50 Strategies For Teaching English Language Learners 5th Edition Pdf
Magnhild Lachowicz
The group emphasized that the strategies listed here, which include both big-picture mindsets and nitty-gritty teaching tactics, can be incorporated into all classrooms, benefiting both native English speakers and ELLs.
No surprise here. A successful classroom, our educators agreed, is one in which students feel known, appreciated, and comfortable taking emotional and intellectual risks. That requires intentional planning and consistent messaging by the teacher.
All kids learn better when they engage with material in multiple ways: Lessons that involve writing, speaking, drawing, and listening, for example, give students four opportunities to deepen their understanding of the work. For ELLs, those additional engagements also provide a little breathing room so they can work through the language barrier.
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According to the National Education Association, ELL students will make up about 25 percent of the children in American classrooms by 2025. Teachers are tasked with helping these students develop English proficiency and meet the grade-level content requirements, in addition to all their other duties. Thankfully, there are many practical strategies for teaching English language learners that benefit the entire class.
To help you enhance your lessons, we created this guide based on a recent webinar presented by Dr. Nicole Schneider, associate professor at UMass Global. Keep reading to learn how to tailor instruction and ensure accessibility for English as a Second Language (ESL) scholars.
ESL and ESOL classes are designed to develop language and comprehension skills for non-native English speakers. In practice, this is very different from teaching students who grew up hearing and communicating English from the moment they were born.
Reading, writing and vocabulary exercises are essential building blocks for developing language fluency, but it is only part of what is needed. Students who appear fully fluent in English may nonetheless struggle to express themselves effectively in academic settings, as they lack the words and phrases needed to connect their ideas and discuss them with others.
This extra help could come in the form of semi-structured small group discussions, adding visuals to a lesson, having students keep a journal and providing instruction in their native language, when possible.
Numerous studies show that students perform better when their home culture and background knowledge are incorporated into the academic environment. When children and their families are represented and respected in the classroom, they are much more likely to be engaged and successful.
Allowing students to express themselves in a safe environment and learn from one another is also a wonderful social-emotional learning opportunity that benefits the entire class, especially students of color.
English language learners learn both through the language they encounter (input) and the language they produce (output). Students should also be given ample opportunities to produce language, and they should receive direct feedback to increase their comprehension and improve their language skills.
Dr. Schneider remarks that the increased use of digital technology in education has opened up many additional opportunities for teachers to supplement lesson plans. Strategies for increasing comprehensible input include:
In order for students to deepen their understanding, and clarify and negotiate for meaning, they must talk about what they are learning. Strategies for increasing language output include:
When teaching English language learners, keep in mind that vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation develop faster when there are opportunities for interaction in the classroom using the language being learned. But many new teachers make the mistake of simply presenting a lesson and then pairing students up to discuss without providing guidance, as was the case for Dr. Schneider.
Teachers should also provide ample opportunities for more structured classroom interactions with a clear purpose and goal. There are hundreds of activities to consider, but here are a few ideas to get you started:
Higher-order thinking skills (HOTS) are essentially critical-thinking abilities that go beyond rote memorization, concept formation and reading comprehension. Mastering HOTS is the ultimate goal of the learning process, as these competencies are needed to become an independent and creative thinker.
As an educator, you work hard to make sure everyone in your class has what they need to learn and thrive. Implementing some of these innovative strategies for teaching English language learners is a great way to make content accessible for all students, regardless of language ability.
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Keep also in mind that these strategies can be adapted and combined in various ways to suit different learners, contexts, and educational goals. The most effective language teaching approach is often a mix of several strategies tailored to the needs of individual learners.
This approach is probably now the most popular teaching model for English language teaching globally. In part because it aims to put students in a variety of real-life situations, so that they can learn how to use their language skills to communicate in the real world. Educators therefore tend to focus on fluency of communication rather than accuracy and lessons are more hands-on than theoretical.
Interactive and relevant classroom activities characterise this approach along with the use of authentic source materials. Teachers are encouraged to provide the students with as much opportunity to give and receive meaningful communication as possible. The use of personal experience is also common in CLT classrooms.
Cooperative Language Learning or CLL forms part of a wider teaching approach known as Collaborative or Community Language Learning (CLL). CLL seeks to make the maximum use of cooperative activities involving pairs and small groups of learners in the classroom. As such, it is a student-centered, rather than a teacher-centered, approach to language teaching.
When using the Direct Method of language teaching, all teaching happens in the target language, forcing the learner to think and speak in that language. The learner does not use their native language in the classroom at all!
As a result, students work out key grammar concepts by practicing the language and by building up their exposure to it. Standard classroom techniques for this approach include Q+As, conversation, reading aloud, writing and student self-correction.
The approach favours accuracy over fluency and tends to favour the development of reading and writing skills instead of communicative or speaking skills. The downside of this approach is that it does not prepare students with spontaneous communication skills. Classroom activities therefore usually include grammar drills, vocab tests and encouraging students to incorporate new grammar concepts in standardised writing tasks.
Audiolingualism was developed in response to some of the problems associated with Grammar-Translation. As a result, classes are usually held in the target language as this approach deliberately seeks to prioritise speaking and listening skills.
Total Physical Response or TPR is a way of language teaching in which the teacher presents language objects as instructions and the students have to do exactly what the teacher tells them. Students might therefore be asked to sit down, stand up, point to the clock or walk to the front of the class.
As students improve, such instructions can become more detailed including additional elements for language comprehension, including adverbs (e.g. talk quickly), adjectives (e.g put on your red jumper) and prepositions (e.g stand in front of the teacher).
Evidently, the Silent Way uses silence as a teaching tool. It encourages students to be more independent and to discover the target language for themselves. Teachers need to employ the widest possible range of gestures and facial expressions to communicate. Props might also be useful and of course, make sure that you explain the whole process to the class first!
Adherents of this approach characterise it as recognising and highlighting the difference between learning and acquiring a language. For them, learning a language requires structure, textbooks, resources and memorising grammar rules or vocabulary lists. Whereas acquiring a language only needs teachers to create an environment which immerses students in the repetition, correction and recall of their target language.
Primarily intended to be used with beginner learners, teachers emphasize interesting, comprehensible input (CI) and create low-anxiety situations. As such, lessons delivered using the natural approach focus on understanding messages in the foreign language, and place little or no importance on error correction, drilling or on conscious learning of grammar rules.
While the core principles of effective language teaching apply to teaching any modern language, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Arabic or Mandarin, there may be some differences in emphasis or approach depending on the specific language being taught. However, these differences are generally minor, and the most effective teaching methods can be adapted to suit any language.
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