Not Enough Time? Teaching For Transfer, Integreation And Time On Task

By Dr. Suzanne Irujo, ELL Outlook™ Contributing Writer

The January/February 2005 issue of the ELL Outlook included an article reporting on a study done at the Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning (The Center), and the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute (UC LMRI) (Gándara, Maxwell-Jolly, & Driscoll, 2005). The researchers used interviews with over 5,000 California teachers of ELLs to identify nine "teacher challenges" that prevent teachers of ELLs from being as effective as they might be. The study concluded with five recommendations for improving the effectiveness of teachers of ELLs in California:

1. "Convene a statewide summit to address the issues raised by teachers."
2. "Develop a clearinghouse of existing materials and resources to aid teachers of English learners."
3. "Develop a package of school and district EL program/resource evaluation tools."
4. "Give professional development for working with EL students a higher priority."
5. "Develop, seek resources for, and begin to implement a well-planned and rigorous research agenda" (Gándara, Maxwell-Jolly, & Driscoll, et al., 2005, pp. 19-20).

Implementation of these recommendations would do a great deal to improve the education of ELLs in California. But that won't help the many teachers of ELLs in other states who face the same issues, nor will it help California teachers while they wait for policy makers and administrators to implement the report's recommendations. As so often happens, teachers will have to try to find solutions to these issues themselves.

There is a lot that teachers can do. To use a tired but appropriate cliché, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. While waiting for policy makers and administrators to provide what is needed, teachers can try to turn those problematic lemons into something useful. At the same time, however, they should not give up fighting for oranges instead of lemons.

Teaching for Transfer

When I began my career as an elementary bilingual teacher, I had a degree in Spanish and secondary education and recent experience student teaching in a high school foreign language classroom, but no idea about what elementary school teachers did with the same students all day long. Shortly after I began teaching, I was given a sheet of paper that listed how much time I was supposed to spend on each subject. I immediately set out to arrange a schedule . . .

. . . and was immediately beset by problems. I taught a combined third- and fourth-grade classroom, but I knew it would be foolish to try to schedule separate math and reading times for each grade level. The students were all at different proficiency levels anyway. A tougher problem was how to ensure that all my students were physically present for instruction in all subjects when they were being pulled out in twos and threes continually during the day so they could be integrated with native English speakers for music, art, and gym classes. It took me several years to solve that one, and when I did, it was by creating a programmatic solution that I could present to the administration.

The biggest problem I had to cope with was finding time to teach the "extra" subjects in my schedule: Spanish reading, Spanish language arts, and English language development. My solution to the problem of having to teach reading and language arts in two languages was to spend half of the allotted reading/language arts time in each language, and to hope that what I was teaching in Spanish would transfer to English.

Of course, research has since shown that this is exactly what happens. The ability to read and write does not have to be re-taught when students do it in a different language. August (2002) has summarized some of the ways in which native language reading and writing skills transfer to English. They include phonological awareness, word recognition, knowledge of cognates, comprehension skills and strategies, and sophisticated writing skills.

Teachers whose students (whether in bilingual or all-English programs) are already literate in their native language can save hours of reading and language arts teaching time each week by using teaching strategies that maximize positive transfer from the native language These teachers need to know enough of their students' native language so they can facilitate the transfer of reading skills by building on similarities between the two languages, calling students' attention to differences, and modeling how skills and strategies learned in one language can be used in the other. Specific strategies for doing this can be found among the "Mora Modules" created by San Diego State University professor Jill Mora (for example, Mora, 2001, 2002).

Integration

As I struggled with scheduling that first year, the hardest thing was to find time for English language development, especially for the beginners in the class. Having my classroom assistant do ELD with them while I was teaching English reading was not satisfactory. They needed more time for English instruction, and it had to be more meaningful than what a paraprofessional was able to do from a textbook. One day as I was teaching science (in English because the materials I had were in English), I realized that my students knew more of the vocabulary and structures that they were learning during science lessons than they did of the vocabulary and structures they were being taught from the ESL textbook. I suddenly realized that this was the solution to finding time for ELD–I could teach it by combining it with something else.

At that time, my "self-discovered" content-based language learning made sense to me just because I could teach both science and language development at the same time. Years later I found out that the reasons for combining content learning with language development went beyond just trying to find time to teach everything. Krashen's theory of language acquisition suggests that the use of meaningful content will facilitate language acquisition, and Cummins' theory of language proficiency suggests that cognitively demanding content will facilitate the acquisition of academic language proficiency (Crandall, 1994).

Of course, effective integration of academic content and ELD is more than just paying attention to language during a content class or using content to add meaning to a language class. The ELD curriculum has to be integrated with the content curriculum in a meaningful way, with standards-related language and content objectives developed for each class period. Teachers of ELLs need to learn to use sheltered instruction techniques, which combine language and content instruction and help make instruction comprehensible. Publishers could make ELL teachers' lives much easier by publishing materials that incorporate principles and techniques of sheltered instruction. (Future articles in this series will address the issues of inadequate preparation and professional development for teachers of ELLs and lack of appropriate materials.)

Time on Task

Teaching for transfer and integrating language and content won't solve all the time problems that teachers of ELLs encounter. For those teaching in all-English programs, the fact remains that teaching content in English to ELLs takes more time than teaching the same content to native speakers. Bilingual programs ease the time problem by teaching content in the native language, but political pressures and the English testing requirements of No Child Left Behind often push ELLs into all-English instruction before they are ready.

We could do a lot to help ease the time crunch by ensuring that students are engaged in productive activities during the entire school day. When I started teaching, my students spent a good part of the day doing unproductive activities or doing nothing, and I found the same thing happening years later when I did an observational study of a second-grade bilingual classroom (Irujo, 1998, pp. 14-20). Almost all teachers can create extra time in their schedules by cutting down on the time spent on clerical tasks such as attendance, announcements, or collecting and passing out papers. Effective classroom management techniques can eliminate excess time spent on disciplining students. Instructional time can be made more efficient through flexible grouping arrangements that change according to tasks and student needs. Student attention can be increased through relevant, motivational tasks that are challenging yet achievable.

Conclusion

None of these suggestions will solve problems such as the sixth-grade student with no previous schooling who is expected to take grade-appropriate achievement tests in English after one year here, or the tenth-grade student with no previous English who can't pass the required high school graduation test in English. Accountability requirements need to take into consideration what is known about how long it takes ELLs to achieve academic parity with native speakers of English (Thomas & Collier, 1997, 2002; Hakuta, Butler, & Witt, 2000). However, attention to student time on task can help teachers of ELLs find more time in their schedules and thus teach more effectively.

I'm sure that one response to my musings will be something like, "That's easier said than done," and I'm aware of that. So I hope that readers will respond to my suggestions with thoughts of their own. Readers of this newsletter bring many differing perspectives to the issues involved in educating ELLs, and sharing those perspectives would be beneficial to all. Please e-mail me at sirujo@coursecrafters.com and I'll share your responses in the next issue.

References

August, D. (2002). Literacy for English-language learners: Four key issues. Paper presented at the U.S. 
          Department of Education's First Annual Summit on English Language Acquisition, Washington, D.C. 

Crandall, J. (1994). Content-centered language learning. CAL Digest. Washington, DC: Center for 
          Applied Linguistics.

Gándara, P., Maxwell-Jolly, J., & Driscoll, A. (2005). Listening to teachers of English language learners: A survey
          of California teachers' challenges, experiences, and professional development needs. Sacramento, CA: 
          The Regents of the University of California.

Hakuta, K., Butler, Y. G., & Witt, D. (2000). How long does it take English learners to attain proficiency? 
          http://www.stanford.edu/~hakuta/Docs/HowLong.pdf

Irujo, S. (1998). Teaching bilingual children: Beliefs and behaviors. Boston: Heinle and Heinle.

Mora, J. K. (2001, 2002). Maximizing cross-linguistic transfer in biliteracy and ELD instruction. 
          http://coe.sdsu.edu/people/jmora/MoraModules/BiliteracyRoadMap.htm

Thomas, W.P., & Collier, V.P. (1997). School effectiveness for language minority students. 
          http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/resource/effectiveness/

Thomas, W. P., & Collier, V.P. (2002). A national study of school effectiveness for language minority students' 
          long-term academic achievement. 
		  http://www.crede.org/research/llaa/1.1es.html

If you have any comments about this article or questions for for the author, please send them to: alex@coursecrafters.com.