The ELL level 1 students at Lincoln High School have been using iPods to improve their language skills since November of 2011. Ben Kreimer, a UNL senior majoring in journalism, has documented their progress in a short video clip. 
http://docushare.lps.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-1089099/IPods%20in%20ELL%20Classrooms.mov
English learners need to have opportunities to speak and listen to the new language they are learning. Although math concepts may be familiar, the language isn’t ELL students need safe opportunities to use new language. It is much less intimidating to speak to one or two other students than it is to speak in front of the whole class or to the teacher. Teachers can have students turn to their partner and tell how he/she got the answer, or what a term means. Teachers can organize small groups and do activities such as Fan and Pick, Jigsaw, and Four Corners. Cooperative learning groups give students opportunities to practice their new learning in the content as well as the language.
What language do my students need to know in order to complete this academic task?
The answer to this question can come in the form of a language objective for each content area that you teach. Language objectives should not only represent necessary vocabulary and language structure in a lesson but also the function from which they will be used.
Below is an example of reading objectives that teachers may use in the process of working on comprehension:
Content Objective:
Students will begin the process of clarifying a text as they read.
Language Objective:
Students will begin to clarify orally by using the sentence frames:
I needed to clarify the word____________.
I chose to _______ and now I know it means __________.
Hill, J. (2006). Classroom Instruction that Works for English Language Learners. Alexandria, Virginia:Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
Teachers often focus on building vocabulary and background knowledge for English learners. This is important but there are also other things to consider. According to David and Yvonne Freeman, when readers gain information and understanding from text, they use three cueing systems. Those three cueing systems are graphophonics, semantics, and syntax. Graphophonics is the subconscious knowledge of phonology(sounds) and orthography(spelling). Semantics is the meaning of words and syntax is the order of words in a sentence.
One of the first things teachers do to help English learners is to teach them the English alphabet and the sounds associated with the letters. Teachers can provide lots of opportunities for students to practice learning these sounds and words as they provide meaningful lessons. Teachers use lots of strategies to help students visualize and conceptualize the meaning of the lesson. Stephen Krashen refers to this concept as comprehensible input. He emphasizes that students will learn when they understand the messages.
Teachers also explicitly teach English learners about context clues. These are hints about the meanings of words that come from definitions, restatements, examples, or descriptions. These are semantic cues. English learners are constantly learning vocabulary and helping them with context clues is valuable.
For syntactic cues, “readers use acquired knowledge of syntactic patterns to predict the morphological categories of upcoming words”(Freeman, 242). The syntax provides a structural frame that certain categories of words would fit. Both the order of words, or syntactic pattern, and the inflectional endings, morphology, provide important clues. Most native English speakers have this subconscious knowledge because they have grown up surrounded by English. This is an important skill to help English learners develop.
Teachers can help students learn these different patterns by using cloze activities in which they give students a passage with some of the words missing. Teachers could delete different types of words to help students focus on different aspects of syntax. They could remove all of the adjectives before the nouns, or all of the conjunctions for example.
Another way to help students learn about syntax is to help them develop their own theory, or rules about word order in a language. Teachers could prepare a list of words and ask students to observe and evaluate the words. Students could categorize words and then group the words that seem to go together. Then students could find connections among the words to create sentences and come up with a rule, or theory to support that.
One example could be the question rule. The teacher could provide lots of questions from statements. The students would then look at the patterns and come up with their rule.
Students can learn from reading.
Can students learn from reading?
In this example, the rule might be to move the second word in a statement to the first word in order to change a sentence into a question.
The Freemans stress how important it is to help students learn about syntax as well as semantics and graphophonics. “Teachers who understand syntax can design lessons to help students acquire academic language”(Freeman, 246). There are five syntactic challenges for English learners when they read academic texts. These include passive voice, comparatives and logical connectors, modal auxiliaries, verb phrases containing prepositional phrases, and relative clauses.
The passive voice is when the subject is being acted on and not performing the action. This is usually found in academic texts because the person doing the action is not usually the focus of the sentence.
Comparatives and logical connectors are often found in academic sentences. They include more/fewer and than, then and not only, and but also. These words and patterns are demanding because they require readers to make connections and remember the first part of the sentence and how it relates to the second part.
Modal auxiliaries are words that give shades of meaning such as permission, obligation, necessity, and possibility. Some of these modals include could, should, would, and might. An example sentences would be, “The liquid could have been substituted for the gas”(Freeman, p. 247) These modals are difficult for English learners because the differences in meaning may not be clear.
Prepositional phrases following verbs create more complex sentence structures. This is difficult for English learners because they need to comprehend all of the information in one sentence. An example would be, “Rainwater seeps into the ground after a storm”(Freeman, p. 247).
Relative clauses are also difficult for English learners because these make sentences more complex and readers need to understand several related ideas in one sentence. A relative clause contains a subject and verb and begins with a relative pronoun (who, whom, whose, that, or which) or a relative adverb(when, where, or why) and it usually functions as an adjective answering what kind, how many, or which one.
English learners need this type of academic language broken down and syntax should be explicitly taught. Teachers can do this by providing graphic organizers, doing hands-on activities, and collaborative projects. These types of activities will help make the meaning of the text comprehensible.
Bibliography
Freeman, D. and Freeman, Y. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, esl,s pelling, phonics, grammar. Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH.
—How to overcome the plight of “idea block” with limited English proficient students—
“I don’t know what to write about.”
This can be a common phrase heard in classrooms. For some students, the ever-present challenge of generating a story is just too great and can typecast them as a “reluctant” writer. For ELL students, the perception of “reluctant” can actually not be the true reality of who they are as a writer.
As educators working with students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds, there are some perspectives to consider before truly trying to tackle the ever present “idea block.”
What is the culture of stories and writing in their family?
The purpose of writing is as diversified as the languages and cultures that we have in this world. Writing instruction has diversity in its outcomes depending on where you grow up. In some cultures, writing is the process of copying something down from the chalkboard and does not require generation of a topic. Some cultures are primarily centered around oral language and the culture of story is preserved through the art of storytelling and not writing. If you have a limited English proficient student who is struggling to come up with topics for writing, an interesting first step would be to find out the role writing plays in their home.
Do they really not know what to write about or is the lack of English language fluency creating a barrier to accessing their ideas?
Students who speak languages other than English have stories too. Those stories just may be preserved in Karen, Vietnamese, Spanish, Arabic and the like. Our role as educators is to find ways to unlock the language by creating learning environments that nurture oral storytelling and common language experiences.
Talking Buddies is an important strategy to implement into the classroom that will create partnerships between teachers, students and their peers. Not only does it act as a process of rehearsing language but it also acts as the first step in planning their own story for writer’s workshop.
Are they the kind of writer that has difficulty generating stories because the topics are culturally significant and students have not had experiences that they can connect to?
Sometimes students are asked to write on prescribed topics in an effort to help them generate stories. One consideration that needs to be made is that some topics that are selected can be culturally significant. Imagine writing a story about a baseball game when you have never seen or played one before? In an effort to aid students in overcoming “idea block”, we can sometimes hinder them more by expecting them to pull ideas out of the air without having any experiences on the topic to pull from. Instead of prescribing topics, share topics. What common experiences do you share on a daily basis with your students that you can turn into a story? Find the cultural commonalities within your day that you can use to anchor language and facilitate the process of writing.
Capturing a story
Much like capturing a butterfly in a net, the art of teaching writing for limited English proficient students starts by catching moments and keeping them safe until it is time to release them.
1. Identify and label the experience to the student: “Do you know what I just saw you doing? You were getting ready to go down the slide. First you sat down at the top of the slide. Then you pushed your arms on the slide to start moving. Finally you slid down really fast! It looked like fun!”
2. Invite the student repeat you in their own words: “Can you tell me what just happened so I can always remember it?”
3. Capture the story for later: “This is such a great story. I think you need to keep this in your pocket for talking buddies and writing time later.”
Searching for stories
Common language experiences can be based on individual moments or whole group classroom activities. Here are some examples of shared experiences that can be captured throughout the day:
Playground activities Breakfast and lunch experiences Art projects School assemblies Field Trips Science and Social studies experience Neighborhood investigationsThe most important thing to remember is that the ability to share an experience together means opportunities to develop language, nurture story, and create community within a classroom environment.