Language Minority Students

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Malmö högskola

Lärarutbildningen

Kultur, Språk, Media

Examensarbete

10 poäng

Language Minority Students

- Five Mainstream American Teachers’

Thoughts of Teaching These Students

Språkminoritetselever

- Fem Amerikanska Klasslärares

Tankar om att Undervisa Dessa Elever

Sofie Johansson

Lärarexamen 180 poäng

Moderna språk: Engelska Höstterminen 2005

Examinator: Bo Lundahl Handledare: Malin Glimäng

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Abstract

In order to find out what support there is for ELL students, students with a first language other than English in mainstream classrooms in the US, I have

interviewed five teachers in Atlanta. I was interested in seeing how much these teachers know of the special needs these students have. The five teachers interviewed knew basic idea of how to instruct ELL students in their mainstream classroom but no one had been taught anything about second language

acquisition or theories about the needs of ELL students in their education. This study also indicates that other languages than English are not of importance in the schools in Atlanta and teachers are not taught how to deal with ELL

students. This is surprising since predictions say that in 2020 twenty five percent of students in the US will speak a first language others than English.

Keywords:

American schools

English Language Learners Mainstreamed classrooms Support

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Introduction

Background

Think of 25 countries, and take one person from each country and put them all in the same room. Some of them might speak the same language, others might only be able to communicate with body language, and even that can be hard since there can be differences in gestures. What do you do? You probably decide that you have to agree on one language of communication.

Imagine having all these people as students in your classroom. For some teachers this might be reality on a daily basis. What do you do as a teacher when your students have trouble understanding what you are telling them? Immigration to the US is not a thing of the past, it is still a frequent occurrence and the goal for a lot of people around the world is to come to the US.

As a future English teacher I am very interested in the language aspect of this topic. How do you make your students succeed in school when they hardly understand the language of instruction? Since I was studying in Atlanta, Georgia last semester I decided to look into how schools there deal with their language minority students, students who have a home language other than English. What support is there for the language minority students in the mainstream classroom in schools in Atlanta?

Immigration is not a matter for the US only, all over the world people emigrate to other countries. In a lot of classrooms there are students who speak different languages. There are a lot of issues to consider when teaching students who speak different languages. To be able to complete school in their new country they will have to learn the language of the new community. Learning a language this way is very different from studying a foreign language in your home country. When you study foreign languages you learn to communicate, and if you have problems understanding, you can often have words and expressions explained to you in your first language. This is not the case with language minority

students in schools. They will have to learn a new language fast enough not to fall behind their peers. They do not learn the language only for communication, they also have to learn the language well enough to learn the various school

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subjects in this new language and there is a huge difference between

communicative and academic language. Many language minority students do not have anybody to ask if they do not understand either. Everybody in their new school might speak the new language, and their family at home might not know more than they do of the new language. Teaching these students is a problem that a lot of schools are faced with today. How do you make the language minority students complete school successfully?

In January 2002 George Bush, the president of the US, introduced an

education reform, the No Child Left Behind act, NCLB. The US Department of Education homepage states that “No Child Left Behind is designed to ensure that all our nation’s children get the quality education they deserve, regardless of their origins". This obviously also includes English Language Learners and is a reform that has brought a lot of attention to various subgroups in the American school system. Another proposition that has brought a lot of attention to schools and the issue of bilingualism is Proposition 227 in California in 1998. It states that this was “aimed to drastically restrict bilingual education in public schools and promote English-only instruction instead” (Medina). In 1968, bilingual education was introduced to the American school system via the Bilingual Education Act and ever since the topic has been widely discussed. Cromwell says that even ”Thirty years after its introduction, bilingual education is still generating controversy” (19 Jan). The debate regarding bilingual education seems to be a discussion that will continue especially since it seems to be very hard to prove which is the better way to teach all language minority students. According to Cromwell “Most educators and parents agree that the main goals in educating students with a native language other than English are mastery of English and of content in academic areas. But a heated academic and political battle rages over how best to reach those goals and how important it is to preserve the students' original language in the process” (26 Jan). As long as no one can determine the best way to achieve English proficiency for these

students, what can be done is to study the various ways of instruction and to evaluate them.

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Aim

In this paper I aim to explore the support for English Language Learners in mainstream classrooms in the US. I have chosen to focus my research on five teachers and how much they know about teaching ELL students. Language Minority Students need to learn a new language at the same time as they learn the subjects in this new language. How do mainstream teachers combine all this in their teaching? I aim to find out what the teachers do to help their ELL students to pass and succeed in school and how aware they are of the needs of ELL students. I will also try to find out what other support there is for these students. Since a lot of the literature on second language acquisition states the importance of a strong first language I also want to explore these possibilities for ELL students.

My main question is as follows. What support is there for English Language Learners in the mainstream classroom and how aware are teachers of their special needs?

Theoretical concepts

In the literature that I have read on this subject, a variety of terms are used to describe the students: language minority students, English language learners, limited English proficient students, bilingual students, second language

learners, English as a second language learners to mention a few. These terms all refer to students who do not have English as their first language. They can be immigrant students as well as students growing up in the US in an

environment where they do not come across the English language to any great extent. According to Carrasquillo and Rodríguez, “The most current term is English language learners (ELL)” (xi) and therefore that is the term that will be used throughout this paper. ELL students can have a variety of knowledge of English when they come to school. They might just have come from their home country, not knowing a single word of English, or they might have studied English before coming to the US. What they all have in common is that English is not their first language.

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When new non-English speaking students come to the US schools they are normally placed in an ESOL class. ESOL stands for English to Speakers of Other Languages and this is where they learn basic English. Sooner or later, ELL students are placed in a classroom with English-speaking students. In this paper, that will be referred to as the mainstream classroom.

English Language Learners, who are they?

There is a lot of literature on first and second language acquisition, on how people actually learn languages. I have not found as much to read about English language learners however. During my teacher education I have only come across some parts and chapters on this subject. When starting this study I found some books about ELL and what is beneficial for such students, but these texts generally do not focus on English language learners in the mainstream classroom. They are more commonly focusing on English as a second language or on bilingualism. Here follows a summary of the most important aspects of ELL students according to some prominent texts.

According to the U.S. Census 2001, 18% of the students at the time “spoke a language other than English at home” (Adamson 159) Garcia predicted that in 2020, “English language learners will make up about 25% of the entire U.S. school population” (Mason and Shay Shuman 356). English language learners are obviously a big group within the American school system and this cannot be ignored. Furthermore, teachers must be aware that, “Language minority

students are racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse. It is a fallacy to consider all LEP/ELL1_{students as one single group” (Carrasquillo and}

Rodríguez 41). They are all different individuals and deserve to be looked upon as such. Nevertheless, it helps to understand a student if you know which language they speak and what the main culture of that student is like.

Carrasquillo and Rodríguez state that among the language minorities in the US “Spanish speakers are in the majority, followed by speakers of Asian

languages. Although Hispanics, Asians and Pacific islanders form the largest segments of the non-native-school students, the number of native speakers of Arabic, Armenian, Polish, Haitian Creole, Russian and other European

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languages have increased. The result is a diversity of languages and cultures in the United States’ classrooms” (22).

This leads to a very complex situation for teachers teaching all these students. Teachers cannot be expected to know all the languages of their students but they must make an effort to get to know them as the individuals they are.

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Methods

Selection

To find answers to the questions this paper is built on there was initially a lot of reading on the topic to get a background and understanding of teaching ELL students in the US. Books about English Language Learners were chosen to learn about the history of ESOL in the US and what some research says about the best ways of teaching ELL students.

To find further information, how it actually works in schools, I decided to focus on schools in Atlanta. Initially I intended to interview teachers in two schools and focus on those two but, since I was not able to get access to schools and teachers the way I had expected, I had to change my plan somewhat. In the beginning I was told that I would have access to several schools and I then hoped I would be able to interview teachers at two of these schools.

Unfortunately, as time passed and despite me asking for the schools I did not get to go to any schools other than the one I had been assigned to in the very beginning of the term. At this school it took several weeks before I was allowed to visit some classrooms, but eventually I was introduced to the year five head teacher and I could finally sit in during the lessons. I was allowed to visit four different teachers’ classrooms, but only two of these teachers had time to be interviewed, the others were busy teaching during the time I was at the school. This school is situated on the outskirts of central Atlanta and I was given a ride to get there and it was not possible for me to stay on past lunchtime, which was the time my ride back was offered. Therefore I could not wait for the other teachers to have time to be interviewed.

The next two teachers I interviewed, I got in contact with via one of my

classes. On Monday evenings a couple of times I went to a graduate course. In a graduate course the students already have their degree and are out working as teachers and I asked the teacher of that class to extend the break during one lesson in order for me to have time to conduct a couple of interviews. I had only been at that class twice before I conducted the interviews and I did not know who to choose. I first picked one teacher whom I had talked to before. The

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second teacher I picked because she was someone who was not engaged in a conversation when I had finished the first interview. After two interviews there was no more time, the lesson had to move on.

When I had three weeks left of my stay in Atlanta I was finally allowed to visit two more schools, other than the one where I had been from the beginning. At the first school it was constantly a rush and no one had time for an interview before my ride back. At the other school I intended to interview the teacher who was organizing my day there but as I was talking to the multimedia expert of this school I found out that she had previously been teaching in classes with a lot of ELL students and I decided that I would interview her. At the end of that

interview there was no more time to interview the other teacher because my ride back was due.

Atlanta is a city where it is difficult to get to places without a car, and since I did not have a car during my stay there it would have been hard for me to go out and interview teachers even if I was allowed to access schools. I had set my mind on about five to eight teachers and in the end I ended up with five. I would have wished to have the opportunity to choose the teachers that were

interviewed a bit more, but as the situation was that was not possible, I had to do with the five teachers I managed to find who had time to be interviewed.

I also had the opportunity to observe and talk to the ESOL teacher at the school which I visited from the beginning several times. Our meetings provided me with a deeper understanding of the American ESOL program but she was not interviewed as one of the teachers since this paper focus on the ELL students in the mainstream classroom and not the ESOL education.

Methods of data collection

The initial intent for this paper was for it to have a qualitative approach and the number of teachers who were finally interviewed din not change this. According to Johansson & Svedner the aim with a qualitative interview is to get the

interviewee to give exhaustive answers on the chosen topic (25). Due to the difficulty of accessing schools in the US I chose on an early stage to use a qualitative approach rather than a quantitative.

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The interviews contained several questions on the subject of teaching ELL students and here follows a description of the questions asked. First, I asked the teachers about their background as a teacher. I then asked them what grade level they teach and how many students they have as well as how many ELL students they teach. To find out how well they know their students I wanted them to tell me where their ELL students are from, which language they speak and how long they have been in the US. I then inquired about how they help their ELL students when they are in the mainstream classroom. Following that I asked what other support there is for them at the school and how they, as teachers, think that ELL students learn best. Another area of questions concerned other languages, if there are any instructions in the ELL students’ first language and if any foreign languages are taught in their school. Finally I asked the teachers how many languages they themselves speak, and what is needed in terms of knowing languages to become a teacher in the US. I also wanted to know how much they were taught about ELL students and second language acquisition during their education.

Procedure

The interviews which initially were intended as qualitative, with the teachers telling about their experiences and discussions about the topic had to be changed once I had realized the difficulty for the teachers to have time to be interviewed. When I noticed at the first school that there was not a lot of spare time for the teachers I had to rethink the questions. The interviews were

changed into rather formal interviews, which turned out to be a good idea since all of the interviews were conducted in a classroom, with students all around. Three of the teachers I visited at their work when they were working and I could not expect them to give me 100% of their attention, they had students and other teachers coming up to ask them things during the interviews. Because of this it was very good to have set questions to ask since a deep conversation would not have been possible in this situation. The other two interviews were also conducted in a classroom with the class around.

During the interviews I made notes of what was said and I also recorded all but the last interview on my mp3 player. Since there were a lot of interruptions

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the interviews mainly consisted of me asking questions that the teachers then answered.

An effort was made to make my questions as neutral as possible, and I had other people looking at my questions prior to conducting the interviews in order to avoid being biased during the interviews. Prior to the interview questions being asked the teachers were told that the information given would be used in a paper for my home university in Sweden.

As mentioned earlier the ESOL teacher was not properly interviewed but I spent five mornings in her classroom when she was teaching. During this time and between the different groups of students she was teaching, we were talking about her job and what she does for the ELL students. These conversations were very informal and they provided me with the basic information of how ESOL works at that particular school.

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Literature

Teaching ELL students

In the literature about ELL students there are references in several books about what teachers should think about when teaching these students in their

mainstream classrooms. One of the issues that stands out and that is important for teachers is that they must treat their ELL students as equals to their other students. Students are not stupid just because they do not know the language of instruction perfectly. Beyond this very basic idea for teachers they should also “be sensitive to students’ linguistic needs as well as cultural and ethnic differences” (Carrasquillo and Rodríguez 7). As for the linguistic differences in students speaking different languages and learning English, teachers will be able to help their students a lot if they have an understanding of the situation their students are in. Carrasquillo and Rodríguez write that “teachers should gain knowledge in the theory behind learning a new language, they should understand clearly the process involved in acquiring a second language” (Carrasquillo and Rodríguez 62).

Inviting parents in the learning process of the students is also a good idea. Schools and teaching methods vary in different countries, and according to Mason and Shay Shuman these cultural differences can become a problem unless an understanding and acceptance is gained. By inviting parents to school and letting them know what actually happens there, teachers can reduce that problem. Teachers also need to make sure that the ELL students feel good about themselves and that they do not feel embarrassed by not knowing the language as well as their fellow students. The involvement of parents in the learning process can give students the feeling that their home language is important as well. It is hard for the teacher to know all languages that might be represented in the classroom but by involving the parents in their children’s education the development of the students’ first language is likely to be helped. Mason and Shay Shuman mean that “This practice shows students that their home language is valued and provides parents with an opportunity to foster important reading and literacy skills” (Mason and Shay Shuman 358).

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Another issue that Mason and Shay Shuman think that teachers should be aware of is allowing the students’ first language in the classroom. They say that research proves that the use of home language in mainstream classrooms helps students’ understanding and leads to higher performances (358). In the book Tongue Tied, edited by Otto Santa Ana, there are many stories by former ELL students who were hit and hurt when they used their first language in the classroom. The stories also demonstrate how miserable students felt when they were forced to speak a language they did not understand and how they missed their own language. ELL students feel more accepted by allowing the first language to be used in the classrooms. Adamson writes about a hybrid note taking style that many ELL students use when they do not have enough time to both understand and write in their new language, they then mix words from the different languages in their sentences (79). By prohibiting these notes, partly in students’ first language, teachers take away both understanding and security as well as the possibility to succeed from their students.

Besides allowing the language of their students, teachers should also know about them and their culture and include that in their teaching. This might help the understanding of the students even more. It is very important to include various students’ cultures in the teaching, but teachers also have to be aware that they do not do it too much. The Georgia Department of Education tells its teachers that they have to be cautious, “school is a stage in life where the key is to ‘fit in’. Consistent reference to a child’s first language or their culture can cause the student to feel different, isolated and no longer ‘part of the crowd’”.

Carrasquillo and Rodríguez as well as many former ELL students in the book

Tongue Tied write about the need for organization and structure in the

classroom. They say that there are so many new experiences already with a new language and culture that having well organized lessons are essential for ELL students’ learning. They also write about possibilities to communicate in the new language, both with the teacher and fellow students. Thompkins suggests that pairing ELL students with native speakers will force the ELL students to use their new language. Other strategies that are helpful for ELL students are for the teacher to “provide the students with background experiences, vocabulary, or knowledge before beginning lessons where cultural-based learning pools may differ” (Wallace). To ensure basic understanding Wallace also suggests that

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visual and kinaesthetic support and repetitions are helpful for ELL students. When the understanding of the new language is very low, gestures and drawings also help communication.

What do English Language Learners need?

Students from different backgrounds have different experiences, and as teachers we have to be aware of these differences. As Lee Gunderson writes, “Teachers … must know about culture. If not, immigrant students will continue to fail because culture is part of identity, and identity relates to how well a student does in school and society” (Mason and Shay Schuman 382). Learning takes place when new information is added to what the student already knows, and if there is no background information for the student to process the new information with, it is hard for the students to learn and understand. Teachers must know this (Carrasquillo and Rodríguez 88). It is not enough teaching the students the culture and understanding the language of communication, the students also need to be taught the academic language since “learning a language involves learning both linguistic forms and how to use them appropriately within some kind of discourse” (Adamson 151).

Furthermore, students still have more that they have to learn. They have to keep learning content, to study the different subjects parallel to the language. If they do not, they will not keep up with the other students and then they will never be able to compete with native speakers. (Carrasquillo and Rodríguez 26). According to many books on the subject, it takes five to seven years to develop English proficiency to “function adequately in all-English schools” (Carrasquillo and Rodríguez 83). Another area of importance that throughout the literature seems to make the learning of English easier is a strong first language. If students do not have a strong language base to start from it is hard for them to learn new concepts in a different language.

Being able to use of their own name is also very important for many students’ self esteem. Many ELL students in the past have been given a new name as they come to school, a name that is easier for the teacher to pronounce. As Georgia Department of education writes on its Internet site, the teacher only has a few new words to learn while the ELL students have a full language to

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acquire. Since a person’s name is an important part of the person’s identity teachers should practice and learn all their students’ original names.

Mainstreaming

There are a variety of programs that accommodate ELL students in the US. One of them is bilingual education, where both English and the students’ native language is used for instruction. Another one is sheltered classes, formed by a group of ELL students who study the same subjects as the mainstream classes but a bit slower and more in depth. A third program is ESOL, which focuses on support in the development of the English language. This study however, does not focus on these programs. The focus is rather on students who are included in mainstream classrooms although they have special needs as English

language learners. Carrasquillo and Rodríguez write that ELL students do not belong in the mainstream classrooms because of their special needs (10). Unfortunately, many schools in the US do not have the opportunity or the desire to provide special programs and therefore many ELL students are being

“mainstreamed". Putting ELL students in mainstream classrooms can cause problems for the teachers, “although it is becoming increasingly common for mainstream teachers to find themselves teaching LEP/ELL students, most of these teachers have not been trained to address the particular learning needs of LEP/ELL students” (Carrasquillo and Rodríguez 167). They also say that often these teachers are not even informed that their students are ELL learners, the teachers will have to find it out themselves when the students do not

understand. (10). If the teachers are not aware of this the students risk not learning anything in school.

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Results

ESOL

This investigation is built on some interviews and several school visits, most of them at the same elementary school in Atlanta. While at this school, the

opportunity was given to visit the ESOL classroom a few times. During the ESOL lessons I tried to get an understanding of what ESOL classes do. The school that was visited and observed has one teacher and one assistant

running their ESOL program. The main purpose for these classes is to teach the students English. All ELL students who enter the American school system get tested in their language proficiency. If they are new to the country and do not speak English very well they get placed in ESOL. The amount of time a student in the ESOL program gets to spend with an ESOL teacher each week depends on where they are, how many other ESOL students there are and the economy of the particular school district. It is a program that costs money and in the US the area where a school is situated determines the amount of money the school has to spend. At the school I visited the students in the program are coming to the ESOL class for forty-five minutes every day. During class they have a book they work with and together they read, talk and write English. The class sizes are very small. I got to see three different classes and the number of students ranged from one to six.

The ESOL teacher told me that the aim, as given by government, is to get the students out of the program in one year, but that they normally need more time than that. This especially applies to the Spanish-speaking students since most of them generally only speak or hear English at school. Outside of school they can get by with Spanish since it is such a major language in the US.

Occasionally when the students did not understand something and the explanations did not work the teacher was telling them in Spanish since she is from Uruguay and has Spanish as her first language. I was wondering how this works for the students who have another first language than Spanish but she said that all the ELL students at that school are Hispanic.

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In spring every year the students in the ESOL program have to take a test to assess if they are ready to exit the program. I was allowed to look briefly at this test the first day I was there, and it seemed to be testing a very basic level of English. It consisted of a few multiple-choice questions with four options where two of the answers had nothing to do with the correct answer. One of the questions on the test pictured a ball on a chair and the options suggested that the ball was behind the elephant, next to the chair, on top of the chair or cutting the grass. The test seemed very basic indeed. However, the different books they use to teach English in the ESOL class seemed to combine communicative skills with facts and phrases that the students are likely to need in their

mainstream classroom. These include the topic of main idea and details, a topic that I actually saw one mainstream class go through while I was observing.

At another school, which I visited for one day only, I had the opportunity to briefly observe the ESOL teacher there. At this school they use sheltered classes for their ESOL students. This means that they put the ELL students in classes where all the students are ELL students. They stay in the same class until they exit the program through passing the test. In the sheltered classes they learn English as well as various other subjects, but at a slower pace than in the mainstream classes. Once ELL students exit the ESOL program they are placed in a mainstream class where they the first year follow a modified curriculum with fewer subjects and slightly lower expectations. Once this first year is over they are supposed to mainstream completely and study according to the same demands as the other students. At this school there is a special reading teacher who many students who have exited from ESOL go to for some extra support in understanding what they read in English.

Interviews

Presentations of the Teachers

After having found out all of the aspects mentioned in the previous parts that are helpful for teachers to think about when they teach ELL students in their mainstream classrooms the next step was to find out how well this is put into

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practice in the real classrooms. Five teachers who all work at schools in Atlanta, Georgia, USA were interviewed. They are all Americans and none of them speak another language than English, although they have all studied a foreign language such as Spanish, German or French, for two years since that is compulsory for everyone who wants to get a college degree. All but one of the interviewees work in elementary school, the fifth one works in middle school. The teachers are introduced here through some general background

information about the classes and students they are currently teaching. All the names of the teachers are fictional.

Ms Adams comes from Cincinnati and has worked for twelve years as a teacher. This is her first year at the present school and she teaches fifth grade. Her class has seventeen students and four of them are ELL students. Two of them come from Vietnam and one is from Mexico. She did not know which country the fourth student comes from. This student was born in the US but speaks Swahili with his parents. According to Ms Adams the other ELL students in her class “have all been in the US since about first grade”.

Mrs Brown, from Florida, is on her fifth year as a teacher. She has been

working at this school for four years and this year she teaches fifth grade. There are twenty students and one ELL student in her class this year. When asked where that student is from she said that “he speaks Spanish and he is from South America somewhere, I think it’s Mexico”. She also knew that he has been in the US for about six years, since just before he started school.

Ms Clark grew up in Virginia and moved to Atlanta after she graduated from college. This is her third year of teaching but the first year at her present school where she teaches first grade. Ms Clark has twenty students in her class, one of them has Korean parents but she was born in the US.

Ms Davis was born in Atlanta where she still lives and works. She has worked at the same school during her three years as a teacher. Ms Davis teaches third grade and has eighteen students in her class. She has four ELL students, one who is still in the ESOL program and three others. Two of them come from Bosnia and two are Hispanic. She was not sure about where they come from but she thinks that one of them is from Mexico and the other student from somewhere in Central America. All her ELL students have been in the US for

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four years and they have been in the American school system since Kindergarten.

Ms Ellis grew up in Louisiana and is on the fifth year of her teaching career. She has been working for two years at her present school and she is now the multimedia expert at her school. Therefore she does not have classes of her own anymore, but when she did she had many ELL students and she is very interested in these students. She is a middle school teacher, teaching students in grade six to eight.

The teachers’ views on teaching ELL Students

After finding out the background information about the interviewees, the next move was to find out how much they know about teaching ELL students. How aware the teachers are of the different aspects and ideas that help their ELL students to learn. The first question asked what their school does to help the ELL students to learn and develop their English. They all mentioned the ESOL program, but explained that most of their ELL students have tested out of that program and hence they no longer get the English instructions provided there. Mrs Brown said that her ELL student has repeated one grade in order to be at the same level as the rest of the class. She thought that, “that was good for her, she is now doing well, she is a good student and has no problems”. Ms Adams said that although her ELL students have tested out of the ESOL program they could still benefit from some extra help. “They don’t have any difficulties with the language” she said, “but the culture is still confusing to them”.

When students leave the ESOL program and the school takes its protecting hand from them, the students are left on their own to succeed along with their peers in the mainstream classroom. The teachers were asked what they

themselves do to help their students and to support them through their learning. Ms Adams said “I don’t treat them any different from the other students. I use the same tools with rewards for all my students.” Ms Davis on the other hand said, “I can use modified objectives for them, I try to allow them to answer orally instead of always written because they have a lot of trouble writing”. Mrs Brown said that the English language has never been a problem for her one ELL student but if it was she would probably pair that student with another

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Spanish-English bilingual student so that they can explain words that they do not

understand to each other. She also said that she might be using a Spanish tutor to explain some major concepts to the student. Ms Clark said “I repeat

directions, I always do. When I send them off to do their independent work I always go to him like, do you understand what to do, and especially with vocabulary”. Ms Ellis was on the same track as Mrs Brown, saying that she pairs up her ELL students with a “language buddy”. She also uses modelling, where she shows the students how words are supposed to look and sound, to ensure understanding.

The teachers were also asked what they think that ELL students benefit from most, in which way they believe that students will learn the best. Which kind of program or class setting do they see as the most beneficial for ELL students. All of the teachers were of the opinion that ELL students need some kind of extra attention and support to succeed in school. Mrs Brown said “It depends on the individual student, on the level of English they have got from home and how well they can survive in the classroom”. All the teachers also said that they think the students need to have some kind of immersion in English. Ms Adams said “I would never recommend full immersion. All these students need to go to ESOL first and then move more and more to the classroom. I think that if they are with English only speakers the can feel intimidated and it is hard for them to make friends. At least in ESOL they speak the same language”. Ms Ellis said that she would never recommend full immersion for ELL students, “I believe they need both. From my experience students can get frustrated and shut down if they don’t understand anything. They need the small pull out with one on one opportunities”.

The importance of languages

Since all ELL students need to learn a new language in school some of the interview questions were about the importance of other languages than English in the schools. How much of foreign languages is being taught to the other students at the schools? Ms Adams and Mrs Brown work at the same

elementary school and there, as in all inner city schools in Atlanta, the students have to learn Spanish. The school has three Spanish teachers and every class

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gets forty minutes of Spanish lessons every day. At Ms Davis’ school there are no foreign languages taught and Ms Clark’s first grade students gets Spanish lessons once a week. Ms Ellis said that at her middle school all students get to learn either Spanish or French. She said that other languages that are being considered are Asian languages. The students do not get to choose which language they want to learn, they are placed into one of the classes and have instructions in this language for nine weeks only. Unfortunately, the result is that “most students forget what they have learned shortly after that”, according to Ms Ellis.

Most literature about ELL students state the fact that a strong first language is very important for learning a second language and therefore the teachers were asked how much support there is for developing the ELL students’ first

language. All of them confirmed that there is no education at all for the students to learn their first language better. Most of the teachers were surprised to be asked about this, they had never heard of such strategies before.

The following questions concerned whether there are any recommendations for the parents regarding which language they should speak at home with their children. None of the teachers knew of any official recommendations from the school or the county. Ms Ellis did however mention that she tutors two

Japanese girls and that she tells them to speak at least thirty minutes of English outside of school every day. She thinks that “the parents are benefiting from this as well, I can see how they are trying”. None of the teachers said anything about the students learning their first language any better, they were more concerned about students’ lack of abilities to use English outside of school.

Knowing about the importance of the first language and the need for students to be able to use their first language in their mainstream classroom the teachers were asked how they feel about the use of first language in their classroom. Ms Davis said “at our school they encourage us to speak English all the time and for the foreigners to speak English in the classroom, but at recess they say it’s fine, in the playground it’s fine, at lunch it’s fine for them to speak their first language. But our school’s policy is to have them really speak English all the time and use English in the classroom”. All other teachers said that they have no problems with the students using their first language if it helps them

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understand when students speak their own languages since they do not speak the language themselves, but allowing the students to use it to understand what is going on in the classroom is good. They said that anything that helps them is good. Ms Adams even said that she encourages her ELL students to use their first language. She told me about some maths problem they wrote the day before the interview and that her two Vietnamese students had written theirs in Vietnamese.

It seems as if most parents of ELL students know very little English and I had to ask the teachers how they communicate with the parents when they do not speak the same language. Teachers have to be able to communicate with parents. Telling somebody that their child needs more of this or that is very hard to do with body language only, and if using the child to translate you cannot trust that he or she gives the correct translation. When asked how they do, all the teachers said that they use the Spanish or ESOL teacher at the school if they speak the same language as the parents. Ms Clark said “I use an older sibling, and have them come in. If they don’t have older siblings I guess it’s up to the parents”. Ms Davis mentioned a translator. She also said that the county has an official database of different notes in several languages. Teachers can access this base to get hold of notes in the particular language of their students. Ms Ellis mentioned something similar, she said that “there is an international centre where you can get translating services, but you have to ask them well in advance, they are pretty busy”.

The final interview question concerned the teachers’ awareness of second language acquisition theory. Mrs Brown and Ms Clark both said that they know nothing. Ms Adams said that she only knows that the earlier you learn a new language the better it is and Ms Davis said that she only knows the very basic stages, that reading normally comes before writing. Ms Ellis had not learnt any of the theory at her teacher education either, but after graduating she chose to take a thirty-hour evening course on the topic, something that she said has helped her a lot. She said that that is something every teacher ought to know, especially since in 2020 twenty five percent of the students in American schools will be ELL students, and every teacher is bound to have some of these

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Discussion

This research has showed that ELL students should not simply be placed in mainstream classrooms and treated as if they were any student. None of the interviewees thought that was a good idea. ELL students have special needs that must be taken into account. If a student who does not understand the language is put in a mainstream classroom for the full school day without any specific language instructions it is hard for them to understand and follow and then they will not learn much at all. Depending on age and level of knowledge of the language of instruction ELL student should receive specific language

instructions.

In most cases all day special sheltered classes for ELL students are not

possible and students are placed in mainstream classrooms. Teachers teaching these ELL students in their classrooms need to be aware of the special needs they have. From the interviews that were conducted, it did not seem as if teachers in Atlanta had any instructions at all about how to teach ELL students and what to think of when having them in their classroom. This research does not contain enough interviews to be able to generalize, but out of the five teachers who were interviewed none of them were taught anything about ELL students before they started teaching. What they know they have had to pick up on their own, by experiencing these students in their classrooms and using their common sense or as Ms Ellis did, who chose to take a course on the topic after she had graduated. If teachers are not taught about teaching ELL students in mainstream classrooms we cannot expect them to know what to do to ensure that their ELL student learn to their full potential.

During the interviews a few aspects came up that show how aware these teachers are about ELL students. It has to be remembered here that all of them but Ms Ellis said that they had no training or education at all in teaching ELL students. Still there are some aspects that are surprising. For example that some of the teachers do not know where their students are from. As a teacher you should know all your students. When teaching students from other

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countries, knowing your students include knowing where they are from. It has a lot to do with who they are and often gives help in teaching them.

Another issue that clearly showed during the interviews was that not at any of the schools where these teachers work is there any education in the students’ first language. The interviewees were all very surprised to be asked about it and had obviously never heard of such ideas before. According to the literature it is very important to know one’s first language very well and to do that, you have to receive some kind of instruction in it, especially if you live in a country where that language is not used. By only speaking a language at home, where in school, with your friends and on TV another language is used is not enough to learn your first language well enough. On the other hand, having a foreign language in the society all around does not necessarily lead to knowledge and understanding either.

It seems that languages other than English are not very important in the US. Ms Davis for example said that at her school there is an English only policy and no other languages are to be used in the classrooms. English is a major world language but that does not mean that you should not learn any other

languages. From what the interviews have shown there is not a lot of attention given to learning foreign languages in schools in the US. To get a college degree you have to have taken two years of a foreign language, but from my own experience you do not learn much in two years of language education in school. I think the US needs to start appreciating other languages, within the country as well as outside. There are many immigrants in this country from all over the world and I think that they would feel a lot more accepted if their languages were appreciated and not just looked down on. It would also lead to ELL students in the schools feeling more accepted and encouraged to learn and succeed in school.

Something positive that the teachers’ answers showed is that they all, except for Ms Davis who has an English only policy to follow, allow ELL student to use their first language in their classrooms. They seem to understand that that might help the students to learn, which is what we want them all to do. In general the teachers who were interviewed also seem to have a fair idea of how to instruct ELL students in their mainstream classrooms. Even though they do not seem to know their students too well, they still have good ideas of what to do. They said

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that they repeat, pair them up, give them the opportunity to answer orally at times and make sure that they understand what they do. This is something that they have not been taught but that they have discovered themselves by

experience and by using common sense.

Another area that showed the teachers’ awareness of ELL students is the fact that most of the teachers did not use the students to translate for their own parents. Most of them were using the ESOL teacher or a Spanish teacher. As long as the languages the students speak are represented in these groups that is great. What seems to be very helpful otherwise is the international centres that Ms Ellis and Ms Davis talked about, where they can get anything

translated. It must be very handy for a teacher to have translations for the most common notes ready in the classroom to ease communication with the families.

As for most issues in schools it seems as if teaching ELL students also has to do with money. According to some research it takes students five to seven years to learn a foreign language enough to fully participate and learn with mainstreamed students. The ESOL teacher who was visited several times said that her goal, given to her from the government, is to exit her students from the ESOL program after one year of instruction. Once students are out of the program there is no extra support for them and they have to rely on their mainstream teachers, who most often have not had any education in teaching ELL students. This does not sound to be a successful strategy to me. When the research say that it takes five to seven years to function adequately in a

classroom setting in a new language it would be good for the schools to take this into account and provide extra support for ELL students for a lot longer than one year only. Understanding simple communicative language is not the same as understanding instructions given in a new language.

This research has only looked into a few schools in Atlanta, Georgia and it is not possible to make comments about the whole country but in Atlanta there are changes that would be beneficial to make. The Georgia department of

education need to become aware of the issue of placing ELL students in mainstream classrooms. If this is what they want to do they need to give the teachers proper education in teaching these students. The teachers are not to blame for what is missing in their education. The teachers interviewed for this research have all thought of their own ideas how to best teach their ELL

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students. That is not enough though, they need to be provided with instructions and support to give these students a successful schooling.

In conclusion there does not seem to be much support for ELL students once they are out of the ESOL program. In some schools ELL students have the first year out of ESOL as a modified year where they get extra support and do not have to do as much as the other students, but when that year is over they seem to be pretty much on their own. Have they not by then grown comfortable in using the mainstream language it seems to me they will struggle to succeed in school. I believe that in order to teach ELL students in a way that is beneficial for them, teachers need to be taught what to keep in mind when teaching these students in order for them to succeed. The world today is getting smaller and people are moving between countries. Having students with different

background speaking different first languages than the mainstream class will be common in many places. Especially in the US where predictions say that in the year 2020 twenty five percent of the students will be ELL students, teachers need to know how to deal with and how to teach these students. With such a high number of ELL students every teacher in the US will teach a number of them during their career. At the moment there is not a lot of support for the students once out of the ESOL program and the teachers are not taught anything how to teach these students. This needs to change or the number of students feeling bad about and failing school will rise.

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List of References

Adamson, H.D. Language Minority Students in American Schools, An education in English. Mahwah, USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2005.

Carrasquillo, Angela L., Vivian Rodríguez. Language Minority Students in the Mainstream Classroom, 2nd edition. UK: Cromwell Press Ltd, 2002.

Cromwell, Sharon. The Bilingual Education Debate. 19 January 1998 Education World. 10 January 2006 http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr047.shtml Cromwell, Sharon. The Bilingual Education Debate. 26 January 1998 Education World. 10 January 2006 http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/curr049.shtml Georgia Department of Education. Kathy Cox. CEISMC – The Georgia Institute of Technology, and Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, and Georgia Public Broadcasting. 26 October 2005

http://www.glc.kl12.ga.us/pandp/esol/accomm.htm

Loreta Medina. "Introduction." At Issue: Bilingual Education. Ed. Loreta Medina. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2003. August 2004. 10 January 2006.

http://www.enotes.com/bilingual-education-article/38841

Mason, Pamela A., Jeanne Shay Schuman, ed. Promising Practices for Urban Reading Instruction. Newark, USA: International Reading Association, 2003. Santa Ana, Otto, ed. Tongue Tied: The lives of Multilingual Children in Public Education. Lanham USA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004

Thompkins, Gail E. Literacy for the 21st Century, Teaching Reading and Writing in Grades 4 Through 8. USA: Courier Kendallville, 2004.

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US Department of Education. 1 June 2005. Ed.gov. 10 January 2006 http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/2004/02/02192004.html

Wallace, Cynthia L. Teaching ESL Students in the Mainstream Classroom. 28 November 2005

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Attachment

INTERVIEW

Personal:

1. Where are you from?

2. Why did you become a teacher? 3. How long have you been a teacher?

4. How long have you worked at present school? 5. What languages do you speak?

Language Minority Students:

6. How many students have you got in your class? 7. How many ELL students?

8. What languages do they speak? 9. Where do they come from?

10. How long have they been in the US?

11. How long have they been in an American school? Teaching:

12. What is done to help ELL students improve their English? 13. How do you feel about first language use in the classroom? 14. Is there any aid for developing ELL students’ first language?

(Home language class?)

15. What is recommended to parents? Which language are they encouraged to speak at home?

16. How do you communicate with parents who don’t speak English? Translator? Through the child?

17. What is your view on teaching English to ELL students, what do you think they benefit from most? ESOL/bilingual/mainstream only 18. How do you encourage ELL students in your classroom? Socially?

Intellectually?

19. What and how much is taught about other languages? Teachers:

20. What language requirements do you have as a teacher? 21. Do you have to study a second language?

Language Minority Students

Malmö högskola

Lärarutbildningen

Kultur, Språk, Media

Examensarbete

Language Minority Students

- Five Mainstream American Teachers’

Thoughts of Teaching These Students

Språkminoritetselever

- Fem Amerikanska Klasslärares

Tankar om att Undervisa Dessa Elever

Sofie Johansson

Abstract

Keywords:

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Background

Aim

Theoretical concepts

English Language Learners, who are they?

Methods

Selection

Methods of data collection

Procedure

Literature

Teaching ELL students

What do English Language Learners need?

Mainstreaming

Results

ESOL

Interviews

Discussion

List of References

Attachment