subject: Assisting Esl Pupils To Understand To Examine English [print this page] There's an ever-increasing level of English language learners represented in our schools for whom a distinctive approach to developing literacy is necessary. The development of literacy by English language learners (ELLs) contains all of the challenges implicit for English talking children literacy attainments, and is also compounded by a diversity of linguistic, cognitive and educational factors.
In general, the following are critical variables that want to be qualified in successful reading instruction:
Phonemic consciousness, phonics, vocabulary growth, reading fluency, including oral reading abilities, and reading comprehension strategies. The National Research Council's Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children recently completed the most respected, comprehensive assessment of the study on typical reading development and education and on preventing reading problems in young children1. This study noted numerous important conclusions about training English reading to language-minority children. These include:
English-speaking children making initial attempts at reading understand, when they are successful, these products of their efforts they examine words they know and phrases they understand, and...can self-correct effectively. Non-English speakers have a more limited basis for knowing whether their reading is right since the important meaning-making process is short circuited by insufficient language knowledge.
Giving a daughter or son initial reading instruction in a language that he or she does not yet speak may undermine the child's opportunity to see literacy as an effective kind of communication by knocking the service of meaning from underneath the process of learning.
It was recommended that "initial literacy instruction in a child's native language whenever possible" and recommended that "literacy instruction should not be presented in any language before some reasonable amount of oral proficiency in that language has been attained."
On the issue of which language to use when teaching English language learners to read, the committee proposed the following guidelines:
If language minority children reach school with no proficiency in English but speaking a language which is why you can find instructional guides, learning materials, and locally available adept teachers, then these children must be taught how to read in their native language while acquiring proficiency in spoken English, and then subsequently taught to expand their abilities to reading in English.
When these 2nd language children arrive at a brooklyn English school with no proficiency in English but speak language for which the above conditions cannot be met and for which there are insufficient numbers of children to justify the development of the neighborhood to meet such conditions, the educational goal must be to build the children's proficiency in spoken English. While print materials works extremely well to produce knowledge of syntax, and English speech sounds, vocabulary, the postponement of formal reading instruction is acceptable until a sufficient degree of proficiency in spoken English has been achieved. In other words, the instructional concern need to be to produce spoken common English prior to trying to facilitate reading in English.
