This session addressed many of the challenges faced by English learners. It is helpful for teachers to understand these challenges so that they can provide support and teach students effective strategies. All students use three cueing systems as they learn to read. Those cueing systems include graphophonics, semantics, and syntax. ELL students have additional needs. Building background knowledge and vocabulary are two areas needed by English learners. Teachers can use various strategies such as mental images, visualization, kinesthetics, graphic organizers, and physical representations to help students. A third area of need is in learning language patterns. David and Yvonne Freeman have presented five syntactic challenges for English learners. They are modals, passive voice, comparatives and logical connectors, verbs with prepositional phrases, and relative clauses. There are many things teachers can do to help ELL students with these challenges. Some examples are scaffolding instruction, using graphic organizers, using hands-on activities, promoting oral language development, and providing opportunities for practice and feedback.

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Freeman and Freeman (2009). Essential Linguistics, What You Need to Know to Teach Reading, ESL, Spelling, Phonics, Grammar. Heinemann Publishers.