ESL Instruction in the SLA

Speech Emergence stage, the third stage of language development and cultural adaptation.  During this stage, the students’ increased linguistic capabilities become evident through their successful participation in small group activities.  In small group settings, students demonstrate comprehension and purposeful language use such as clarifying, requesting, refusing, interrupting, or apologizing.  By now, the focus of lessons should be on concepts and not on key terms.  Also, because students at this stage are usually able to express and make connections to personal experiences during discussions, Zigo (2001) asserts that the narrative form of expression is the most appropriate format for introducing abstract concepts.  Thus, it also becomes good practice to assess comprehension by including more open-ended questions in classroom discussions.  By now, after having dedicated most of their efforts to formulating a knowledge base of reference, ESL students begin to feel an increasing sense of relief.  Slowly but surely, any remaining feelings of isolation and frustration begin to evaporate.  And although many of these students are still under pressure, most of them feel as if they have “regained” control of their lives.  As a result, even greater amounts of school participation become easily observable.  As the students prepare themselves for the fourth and final stage, many are faced with the dilemma of whether to assimilate or acculturate.  As the authors mention, research indicates that successful language learning is more likely to occur when learners acculturate (Ellis, 1986).  Therefore, it is the teacher’s job to help the students “add” the new language and culture to their pre-existing one (not replace the old with the new).  By doing so, the teacher ensures that the students preserve their own unique identities (which in turn does wonders for the learning process).

Finally, the last stage of language development and cultural adaptation—the Intermediate Fluency stage—is identified by the students’ abilities to engage in conversation and produce connective narratives.  Students can now view reading and writing as a way to acquire new information.  Direct instruction is now aimed at improving study skills such as note taking, skimming the text for specific information, and scanning text for main ideas.  By using these attributes, ESL students can now express their personal representations.  In addition to all this, second-language learners also exhibit higher levels of thinking.  As a result, students are now able to respond to such questions as: “What would you recommend/suggest?” “How do you think this story will end?” “How are these the same/different?”  Also, because the students now have a greater ability to produce written narratives and connected discourses, semantic maps or outlines should form the foundations for essay writing.  By now, most students have the ability to function well in school.  Students at this stage have successfully learned a new language, and most are proud to realize that they managed to steer their way successfully around complex cultural contexts and clues.  Students are now able to ask for assistance, share insights, and offer personal opinions.  Most importantly, on a social and emotional level, students are now able to form friendships. 

While Ernest-Slavit et al. focused more so on discussing background information regarding ESL education and the manner in which these nontraditional students go about acquiring a second language and its accompanying culture, Joan A. Williams (2001) continues the heated national debate concerning second-language learners and ESL education by discussing yet another approach to educating and addressing the needs of America’s linguistically and culturally diverse students populations: combining theory and practice within social, cultural, and historical contexts in order to help ESL students succeed.  In addition to this, Williams explains the importance of developing curriculum that meets the needs of ESL students (for example, statistically, Hispanic students—some of which will more than likely be limited in their English proficiency—are more likely than white or black students to drop out of high school) and, as a way of helping educators understand and determine how mainstream values affect the educational opportunities of this unique body of learners, she also encourages educators to closely examine the theoretical backgrounds of their beliefs.  To Williams, understanding the various issues and concerns (such as student level of English proficiency, the impact of classroom language, opportunities for academic growth, building classroom communities) affecting ESL students in mainstream classrooms is just one of the many steps that an educator can take towards planning “sound” educational programs.  Overall, once educators begin to realize that literacy involves much more than just simply reading and writing (in other words, as Gee (1996) mentioned, “literacy instruction also involves talking, interacting, valuing, and believing), it becomes much easier for teachers to guide the academic progress of ESL students and increase the likelihood of a much brighter future for this set of unique learners.

            

 The bulk of Williams (2001) article was dedicated to discussing four broad topics which have proven to have an enormous impact on the way that ESL students learn: second language proficiency, classroom language, opportunities for academic growth, and creating community.  In regards to second-language proficiency, Cummins’ (1981) research in language development showed that there is a continuum of development beginning with basic conversational skills and continuing towards academic language proficiency—a development described by Cummins as a distinction between interpersonal communication skills and cognitive academic language proficiency.  As was explained by Williams, the beginning communicative level of language development (for example, learning and relating simple greetings, descriptions, expressions of feelings, etc.) is typically “context embedded and cognitively undemanding”.  Therefore, it usually takes only 2-3 years for an ESL student to become proficient in communicative language.  (Williams, p. 751)  On the other hand, academic language (which includes skills such as comparing, inferring, evaluating, and problem solving)—the level of language development whose proficiency determines student success in school—is “context reduced and cognitively demanding.”  (Williams, p. 751)  Consequently, it takes an ESL student significantly longer (about 5-10 years) to fully understand the more difficult academic language of content lessons.  There are several reasons why academic language takes so long to develop.  According to Corson (1995), about 60% of the English words used in text come from Greek and Latin sources, while the bulk of conversational vocabulary originates from the Anglo-Saxon lexicon.  In general, while the Greco-Latin vocabulary is usually multisyllabic and low frequency, the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary tends to be only one to two syllables and of high frequency.  Therefore, because most of the language that students encounter in books is Greco-Latin in origin, it makes sense that academic language proficiency will take longer to develop than proficiency in communicative language.  Overall, in Williams’ opinion, educators should avoid at all costs assuming that students who demonstrate a beginning level of language proficiency (for example, having small conversations in or outside of class) also have a clear understanding of academic language.  What all this suggests is that teachers must be informed about the subtleties that encompass the complicated process of language development.  By making sure that they are clearly understood by ESL students, teachers take the first step towards integrating their knowledge (about how second-language learners acquire a new language) into a curriculum that will be better suited to addressing the unique needs of these students. In addition, Williams also offers various helpful instructional concepts for fostering adequate student-teacher understanding.  Some of the most notable include: Drawing visual attention to cognates and not assuming that students will recognize the connections between their native language and English automatically, structuring learning activities to be context rich in order to scaffold both language and academic development, avoiding the use of idioms or synonyms during direct instruction in order to avoid confusion, encouraging students to substitute words from their native language for unknown English words, establishing a risk-free environment that respects diversity, and so forth.