Monica

The development of a successful ELL program for teachers has yet to be developed. As a teacher I feel that we are always given a program, but no true explanation on HOW to teach using the program is ever provided. An overview of the materials is the extent of our trainings, which we have found to be frustrating with the increasing demands to meet the needs of ELL students to push them to the level of proficiency. The teachers need more training on HOW to be better able to service this population of children. A balanced approach is definitely needed, not just one sole method. Sufficient research must be gathered and reviewed to choose an appropriate program to implement, or a combination of effective strategies should be selected (pg 4). There are many methods to teach ELL’s that are implemented daily such as SDAIE, relia, TPR etc. The following quote supports the lack of resources and need for a balanced instruction for ELL’s, “Unfortunately research has failed to provide a complete answer to what constitutes high literacy instruction for language minority students. However, what is evident from the existing research that is, as its true for language minority students, instruction that provides substantial coverage of key components of literacy has a positive influence on the literacy development of language minority students” (pg. 16).

After reading the section on Diane August and Catherine Snow, there were many similarities in there ideas and/or beliefs. Diane August states an important finding regarding the language development of minority children. She writes that the word level component of literacy such as decoding and spelling are or can be at the same level with their monolingual peers with the appropriate instruction. However, they have difficulty with reading comprehension in terms of reaching the level of their monolingual peers (pg. 13). This is similar to Catherine Snows’ statement that ELL’s perform equivalent to monolinguals in spelling and word recognition, however are below in comprehension, reading vocabulary, and writing (pg. 633). Both Diane August and Catherine Snow share various items that influence literacy development. For example, societal and cultural factors that influence literacy are supportive communities, stale economy, effective schools, high educational standards, high teacher expectations for student performance, and good instruction; Family and cultural factors such as, SES status, parental education and literacy levels, and home support for literacy development; Individual factors such as school readiness skills, phonological processing skills, oral language proficiency and use of comprehension strategies. (Pg. 634).

Findings state that a systematic alignment of home and school expectations is necessary to foster the growth of literacy (pg. 17). As a staff we have found this item to be a hindering struggle in our community. Students have a difficult time articulating themselves orally and in writing to the level of proficiency due to the lack of English support in the home. The children speak by model of their parents and unfortunately, their parents being second language learners themselves, a majority of the time, my pronounce words with accents that the students transfer to their own language usage in the classroom. They have many grammar and tense problems when expressing themselves orally and in writing. In addition, some parents may not even speak English and the child only hears Spanish at home, therefore a lack of support occurs.

