why?
• How?
• Explain . . . .
• Describe . . . .
• Questions

requiring only
short answers.

Intermediate
fluency

3–5 years • Very good to excellent
comprehension.

• Few grammatical errors.
• Errors rarely interfere with

meaning.
• May have to read passage more

than once for meaning.
• Has acquired academic vocabulary.
• Able to use detail when telling or

retelling story.
• Improved narrative writing but

with some errors.
• Has sufficient vocabulary to

express ideas.
• Uses variety of sentence structures.

• Why do you think
. . . ?

• What would
happen if . . . ?

• Questions
requiring longer
responses (more
than a sentence).

• What do you
think will happen
next?

• What’s the
difference
between . . . ?

(continued)

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Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

Listening
Listening comprehension is the most foundational of all language domains. It precedes and is
necessary to the development of speech in normally hearing children, and research indicates
that it even plays a role in reading. Researchers have shown that readers often call on phono-
logical information when reading silently, even when such a strategy negatively affects their
comprehension (Treiman et al., 2003). When readers in one study were asked to make rapid
decisions about whether a word belonged to a specific category—such as food or animal—
they were more likely to misclassify a homophone (e.g., meet/meat, right/write) than words
that were visually as similar (e.g., meet/melt, write/white). The same study also revealed that
the confusion was greater with hearing than nonhearing readers—hearing readers had more
difficulty processing He doesn’t like to eat meet than with He doesn’t like to eat melt, whereas
deaf readers showed no difference (Treiman & Hirsh-Pasek, 1983). The ability to process
spoken language accurately is, thus, at the heart of all language learning and use.

Although linguists and educators sometimes characterize listening as a “passive” skill, it is pas-
sive only in the sense that it is not observable. Listening is hard work for ELLs. Indeed, for every-
one listening comprehension entails a complex network of cognitive processes. These processes
involve the listener calling upon both linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge. Linguistic knowl-
edge includes information about the relevant sounds in a language (the phonemes), how they
go together to form words, word identification and meaning, sentence structure, and discourse
structure. Nonlinguistic knowledge refers to the real-world information and experience the lis-
tener has and includes content information about the topic and the speaker’s intent, that is, why
it is being communicated. Of course, the two kinds of knowledge must interact—listeners can’t
identify the topic much less bring relevant prior knowledge to bear if they don’t first under-
stand at least the major nouns and verbs and the sentence structure that carry the meaning.

While we have a good grasp of what kinds of knowledge must be processed to understand
spoken language, we know less about how the processes fit together. What we do know is that
they differ depending on the listener’s language ability, knowledge of the content, relationship
with the speaker, and the context of the situation. We know, in brief, that the process is not a
linear, predictable one in which the listener processes first the sounds and then figures out

Acquisition
Level
Approximate
Time Frame
Learner Behaviors Teacher Prompts

Advanced
fluency

5–7 years • Near-native fluency.
• Writes narratives.
• Uses a variety of sentence

structures.
• Has extensive social and academic

vocabulary.
• Has grade-level or better language

abilities.
• Reads for meaning.
• Few, if any, errors in speaking;

occasional errors in writing, but
none interfere with meaning.

• Retell . . . (can be
lengthy story).

• Explain why . . .
• Decide if . . . .
• What is the

argument for (or
against) . . . ?

• Why do some
people believe
that . . . ?

Sources: Syrja (2011); Hill & Bjork (2008)

Table 2.1: Recognizing the levels of second language acquisition (continued)

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Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

It’s Fun to Recognize Speech
Anyone who has used voice recognition software, such as the kinds used on visual voice mail,
knows that the software sometimes gets it badly wrong. Such software would find it difficult
to distinguish these two sentences:

It is fun to recognize speech.

It is fun to wreck a nice beach.

Builders of speech recognition software build language prediction models based on millions
of language discourse samples in their databases. Native speakers of a language have similar
stores of information, so if a sentence is uttered in any kind of context—conversation, lec-
ture, television show—the human listener can usually get it right. How? What kinds of specific
knowledge might be brought to bear? Why are ELLs at a disadvantage?

What information would you need to distinguish the following two utterances?

Recognize speech using common sense.

Recognize speech using calm incense.

Describe what linguistic knowledge is needed and what particular challenges an ELL might face
in distinguishing between He showed her the baby pictures and He showed her baby the pictures.
Source: Lieberman et al., 2005

Monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Thinkstock

Active listening is an essential skill to develop
in elementary school children because it is a
precursor to comprehension.

where the word boundaries are (there
is no “space” between spoken words),
what they mean, and how the order
in which they are uttered creates the
meaning. It is more a matter of simulta-
neously processing all levels of linguistic
and nonlinguistic information, revising
as new information is received, check-
ing against prior knowledge and the
context, and then, possibly, starting all
over again. Scientists who develop and
work to perfect speech recognition soft-
ware have to think about how to make
a machine comprehend, as we see in It’s
Fun to Recognize Speech.

The centrality of listening comprehension to ELLs eventually achieving competence is under-
scored in language acquisition theory in Krashen’s input hypothesis (1981). We will return
to this hypothesis later in this chapter in our discussion of meaning, and again in Chapter 5
when we examine theories of second language acquisition. According to the input hypothesis,
a learner’s ability to understand language is the only mechanism that leads to an increase
in linguistic competence. Output—or speaking and writing—are important skills, but they
do not, in Krashen’s view, advance the learner’s underlying competence. In educating ELLs,
however, the other three domains are equally essential to achieving academic success.

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Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

Speaking
Even if Krashen is correct that listen-
ing comprehension (input) is the only
skill that actually advances underly-
ing proficiency in the language, it is
nonetheless true that to be able to
communicate in the language, learn-
ers have to be able to speak. Unless
learners are able to communicate
orally, they will not succeed academi-
cally or function well in an English
language environment. Speaking is
the skill that we are most likely to use
in judging someone’s overall profi-
ciency with language. With children
who are learning their first language,
we judge their progress on the num-
ber of words they produce. With ELLs,
if their pronunciation is good and
they speak fluently with appropriate vocabulary, we usually judge them to be proficient
even when we may have no evidence about proficiency in the other domains except for
listening. What constitutes speaking ability? According to Kayi (2006) and Nunan (2003),
it entails the ability to

• Produce English speech sounds and replicate sound patterns correctly.
• Use word and sentence stress appropriately.
• Reproduce the intonation patterns and rhythm of the language being learned.
• Make vocabulary choices and organize words into sentences appropriate to the con-

text—social situation, audience situation, and subject matter.
• Organize spoken thoughts in meaningful and logical sequence.
• Use language to express values and judgments.
• Use the language fluently—confidently, quickly, and with few unnatural pauses.

(Kayi, 2006)

How? As might be expected, there are a number of different models that attempt to explain
how the mind and articulators work together to form spoken utterances. There are two basic
types of explanations: holistic and componential. Holistic models assume that an entire
phrase is processed at once, while componential models assume that the components of a
phrase are processed separately. None of the models of either type can provide a complete or
certain account of the process, but in attempting to answer the same question—how speak-
ers retrieve language information and assemble it during continuous speech—they also share
certain other characteristics:

1. They agree that linguistic information is organized in a hierarchy of distinctive fea-
tures—phonemes, morphemes, syllables, words, and phrases.

2. They agree that speakers need to have access to both semantics (meaning) and
syntax prior to the sounds of an utterance. In other words, the speaker has to know
the meaning she wishes to convey before searching for the words and the sounds to
produce them.

3. They agree that the process is sequential.

Fuse/Thinkstock
A child’s piece of art provides stimulus for oral
language development. The artist can explain the
picture, other children can ask questions, and the
teacher can use the opportunity to introduce or
reinforce new vocabulary.

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Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

4. The order of the process must be

a. Deciding on the message to be conveyed (i.e., conceptualization).
b. Sentence formation, which involves selecting the appropriate words for the mes-

sage and the appropriate order in which to place them, as well as other gram-
matical information (e.g., verb tense, plural or possessive morpheme).

c. Articulating the phrase by executing the motor movements necessary to produce
the sounds of the phrase. (Fromkin, 1973; Clark, E. & Clark, H., 1977)

Important as it is to ELLs’ academic success, speaking is one of the hardest skills to teach. One
reason has to do with how classrooms are organized. Speaking, unlike reading, writing, and
even listening, requires an immediate co-communicator. In other words, while a teacher can
work with a group on listening skills or use listening stations or other media for learners to
work on their own, and while reading and writing can, to some degree, be taught as group
activities or be done by ELLs on their own, meaningful activities to develop speaking skills
require active participants to engage and react. Much oral language will be learned in interac-
tion with other children on the playground at recess. But ELLs also need academic language,
as Ellen Rodriguez learned in There’s Talk and Then There’s TALK.

A Teacher’s Story: There’s Talk and Then There’s TALK

After a year of teaching, Ellen was feeling more comfortable and more confident in Septem-
ber of her second year in Chicago, even though she once again had a very diverse group of
children in her third grade class. Then she met Juan. When she first saw him, he was arriving
with a group of friends who were chattering away in Spanish as they came into the class-
room. Juan appeared to understand Ellen’s directions in English and responded appropri-
ately, but after a week he had uttered hardly a word in English. She wasn’t too concerned.
Then another week went by, and although he answered simple yes/no questions, he said
almost nothing else. Okay, Ellen thought, so he is in the stage of early production and would
speak when he had acquired more language. Then, in the third week, she was on playground
duty and witnessed Juan playing with Spanish and English speakers, and he was talking
in English. And talking a lot! Ellen didn’t know what was going on, and so she went to the
library that night and started doing research. That’s when she figured it out. He had basic
interpersonal skills in English, and his use of the language with his peers was excellent.
What he was lacking was academic language. But she knew that he’d get it because his com-
prehension was so good. She just had to give him unthreatening opportunities to practice. At
least now she knew what her job was!

There was a great deal that Ellen could do for Juan and that all ELL teachers can do to assist
learners, and we will examine some approaches in Chapter 5. Some of them involve using
reading activities to introduce and reinforce academic language.

Reading
Learning to read well in the early years of elementary school is a key to all childrens’
academic success. ELLs who enter public school in kindergarten or first grade have to
acquire reading skills simultaneously with listening and speaking. However, reading is

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 36 6/30/15 2:11 PM

Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

fundamentally different from listening and speaking. Whereas humans are “hardwired” to
learn oral language (Piper, 2012; Daggett & Hasselbring, 2007), reading and writing have to
be taught, which puts pressure on teachers and schools to focus on reading from the very
beginning of schooling.

“Reading is the key enabler of learning for academic proficiency across all subject areas and
over all grades” (Daggett & Hasselbring, 2007, p. 1). ELLs who begin schooling in English in
later years will also have to learn the three domains simultaneously, but some will benefit
from having the foundation of literacy in another language. As we see in A Bilingual Child
Learns to Read, Isabelle was such a child.

A Bilingual Child Learns to Read (Part 1)
Isabelle, age seven, is able to read in both English and French. With a Francophone mother
and Anglophone father, Isabelle has spoken both languages since birth. When she was five,
she announced that she wanted to learn to read, and so her grandmother, a teacher, taught
her. The approach that worked for Isabelle was using flashcards, at first with pictures of the
accompanying word and then later without pictures. At the beginning, Isabelle appeared to be
following a holistic approach, identifying a word by its shape—she would occasionally con-
fuse lake with take, for example, or mice and nice. But when she became frustrated by these
errors, her grandmother switched strategies, helping Isabelle to associate letters with sounds.
After a week, using a combined holistic sight-word and phonics approach, Isabelle was able to
identify 55 words, and at the end of a month she had learned more than 100. Throughout, her
grandmother also read to her and Isabelle would try to follow along. By the time her grand-
mother left to return to her own home after a month, Isabelle was well on her way to becoming
a proficient reader. In English. But Isabelle attended a French language school, and her mother
worried that her English reading would interfere with learning French. Did it? (We will find
out in Chapter 6.)

What is involved in learning to read and how is it taught? Hundreds of thousands of studies
have been done on the reading process, and yet there is still a reading crisis in U.S. schools.
Researchers have reached broad consensus on a few points:

• One of the things that researchers learned very early is that the model of the profi-
cient reader—or how an able reader processes written text—does not tell us a great
deal about how that reader became proficient. In Good Readers . . . we identify some
of the behaviors that good readers use. But what do they tell us about how to teach
reading, especially to beginners?

• Not every child learns to read in the same way. Failure to appreciate this reality is
one of the reasons that an estimated one-third of children designated as special edu-
cation students have been so categorized because of the lack of reading proficiency.
(President’s Commission on Excellence in Special Education, 2002)

• There remains “a persistent gap . . . in reading abilities along the racial and pov-
erty divide” (Daggett & Hasselbring, 2007, p. 5). Reading is also a skill that is most
often measured as an indication of ELLs’ progress and readiness to move up a
grade level.

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Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

Knowing how proficient readers behave helps teachers develop strategies to improve reading
comprehension, but what do we know about the process of actually learning to read? In part,
the answer depends on the writing system of the language they are learning to read. Writing
systems range from alphabetic to logographic, as shown in Table 2.2.

The first task of the beginning reader is to figure out how the written language relates to the
spoken language. Chinese children must learn to associate each symbol, or character, with a
meaning. Considering that a literate adult knows somewhere between 5,000 and 7,000 char-
acters, children need to learn at least 500 per year, and they do so after first spending a year
learning to read an alphabetic system called pin yin (Rayner et al., 2001, p. 32). Pin yin uses
letters of the Roman alphabet to spell Chinese words, adding diacritic markings to indicate
tones and pitch variations. Most Chinese learners will, therefore, have some understanding of
an alphabetic writing system to bring to the task of learning English.

Table 2.2: Writing systems and their characteristics

Writing System Characteristic Description Languages

Alphabetic Graphic units, called letters, are asso-
ciated with sounds, called phonemes.

English, Italian, French, German, Rus-
sian, Korean

Modified alphabetic Essentially alphabetic, but vowels
are predictable (i.e., can be omitted).

Hebrew, Persian

Syllabic Graphic units, or syllabaries, cor-
respond to syllables rather than
individual sounds.

Japanese Kana

Logographic Units (characters) correspond to
specific words or morphemes.

Chinese (although modern Chinese
has evolved into a morphosyllabic
system in which the characters are
mapped onto syllabic units that are
usually morphemes)

Good Readers . . .
Good readers are active, and will

• Identify a purpose for their reading—for pleasure (e.g., letters, stories, novels), to gather
specific information (e.g., where a gathering will take place and when), for general
knowledge (e.g., the news account of a local robbery), and to learn (e.g., textbooks).

• Preview the text before reading. Good readers will scan through a text quickly to look
for clues about whether the information they seek is there or what might be coming up
next in the text.

• Predict, strategize, visualize, and do whatever they can while reading to help them make
sense of and to remember what they are reading.

• Develop and use strategies for figuring out unfamiliar words.
• Think about what they have read after finishing it. Some will make a few notes or talk to

other people about what they have read.

Source: Center for Distance and Independent Study, http://muhigh.missouri.edu/exec/data/courses/
8236/public/lesson01/lesson01.aspx

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http://muhigh.missouri.edu/exec/data/courses/8236/public/lesson01/lesson01.aspx

Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

It might seem that an alphabetic system is more efficient—it is, in theory at least, easier to
learn a small number of sound-symbol correspondences and use them to map written words
onto meanings—assuming that the learner knows the meaning of the word once it is decoded.
But learning to read English is not easy for two reasons:

1. The notion of phoneme is abstract. We think of phonemes as our smallest units of
sounds, but in fact a phoneme actually represents a number of different versions of a
sound, all of which native speakers tend to recognize as the same sound. How many
distinct sounds in the word toasts? Native speakers will say three:
/t/ x2
/o/ (represented by digraph, oa)
/s/ x 2

In fact, there are five. The phoneme /t/ has two separate pronunciations, depend-
ing on where it is in the word. Native speakers, however, do not hear this distinction
because the differences are “predictable”: The one at the beginning of the word is aspi-
rated, meaning it has a little puff of air preceding the vowel, while the one between the
/s/ sounds is not. Even the two /s/ sounds are slightly different in length. Which one
do you think is longer?

2. There is no one-to-one correspondence between sound and symbol. The sound /o/
can be represented in writing in several ways:
a. both
b. boat
c. owe
d. mow
e. aloe
f. oh
g. dough

Conversely, if we think we have cracked the code by learning these spellings for the
/o/ sound, we will likely not recognize:

a. sloth
b. gown
c. shoe
d. tough
e. bough

Word identification is only the first stage in learning to read, and probably not the hardest.
Emphasizing the importance of children developing early reading skills through “Reading
First,” NCLB identifies five essential components of reading programs:

1. Phonemic awareness
2. Phonics
3. Fluency
4. Vocabulary
5. Reading comprehension strategies

The Common Core State Standards also recognize the critical foundation that these skills
provide by requiring demonstrated growth in the reading foundational standards from kin-
dergarten through fifth grade. Whether or not there is a reading crisis in the United States,

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 39 6/30/15 2:11 PM

The prewrite phase

Step 1. Is for brainstorming
and getting ideas down on
a piece of paper.

The draft phase

Step 2. Is for organizing ideas
in a logical format for the
speci�ed purpose, topic,
and audience.

The edit phase

Step 4. Is for �xing the little
errors that detract from the
writing.

The revision phase

Step 3. Is for revising the
text to improve the order,
examples, style, tone, etc.

The publish phase

Step 5. Is for �nalizing and
sharing the �nished product.

Section 2.1 Basic Competencies: The Four Domains

there is no arguing the fact that a high level of reading competence is necessary, not only for
academic success, but for citizens to function fully and productively in society. In Chapter 5,
we will return to the topic of reading for ELLs.

Writing
Writing is a means of communication and, thus, a social process. It is not just reading in reverse.
It is often the last of the four language levels to be learned, and proficiency in the other four does
not ensure success in writing. Nevertheless, we do know that both reading and writing need to
be built on a firm foundation of oral skills. Reading and
writing can be taught simultaneously, although writing
skills will always lag behind reading skills. Writing, like
speaking, is an encoding skill, but this does not mean
that articulate, orally fluent speakers are necessarily
able to convey the same meanings in print.

Writing involves several different stages, as shown in
Figure 2.1. It is a difficult and onerous process for many
learners; many native speakers with excellent reading
ability become frustrated when trying to express them-
selves in writing. ELLs can begin to learn to write at the
same time they are acquiring vocabulary and learning
to read—they don’t have to achieve a certain level of
language proficiency first. For ELLs, writing is easier
and more purposeful if it is fully integrated into other
language activities and with the broader curriculum.
Because writing is a social skill, and to make classroom
writing more like “real” (purposeful) writing, it is use-
ful to make writing an integrated classroom activity.

It is not only possible, but helpful, to engage ELLs
and other children in the classroom throughout most
of the writing process. At the prewriting stage, learn-
ers can brainstorm together with the teacher about
whatever they are preparing to write about. Or more
advanced learners can make notes on what they
know or what information they may need to seek.
Even for beginners, this cooperative activity can be
made to work. For beginners the writing task may
be writing a few descriptive words or a sentence or
two about one or more of the ideas captured. The ini-
tial drafting of a piece is a solitary activity, but other
learners can work together in revising and editing
a first draft. And, of course, they provide a valu-
able audience for the final product, whether it is a
sentence or a paragraph, a description, or an entire
story. Reading a draft aloud helps writers to discover
errors or awkward expressions, and reading to an
audience—of one or several—makes the activity
more purposeful. The teacher’s role is to guide and

The prewrite phase
Step 1. Is for brainstorming
and getting ideas down on
a piece of paper.
The draft phase
Step 2. Is for organizing ideas
in a logical format for the
speci�ed purpose, topic,
and audience.
The edit phase
Step 4. Is for �xing the little
errors that detract from the
writing.
The revision phase
Step 3. Is for revising the
text to improve the order,
examples, style, tone, etc.
The publish phase
Step 5. Is for �nalizing and
sharing the �nished product.

Figure 2.1: The writing process

ELLs can simultaneously learn to read
and write in their new language.

Adapted from http://261095.medialib.glogster.com/
thumbnails/a188514252983603828c28daa190fd
32a8cba2becefa3f510ca96f8ba5cdd995/the-
writing-process-source

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 40 7/1/15 3:07 PM

http://261095.medialib.glogster.com/thumbnails/a188514252983603828c28daa190fd32a8cba2becefa3f510ca96f8ba5cdd995/the-writing-process-source

Section 2.2 The Fifth Dimension: Meaning

support students throughout the process and to provide specific instruction in the mechanics
and conventions of writing in English.

The most important thing for teachers of ELLs to remember about teaching writing is that it
should not stand alone as an end in itself; it has to be linked with or integrated into the other
language domains that the children are learning. Not to do so misses an important opportu-
nity to improve ELLs’ writing and overall language proficiency simultaneously.

It is inconceivable that anyone could write without being able to read, and, significantly, com-
petence in both literacy skills are best built on a foundation of oral language—and when the
learners are children, this is always the case. And yet, there are instances when the primary
focus of a lesson needs to be on one domain or the other. Especially for beginners, it is impor-
tant to focus on oral language first, but for all learners it is sometimes necessary to concen-
trate on helping them develop comprehension and speaking ability before embarking on the
journey to literacy. Whatever language skill or ability is being fostered, whether the focus of
the activity or lesson is specifically targeted or integrated, central to all language learning—
and, thus, teaching—is the ability to understand and create meaning.

2.2 The Fifth Dimension: Meaning
Before language begins to emerge, from the time an infant cries to signal hunger, thirst, or dis-
comfort, the intention is to communicate meaning. Although we are, arguably, hard-wired to
learn language, and although it is inextricably entwined with cognitive processing, the moti-
vation to acquire language is to communicate with the people around us. Some older read-
ers may remember the experience of foreign language classes in which they were forced to
memorize Paul Adams est un jeune étudiant américain vivant à Parisan (Paul Adams is a young
American student living in Paris) or La brosse à cheveux de ma tante est sur le bureau le matin
(My aunt’s hairbrush is on the bureau in the morning). Lessons were memorized and trans-
lated, and although they were sometimes constructed around narratives that were memorized
through sentence-by-sentence buildup (i.e., beginning with two words, “Paul Adams,” and then
adding a word or phrase at a time until the sentence was complete), there was little that was
meaningful to the learner in the passages or the lessons. When people report that they didn’t
learn a language until they spent time in the country where it was spoken, it is because that was
when it became necessary to understand and create meaning. Chances are that Paul Adams, if
he existed, did not learn his French by studying with this text or this method!

Comprehensible Input
Making meaning the focus of lesson planning, teaching, and all interactions with ELLs, makes
the experience of learning more natural and thus easier. In fact, as noted earlier, if what learners
hear or see in print is not comprehensible, there is no learning. Nobody can learn Mandarin by
only listening to Radio Beijing, because the information, while meaningful to the broadcasters,
has no meaning to English speakers. And, more importantly, listeners have no way of discerning
meaning absent a translation. Television news programs from the same sources might be mod-
erately more successful when photographs or video footage accompany the stories. But even so,
the listener usually needs more help. Input, whether oral or written, needs to be at or just beyond
the learner’s level of understanding for it to have an impact on learning. Just beyond means that
the learner understands enough words or enough about the context to make inferences about

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 41 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Gestures

Field trips

How to make
input

comprehensible

Advance
organizers

Realia

Visuals

Paraphrase

Demonstration

Section 2.2 The Fifth Dimension: Meaning

the meaning. The quality of the
input is therefore very impor-
tant from a practical and a
theoretical perspective. In fact,
comprehensible input is one of
the five pillars of Krashen’s com-
prehension hypothesis model
(Krashen, 1981). Even theorists
who object to Krashen’s theo-
retical model of second language
acquisition cannot credibly fault
the relevance of comprehensible
input from a practical perspective.

What comprehensible input
implies for teachers is the need
to find just the right level of
language for each learner—too
easy and language learning does
not progress, but if the input is
not at all comprehensible, learn-

ing does not occur either. How do we ensure that linguistic input is comprehensible or poten-
tially comprehensible? By providing familiar context, using visuals and gestures, using probes
to guide the learner to understanding, linking new language structures to prior knowledge,
and even slowing and repeating or paraphrasing their own speech, teachers strive to make
language comprehensible. Figure 2.2 shows a few of the many tools available to teachers.

Finding ways to make input comprehensible takes us right to the heart of language teaching
methods, particularly those linked to content-area teaching. The question faced by every ELL
teacher across the country is the same: How do I make content comprehensible, foster cogni-
tive development, and nurture and grow language competency simultaneously for learners
who are likely diverse in language background and English language proficiency? The answer
is simple, although its implementation may not be: Use every possible opportunity to create
and reinforce meaning. In brief, make meaning everywhere.

Making Meaning Everywhere
It may seem obvious that everything that happens in the ELL classroom should be centered
on meaning—even when a teacher is working on a particular distinction in pronunciation,
such as the difference between /b/ and /v/, which creates an opportunity to introduce new
vocabulary, expand definitions of existing vocabulary, and even to work on sentence struc-
ture. For example, Spanish speakers often have trouble distinguishing long and short vowels
in word pairs such as ship/sheep, blip/bleep, fit/feet/, sit/seat, and so on. One way of working
on this problem is to drill, making students point to the correct word when it is spoken, or
to speak the word shown on a flashcard. But the exercise might be even more effective if it is
contextualized as the response to a question: If we want to sail to Bermuda, should we take a
sheep? Or Can we get wool by shaving a ship?

In the context of the entire curriculum, meaning is the basis for planning all content and skills
instruction. One of the most basic ways of giving learners the tools they need to understand
what they hear and read is to build vocabulary skills. Learning the names of objects and actions

Gestures
Field trips
How to make
input
comprehensible
Advance
organizers
Realia
Visuals
Paraphrase
Demonstration

Figure 2.2: Some strategies for making language
comprehensible for ELLs

Teachers need to find the best language balance for each ELL to
help ensure the language input is comprehensible.

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 42 6/30/15 2:12 PM

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm

Section 2.2 The Fifth Dimension: Meaning

is the first language behavior we observe in infants. Starting with one word, then two, three,
and onward, they are able to make themselves understood long before they are able to form
sentences. So it is with ELLs; if they have a good store of words to draw from, the context or
situation will often help them to figure out what is being said (whether orally or in writing), and
that in turn advances their knowledge of sentence structure. Moreover, the more English words
an ELL has learned, the easier it is to use the context of a situation to figure out the meaning. For
example, suppose two ELLs hear this sentence:

Fainting can be caused by factors ranging from dehydration to low blood pres-
sure and even serious illness.

Neither has learned enough about English sentence structure to identify the subject, verb
tense, or much of anything else. One ELL hears only three familiar words, can, blood, illness,
and so the sentence is totally incomprehensible—the speaker could be talking about some-
body named Fainting who has leukemia. The second ELL, however, knows fainting, cause,
hydration, blood pressure, serious, and illness. This learner will make a far more accurate guess
at the meaning of the sentence.

Having Common Core standards in place for language and content means that ELL teach-
ers necessarily teach content and language simultaneously. One of the most successful
approaches to doing so is immersion (Genesee, 2004). Immersion teachers begin with simpli-
fied language—controlled vocabulary with few or no idioms, high-frequency words, simple
sentence structures, and frequent paraphrasing. Another tactic used by immersion teachers
is to model tasks as they talk their way through them—whether something as simple as put-
ting on a coat and mittens for beginners, or as complex as locating places on a map and giving
directions. The success of these tactics depends on teachers doing regular and frequent com-
prehension checks. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” or “Now, show me,” for example,
are ways of establishing that an ELL has understood before moving on. In Chapter 4, we will
see how some immersion practices can be used in another program option for ELLs.

Meaning and Accuracy
Teachers also have to find a way of dealing with developmental errors. When the focus is on
content and meaning, learners will make errors, and excessive correction may discourage
ELLs from speaking (or writing). Very
young children will eventually figure out
the correct forms without correction,
but for older learners it is sometimes
just more efficient to provide correction.
There is no formula for when to correct
and when not to, but as a rule teachers
do not interrupt a speaker or the flow of
a lesson to make corrections. It is usu-
ally more effective to make a note and
address the matter later. For example, if
a child uses be for is or are while speak-
ing in class, the wise teacher does not
correct on the spot, but plans a mini-les-
son on the forms of to be to be presented
later. How learners respond to correc-
tion is partly a matter of culture.

Monkeybusinessimages/iStock/Thinkstock

Arts and crafts activities provide excellent
opportunities for expanding vocabulary and
making meaning.

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 43 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Section 2.3 Learning Language and Culture Simultaneously

2.3 Learning Language and Culture Simultaneously
“At the intersection of multiple native and target cultures, the major task of language learners is
to define for themselves what this ‘third place’ that they have engaged in seeking will look like,
whether they are conscious of it or not” (Kramsch, 1993, p. 9). M. J. Bennett frames this notion
of adaptation as a question: “How is it possible to perceive in culturally different ways and still
‘be yourself ’?’’ (2004, p. 8). In a sense, when ELLs come to the English language classroom, they
are caught between cultures: their home culture and the dominant one of the school. They have
to negotiate a kind of subculture that has elements of both and is likely unique to each learner,
and they have to do so as they learn language and content in a new language.

The Relationship Between Language and Culture
Language exists to meet the needs of the people who speak it. Those needs are social, edu-
cational, vocational, and even spiritual. When we say that language is culturally determined,
we refer to the fact that “different cultures have different perceptions, different beliefs, and
different communicative needs that their languages must serve” (Piper, 2012, p. 15). Because
we are all human, there are similarities between cultures, but because the world’s languages
evolved in different locations and under different conditions, there are also differences among
cultures and, thus, languages. Some of these differences have an impact on how ELLs react to
classroom settings and on how they are treated when they get there. To understand why
learners may have difficulty comprehending intended meaning, it is helpful to understand the
three-way relationship between language, learning, and culture.

Culture in the Classroom
. . . traditional methods of uniform instruction seem to be ineffective with a
student group that is very diverse, with students from different backgrounds
and with different approaches to learning (De Vita, 2005, p. 165).

One important reason that it is so important for teachers to become more culturally aware
is to avoid succumbing to a view that equates cultural diversity with deficit. ELLs are over-
represented in special education (Rhodes et al., 2005), in part because schools sometimes do
not know what else to do with them, but also because culturally determined differences are
mistakenly identified as learning or cognitive deficiencies.

Even when ELLs are not misidentified as needing special education, they are made to take the
same standardized tests and are part of the school’s accountability data. The pressure is on ELLs
and their teachers to negotiate that “third place” as quickly as possible. So how do teachers learn
everything they need to know about the different cultures represented in their classrooms?

The simple answer is that they don’t. Just as it is impossible for teachers to speak the lan-
guages of every ELL student in their classrooms, so it is impossible for them to have detailed
knowledge or understanding of the culture. What teachers can develop, however, are certain
sensitivities that allow them to avoid communication conflicts or misunderstandings.

Individuals employ different learning styles and strategies; some need to see print in order
to understand and remember, while others prefer “listen and learn.” There are many other
kinds of individual differences, but there are also more general differences based on culture.
Older children who have attended school in another country may have particular experiences
of learning that differ from the expectations of teachers in this country. In fact, even young

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 44 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Social
You prefer to learn in groups

or with other people.

Solitary
You prefer to work

alone and use self-study.

Musical/Auditory
You prefer using sound

and music.
Verbal

You prefer using words,
both in speech and writing.

Physical/Kinesthetic
You prefer using your body,
hands and sense of touch.

Logical/Mathematical
You prefer logic, reasoning

and systems.

Visual
You prefer using pictures,

images, and spatial
understanding.

What is your
Learning

style?

Section 2.3 Learning Language and Culture Simultaneously

ELLs who have not attended school in another country may bring a different view of learning,
and how to learn, than other children in the classroom.

Individual Learning Styles and Strategies
People have different ways of learning. Actually, individuals usually employ more than one
learning technique, although many people will have a dominant or preferred style. Some differ-
ences are gender-based, but many others are simply individual preferences. For example, some
learners are more tolerant of ambiguity than others. They understand that some problems have
multiple answers and can tolerate not knowing while a teacher develops an idea. Other learners
see the world in more absolute terms and want to know “which one is true?” when faced with
multiple possibilities. As Figure 2.3 illustrates, some learners are able to recall material after

Figure 2.3: Learning styles

People learn in different ways; individuals may use different techniques depending on what they are
trying to learn. Which of these styles would you likely employ to learn to play saxophone? To learn
20 new words in Mandarin? Teachers should be aware of their students’ different learning styles and
adopt strategies to help meet unique needs.

Musical/Auditory – Fuse/Thinkstock; Verbal – Fuse/Thinkstock; Physical/Kinesthetic – ZoiaKostina/iStock/Thinkstock;
Logical/Mathematical – Hongqi Zhang/iStock/Thinkstock; Social – Minerva Studio/iStock/Thinkstock;
Solitary – AmmentorpDK/iStock/Thinkstock; Visual – Fuse/Thinkstock

Social
You prefer to learn in groups
or with other people.
Solitary
You prefer to work
alone and use self-study.

Musical/Auditory
You prefer using sound
and music.
Verbal
You prefer using words,
both in speech and writing.
Physical/Kinesthetic
You prefer using your body,
hands and sense of touch.
Logical/Mathematical
You prefer logic, reasoning
and systems.
Visual
You prefer using pictures,
images, and spatial
understanding.
What is your
Learning
style?

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 45 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Section 2.3 Learning Language and Culture Simultaneously

hearing it and, perhaps, repeating it orally, whereas others need to see it in print and, perhaps,
write it down. Some people learn more readily on their own, but others learn more effectively
in groups. Teachers need to be aware of these variations and respectful of them, while assist-
ing learners to add to their repertoire of styles and strategies. Layered onto this complexity are
those attitudes and approaches to learning that are culturally determined.

Cultural Influences on Classroom Behavior
Even in very young children, the way they learn may be partly culturally determined. With
older children who have experienced formal education in another country, this is may appear
to be more significant because of differences in how countries approach formal education.
Chinese children, for example, are accustomed to memorization, a technique rarely employed
in U.S. schools. Because memorization is a solitary activity, these children may be less accus-
tomed to group work. Asian children may, for cultural reasons, be quiet in class and be reluc-
tant to make eye contact with teachers, whereas U.S. children are usually expected to be active
participants in class and to make contact with the teacher as a sign of respect (Bennett, J. M.
et al., 2003). In some Hispanic cultures, parents may view teachers as expert and defer to
them on major decisions about their children’s education (Valdés, 1996, cited in Rosenberg et
al, 2010). As Ellen Rodriguez learned in Ellen Learns about Comprehension and Culture, such
differences in cultural expectations about education may have an impact on judgments and
decisions teachers make about ELLs. Cultural differences might play a role in a child’s claim-
ing to understand when he doesn’t.

A Teacher’s Story: Ellen Learns about Comprehension and Culture

Just before Ellen went back to full-time teaching, she was substituting in a third grade class. She
had been instructed to review certain concepts in arithmetic for half an hour before adminis-
tering a quiz. She did so, and she was careful to check to see that the children understood one
step before moving on to the next—it was a very orderly lesson. She repeatedly asked, “Do you
understand?” and occasionally some of the children would indicate they didn’t. One little boy
always smiled and nodded eagerly, and Ellen assumed he was following the review lesson well
and had mastered the material. Imagine her surprise when she looked at his quiz at the end of
the day and saw that he had scored a bare 25%! His name was Tahn, he was East Asian, and his
English had appeared to be good. He said he understood, and yet he clearly hadn’t. On reflec-
tion, Ellen learned three significant things from this experience:

1. Asking children if they understand is not always the best way of finding out whether
they do, which . . .

2. . . . is true of language and content!
3. Cultural differences might play a role in a child’s claiming to understand when he doesn’t.

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 46 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Section 2.3 Learning Language and Culture Simultaneously

Although there are many dimensions along which cultural attitudes can be measured, one of
the more revealing is the individualist-to-collectivist continuum. Table 2.3 shows the major
differences between the two extremes. Countries that are representative of the more indi-
vidualistic end of the spectrum are the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New
Zealand, Hungary, and the Netherlands, while countries representative of the other end of
the continuum include most Asian countries, Brazil, Portugal, Greece, and Mexico.

Table 2.3: Two broad cultural perspectives on education

Individualist Perspective Collectivist Perspective

Students work independently; helping others may
be construed as cheating.

Students work with peers and help each other.

Students actively participate in discussion and
argument and are encouraged to think critically.

Students consider being quiet and respectful a
more efficient way to learn.

Emphasis is placed on deadlines and schedules. Relationships are more important than tasks.

Personal opinions are expected and encouraged. Individuals will speak in class when called upon to
do so but are not likely to volunteer opinions.

Property belongs to individuals, and others must
ask permission to borrow it.

Property is communal.

The teacher manages the environment indirectly
but encourages students to develop self-control.

The teacher is the primary authority, but children
may guide each other’s behavior.

Parents are considered important to children’s
academic success and are encouraged to be active
participants.

Parents defer to teachers’ expertise both for
instruction and for academic guidance and advice.

Confrontation is allowed and may be considered
opportunity for learning.

Harmony should be maintained; disagreement
should be avoided.

“New and trendy” are generally viewed positively. Greater emphasis on tradition.

Self-improvement and education considered life-
long undertaking (“permanent education”).

Education is for the young; it is harder for adults to
accept student role.

Competence and the acquisition of skills are more
important than acquiring certificates.

Certificates and diplomas are valued in themselves.

Sources: Adapted from Collectivist vs. individualist perspectives, Very Informed Parents Newsletter, February 21, 2012,
http://veryinformedparents.blogspot.com/2012/02/collectivist-vs-individualistic.html. Based on Gouveia & Ros, 2000.

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 47 7/1/15 1:22 PM

Section 2.4 Culture Shock

Keep in mind, however, that no country or cultural community is purely one or the other. Simi-
larly, there is as much variability in learning style within cultural groups as between them. While
it may be true that children from different cultural backgrounds may exhibit distinctive patterns
of intellectual abilities, not every child from the culture will have that ability. Moreover, research
provides little support for the effectiveness of tailoring instruction according to generalized
assumptions about any particular cultural group. Nevertheless, as Perkins states, “Building on
students’ prior knowledge, which is built on their (cultural) backgrounds and experiences, is a
foundation of effective and efficient learning and teaching” (2011, p. 33). Perkins’ reminder is
appropriate for all teachers and all children, regardless of language ability or culture.

What is especially important for teachers is cultural sensitivity and understanding:
knowing about the history, shared experiences, traditions, and valued practices of dif-
ferent cultures. What is not as important is to design instructional techniques for a
particular group. Rather, it is better to understand the needs and struggles of individual
students. Developing cultural sensitivity also helps teachers recognize and deal with the
reality of culture shock.

2.4 Culture Shock
Culture shock refers to the stress that people experience when they are immersed in a new
and unfamiliar environment. Normally, we think of it as applying to people moving to a new
country, but it can also occur within a country when people move from one region to another,
such as from New England to the deep South. However, when people move from one region of
a country to another, it’s often the case that the language is not different, although the dialect
may be, and so there is a substantial commonality from which to learn. Also, when a child
moves from Boston to Savannah, the school will be new but the basic configuration of the
school and the underlying assumptions about teaching and learning will be fundamentally
the same.

For ELLs, however, especially those who are newly arrived, the situation is very different.
They do not share a language with others in their new homeland, and they are also facing
cultural adaptation at two levels—the society or country and the school. Depending on how
long they have lived in the community and a number of other factors, including the degree to
which their parents have integrated into the community, ELLs will experience different levels
of culture shock and school shock, or they will be at different phases.

Phases of Culture Shock
Researchers commonly agree on four phases of culture shock (Figure 2.4), but some also add
an initial stage, called preliminary or awareness. This initial phase includes the preparatory
activity that occurs before the move to the new culture and is more applicable to culture
shock than to school shock. The other four phases shown in Figure 2.4 are considered univer-
sal and would apply to both culture and school shock.

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 48 7/1/15 1:22 PM

http://veryinformedparents.blogspot.com/2012/02/collectivist-vs-individualistic.html

Euphoria
Acceptance

Adaptation

Shock
L

e
v
e
l
o

f
S

a
ti

s
fa

c
ti

o
n

Time

Section 2.4 Culture Shock

1. Euphoria or
“honeymoon”.
This begins with
arrival in the
new place. It is a
period of excite-
ment mixed
with anticipa-
tion. There is no
timeline on any
of the phases,
but this phase
can vary accord-
ing to a number
of factors, including the proximity of the new culture to the old.

2. Shock. Once the euphoria wears off, a period of irritability occurs as the newcomer
begins to acclimate to the new environment. Typically, this phase is character-
ized by a focus on the differences between the host culture and home. Sometimes,
because of the stress, even minor differences will take on major significance—not
being able to find a familiar brand of tea or a home language newscast can be a
major cause of irritability. During this phase, it is not uncommon for members of
the home culture to cluster together, clinging to the familiar and complaining about
the new.

3. Integration. This is a period of gradual adjustment to the new culture. Often, people
are not even aware that this is happening, but they find themselves increasingly
comfortable with the new ways.

4. Acceptance. The ultimate goal is biculturalism, which occurs when a newcomer is
fully able to function in the new culture and feels less “foreign” than before. This stage
in no way implies that the home culture is abandoned, but rather that newcomers
begin to feel that they have a second home. It is the phase at which the newcomers
are comfortable enough to begin to negotiate that “third place” described earlier.

Although the length of time individuals spend in each phase varies according to environment and
circumstances, the phenomenon of culture shock itself is universal for everyone except for very
young preschool children—which means that ELLs will be affected both at home and at school.

Classroom Implications
Children are usually more resilient and adaptable than adults; nevertheless, it would be a
mistake to underestimate the effects of culture shock and school shock on any learner. Just as
there is diversity in terms of language and language ability, there will also be a great deal of
variation in the degree to which ELL children have adapted to the new culture and the new
school. In terms of cultural adaptation, the task in school is to facilitate learners’ acceptance
of and into the new culture while respecting their first culture. Doing so requires that we be
able to recognize that certain behaviors may occur because of cultural differences.

ELL children who act out in class may well be suffering from culture or school shock. Many
of the differences between the home and host cultures that lead to culture shock in the broad
sense may be realized in particular in the classroom. For example

Figure 2.4: Stages of culture shock

Notice that in these stages of culture shock the “road” has a few bumps.

Euphoria
Acceptance
Adaptation
Shock
L
e
v
e
l
o
f
S
a
ti
s
fa
c
ti
o
n
Time

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 49 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Section 2.5 Language, Content, and Culture in the ELL Classroom

1. The emphasis in U.S. schools
on thinking and analyzing
over memorization may take
some time for an ELL to adapt
to, and may result in apparent
nonparticipation in class. In
a sense, they have to relearn
how to learn.

2. The tendency of teachers to
call out or chastise students
publically rather than pri-
vately will be alien to some
learners from cultures where
“face” is valued, and may also
result in lack of participation
in class.

3. The relative informality that
teachers exhibit may seem
strange.

4. The punctuality and maintain-
ing of schedules that teachers and schools demand will be strange to some ELLs and
their families from cultures where time is considered more fluid.

5. The stress on individual rather than cooperative effort, especially on tasks that are
evaluated, may be unusual.

6. The fact that it is permissible to ask questions of teachers that appear to challenge
their authority will seem disrespectful to some ELLs.

7. ELLs may expect teachers to “know everything” and reach faulty conclusions when
they do not.

Creating an environment in which all ELLs and, indeed, all children are comfortable requires
sensitivity to these cultural elements. It is very difficult to help anyone learn without first
understanding how that person learns or the barriers that may exist to impede learning. The
role of the teacher is clear, if not easy: Planning for and teaching the diverse range of stu-
dents in today’s classroom requires the integration of curricular content with language and
culture teaching objectives, tailored to the need of each student, and assisting the learner to
adapt to the new culture.

2.5 Language, Content, and Culture in the ELL Classroom
Educators do not believe that all learners are the same. Yet visits to schools
throughout the world might convince us otherwise. Too often, educators
continue to treat all learners alike while paying lip service to the principle of
diversity (Burke Guild, 2001, p. 1).

It is understandable that with the emphasis on common standards and the increased pressure
of accountability as measured by standardized tests, schools might opt for “consistency” in
curriculum and instructional methods. Particularly since such measures are interpreted with
only scant regard for cultural and language differences, teachers can be forgiven for seeking

Creatas/Thinkstock

Holding up the hand to signal willingness to
participate is a custom in U.S. schools that children
beyond kindergarten do not usually need to be
taught. Should a third grade teacher assume
that all his pupils will understand and meet this
classroom expectation?

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 50 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Section 2.5 Language, Content, and Culture in the ELL Classroom

ways to have the greatest impact on the greatest number of learners. And yet, the job is to
realize the potential in all children. To do so, educators must find ways to respect and even
take advantage of the language and language skills that learners bring with them along with
their learning styles and experiences. In broad terms, educators have to find ways of realizing
a common mission while respecting diversity. How?

1. Accept that there is no single best way to teach or learn anything, and that this is
truly independent of culture or language. If a method or technique is not working,
it doesn’t help to do it more often. As an example, if children are struggling with
phonics, doing more phonics isn’t necessarily the best approach to remediation. The
goal is not skill at phonics but skill in reading, and so trying another approach might
be called for. Teachers should be open to alternatives.

2. When possible, connect with the families of ELLs. Family members can be a
valuable source of information not only about the child’s educational background,
skills, interests, and even language ability, but also about the home culture. This
kind of information helps teachers evaluate children’s needs and understand
and deal with problems they may be having. Enlisting and involving parents in
the education of their children helps to ease culture shock for the entire
family.

3. Become culturally competent. Cultural competence, or proficiency, is the goal of
a process that begins with cultural knowledge and progresses through cultural
awareness and cultural sensitivity to the ability to operate effectively in new or dif-
ferent cultural settings. Cultural knowledge is what we know about the characteris-
tics of a culture, cultural awareness refers to the development of sensitivity to and
understanding of another ethnic group, and cultural sensitivity means that cultural
similarities and differences can be recognized without value judgment.
Progressing from cultural knowledge, awareness, and sensitivity, leads to
cultural competence. Although cultural competence has many definitions,
the one that is most useful for educators is “ . . . a set of academic and
interpersonal skills that allow individuals to increase their understanding and
appreciation of cultural differences and similarities within, among, and between
groups” (Mizrahi & Davis, 2008, p. 64).

Acquiring cultural knowledge, the most basic phase in becoming culturally com-
petent, involves acquiring information about aspects of the culture’s history, values,
beliefs, customs, and behaviors. It is a kind of overview of the new culture. Cultural
awareness entails developing some understanding of, and sensitivity to, members
of a cultural group, progressing beyond information to some kind of internal adjust-
ment—or transformation—of attitudes and values. Building on knowledge and
awareness, cultural sensitivity entails understanding that cultural similarities and
differences exist without making value judgments about the rightness or wrong-
ness of one over the other. Educators who can lay claim to cultural competence have
progressed through these three phases (Figure 2.5) to the point at which they are
able to integrate and transform the knowledge, sensitivities, and awareness, into
their curricula and teaching practice in ways that help all their students realize their
learning potential.

4. Implement culturally responsive teaching. Culturally responsive teaching is defined
as “a pedagogy that empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and
politically, by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes”
(Ladson-Billings, 1994, p. 382). Educators such as Sam Perkins argue that the best

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 51 6/30/15 2:12 PM

http://www.intime.uni.edu/multiculture/curriculum/culture/teaching.htm

Cultural Awareness
Integrating knowledge
and changing attitudes

Cultural Sensitivity
Understanding

differences but making
no value judgments

Cultural Knowledge
Facts and �gures,

what we think we know

Cultural Competence
System of knowledge,
attitudes, and feelings
that allow us to work in
a new cultural setting

Section 2.5 Language, Content, and Culture in the ELL Classroom

approach to curricular development that respects cultural diversity is transforma-
tive in nature:

With the “transformation approach” to curricular development in mul-
ticultural education, the structure of existing curricula is fundamentally
changed to enable your students to view concepts, content, events, issues,
and themes from the perspectives of diverse cultural groups. The infor-
mation is brought from the margins to the center of curricula, which no
longer focus just on the dominant cultures. The goal is to assist your stu-
dents to understand that knowledge is socially constructed and that it
reflects the attitudes, beliefs, biases, experiences, and/or values of its cre-
ators. Finally, there is a focus on teaching your students to think critically
and to justify their own interpretations of events and situations. (Perkins,
2011, pp. 38–39)

Through reading, study, reflection, and practice, teachers come to view the diversity in their
classroom as beneficial and find therein opportunities for everyone in the class to reach
higher understanding of, and respect for, each other. They create a safe environment for chil-
dren to progress toward common goals while learning in different ways. Culturally proficient

Figure 2.5: Stages of becoming culturally competent

Cultural competence is the result of having cultural knowledge, awareness, and sensitivity.

Cultural Awareness
Integrating knowledge
and changing attitudes
Cultural Sensitivity
Understanding
differences but making
no value judgments
Cultural Knowledge
Facts and �gures,
what we think we know
Cultural Competence
System of knowledge,
attitudes, and feelings
that allow us to work in
a new cultural setting

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 52 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Summary & Resources

Summary
In this chapter we have examined the broad intersection of language, learning, and culture
as it impacts ELL teachers and their classrooms. We began with a description of the four
domains or levels of language that learners must master: listening, speaking, reading, and
writing. We went on to analyze the effect that previous learning and expectations of school-
ing might have on how diverse learners acquire skills in each area. Diverse classrooms
require teachers to be sensitive to culture and to develop their own cultural awareness so
that they are able to think about curriculum not as a set of directives or prescriptions for all
learners, but as a general set of goals that may be achieved differently by each learner. The
goal of teaching is not to replace the experiences that ELLs bring to school, but to find ways
of helping them to build upon those foundations.

In Chapter 3, we will attempt to deepen our understanding of diversity, and what it means for
the classroom, by looking at the differences between first and second language acquisition,
and the stages that second language learners pass through in acquiring a new language.

teachers do not know everything there is to know about every child or every culture repre-
sented in the classroom, but they do take advantage of teachable moments to advance their
students’ awareness and their own. It’s just good teaching.

We will end this chapter with a word from Marissa, who tells us what the experiences of cul-
turally diverse learners mean to her.

Why I Teach: Every Day Is a New Day
Marissa teaches kindergarten in a small elementary school near Miami, Florida. It was in the
middle of her fourth year of teaching that she explained why she chose to teach and why she
chooses to remain in the profession.

I had other jobs before I got my teaching degree. Some of them I liked well enough, but noth-
ing compares to this one. Of course I like the fact that I feel useful, like I’m really contributing,
but what really keeps me here is that there is no possibility of ever being bored. Every year
is different. Actually, every day is different, and it’s because of the kids. This year especially
I have a really diverse group. There are 12 in the class, but those 12 represent four different
languages and backgrounds, and only five of them are English speakers. One of the English
language learners is really advanced—she knew the alphabet and could count in English at
the start of the year. But I have one student who could barely speak English when she started
the year. Most of the kids didn’t know each other and they didn’t know me. About the only
thing they had in common was that they were born outside this country. And me! I love the
fact that out of this diverse class of strangers I was able to help us to forge a unit—a kind of
family, really—and while we’re doing that, they are also learning so fast. They amaze me, they
exhaust me, but they never, never bore me.

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 53 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Summary & Resources

acquisition level A stage that an ELL
achieves in the process of acquiring lan-
guage proficiency. Based on observation.

competency What the ELL understands of
the structure and vocabulary of a language.

comprehensible input Language that lis-
teners can understand despite being unable
to understand all the words and structures
in it.

cultural awareness The ability to under-
stand and be sensitive to members of a
cultural group, progressing beyond informa-
tion to some kind of internal adjustment—or
transformation—of attitudes and values.

cultural competence “A set of academic
and interpersonal skills that allow individu-
als to increase their understanding and
appreciation of cultural differences and simi-
larities within, among, and between, groups.”

cultural knowledge The ability to acquire
information about aspects of a culture’s his-
tory, values, beliefs, customs, and behaviors.

cultural sensitivity Understanding that
cultural similarities and differences exist
without making value judgments about
the rightness or wrongness of one over the
other.

Key Ideas

1. To be considered fully proficient, learners must master all four domains of language:
listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

2. The purpose of learning language is to communicate, and thus the ability to under-
stand and create meaning is at the heart of language learning and teaching.

3. Language exists to meet the social, educational, vocational, and spiritual needs of the
people who speak it.

4. There are similarities between cultures, but because the world’s languages evolved
in different locations and under different conditions, there are also differences
among cultures and languages.

5. Teachers should have some knowledge, awareness of, sensitivity to, and respect for
the cultures their ELLs represent.

6. While an important part of teaching is to help ELLs adapt and accept the new cul-
ture, it is important to remember that they are not replacing a culture but adding
and integrating one.

7. Culture shock has four stages: euphoria, shock, integration, and acceptance. ELLs
may experience school shock simultaneously.

8. Language, culture, and content intersect to shape curriculum and instruction for
ELLs.

9. To be effective in planning for and teaching ELLs, teachers need to

• Understand that different children have different learning styles, no matter their
language background or the language being taught.

• Be willing to change tactics if one isn’t working.
• Strive toward becoming culturally competent.
• Implement culturally responsive teaching that allows learners to view concepts,

content, events, and issues from different cultural perspectives.
10. The goal of English language teaching is not to replace a language and culture, but to

build upon them while helping learners to acquire a new language and culture.

Key Terms

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 54 6/30/15 2:12 PM

Summary & Resources

culture shock The stress that people expe-
rience when they are immersed in a new and
unfamiliar environment. The four stages of
culture shock are euphoria, shock, integra-
tion, and acceptance.

fluency The smoothness or flow of speech,
oral reading, and writing, reflecting an ease
with putting together sounds, words, and
phrases.

homophone A word that sounds identical
to another word but has a different meaning
and spelling.

input hypothesis An assumption under-
lying Krashen’s theory of second language
acquisition, holding that a learner’s ability
to understand language is the only mecha-
nism that leads to an increase in linguistic
competence.

language proficiency levels What a
learner is able to demonstrate on a for-
mal language assessment. Based on
measurement.

learning styles The usual or habitual tac-
tics, patterns, or approaches an individual
uses to learn or acquire new information or
knowledge.

proficiency An individual’s ability to speak,
read, and write with both accuracy and flu-
ency in an acquired language.

school shock A specific kind of culture
shock that ELLs may experience when they
begin schooling in a culture different from
their home culture.

Critical Thinking Questions

1. Based on the limited information you have about Quy, Mai, Ye-jun, and Ji-woo, at
what level of acquisition would you place each?

2. If a learner can read a passage flawlessly, pronouncing all words correctly and with
an appropriate intonation pattern, can you say confidently that the person can read?

3. How does the notion of fluency apply to reading comprehension (as opposed to oral
reading)?

4. Why is meaning central to all language learning?
5. Why is it important to do frequent comprehension checks with ELLs?
6. Some human societies have a “future” orientation, whereas others place greater

value on the past and present. Which do you think best describes mainstream U.S.
culture? What are some of the issues that children from the opposite orientation
might face in U.S. schools?

7. How might the euphoria or honeymoon stage of culture shock be manifested in
school shock? That is, how might ELLs at this stage behave?

8. How might an ELL teacher involve children’s families to reduce or minimize the
effects of school shock?

9. How does their teacher’s cultural competency affect ELLs’ language and content
learning?

Additional Resources
For an insightful but highly technical description of the factors involved in language process-
ing (i.e., listening comprehension), see
http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~schuler/paper_COLING_2008_memory

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 55 6/30/15 2:12 PM

http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/~schuler/paper_COLING_2008_memory

Summary & Resources

For concise notes on Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition, see
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm

For assistance in teaching standards-based writing to ELLs, see
http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/teaching/writing/

For an excellent list of resources for teaching content and language simultaneously, see
http://www.cal.org/resources/archive/rgos/content.html

For a useful definition of cultural competency, see Advocacy Unlimited, 2013,
http://www.mindlink.org/online_courses/cultural_competency_1.html and
http://cecp.air.org/cultural/Q_howdifferent.htm

For a discussion of the “third place” as a component of acculturation, see
http://lrc.cornell.edu/events/past/2008-2009/papers08/third .

For definitions of culture and mini-lessons on the role of culture in teaching, see
http://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/modules/culture/01/

For useful tips for creating an ELL-friendly classroom, see
http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat124.shtml

pip82223_02_c02_029-056.indd 56 6/30/15 2:12 PM

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/vivian.c/SLA/Krashen.htm

http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/teaching/writing/

http://www.cal.org/resources/archive/rgos/content.html

http://www.mindlink.org/online_courses/cultural_competency_1.html

http://coerll.utexas.edu/methods/modules/culture/01/

http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat124.shtml

Process Groundwork—Brainstorm

[CLOs: 1, 2, 3, 4]

When preparing for the Final Paper, remember that

· Your audience will be a group of colleagues who are unfamiliar with these ideas or who need clarification and strategies to help with the presented problem.

· Your role will be a well-informed teacher with knowledge of teaching ELLs.

· The format is

Essay Structure (Links to an external site.)

· The purpose is to develop a clear response to the questions following the story.

· Read and review the assignment guidelines for Week

Restate them below in your own words.

· Brainstorm potential topics. Use this sample outline to develop a focused topic.

	1.
	2.
	3.
4.
5.

· Use the topics you came up with above to develop three

Thesis Statements (Links to an external site.)

that you would be interested in pursuing for the Week 5 Final Paper (see

Moving From Prompt to Thesis—How to Turn a Prompt Into a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.)

for assistance). Review this model for an effective thesis statement.

Case Study for Final Paper

Young Learners

Mrs. Serpe has been teaching for about 10 years; however this is the first year she can remember having ELLs who are coming in at lower proficiency levels. She is not always sure how to help them. Two of her students, Maria and Abed, have her particularly perplexed.

Maria has been in the classroom now for about six months. Although she is silent in the classroom, Mrs. Serpe hears from the playground teachers that Maria has started talking with her friends on the playground. In class, Maria will respond with nods and smiles only. She does not talk. Mrs. Serpe is confused on how to help her, based on her proficiency level, and why Maria is now talking while on the playground, but will not talk in class. Mrs. Serpe does her best to hide her frustration and help Maria feel part of the classroom. However, since Maria came to the classroom with little English background, Mrs. Serpe feels somewhat lost on how to help her.

Abed, on the other hand, has been at this school for over a year now. He is doing very well. He speaks with friends on the playground and is involved in class discussions. He came to school with some English background. He is reading almost at grade level and is very outgoing, communicative, and engages well with peers both inside and out of the classroom. He can understand and make himself understood with a mostly accurate English grammatical system when speaking and listening. However, his writing is struggling. Although he writes, he has many grammatical mistakes, has trouble getting the words he speaks from his brain to the paper, and becomes easily frustrated.

Mrs. Serpe needs help with both students.

Case Study for Final Paper

Adult Learners

You have been teaching in the University Intensive English Program for several years, so when a newer teacher comes to you in need of assistance, you are ready to help him! Unique to your program, each instructor teaches all four domains of language in the classroom. So, each teacher will spend four hours each day with a group of about 15 adult learners and will teach all four domains with the assistance of some adult ESL textbooks. Because this instructor is newer and is still learning, he has been placed with the intermediate adult students. He is thriving at his job, but has a few questions about how to help students with some key skills.

During the listening and speaking portion of class, your colleague tells you that he is struggling to have his students engage in conversation. He gives them the directions verbally, breaks them into groups, and then gives them time to get started. However, the students will often get into groups, but then are not sure what to do and will not be able to get started. Most frustrating is that he will often hear the students talking with each other, in English, before class and in the hallways, but they will not readily speak up in class. He is perplexed why speaking in English in class is difficult for them. They will nod as if they understand and will ask each other questions about class information in their native languages. He asks you to help him understand what he could be missing and what he can do to help them with communicating in class.

Your colleague is also frustrated with his students’ writing. He feels that he is giving them the grammatical knowledge to write, but his students are still struggling with how to get the ideas on paper in an organized way. He is asking for your help in how to help the students with their writing.

Case Study

[WLOs: 2, 4] [CLOs: 1, 2, 3, 4]

You have spent five weeks learning all of the nuances of helping students learn English as an additional language. The process goes well beyond “just learning English” and includes very complicated processes that need explicit teaching of language. For the final assignment, you will combine everything you have learned to analyze a case study.

TESOL Pre-K–12 English Language Proficiency Standards Framework (Links to an external site.)

For this assignment, you will choose either the

K-12

Adult Language Case Study

. It is recommended that you choose the case study that fits with the age you have been choosing most throughout the course.

Part I: Analysis

· Case Study Analysis.

· Describe any unique characteristics of the students.

· Hypothesize how these characteristics could impact language learning.

· Propose what their current proficiency levels are.

· Explain what evidence led you to that conclusion?

· Propose which strategies are currently being used by the teacher.

· Explain if the strategies are effective based on what we know? Why or why not? Provide evidence for your argument.

· Synthesize what theories are currently being used by the teacher.

· Propose what theories/concepts would be beneficial in this situation.

It will be important to provide specific examples and use vocabulary and concepts that we have learned in our course.

Part II: Action Plan

· Propose two language objectives that would be beneficial for helping the ELLs progress in language at this point based on what you have read.

· Integrate two interventions/activities for each language goal that will provide comprehensible input necessary for the students to progress.

· Synthesize how you are applying fundamental theories, concepts, and vocabulary to develop the strategies/interventions.

To structure your writing,

· Your audience will be a group of colleagues who are unfamiliar with these ideas or who need clarification and strategies to help with the presented problem.

· Your role will be a well-informed teacher with knowledge of teaching ELLs.

· The format will be an academic essay.

· The purpose is to develop a clear response to the questions following the story.

· You are writing using an

Essay Structure (Links to an external site.)

The Final Paper

· Must be three to five double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the

Ashford Writing Center (Links to an external site.)

· Must include a separate title page with the following:

· Title of paper

· Student’s name

· Course name and number

· Instructor’s name

· Date submitted

For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to

APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.)

· Must utilize academic voice. See the

Academic Voice (Links to an external site.)

resource for additional guidance.

· Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.

· For assistance on writing

Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.)

as well as

Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.)

, refer to the Ashford Writing Center resources.

· Must use at least two scholarly sources in addition to the course text.

· The

Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.)

table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.

· Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s

Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.)

· Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the

Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.)

resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.

TESOL Pre-K–12 English Language Proficiency Standards Framework

The Pre-K–12 English Language Proficiency Standards are available in the TESOL Bookstore.
The standards address concerns introduced by the No Child Left Behind legislation. It also
presents detailed tables that show indicators of success at different levels of proficiency. The
framework of the standards is available here for your convenience. For questions about using,
reprinting, or quoting the Pre-K–12 English Language Proficiency Standards, see
TESOL’s Rights and Permissions page.

1. Proficiency Standards Framework
2. Grade Level Clusters
3. Language Domains
4. Language Proficiency Levels
5. Background

1. Presentation of a Clear Proficiency Standards Framework

The standards publication presents five language proficiency standards. They include both social
and academic uses of the language students must acquire for success in and beyond the
classroom. The English language proficiency standards are as follows:

Standard 1:

English language learners communicate for social, intercultural, and
instructional purposes within the school setting.

Standard 2:

English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts
necessary for academic success in the area of language arts.

Standard 3:

English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts
necessary for academic success in the area of mathematics.

Standard 4:

English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts
necessary for academic success in the area of science.

Standard 5:

English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts
necessary for academic success in the area of social studies.

2. Identification of Specific Grade-Level Clusters

The grade-level clusters for the English language proficiency standards reflect current
educational configurations in the United States.

PreK-
K

Grade levels preK-K are grouped together because the
primary focus is on creating a learning environment that
nurtures the development of young English language
learners.

http://tesol.prod.vtcus.com/read-and-publish/rights-and-permissions�

1-3
Grade levels 1-3 are grouped together because in most
elementary school programs, these grades are geared toward
“learning to read.”

4-5 Grade levels 4-5 share the common goal of literacy skills application, often referred to as “reading to learn.”

6-8

At the 6-8 grade levels, English language learners face
increased academic and social pressure to perform. In
addition, at this level, there is a widening range of student
performance.

9-12

Grade levels 9-12 reflect the traditional high school
organization. The academic demands at the secondary level
make reaching parity with grade-level peers increasingly
difficult for English language learners.

3. Usage of Four Language Domains

Each of the five language proficiency standards is divided into the language domains of
listening, speaking, reading, and writing. While interaction naturally occurs between and among
language domains, in this document, they are maintained as separate constructs as one way of
thinking about curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Listening
Listening is an active skill. By highlighting an assortment of listening tasks across
standards, the need to involve students in active listening and purposeful listening skills
development becomes clear.

Speaking
English language learners engage in oral communication in a variety of situations for a
variety of purposes and in a wide spectrum of settings. As part of oral communication,
students are constantly using language in meaningful interaction with others.

Reading
English language learners process, interpret, and evaluate written language, symbols, and
text with understanding and fluency. Learning to read in a second language may be
enhanced or hindered by students’ level of literacy in their native language. Students who
have a strong foundation in reading in their first language bring with them skills that can
be readily transferred in the process of learning to read in English.

Writing
English language learners use written communication for a variety of purposes and
audiences. Writing can be used to express meaning through drawing, symbols, or text.

English language learners may come with writing styles influenced by their home
cultures.

4. Inclusion of Five Levels of Language Proficiency

The use of five levels reflects the complexity of language development and allows the tracking
of student progress across grade levels within the same scale. The five levels of language
proficiency reflect characteristics of language performance at each developmental stage. The
language proficiency levels are intended to highlight and provide a model of the process of
language acquisition that can be adapted by individual districts and states.

Level 1-Starting
At L1, students initially have limited or no understanding of English. They rarely use
English for communication. They respond nonverbally to simple commands, statements,
and questions. As their oral comprehension increases, they begin to imitate the
verbalizations of others by using single words or simple phrases, and they begin to use
English spontaneously.
At the earliest stage, these learners construct meaning from text primarily through
illustrations, graphs, maps, and tables.

Level 2-Emerging
At L2, students can understand phrases and short sentences. They can communicate
limited information in simple everyday and routine situations by using memorized
phrases, groups of words, and formulae. They can use selected simple structures correctly
but still systematically produce basic errors. Students begin to use general academic
vocabulary and familiar everyday expressions. Errors in writing are present that often
hinder communication.

Level 3-Developing
At L3, students understand more complex speech but still may require some repetition.
They use English spontaneously but may have difficulty expressing all their thoughts due
to a restricted vocabulary and a limited command of language structure. Students at this
level speak in simple sentences, which are comprehensible and appropriate, but which are
frequently marked by grammatical errors. Proficiency in reading may vary considerably.
Students are most successful constructing meaning from texts for which they have
background knowledge upon which to build.

Level 4-Expanding
At L4, students’ language skills are adequate for most day-to-day communication needs.
They communicate in English in new or unfamiliar settings but have occasional difficulty
with complex structures and abstract academic concepts.
Students at this level may read with considerable fluency and are able to locate and
identify the specific facts within the text. However, they may not understand texts in
which the concepts are presented in a decontextualized manner, the sentence structure is
complex, or the vocabulary is abstract or has multiple meanings. They can read

independently but may have occasional comprehension problems, especially when
processing grade-level information.

Level 5-Bridging
At L5, students can express themselves fluently and spontaneously on a wide range of
personal, general, academic, or social topics in a variety of contexts. They are poised to
function in an environment with native speaking peers with minimal language support or
guidance.
Students have a good command of technical and academic vocabulary as well of
idiomatic expressions and colloquialisms. They can produce clear, smoothly flowing,
well-structured texts of differing lengths and degrees of linguistic complexity. Errors are
minimal, difficult to spot, and generally corrected when they occur.

5. Proficiency Standards Background

In the nearly ten years since the publication of TESOL’s ESL Standards for Pre- K-12 Students,
the standards movement has continued to grow and impact educational systems throughout the
United States at the state, district, and classroom levels.

The provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) have also focused attention on
the language needs of English language learners by requiring each state to develop English
language proficiency standards.

Using TESOL’s 1997 publication as a building block, the revised 2006 PreK-12 English
Language Proficiency Standards

• Expand the scope and breadth of the ESL content standards by bridging them to specific
core curriculum content areas, namely, English language arts, mathematics, science, and
social studies

• Use students’ first languages and cultures as the foundation for developing academic
language proficiency

• Provide an organizational structure that is synchronized with federal legislation.

In addition, the revised PreK-12 English Language Proficiency Standards build on and augment
the World-class Instructional Design and Assessments (WIDA) Consortium’s English language
proficiency standards for English language learners in Kindergarten through grade 12.*

Copyright © 2006 Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this may
be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any
informational retrieval or storage system, without permission from the publisher.

Augmentation of the WIDA ELP Standards” is based on WIDA ELP Standards Copyright © 2004 State of
Wisconsin. The WIDA ELP Standards are a product of the collaborative effort of nine states known as the WIDA
consortium: Wisconsin, Delaware, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont,
and Illinois. Permission to use for anything other than personal, non-commercial use must be obtained from the
Department of Instruction, State of Wisconsin.

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