ELL – What’s All the Hype?

Effective Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners

What's All the Hype?

By: Karen Pellino

Students with English as a second language (ESL) constitute a significant percentage of the population of our nation's schools. This population continues to increase more rapidly than that of native English speaking students (Shore, 2001). The language minority population has a high drop out rate. These students are also among the lowest ranking in academic achievement and expectations. They represent an at-risk population faced with a wide range of challenges (Thompson, 2000).

This presents a unique challenge for teachers as we strive to help these students achieve in learning the English language and the academic material specified in our content area learning standards. Every teacher who teaches subject matter in English to ESL students is not only a teacher of the content area but is a teacher of English as well. As educators, we must continually reflect on our teaching and update our practice to address the needs of this population, placing a strong emphasis on the human side of teaching. We must continually focus on these students and find effective ways to arrange their learning to help them achieve.

This tutorial is a summary and critical analysis of four recent journal articles on the above subject. The articles focus on the challenges ESL students face and how they translate into challenges for teachers. Following the summary of articles, strategies that teachers can use to help overcome these challenges will be discussed.

Learning English and Learning America: http://www.teach-nology.com/tutorials/teaching/esl/2/