ENLIGHTENING PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS AND IMMIGRANT STUDENTS' SUCCESS IN THE U.S.: EVIDENCE FROM A HOLISTIC MODEL

Author(s):  
Deborah Romero ◽  
Aldo Romero de la Torre
Author(s):  
G. Sue Kasun ◽  
Cinthya M. Saavedra

Young immigrant youth often live their lives across borders, either by physically crossing them for return visits and/or by metaphorically crossing them through social media and cultural identification. The authors argue these students are better understood as transnational, shifting the focus for educators away from imagining their immigrant students on a straight, one-way path to assimilation in the U.S. to understanding these youths’ abilities to cross borders. Specifically, they call for a redesignation of English Language Learners (ELLs) as Transnational English Learners (TELs). Highlighting examples of educators’ successful border-crossing work, the authors call for educators to cross borders as well in their curriculum and relationships with transnational youth.


Author(s):  
Laila Aghai

This qualitative research study focuses on English language learners who are continuing their education in the U.S. high schools and examines their translanguaging in the classroom. When students are learning a second language, they use their linguistic repertoire and their knowledge in English and their native language for negotiation of meaning. In order to gain a better understanding of the students' translanguaging, one ESL teacher and 10 ESL students were interviewed and observed in a classroom. The ESL students spoke Arabic as their native language and had beginning to intermediate proficiency levels. The findings of the study showed that English language learners use various strategies to make the content comprehensible by making connections between their knowledge in their L1 and L2.


Author(s):  
Alejandra Sanmiguel-López

Research shows that children who speak a language other than English in Latinx and immigrant households make up a significant portion of schoolchildren in the United States and the process of developing and maintaining the heritage language (HL) is complex when that language is distinct from their classroom's language. This chapter explores the motivations parents have in maintaining the home language and the effect this has on Latinx and immigrant English language learners (ELLs) children. The motivations for preserving home language for Latinx and immigrant families are to maintain ties to Latinx cultural values and sustain cultural identity while also providing academic support for Latinx and immigrant ELLs students in the U.S. schools. Research on previous works of literature documents that through family language policy (FLP) practices and HL maintenance, Latinx and immigrant ELLs children can maintain and carry on their cultural values while simultaneously advancing academically in the U.S. schools.


2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleni Pappamihiel

In the United States and Canada, as in many other countries, it has become common for teachers not specifically trained in English as a second language (ESL) to have immigrant and minority language students in their classrooms. These students, who are generally learning English along with the culture of their new countries, present many challenges for their teachers, who are often not appropriately trained to meet their needs. Often teachers of mathematics, science, and other content-area courses feel less than prepared for these students and lack the skills needed to accommodate instruction to their unique needs. In addition, these same teachers often harbor attitudes and beliefs about immigrant students that are not conducive to the development of a safe learning environment and are difficult to alter. This article describes how a community-based service-learning project (CBSL) was used to begin to investigate the attitudes and beliefs of preservice content-area teachers toward English language learners (ELLs). In this study many participants exhibited some level of change in their attitudes about working with ELLs.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hebert ◽  
John Marc Goodrich ◽  
Jessica M. Namkung

The purpose of this survey study was to characterize the nature of remote instruction provided by elementary teachers across the U.S. during school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey included questions on demographics, questions that broadly focused on remote instruction (e.g., live meetings with students), questions focused on academic instruction (in reading, writing, and mathematics), and questions focused on the nature of remote instruction for students with disabilities and English language learners. The survey was distributed to a random sample of teachers across the U.S. Results indicated that although most teachers provided remote instruction, few teachers believed remote instruction was effective at promoting student learning. Moreover, teachers reported that only 60% of students were ready to advance to the next grade level when schools closed. Based on our results, we estimate that between 7.2 and 11.6 million students did not receive any live remote instruction during the shutdown.


Author(s):  
Khanh Nguyen Bui ◽  
Isabel L. Balsamo

During the last decade, the United States has witnessed an influx of multicultural and multilingual students, especially the dramatically increasing number of students at elementary level, which accounts for 85% of native born (). However, most of teachers still lack professional developments in teaching those increasing population. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to synthesize different studies to address the most common misconceptions on how elementary English language learners learn English as a second language and teachers' pedagogical practices. This chapter ends with some recommendations, solutions, and future directions for researchers to advance teachers' pedagogical practices, so they can best serve this increasing population in the U.S. school system.


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