Effective Literacy Programs For English Language Learners: full version free software download5/30/2016 Effective Programs for English Language Learners (ELL) with. Interrupted Formal Education. A growing number of recent immigrant students are entering U.S. schools. Linguistic Diversity, Teaching English Language Learners (ELLs), the Debate Over Bilingual Education, and More. Websites Current State of English Language Learners in. Effective Reading Programs 245 Sample characteristics Evidence of initial equality Posttest Effect size Median effect size Success For All. Terms you should know: English language proficiency is the ability to speak, read, write, and comprehend the English language in general. Academic English proficiency. Effective Programs for English Language Learners with Interrupted Formal Education By Olga Tuchman Reproduced with permission of Indiana Department of Education. V ABSTRACT The purpose of this report is to summarize research on the role of English oral proficiency in acquiring English literacy, describe the issues that English. IRIS Services TA Training Application. We are now seeking applications for three types of IRIS services. Click the link to get started! What Does Research Tell Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners? By: Suzanne Irujo. In this article, a seasoned ELL teacher synthesizes her own. What Does Research Tell Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners? Adolescent Literacy Topics A- ZBy: Suzanne Irujo. In this article, a seasoned ELL teacher synthesizes her own classroom experience and the findings of the National Literacy Panel on Language- Minority Children and Youth to make recommendations for effective literacy instruction of ELL students. As a classroom teacher, I was largely ignorant of, and definitely suspicious of, research. I believed that researchers could make their studies come out any way they wanted them to, and that a good teacher who reflected on her own teaching knew much more about how to be effective with her students than any researcher did. Later, as a university professor, I learned how important good research can be, and how difficult it is to do really good experimental research in a field such as education, where it is impossible to control all the variables. For that reason, I was pleased in 1. Congress funded the National Reading Panel (NRP) to evaluate research about teaching children to read. The panel's charge was to review existing studies, choose those that were well designed and well implemented, and synthesize their findings. The results were published in 2. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2. Reading First grant program included in the No Child Left Behind legislation of 2. Although there was initially a good deal of controversy about the findings of the report, all U. S. elementary school teachers were soon very aware of the five "essential elements" of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension). Teachers of English language learners (ELLs), however, were left to wonder if and how the findings of the NRP applied to their students. How do you teach phonemic awareness and phonics in English to students who can't yet hear and distinguish the sounds? How do you teach fluency to students whose control of the structures of the English language is still limited? How do you teach them grade- level vocabulary when their vocabulary knowledge starts so far behind that of their English- speaking peers? How do you teach reading comprehension in English when they don't yet comprehend the English language? Now there appears to be help. In 2. 00. 2, the U. S. Department of Education funded the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority and Youth to survey, select, and synthesize research on teaching language- minority students to read and write. Their report was published recently (August & Shanahan, 2. How much help will this report provide for teachers of ELLs? A preliminary review of the Executive Summary (August, 2. Educating Language Minority Students" reveals these four potentially important general recommendations: Literacy in the native language is an advantage. We already knew this (see, for example, Collier & Thomas, 1. Substantial coverage of the five essential elements of reading instruction helps. However, this finding is based on only 1. ELLs. Because of the small number of studies, this recommendation is based on the fact that there is nothing in these 1. National Reading Panel. Also because of the small number of studies, no specific practices could be advocated for teaching the essential elements of reading to ELLs. Reading programs for ELLs should include intensive language development as well as instruction in literacy strategies and skills. This recommendation is not based specifically on the research, because there were no studies that addressed the inclusion of intensive language development in reading instruction for ELLs. It is instead a hypothesis drawn from several other findings: (1) native speakers benefit more from instruction in the essential elements than do ELLs; (2) ELLs with greater language proficiency benefit more from instruction in the essential elements than do those with less proficiency; and (3) instruction in the essential elements with ELLs has a greater effect on decoding and fluency than on comprehension. Instruction needs to be adjusted to meet the needs of ELLs. The report, however, states that there is not enough research to be able to identify specifically how those adjustments should be made. I could find only seven specific suggestions that would be useful to teachers of reading classes that include ELLs: Provide additional work on English phonemes that are not present in the students' native language. If students are literate in their native language, focus on differences between that language and English, with less attention given to elements that will transfer. Provide extra practice in reading words, sentences, and stories. Use cognate words in the native language as synonyms when teaching vocabulary. Identify and clarify difficult words and passages. Consolidate knowledge of the text through the use of summaries. Find appropriate ways to use the native language. These seven findings do not constitute a reading program for ELLs. We obviously need much more research. However, given the fact that teachers cannot wait until research catches up with their needs in order to implement effective practices with their ELL students, I think it is important to look not only at the research that is available, but also at what experienced, reflective teachers of ELLs (and observers of those teachers) consider to be best practices. The rest of this article will discuss the implications of available research on instructional practices in the teaching of the five essential elements of reading to ELLs, based on the findings of the National Literacy Panel as much as possible, but also drawing on information from reliable sources such as The Knowledge Loom: Spotlight on Elementary Literacy (The Education Alliance at Brown University, n. Back to Top. Phonemic awareness. Phonemic awareness is difficult for ELLs because they may not yet have enough experience with English to be able to distinguish sounds that differ from those of their native language. There are three aspects of phonological awareness when learning to read in a second language that are important for teachers of ELLs to remember and incorporate into their instruction: ELLs cannot develop phonological awareness in English until they are familiar with the sounds of English. This means that before explicit instruction in phonological awareness begins, children should have extensive experiences with fun and appealing songs, poems, chants, and read- alouds that will allow them to hear and reproduce the sound patterns of English. Once explicit instruction has begun, modifications must be made to allow for more practice with sounds that can potentially cause confusion. These are sounds that either don't exist in the native language (most of the short vowel sounds of English don't exist in Spanish, for example), or sounds that are perceived as different in English but the same in the native language (such as /r/ and /l/ for speakers of Japanese, or /b/ and /v/ for speakers of Spanish). Because these differences vary from one language to another, teachers will have to become familiar with which sounds of English will need extra practice, depending on the language backgrounds of their students. Once phonological awareness has developed in any language, it transfers to other languages that are learned. Therefore, students who are literate in their native language will not need to develop this skill again in English; they will only need to become familiar with the sounds of English and to learn to discriminate sounds that are different between their native language and English. Back to Top. Phonics. Phonics can be problematic because ELLs often have difficulty discriminating between similar sounds, and because the English language does not have a regular system of correspondence between letters and sounds. Here are some issues related to phonics instruction for ELLs, with discussion of their implications: Systematic phonics instruction can be very effective in helping ELLs, even those at fairly low levels of language proficiency, learn to decode words. However, this skill does not facilitate reading comprehension if students' oral language proficiency is not developed to the level of the texts they are expected to read. For this reason, reading instruction should be combined with intensive development of the oral language needed to understand the text. The most effective reading programs for ELLs combine systematic phonics instruction with a print- rich environment that provides exposure to appealing reading materials in varied genres. Skills practice that is embedded in meaningful texts helps ensure that decoding skills don't progress beyond students' ability to comprehend the text. Many of the components of phonics instruction need to be modified to meet the particular needs of ELLs. For example: Before phonics instruction begins, students must have the phonemic awareness skills they need in order to perceive individual sounds in words. This is particularly important for sounds that are problematic because of the native language. Teachers must be aware of whether a students' native language uses a non- Roman alphabet or is non- alphabetic. Even if ELLs have had no instruction in reading in the native language, environmental exposure to a different writing system can negatively affect the ease with which they learn to recognize the letters of the English alphabet. ELLs must be able to hear and reproduce English sounds with a degree of accuracy commensurate with their pronunciation abilities, before they are taught to make associations between those sounds and particular letters. It is helpful to explicitly point out different letter combinations that have the same sound, and provide extra practice with them. Multiple spellings of the same sound can be very confusing for ELLs, particularly if they have had some reading instruction in a language such as Spanish, which has almost completely regular sound- symbol correspondences.
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