English Language Learning: How to Improve Instruction

Do You Speak English? Chances are, if you arrived in the U.S. without English language skills and then went through the U.S. Education system, the answer is no. This is a sad reality especially given the continuing growth of the Limited English Proficient (LEP) population in the United States as a whole. 

Although the reasons are many, cities like Chicago, are struggling to provide mandated supports to LEP students due, at least partly, to lack of teacher training on English as a Secondary language (ESL) and/or bilingual instruction. In addition, according to an independent review commissioned by Bellwether Education Partners and the Collaborative for Student Success, state plans in response to the Federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) can sometimes lack details when it comes to setting performance metrics/goals for student sub-populations, such as LEPs, and in developing response mechanisms when student sub-populations do not meet said performance metrics. Reviewers also failed to award any state plan, out of the 16 reviewed,  with a top grade in meeting the needs of "all students".  For a discussion on possible ways through which states and districts could monitor LEP student progress, see 3 States Smartly Using ESSA to Help English Learners (Conor P. Williams).

So what can teachers and districts do to better instruct LEP students? While there are specific strategies that can be used with LEP students to help them to meet grade level standards rather than "dumbing down" performance expectations, best teaching practices, particularly around differentiation, can serve the needs of all learners. Effective and specific vocabulary and literacy acquisition strategies, in particular, can assist all students to develop further reading and writing skills. 

Research on Effective Instructional Strategies for All Students

In 2010, McREL researchers (Marzano, 1998) conducted a meta-analysis of prior research studies on the effectiveness of various instructional strategies. McREL then calculated an effect size for each teaching strategy observed that was then translated into percentile point gains/differences that could be expected for students being instructed using the experimental condition (i.e. instructional strategy) as opposed to those students being taught without the use of the studied experimental condition. For example, if a student was performing at the 50th percentile under the control condition (not using the strategy being studied) and the studied strategy had a 34 point percentile gain projection, we could expect this student to improve to the 84th percentile under the experimental condition (instruction including the strategy being studied). 

Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock found that nine instructional strategies, in particular, were associated with positive percentile point gains. This is indicated on the corresponding chart. 

When working with school leaders and teachers in integrating these instructional strategies in lesson planning, I have found ASCD's Classroom Instruction that Works shows how and why various instructional strategies work for effective learning and presents a model of how these different classroom learning strategies can be aligned to help all students realize academic success. Classroom Instruction that Works with English Language Learners, also published by ASCD, goes further in taking these nine highly effective instructional strategies and applies their relevance, in concrete ways, to English as a Secondary Language students. Some strategies for ESL instruction/LEP students are noted below.

How to Know the Level at Which LEP Students are Performing:

To decide when students should enter and exit from ESL services, and to ascertain fluency levels, districts can consider implementing ESL formative and summative assessment practices.  Cynthia Bjork of McREL also suggests looking at English Language Learners as being in five distinct phases of fluency - preproduction, early production, speech emergence, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency. The level of fluency at which an LEP/ESL student is performing will determine the amount of intervention and support that the teacher will need to provide learners. The level at which LEPs are performing should be informing state and school district plans in response to ESSA.

Effective Instruction for English Language Learning:

Setting Objectives: Teachers can post both content and language objectives at the front of the room and refer to these objectives throughout the day. Communicating the learning objectives can help students understand and focus on what you want them to learn. ESL students can benefit from not just knowing content goals but language goals as all teachers, not just ELA teachers, should be monitoring ESL student progress in both areas. Building Academic Vocabulary: Student Edition, by Robert Marzano, includes language word banks organized both by subject area and grade level. 

Also, consider the appropriate level of language "thinking" and "function" for each ESL student. Just as students vary in readiness level within the general student population, ESL students range from those being introduced to English while others may be ready to "test out" of ESL services. 1) Pre-production - have students develop a non-verbal response (drawing/picture); 2) Early production - have students develop one word responses and/or provide sentence starters (I predict _______), The _______ lives in _____; 3) Speech Emergence - have students create phrases or short sentences independently and/or with the aid of sentence starters; 4) Intermediate Fluency - have students craft longer and more complex sentences; and 5) Advanced Fluency - continue having the student write/communicate complex sentence structures. There also are additional ways in which to develop academic vocabulary. Harvey Silver's The Word Works: Cracking Vocabulary's CODE provides additional ways in which the teacher can design vocabulary lessons/objectives by incorporating connecting, organizing, deep processing, and exercising language activities. 

Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers: It is important for all students to focus on what is important in learning, use explicit cues, ask inferential questions, and to develop analytic questions which can often be done by completing a KWL Chart - What I know, What I want to Learn, and What I Learned. However, ESL students might not have the language to participate. To adapt a KWL chart for ESL learners, consider having students incorporate pictures/drawings for what they know/learned and sentence starters to kick-start inferential/analytic questioning. Teacher preparation would involve developing the sentence starters before hand, providing an augmented KWL chart to ESL learners, and illustrated/related resources that students can use when designing their own images. Again, teachers can consider the level of student fluency when designing appropriately adapted ESL materials (see objective planning above). 

Teachers can also consider using expository advance organizers which describe new content in clear written or verbal form. Keep language simple while using other visuals, manipulatives, pantomime, facial expressions, gestures and eye contact. For earlier grades, narrative advance organizers are stories told that augment student prior knowledge through the teacher, video clips, and or audio recordings. There are a growing number of storytelling resources on the Internet for this purpose. For older grades, consider using graphic organizers for students to organize and "picture" information. The Building Academic Vocabulary text, noted above, provides templates for Venn Diagrams, Double Bubbles, and other graphic organizers. Further consider how much of these templates need to be pre-populated/completed by the teacher which will be dependent on the level of ESL student fluency.

Nonlinguistic Representations: Graphic organizers, as noted above, can also be non-linguistic representations of information depending on the amount of illustrations/pictures used to convey understanding of meaning. Physical models (stages of cell division, star life cycle, etc.), mental images (movie in the mind - what does the student see, hear, feel, taste, touch, etc.) manipulatives (drawings to represent ideas/words that can be used for sorting), and kinesthetic activities can also be used to assess language understanding (students complete body movements/placements to indicate language and/or process awareness). 

Summarizing and Note Taking: Using summary frames with students can be an effective way in which English language learners can process language. Summary frames are a series of questions that spotlight important elements from different types of text patterns. There are frames for 1) narrative text; 2)topic-restriction-illustration; 3) definition; 4) argumentation; 5) problem-solution; and 6) conversation which are presented in detail in Classroom Instruction that Works. The authors of Teaching Reading in the Context Areas suggest having students organize text elements by sequence, comparison/contrast, concept/definition, description, episode, and generalization/principle. Reciprocal teaching can also be an effective summarizing strategy. Again, teachers will need to determine how much of this information needs to be pre-loaded so that ESL students can better access class texts. Any book by Douglas Fisher and/or Nancy Frey, on reading/writing acquisition strategies, is also well worth a review. 

Note taking: Consider giving students teacher-prepared notes, teach students specific note-taking strategies such as Cornell Notes and/or combination notes (like Cornell but includes images where appropriate), and provide students with practice opportunities to revise notes and to use them for review.  Providing students with teacher-prepared notes can highlight effective note taking strategies and alert students to important information/vocabulary.  Specific note-taking strategies can help students to develop self questioning techniques which can then foster curiosity and self-direction in learning. When allowing students to review notes, consider having students compare their notes to both models as well as rubrics/checklists. 

For ESL students at preproduction level, consider providing students with a complete note taking template in words/numerical examples and illustrations/graphics. Students can also use kinesthetic non-linguistic representations and manipulatives along with note taking strategies. For students performing at early production and/or speech emergence levels, provide word banks, and examples out of order on the page bottom. Have students explain the steps involved in any process using sentence stems. With students at intermediate to advanced English fluency, students can explain their work to partners and can fill-in open templates as the teacher explains content to the general education population.

Identifying Similarities and Differences: Teach students various ways through which to determine similarities and differences between/among terms and vocabulary. Students at all levels of fluency can be given attribute charts to improve literacy and comprehension. Students at the preproduction stage can organize pictures, inclusive of relevant words, in appropriate columns/charts to help them organize and classify vocabulary while those students working at early production to speech emergence levels can be provided with word banks and sentence starters to classify themes, compare vocabulary through analogies and metaphors, and to developing oral academic language. Start with teacher generated anaolgies and metaphors before having students start to develop their own, and continue to review Harvey Silver's Vocabulary CODE for varied strategies through which students can compare and contrast terminology.