Foundations for Teaching English Language Essay Sample.
Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for Teaching English Language Learners: Research, Theory, Policy, and Practice (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing.
What does the research tell us about the relationships between ELLs’ oral language development, literacy development, and educational achievement?Foundations for Teaching English Language Essay Sample.
How can an understanding of ELLs’ listening and speaking strengths and needs inform a teacher’s choices of instructional approaches, methods, and strategies?
How can the Common Core State Standards and the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium English language proficiency standards guide listening and speaking instructions for ELLs?
How can teachers promote oral language use in the classroom as a foundation for ELLs’ literacy development and academic achievement in English?
ORDER A CUSTOM-WRITTEN, PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE
How can teachers promote the development of higher levels of oral language proficiency for ELLs?
Past – Listening and reading considered as passive skills
Students simply receiving oral or written input
Present – Listening and reading recognized as active skills of constructing meaning
Ex: native speakers in political debates and personal arguments hear the same thing but interpret it differently
Challenges for ELLs: Foundations for Teaching English Language Essay Sample.
At the most basic level must attend to each phoneme
change of one phoneme can change the meaning
Ex: bit/pit
English speakers do not always speak in complete sentences.
Often start a sentence but then get off on a tangent without finishing their earlier thought.
Oral language is invisible
Once spoken, an utterance is gone forever (unless recorded)
Can’t rewind real life conversations to hear an utterance they missed.
Can’t pause the conversation to look up a word in a dictionary.
To be comprehensible to others, an ELL needs
Adequate pronunciation
A smooth rate and flow of speech
A sufficient vocabulary and grammar
An understanding of the sociocultural context of the speech event
Different types of speech activities are structured by unwritten norms that are known by native speakers but may be elusive to ELLs
Despite being the most frequently used mode of communication, oral language typically gets the least amount of classroom instruction time
- Oracy (oral skills) has three components:
Language structures
Vocabulary
Dialogue
The Silent Period
Non-English speaking students (i.e., Level 1) may not be ready to start speaking when they first enter the classroom
Wait Time
ELLs may need time to process the input and time to draw from their developing linguistic system to formulate their thoughts in English before speaking
In different cultures pauses are longer or shorter, so teachers should not mistakenly interpret silence for not knowing the answer
Teacher Talk in the Classroom
Teachers should talk less and plan classroom activities that give students regular opportunities to speak
Correcting Students Speech Errors
Teachers should correct only those errors students are ready to learn how to correct
When to Correct Student Speech Errors
When students are ready to learn the correct form
When errors impede comprehension or communication. Foundations for Teaching English Language Essay Sample.
During content-area instruction which includes specific target language forms
Ex: a language objective about using the past tense in a lesson about historical events
How to Correct Student Errors
Provide implicit corrections through recasts by responding naturally but in a manner that models the correct form
Student: “My mom, she buy me shirt red.”
Teacher: “Your mom bought you a red shirt? Very nice! My wife bought me a blue jacket.”
Provide explicit corrections in a manner that does not embarrass or ridicule the student
Teacher: “I think you mean your stove is in your kitchen. Is that what you meant?”
Provide corrections with gentle reminders of past instruction
Student: “At my house we have four pet.”
Teacher: “Remember how we practiced making plural words? So how would you say you have more than one pet?”
Student: “Pets.”
Teacher: “You got it. Great job!”
- Revoicing – the teacher tries to repeat some or all of what the student has said:
“So you’re saying that it’s an odd number?”
- Repeating – asking students to restate someone else’s reasoning:
“Can you repeat what he just said in your own words?”
- Reasoning – asking students to apply their own reasoning to someone else’s reasoning
ORDER A CUSTOM-WRITTEN, PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE
“Do you agree or disagree? Why?”
- Adding on – prompting students for further participation
“Would someone like to add something more to this?”
- Waiting – using wait time
“Take your time…; We’ll wait”
- Ells need about 2,000 words to engage in conversations, about 5,000 words to read authentic texts, over 10,000 words to comprehend complex academic texts
- Three tiers of vocabulary words: Foundations for Teaching English Language Essay Sample.
Tier 1: basic words
Tier 2: high-utility words that cut across all academic content areas
Tier 3: content-area specific words
WIDA, 2012a, p70. Courtesy of WIDA Consortium. Foundations for Teaching English Language Essay Sample.