Connection: Oral Language and Reading for ELL Students

When I think of how to teach my ELL students in my classroom, I often wonder when the students are able to fully access everything that we are teaching them? The only time I have put myself into a position of learning a language was when I took German classes from Kindergarten through my Junior year of high school. However, in the classroom environment, I wasn't having to translate everything I heard from German into English all day long. It was only during that hour block each day that I had to exhaust my brain with constantly thinking about what I was hearing and saying, and being able to identify what I did not understand. For our ELL students, there is no turning on or off their having to translate what they are hearing, saying, reading, and writing.

A second experience I have that I try to think about when teaching my ELL students, which again was very brief, was when I spent time in Sweden visiting friends. I have never felt so completely lost or helpless. As someone who has never been completely surrounded by another language and culture before, I now knew what it was like to be completely helpless. Yes, my friends could speak Swedish for me, and yes when I was not with them all of the Swedes would speak English to me, but without their ability to change for me, I could not have done anything for myself. There was no need for e to try and learnthe language, because they adjusted to my native language. Thinking about how our school system works, we are really not changing much for our ELL students. Sure, we make a word wall, or provide supports, heck, even translated documents, but are we doing enough for students to become confident in the English language?

So, in our classrooms, how do we best support our ELL students with making the skills we teach them apply to multiple modes of learning?

The easiest way for us to support students, is to teach oral language and reading together. By supporting students with the development of their language skills in both of these modalities together, we are enabling students to know that their is a variety of ways to use language. With my own teaching experience, I see that students are not provided the opportunity to develop their skills in this manner, until they are on the Developing range of the WIDA standards. WIDA Standards
Prior to students being in this range, students are taught, much like I was in my German classes at the beginning of  my own learning, with things in small chunks.

Essential Linguistics: What You Need to Know to Teach identies the following as ways ELL students are taught in a traditional classroom: 

• Readers break language into component parts are taught each part (prefix, suffix, root word)
• Students perform drills and exercise to practice the language
• Teachers correct errors to help students develop good language habits 
• Each part of language is taught directly (pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary) 
• Students practice their language in small groups or in pairs to enforce the grammar and vocabulary they have learned 

If we want to support our ELL students better, we need to teach them the way native speakers are taught, and that is practicing skills through speaking, reading, writing, and listening with skills together, not individually;  Essential Lignuisticis identify this type of support as aquisition teaching.  Students can be supported by first being asked to listen and read in order to build on their language. Because students have exposure to their native language, we must first allow them to feel comfortable with their new language and make connections between the words and ideas they already know in their native language. A simple way we can support students with this is by providing them with texts that have a predictable patterns and pictures to support their understanding. ELL students should be able to see a word and make a connection to what that word means when they say the word. Think about the students in your own classroom  who realize they know the meaning of a word, but did not know what it looked like in print? This "lightbulb"  moment occurs because students get more practice with their verbal language than reading language due to their peer to peer interactions they have through out the day.  It is essential that we set up our classrooms to allow the langauge we are teaching them be understood verbaly, in print, in writing, and when heard so they are succesful learnings at all times.

Sources:
Freeman, D., & Freeman, Y. (2004). Written and Second Language Acquisition. In Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

English Language Development (ELD) Standards. (n.d.). Retrieved January 8, 2015, from 
https://www.wida.us/standards/eld.aspx