English Language Teaching Strategies Used by Primary Teachers

[English Language Professors]

Many teachers in the United States are faced with the challenge of
teaching children to
read and write in English when the students have a heritage language
that is not English
and they are not yet proficient in English. Making this a more
critical issue, several
studies (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 2003;
Southeast Center for
Quality Teaching, 2003) suggest that teachers are not receiving
adequate professional
development in effective strategies to address the English learners'
literacy development.
Thompson (2004), in a recent Title I Communiqué Special Report that
reviewed the
current research related to quality literacy instruction for English
learners, concludes that
classroom teachers urgently need to know more about effective
strategies for teaching
English learners.
As part of the effort to learn more about quality instruction for
English learners,
educational researchers and teachers in the United States have looked
at instructional
practices in other countries. When those countries are faced with the
same challenge of
teaching children in English to learn to read and write in English,
there has been greatest
transfer of best practices (Clay, 1991; Holdaway, 1978; Frater &
Standiland, 1994).
Research and close observation of the teaching of reading has been
conducted in Australia
and New Zealand, and a smaller amount of study in England for the
obvious reason that
English is the language of instruction.
Literacy instruction in India has not received the same attention,
perhaps because
English is not the first language of the majority. There are studies
that compare and
contrast educational practices in India to those in the United States
with respect to the
goals that teachers have for student learning, the way teachers
approach the curriculum
and the textbook, the way knowledge is communicated to students, and
the way teachers
interact verbally with their students (Clark, 2001; Alexander, 2000).
There is however,
very little literature that reveals current methods and practice in
Indian primary
classrooms for the teaching of reading to children whose first
language is not English.
Interest and curiosity about reading instruction in India leading to
this research came
about as a result of observation and conversation with two graduate
assistants working in
a university department of Language Literacy and Culture. These very
capable and
well-educated young men, after graduating from college in New Delhi,
came to a southern
California university for master's degrees in Computer Science. They
both told of starting
kindergarten knowing almost no English, and immediately began to learn
to read and
write in English. While this experience was limited to observation and
interviews with
only two people, it stimulated a need to know if their experiences
were similar to others,
particularly, when it has become noticeable that young people
graduating from Indian
universities are being recruited to work in the United States. This is
most apparent in the
field of technology.[1] Responding to demand for Indian technology
workers, the United
States Senate increased the quota of visas for skilled workers from
115,000 to 195,000 in
2000 (Alarcon, 1999; Saxenian, 2000). Even though obtaining a US visa
has become
increasingly difficult, Indians still receive nearly 45 percent of
visas each year.
Furthermore, Indian students are increasingly in demand at
universities in the United
States (Creehan, 2001).