Giving ELLs Academic Support

Giving ELLs the academic support they need to be successful is critical if the educational system in the US is going to help English language learners to become literate in English, not to mention fluent, according to a 2013 American Educator journal article.

In order to help them do this, it’s important to know what areas to focus on. For instance, second-language learners’ reading comprehension greatly improves when they read material with familiar content. The article says that what people are already familiar with and what they know influences new learning and the comprehension of what has been read. So according to this article, this is one way to improve their reading.

Another finding that illustrates the need to assist them in reading, for example, shows that though word-level abilities in literacy, like decoding, word recognition and spelling, may be taught well enough to allow ELLs to attain levels of performance equal to those of native English speakers, they are still greatly behind in the areas of writing and reading comprehension, says a 2006 journal article from the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL). Language-minority students rarely have the same levels of proficiency in text-level skills achieved by native English speakers, it says.

The 2003 journal article “Teaching Reading to Early Language Learners” from Educational Leadership shows how to begin to correct these areas of deficiency. It found that the awareness of individual speech sounds in one’s native language correlates with the awareness of individual speech sounds in a second language. This awareness can also predict reading and spelling development in both languages, even when the two languages are very different from one another.

As such, all of these articles indicate that their own native language can assist in overcoming these challenges. One specialized publishing company, Lectura Books, is helping ELLs to maintain their native language while keeping their unique cultural experiences alive through their bilingual books written in both Spanish and English. Through its parent programs, Lectura Books also involves parents in the school experience of their children which is also key in helping to increase literacy levels of ELLs.

These programs are provided by The Latino Family Literacy Project, a White House BRIGHT SPOT award-winner. In order to provide the programs to parents on the school site, it’s recommended that two staff members attend either a half-day workshop or a 1 ½ hour online webinar. If it’s not possible to attend an in-person workshop, a webinar is easy and effective, and attendees will be prepared to provide the step-by-step curriculum for the program level of their choice. For more information, please contact The Latino Family Literacy Project.