English Language Learners

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For English Language Learners, the ability to read at or above grade level is one of the biggest metrics of success in their education. However, many of these students lack the level of formal education that other students may have and they continue to lose time as they move through the immigration process, which can take years. That problem, combined with all of the struggles surrounding language acquisition, makes it difficult for most ELL students to exceed past a middle school reading level. This problem is made worse by Arizona’s lack of consistency in ELL placement. Arizona places ELLs into one of four categories – Pre-Emergent, Emergent, Basic or Intermediate – based on their scores on the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment. …show more content…

It was explained to me that many of these students will be close to reading at grade level and are the highest level of students in terms of reading ability at the school. In spite of that, scores from the same classes in previous years showed that almost no students were reading at grade level, and many of the students in class were reading several grade levels below the area they were expected to be. Further, I looked at scores from a Scholastic Reading Inventory test from previous classes and saw some students reading at as low as 100-200 Lexile level - which is approximately 1st to 2nd grade level - and others reading as 600-800 level - approximately 6th to 8th grade level (“Lexile-to-Grade-Correspondence”) who were all labelled “Intermediate” and were working together on similar material in the same class. The results showed that many students, especially students that originally tested at a 500 Lexile score or lower, showed little to no improvement and in many cases even regressed, scoring lower on an end-of-the-year reading test than they did at the beginning of the year. Even more astounding is that many students who achieved higher Lexile scores than students who passed that year’s AZELLA were unable to pass the AZELLA, causing me to question the accuracy of the test in determining a student’s reading …show more content…

That contradicts many prominent language acquisition theories, including Vygotsky’s social interactionist theory, which say that language learning is most effective when it involves cooperative learning so that students may “grow into the intellectual life of those around them.” (Vygotsky 1978, p. 81) Grouping students by level gives them an opportunity to work with people who may not be the people who they would have otherwise chose to work with, as well. This could have the added benefit of helping them build more language skills - as the pairs often do not speak the same L1 Language - which would further increase reading comprehension and thereby further increase the grade level at which they can comfortably read. Finally, since their only English/Language Arts instruction comes in sheltered ELL classrooms, it only seems appropriate to give them cooperative learning opportunities, as they may be expected to do these in their other classes, and therefore could benefit from the extra practice – as they would likely be doing similar discussion in a mainstream English

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