Ways to Maintain ELLs’ Cultural Diversity in Education - Taking Three New York Elementary Schools as Examples

English as a second language (ESL) education refers to teaching non-native English speakers English as a second language. The number of English language learners (ELLs) is increasing in the United States in recent decades because of globalization, including immigrants, international students, merchants, refugees, etc. One of ELLs’ main characters is their various cultural backgrounds. Teaching and maintaining a diverse class within a safe learning environment can benefit students both now and in the future. In this case, understanding ELLs’ diverse cultures and knowing how to maintain ELLs’ cultural diversity is a significant consideration in American ESL education nowadays. This study reviews the cultural diversity in American ESL education by analyzing three New York elementary schools. The author summarizes some critical ways to maintain ELLs’ cultural diversity from four aspects: (1) the background of American ESL education and cultural diversity; (2) cultural diversity in school; (3) cultural diversity in family; (4) cultural diversity in communities. Finally, the study indicates the significance of connections among schools, families, and communities and identifies some difficulties when maintaining cultural diversity in education.

The Effectiveness of Visual Mind Mapping Strategy for Improving English Language Learners' Critical Thinking Skills and Reading Ability

<p style="text-align: justify;">This study investigated the effectiveness of visual mind mapping as a reading strategy for improving English language learners' critical thinking skills. Students from two general English courses were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. California Critical Thinking Test was used to assess participants' critical thinking skills. The findings revealed a statistically significant difference at (p < .005) in the mean scores of the experiment and control groups in the post-test due to visual mind mapping strategy in favor of the experimental group with a positive and significant impact on participants' critical thinking skills. The findings also showed that the experimental group’s scores were significantly improved in all indicators of critical thinking. The study results showed that visual mind mapping strategy affected the increased of critical thinking skills and reading comprehension ability. The study's findings revealed that using a visual mind mapping strategy had a significant improvement impact on English language learners critical thinking skills and reading ability.</p>

DEVELOPMENT OF VERBAL CREATIVITY BY BILINGUAL AND ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNERS IN KINDERGARTEN TO 8TH GRADE SCHOOLS

Bilingualism has long been within the scope of creativity studies that investigate creativity and problem solving. This study aims to explore the possible effect of bilingualism on the verbal creativity of English language learners. Participants from a bilingual and an English as foreign language teaching program within the same school were selected as an experimental and a control group respectively to compare verbal creativity. A series of creative English writing tasks designed by the authors were assigned to a total of 86 third grade (aged 7–8) students. Both the English as foreign language group (N = 42) and the bilingual group (N = 44) were subject to assessment and evaluation in terms of verbal creativity. The two cohorts completed the same creative writing tasks that were then assessed by a board of five English teachers from the same school who were trained by the authors to assess verbal creativity using a Student Product Assessment Form. An independent samples Student’s t-test was conducted and descriptive statistics of both cohorts for 9 of the assessment form were analyzed. The results showed that the students on the bilingual program outperformed those on the English as foreign language program in terms of verbal creativity. The study offers implications for English language teaching in primary schools with reference to developing creative verbal language skills at early ages.

Closing the Achievement Gap in the Classroom Through Culturally Relevant Pedagogy

It has been shown that Culturally Relevant Pedagogy is beneficial in schools with a wide range of populations because of its emphasis on academic achievement for all students, cultural competency, and social justice issues. This study focused on teachers&rsquo; perceptions about how to use a Culturally Relevant Pedagogy model in the classroom. Interviews with 20 in-service teachers across eight states revealed the following themes: (a) teachers&rsquo; ideas about Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and the classroom environment, and (b) school and district support on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and social community, resources, and teachers&rsquo; training to understand Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. This paper explores themes to reveal how in-service teachers perceived their preparedness to teach using CRP strategies in the classroom. In order to close the achievement gap, a paradigm change is required. It is necessary to employ CRP strategies to create this change and integrate students&rsquo; everyday life with classroom learning objectives so that achievement disparity in classrooms may be reduced. English Language Learners (ELLs), students with low socio-economic status, and racial/ethnic minorities were the focus of this study.

Assessing English language sentences readability using machine learning models

Readability is an active field of research in the late nineteenth century and vigorously persuaded to date. The recent boom in data-driven machine learning has created a viable path forward for readability classification and ranking. The evaluation of text readability is a time-honoured issue with even more relevance in today’s information-rich world. This paper addresses the task of readability assessment for the English language. Given the input sentences, the objective is to predict its level of readability, which corresponds to the level of literacy anticipated from the target readers. This readability aspect plays a crucial role in drafting and comprehending processes of English language learning. Selecting and presenting a suitable collection of sentences for English Language Learners may play a vital role in enhancing their learning curve. In this research, we have used 30,000 English sentences for experimentation. Additionally, they have been annotated into seven different readability levels using Flesch Kincaid. Later, various experiments were conducted using five Machine Learning algorithms, i.e., KNN, SVM, LR, NB, and ANN. The classification models render excellent and stable results. The ANN model obtained an F-score of 0.95% on the test set. The developed model may be used in education setup for tasks such as language learning, assessing the reading and writing abilities of a learner.

Unraveling Contradictions: Which Glosses Facilitate Reading Comprehension Among ELLs, and Why?

This critical literature review provides study details for 36 studies examining the effect of glossing for language acquisition among English language learners (ELLs). Useful tables include specificity of participants, gloss types, target vocabulary items and text information about all studies. An analysis of these studies reveals that glossing is an effective means to enhance reading comprehension among ELLs. However, gloss language—whether L1 or English, may depend on learner factors. Other findings include the importance of proximity of gloss to text and the need for glosses that do not require readers to leave the text to access meaning. Considerations such as text genre, text length, targeted items for glossing, number of items to gloss, and gloss presentation are also examined and discussed, including which gloss types may result in trade-offs when glossing is used as a means to promote incidental vocabulary acquisition through independent reading. Several recommendations for further research are offered.

Review of Literature on Teaching English Vocabularies Through Games to Young Language Learners

In the last two decades, learning English has become a popular activity in Iran (Sadeghi & Richards, 2015). There has been a remarkable increase in the number of private language schools in the country. In Iran, interest in English has risen due to the status of the language as a lingua franca and its necessity for technical, scientific, and economic developments. Meanwhile, vocabulary is deemed as one of the most crucial aspects of learning a language. Currently, vocabularies are taught through traditional methods; therefore, young learners lose their interest over time. This paper aims to substantiate that games are profoundly effective in teaching vocabularies and affect young learners’ motivation and engagement with the language. This paper presents a review of literature on teaching English vocabularies through games to young English language learners in Iran. It discusses the practical instructions of games and how games could be taught more effectively. It describes the suitability and implication of games and how they should be selected and implemented by teachers. Three games are introduced for teaching vocabularies and followed by a discussion on the inherent challenges of teaching vocabularies through games.

Physical Educators Teachers Perceptions when Teaching English Language Learners (ELL)

The purpose of this study was to explore how physical educators from the state of New York accommodate English Language Learners (ELL) in their Physical Education (PE) classes. Furthermore, to find out how many teachers have a background in foreign languages and the strategies they use to teach these students. A content-validated open-ended questionnaire was used to collect the data. A total of 53 PE teachers completed the questionnaire. Results from this study indicated that the majority (73%) do not know a second language other than English. They also expressed the need for teacher preparation programs to provide more information on effective strategies on how to teach ELL students. Data analysis uncovered two recurrent themes: (a) lack of knowledge on a second language, and (b) the lack of knowledge of effective teaching strategies. Professional development opportunities and clear guidelines on how to teach ELL students need to be provided to PE teachers.

The Integration of Popular Culture in K-12 and Higher Education English Language Curricula

In this chapter, the authors present the approaches and benefits of integrating popular culture into the English language learning classroom. They provide background information on classroom use of technology and popular culture as well as student demographics. This chapter addresses counterarguments against the inclusion of popular culture for literacy development and explains why the advantages outweigh the concerns. Also discussing the teaching approaches that are supported by the incorporation of popular culture, the authors provide reasons and examples of effective curricula, including lessons, materials, and topics. The authors base their argument on research as well as personal experience to claim that the incorporation of popular culture will support linguistically and culturally responsive teaching approaches and will promote student engagement, connections, and motivation in ways that support learning for English language learners in both K-12 and higher education settings.

The Role of Educator Preparation Programs in Fostering Partnerships With Schools in Supporting English Language Learners, Immigrant Families, and Special Education

Teacher educator preparation programs play a central role in preparing teachers and practitioners who work with children with exceptionalities, immigrants, and English language learners (ELL), among others. Research indicates that immigrants, ELL, and children with exceptionalities benefit from effective family-professional partnerships in several ways. Family-professional relationships are also key in producing positive educational outcomes for vulnerable and children who are at-risk. The following layers of partnerships and relationships are discussed: university-based educator preparation programs (EPPs) and K-12 schools; immigrant families and K-12 schools; and teachers/caregivers in K-12 schools and immigrant children/ELL, including children with exceptionalities. The benefits of positive partnerships and relationships are discussed. These include positive educational outcomes for children and their families, positive outcomes for children's school readiness, enhanced quality of life for families and their children, family engagement in children's programs, strengthening of home-school program connection, and trust-building for all stakeholders.