Help! They Don't Speak English and They Can't Read!

By Suzanne Irujo, ELL Outlook™ Staff Writer

One of the most difficult issues I have ever had to deal with in my career as a bilingual/ESL teacher, administrator, and teacher educator was what to do with the children of a Cambodian refugee family who arrived in the upscale suburban school district where I was director of the ESL program. There were 5 children, ages 8 to 15, who spoke no English and had never been in school before. Most of the students in the ESL program were either Chinese immigrants or children of visiting professors at nearby universities, all of whom had excellent academic skills and some knowledge of English before they arrived, and all of whom did quite well in our traditional pull-out program. But I knew the program could not meet the needs of these refugee children, especially the older ones.

I was prepared to fight with the administration for extra money for tutors for the children, and I was prepared to spend extra time with their classroom teachers providing resources, working with the children myself if necessary. What I wasn't prepared for was the fight I had to put up to keep them out of classrooms for children much younger than they were and out of self-contained language development classrooms that were part of the special education program. It was obvious to me that these children needed large amounts of meaningful interaction with other children their own ages whose language was at an age-appropriate level of development; how could the administration not understand that?

Newcomer Centers

The placement of recently arrived older children who speak no English has always been an issue in ESL programs, especially when the children have had no formal schooling or their previous schooling has been limited or interrupted. School districts that have large numbers of these students often create Newcomer Centers, where the program focuses on creating a nurturing environment, developing initial literacy, and integrating language and content. (See the November/December 2004 issue of The ELL Outlook™ for a description of Phoenix Academy, a newcomer program in Georgia: 2004/nov_dec/ELLOutlookITIArticle4.htm) These programs may be within a school or at a separate site, full-day or half-day, short-term or long-term, and bilingual or English-only (Genesee, 1999).

Extensive information on newcomer programs is available from the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), including conference proceeding and results of studies on the characteristics of these programs (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2003a; Short & Boyson, 2003). CAL also maintains a database of these programs (Center for Applied Linguistics, 2003b).

Low-Incidence Programs

But what of my Cambodian students, who were the only newcomers in the school system and the only non-literate students in the ESL program? There are many districts around the country where the number of newcomer students is so low that Newcomer Centers are not possible. Many of these students are placed into mainstream classrooms for the greater part of the day. ESL support is usually provided to varying degrees, and sometimes the classroom teachers are trained in ways to adapt materials and make instruction more comprehensible. These modifications might be sufficient for some newcomers in the lower grades, but they are woefully inadequate for middle and high school students with limited formal schooling. These students have to learn how to speak, understand, read, and write English as quickly as possible. Until they have achieved some proficiency in these areas, there is very little their teachers can do to make the curriculum accessible to them. The time they spend sitting in a class where they can't benefit from anything that's going on is wasted time. And time is one thing these students have very little of. Those who come to the United States as freshmen in high school have to do the equivalent of 13 years of schooling in four years. It's a formidable task-one that can only be accomplished through providing optimal services at every stage of the students' development of language, literacy, and academic skills, and through immense amounts of tremendously hard work on the part of the students and of those who work with them.

An "Ideal" Program for Newcomers

Ideally, older newcomer students with limited prior schooling would receive support in these four areas:

• Intensive English language development to help students learn English to communicate in social settings, achieve academically in all content areas, and use English in socially and culturally appropriate ways. These three goals from the national ESL Standards (TESOL, 1997) can be facilitated by direct instruction in the vocabulary and structures needed for both social and academic language and by opportunities for meaningful interaction with native speakers of English in varied contexts.
• Intensive instruction in beginning reading and writing, preferably in the native language. It is a tremendously difficult task to learn to read for the first time in a language in which the sounds are impossible to perceive, the words are meaningless combinations of sounds, and the sentences have no recognizable structure. Since literacy must be developed as quickly as possible, native language instruction during the time that basic oral language is being learned can be a shortcut to proficient reading and writing in English (Krashen, 1991). When this is not possible, as was the case with my Cambodian students, literacy instruction must be in English but should be closely coordinated with the oral English that students are learning.
• Instruction in the content areas to catch up on everything their peers have already learned. Pre-assessment of existing knowledge in each content area, done in the native language, is absolutely essential in order to establish a starting point for instruction. At beginning stages, the most efficient way to provide this instruction is orally in the native language. As oral English skills and literacy skills in both languages develop, instruction can be provided in oral and written form in both languages (Krashen, 1991).
• An accepting environment in which students feel that they "fit in" and can achieve success and in which they can learn the basics of classroom behavior and school culture. Without this, students often feel uncomfortable and strange in a school environment and are at risk of dropping out (Alcala, 2000).

Given these needs, what would an optimal program for these students look like? Here is one possibility:

• Approximately one-third of a student's day would be spent in ESL instruction, learning both social and academic language through meaningful, interactive activities; once some oral proficiency has developed, literacy in English and sheltered content instruction would also be included.
• Approximately one-third of the day would be spent in native language instruction, learning beginning reading and writing skills and bringing content-area knowledge up to grade level.
• Approximately one-third of the day would be spent integrated with native English speakers in classes (e.g., physical education, art, vocational classes) and other activities (e.g., sports, music) that are not dependent on proficiency in English for success. In all cases-ESL, native language, and integrated classes-ELLs must be placed in classes with same-age peers. It is never appropriate to place ELLs in classes with younger students just because they have low language and literacy levels; nor is it ever appropriate to place them in special education classes. As students' English language proficiency improves and their English literacy develops, they would gradually be integrated into other mainstream classes. The sequence of subjects for this gradual mainstreaming would depend on each student's academic background in the subject, the degree to which the content of the class is language dependent, and the way in which the class is taught.

The Realities of Newcomer Programs in Low-Incidence Settings

The reality, however, is that there is virtually no possibility that any student will receive this kind of a program in a school district that does not have large numbers of ELLs. Native language reading materials in many languages that are appropriate for adolescents? Teachers in many languages who can catch students up to their grade levels in math, science, and social studies? ESL teachers who can teach all these subjects through sheltered instruction? Even if these resources could be found, very few school systems have the financial resources to pay for them.

This lack of resources, however, cannot be used as an excuse to place ELLs with limited formal schooling into mainstream classes with limited ESL support and hope that the mainstream teachers will somehow be able to figure out what to do with them. Any program must be based on the needs of the students, not the convenience of the school. By carefully assessing students' needs, determining the optimal program to meet those needs, and comparing that with available resources, schools can figure out ways to use their resources in more effective ways. This may mean reorganizing ESL teachers' schedules, recruiting native language tutors, providing training in ESL techniques for mainstream teachers, or other solutions. It surely does not mean placing a student who knows no English and can't read or write in any language into a mainstream middle or high school class with little or no support.

References

Dr. Irujo would be happy to answer questions about the use of differentiated instruction in specific contexts, or any other questions related to the education of ELLs. Please send questions for her to: alex@coursecrafters.com.