Judging+teacher+effectiveness+in+ESL


 * Research Question:** How can we judge the effectiveness of teachers who deal with ESL students?
 * Author: Melissa Abbate**

=__Journal Article__=

Cross, R. (2011, August). Troubling literacy: monolingual assumptions, multilingual contexts, and language teacher expertise. //Teachers & Teaching,// //17//(4), 467-478.


 * Summary:** The No Child Left Behind act has the assumption that in order to pass, a child must be literate. However, this article discusses the questions of: What are the terms of literacy? Monolingually or bilingually? For many students, they may be literate in their native tongue that isn't English, and therefore they are not considered literate. The article poses questions such as: How fair is this particular target when the United States does not officially have English as its official language? Also, Cross discusses the problem of teaching literacy with teachers who have and do not have degrees certified in bilingual education, and how ESL degrees are becoming more mainstream.


 * Reaction:** Being that this article is up to date in the education world, it was one of the more important articles I had to read. However, it had a concentration on Australian and United Kingdom children. While not prevalent to my topic, I found it interesting how similar America's situation is to them. Cross made the point that literacy and fluency in a language is key to learning by describing a few case studies. Cross proves the point that a student needs to be fluent (or at least passably/conversationally fluent) to understand a lesson (especially if it is a class that uses a lot of subject-specific jargon, that of which circumlocution and context may have to be used in order to understand a word), and this brings up the question of how our nationwide tests should judge them. After all, teachers are judged on those tests, and how fair is it to judge teachers on a test in a language their students cannot speak?

=__**Magazine**__=

Gunderson, L. (2008, November). The State of the Art of Secondary ESL Teaching and Learning. //Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52//(3), 184-188.


 * Summary:** Gunderson is an experienced teacher who addresses the problems of labeling children with the title of ESL or ELL. There are certain dangers to this, as there are certain types of ELLs: those who never learned to read in their own native language, and those that are literate in their own language but cannot achieve that literacy in English. Also, Gunderson states that ESL students who eventually perform adequate or similar to that of English speakers have their 'ESL' status taken away, thus the labeling is also unfair. The ELL program is biased in this manner, as reports consistently show that no improvement has been made, while those positive statistics are just being removed from the study. Gunderson also describes the laws concerning bilingual education since the late 60's, and also comments about how no progress has been made.


 * Reaction:** Gunderson's article read a bit like one of Ravitch's chapters in her book. I was almost shocked at the similarity, however they were both experienced educators. I was not surprised to see that little was being done for the ESL students aside from the few laws that Gunderson talked about. Overall, she stated that not much was being done, and that the ESL population was being done a disservice by excluding the people who became more fluent in the group. I was surprised at this, but then I remembered how one of my friends was a 'former ESL' student at my school. Even though she came to my school with no knowledge of English, after a few years she was no longer considered an ESL student, and even placed in AP English! Gunderson's article made me realize how slighted the government is towards making the education statistics appear a certain way.

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__**Opinion Essay**__
Slater, T., & Mohan, B. (2010). Cooperation Between Science Teachers and ESL Teachers: A Register Perspective. //Theory Into Practice//, //49//(2), 91-98. doi:10.1080/00405841003626478


 * Summary**: ESL students are becoming more in demand than ever. Over 20% of students are children of immigrants, and since they are at a high failure rate academically, a special methodology for teaching them has been constructed. Called the Systemic Functional Lunguistics, it is the belief that learning a language is the first step to learning about the world. According to this report, all ESL teachers should be able to teach in the SFL mindset, and take the extra step to clarify lessons. For subject specific classes, such as science, those cognizant of the amount of ESL students do not use sophisticated terms that a student whose native language is not English may not understand. An extra step must be taken for teachers who have to teach ESL students: they must first teach 'science language' before teaching the actual subject.


 * Reaction:** This article sums up the way that teachers who have dual certification in ESL and in science must teach. There are many extra steps needed, as well as intense repetition. For example, for a science teacher needing to teach the density formula, she would perhaps perform a demo in which she would use the words density and dense multiple times to get the language across. However, the article extracted an example from a teacher who was prepared to teach with half of her class unintelligible in English. Describing the methodology in which an ESL teacher should be prepare to know was very helpful in pondering my research question. Is that the way we should judge teachers that have ESL students in them? But then I thought about the teachers who are not ESL certified and still face these kids in their classes, and do not know about the SFL teaching methods. The article, unfortunately, does not provide any wisdom about the judgment of these teachers.

=__Eric Digest__=

Short, D. J. (2000). The ESL Standards: Bridging the Gap for English Language Learners. In //ERIC Digest//. []


 * Summary:** The ERIC Digest article summarizes the ESL standards, ranging from using English for personal expression and enjoyment, to using it in socially and culturally appropriate ways. Short also mentions how these ESL standards represent more than just an academic standard -- English has no longer become just a subject, but a method of learning. The standards also call for every district to develop a curriculum based on that district's ESL needs: so the curriculum for ESL students everywhere is not standardized. One of the successes of these standards is that number of effective ESL and bilingual teachers has increased over the years, as well as the importance of TESOL. (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) One of the solutions proposed to fix this problem is to implement more rigorous courses, and perhaps have textbooks following ESL guidelines as well.


 * Reaction:** The article was very informative and direct about the information presented, as well as being easy to read. It provided all of the standards and goals of ESL students. Most of them I expected, and all have the umbrella goal of just being fluent in the language. This article seemed a bit more positive than the Gunderson article, focusing on the positives the ESL standards have brought, rather than the negatives. I was surprised to learn that the number of ESL students being enrolled is growing at ten times the rate native English speakers are being enrolled. I feel this high number can be directly contributed to the American culture and how there isn't one 'defining' aspect of Americans, just the fact that everyone is different from the other. Though because this is inbred into the country, I would expect there to be more academic improvement in ESL students in America than in other countries. It makes me think if other countries even have programs like ours; if a native Japanese speaker moves to Italy, would Italy have an Italian as a Second Language program? I think that ESL is a uniquely English problem, and something that needs to be addressed immediately.

Overall Reaction to Your Research
Despite the 20% increase in ESL students over the past few years, little has been done for them. However, the statistics may seem slighted because ELL students who improve drastically are no longer considered ELL students. The little that is being done may be an improvement, such as an increased amount of teachers who are either bilingual or have dual certification (ESL and a core subject). Though this may seem like an extra qualification for a teacher, since this problem is almost uniquely an English-speaking country's problem, an extra step may need to be added to hire teachers. A methodology being implemented now is called the Systematic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The SFL theory of teaching believes that the way to learn is through language, and focuses on repetition of subject jargon to grasp the meaning. However, it's one flaw is that an ESL student who becomes fluent in English could still experience trouble with science, just like a native English speaker would. Many people would attribute this as the fault of the ESL program at that district, while it could be another factor entirely, such as how effective the teacher is. An effective ESL teacher according to Slater's article, is one who follows the SFL. AD

Relevance in Rhode Island Schools
Having also done research on the school district of Central Falls, I know that the amount of ESL students (among other factors) and how academically successful a school is are intrinsically connected. One of the methods Rhode Island took to reform Central Falls was to fire all of the teachers, and were only planning on hiring back half of them. While this may sound good, a true method to improve academic stability may be to increase the amount of teachers with dual certificates in both their subject and ESL. While that may sound like a huge requirement, it surely is not as drastic as firing the entire teaching staff. Also hiring bilingual teachers may improve student's relationships with teachers, as they may be more inclined to open up to a teacher they can talk to in their native language.

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