3 Strategies to Enhance Students’ Language Development

The article I read this week addresses research findings and technology used to support language learning. Murray (2020) states that “language learning is delicate in nature” (para 3). I agree with this statement because I think it takes a special educator to utilize various different educational approaches in order to teach language learning and development. Especially now during these unexpected times, educators are utilizing all available tools and resources possible to help ELL students. 

The article mentions three language development approaches for educators: the promotion of oral language, visual and auditory support, and the building of metacognitive strategies. These strategies can be utilized through remote and in-person instruction.

Oral language promotion involves having students engaged in discussions and using sentences with complicated syntax. For example, Murray (2020) states that “if a student cannot demonstrate the use of a particular vocabulary word, morphological unit (such as a prefix), or syntactic structure in expressive oral language, then that student will likely struggle with its written form” (para 6). In order to practice this concept, two activities that are mentioned in the article include “Whip Around” and “Turn and Talk.” Both of these activities are quick, easy, and involve practicing specific oral language.

Language is multimodal and multi sensory. It is build upon visual, oral, and auditory support. Visual support essentially includes scaffolds with images. Images should be cultural relevant and ensure students’ comprehension. Auditory supports include reading definitions and questions aloud tp students. By providing students with auditory language use, they will have an equal opportunity to connect with the content material. 

Murray (2020) mentions a web-based tool called “InferCabulary” that can be used to support metacognitive strategies. InferCabulary is a visual vocabulary program that teaches students new words by allowing them to infer meaning from a series of pictures (Murray, 2020). This web-tool seems very interesting because it allows students to hide answer choices they know are incorrect to help them focus on discovering the correct answer. In addition, I believe this kind of tool will help students develop critical thinking skills during language development activities. 

Murray, A. (2020, November). 3 strategies to enhance students' language development. Retrieved from https://www.smartbrief.com/original/2020/11/3-strategies-enhance-students%E2%80%99-language-development

Don't Make Assumptions About Your ELL Students

The article I chose to read this week was a very interesting read as it focuses on the importance of refraining from making assumptions about our ELL students. I thought this was an interesting article not only for ELL teachers but for teachers in general because making assumptions can happen quite frequently.  Ferlazzo (2020) begins the article by addressing that we as teachers do not assume what a student should or should not know or what a student can or cannot do based on our perceptions of their identities. Some assumptions that Ferlazzo (2020) mention include: 

• “an EL student is lazy, obstinate, or unintelligent because they're not raising their hand in class, they speak in another language to peers, or they don't complete their work
• sheltering content to make it accessible will not be fair to other students, makes the lesson too easy, or lowers expectations
• teaching language is the sole responsibility of the ESL department
• students must only speak in English at all times, and that using other languages slows their progress” (para. 4). 

This first bullet point stood out to me because there are many different reasons as to why an EL student may not raise their hand, complete their work, etc. We need to consider students cultures because there may be a reason why students are not raising their hand in class. Or, students may be struggling to complete their work due to taking care of younger siblings at home while their parents work a second job to make ends meet. 

I strongly believe that it is so important to welcome and teach students equally in the classroom setting. Students should have equal access to the same educational opportunities and not be regarded through assumptions. In order to disrupt these assumptions, Ferlazzo (2020) suggests that we:

• “learn how to say and pronounce the names of all students including creating a safe space for students to share pronouns they use to identify themselves
• learn as much as possible about the background, interests, and hopes and dreams of all students
• be prepared to assess and build background knowledge as needed
• consider how language can change depending on role, relationship, topic, purpose, and task, and that explicitly teaching this benefits all students
• ensure that all lessons and assessments are universally accessible by using visuals, writing while speaking, modeling, providing exemplars, having clear and concise directions, offering choice in how students demonstrate learning” (para. 10). 

Creating a safe and secure environment will help ELL students feel more at ease. I also love that Ferlazzo (2020) mentioned learning as much as possible about students backgrounds. This is so important! If we as educators don’t “educate” ourselves on our students backgrounds, then how will we ever recognize our students educational needs.

 Ferlazzo (2020) goes on to mention that we are not perfect and we do make mistakes no matter how hard we try not to. Unfortunately sometimes we do make false assumptions such that students who are proficient are able to perform well academically without support. This is false. An EL’s level of proficiency in social language does not correlate automatically with their proficiency in academic language. If I remember correctly, it takes a student anywhere from two years to acquire social language and five or more years to develop academic language. Another assumption is that one scaffold is sufficient for all EL’s. This is also false. Scaffolding for EL’s need to be created for varying levels of proficiency. These can be in the form of visuals, pictures, charts, interactive boards, etc. 

Since students spend the majority of their day with teachers who are not the “ESL teacher,” there needs to be a somewhat shared responsibility.  When working with EL’s, teachers are bound to make some mistakes, but it is important to focus on learning about students strengths, providing appropriate and differentiated scaffolds, and building a community where students will succeed.

Ferlazzo, L. (2020, November). Don't Make Assumptions About Your ELL Students. Retrieved from http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2020/11/dont_make_assumptions_about_your_ell_students_2.html