Nancy's Notes

Right now, it is estimated that over 40% of students served by adult education programs are English Language Learners, also known as ELLs, and traditionally referred to as ESL (English as a second Language) students. So nearly half of your students, in some areas of the country, not only lack the scaffold of basic English, they do not have the infrastructure in place to learn the content of the curriculum, either.  If you pause for a moment to head on over to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and find the position English Language Learning Instruction, you’ll see that the majority of adult education instructors who are teaching English Language Learners have NO official training whatsoever in helping these students build their English language skills.

This will not suffice. We must address these teachers’ needs in order to further address the students’ needs. I have been marinating in articles about this situation for a couple weeks now and feel like the most useful thing to do is boil down the subject into some instantly applicable tactics for you teachers. Much of what the “experts” have diagnosed as successful teaching of these learners is what you’re doing anyway.

All successful communication scenarios begin with asking: what is the purpose and who is my audience?

Your purpose as the instructor of an English Language Learner is two-fold:

1. familiarize and build the language scaffold for practical AND academic English;
2. teach the content of the various areas of study—math, science, social studies, etc…. In order to accomplish this daunting task, find out who your students are

“Who is my Audience?”

• Learn Their Name: What is their name? How is it pronounced? RESIST the urge to Americanize it unless invited to do so by the student.
• Country of birth
• Family Background
• Home Language
• Educational Experiences
• Reading and Writing Skills in Home Language
• English Language Proficiency (ELP) Level /ELP Scores
• Student Interests
• Plans or Goals

To build up your empathy skills, try going online and watching a video in that student’s language—not to learn the language, but to feel what it’s like to have the world carrying on in a code you haven’t cracked.

Keep in the forefront of your mind how incredibly courageous students are who come to a country where they don’t speak the language and who try to rise up through learning. Could you do it? Move somewhere else where your language is not the dominant one, go to school, try to maximize your potential with such a monumental challenge to overcome? As often as I’ve thought about moving to the south of France and living there, the idea of not having full language literacy has deterred me thus far.

And that brings me to one of the big points I’d like to make: Lack of language does not equal lack of intelligence.

Once upon a time, ELLs were called ESL students, which stood for English as a Second Language student. Whole departments at colleges and universities were dedicated to it—here at WIU, it was called WESL, and the program was renowned for its cutting-edge philosophy in teaching and supporting the non-native English speaker. What has emerged, though, over the decades is the fact that most of these students were not learning English as a second language—often it was their fifth or sixth, so the academics set about renaming the discipline to English Language Learner.

What do we know about English Language Learners? Having a flexible profile in mind as you’re creating your lesson plans may help with your instruction. These are the attributes, both positive and challenging, that we can attribute to ELLs:

As I look at these lists, what I see are the skills and challenges we often associate with our adult education students, whether they are monolingual or polylingual.

Some of the following practices will benefit your ELLs, but because they are best practice in teaching, everyone in the classroom will enjoy improved outcomes.

1. cultivate relationships and be culturally responsive
2. incorporate learning language skills across the curriculum
3. emphasize productive skills (speaking and writing) first and foremost, even though hardest
4. resist the tendency of learners to be passive or receptive –they will want to focus on listening and reading
5. SWIRL – Speak, Write, Interact, Read, Listen—EVERY DAY
6. speak slowly, increase the wait time for answers to questions
7. go Multi-modal – use visual elements to support vocabulary, concept, and content concepts
8. QSSSA – Question, Signal, Stem, Share, AssessAsk open-ended questions to discourage one-word responsesGive students a “signal” that they can give you when they’re ready to respond—avoid just calling on ELLS because if they become frustrated or embarrassed, they will disengage.
   Offer students a stem or branch of a sentence so they can repeat constructs and begin to understand and duplicate them—for instance, “If I want to  __________to college, I must __________________. This can be less intimidating than having to come up with the whole sentence. It builds confidence and allows you to model correct verb conjugations and syntax.

Share your own experiences with language learning, or allow students to share their culture’s differences so they can connect new knowledge with existing knowledge.

Assess how your teaching is going on an ongoing basis so you can adjust if necessary. Ask your students to assess how effective the lessons are, too. Because you are dealing with adults, they will want to weigh in on what’s working