Definition Of Mainstream English Language Development

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Overview
Mainstream English language development (MELD) is a program that provides support for students to improve their speaking, listening, writing, and reading skills. This program is not limited only to bilingual students who are having difficulty with English language. It also helps native speakers to develop standard and academic English. MELD is a program which instructs teachers with their instruction to accommodate the particular linguistic and language issues that apply to these students. According to California Department of Education in 2015, 94 percent of the students in California speak Spanish, Vietnamese, Filipino, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Hmong, Korean, Punjabi, and Russian. 83.7 percent of these students are a Spanish speaker, which indicates that Spanish speakers constitute the majority of non-English speakers in California.
One of the benefits of Mainstream English language development (MELD) is that it provides an equal opportunity of native speakers as well as bilingual students to accomplish academic success and to facilitate academic support in order to assist the students to meet or exceed grade level California contents standard. The English Mainstream classes teach in English but provide scaffolded support for language acquisition. These programs can be challenging for the teachers as well as the students if appropriate tools and methods are not being used to facilitate students’ language acquisition and skills development. Teachers are required to have enough knowledge and training as well as support from the school and the parents to help the student improve their English language skills.

Purpose
The purpose of this research is not to measure whether Mainstream English language development (ME...

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...sh speakers (Hispanics) haven’t had equal opportunities compare to white Americas, which ultimately lack of access to equal opportunities has led them to stay at the lower class level from socioeconomic perspective. As Bourdieu (1987) said, people look up to their parents and follow their career path. However, the lower class values education and believes that it can provide a better future for them, but the lack of social capital devaluates their education. As Bourdieu (1987) mentioned people who have more economic capital have used the educational system to their own benefit in order to reproduce social capital. As we can see the lack of economic capital has a huge negative impact on the lower class and increases the gap between social classes. This is the result of inequitable distribution of the resources in the society, which causes inequality and segregation.

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