Foreign Language Teachers Can Help Us Rock Achievement with Our ELL's

Public education faces many 21^st century challenges. As the demographics of the United States changes, our approaches in education must adjust. The number of English language learners (ELL) enrolled in public schools nearly doubled from the year 1998 to 2009. Sadly, there is a significant achievement gap between ELL’s and their native English-speaking counterparts. Also alarming is the lack of training that teachers receive entering the workforce on how to teach ELL’s. When it comes to reading intervention, teaching ELL’s can be especially tricky. This is why a multifaceted approach is needed when it come to Response to Intervention (RTI) for ELL students.

One huge challenge in RTI for ELL students is that many teachers of ELL’s (at least at the secondary level) are themselves not bi-lingual (in the student’s native language). Depending on the program ELL’s are receiving determines whether they are receiving bilingual instruction. This can really pose a problem when pre-assessing students since much of what we learn about students is done through formative assessments with oral language. Research suggests that reading deficiency can exist with our ELL students for different reasons. For example, a student might have adequate literacy skills in their first language but need help translating those skills into their second language. Another student might have inadequate literacy skills in their first language and English because of lack of experience in school (some of our students coming from South America may have never been enrolled in a formal school until they get to this country). And finally, there are the students who have poor literacy in both their first language and English, even after reading intervention instruction – perhaps these are our true learning-disabled children.

            

What is needed to address RTI with our ELL population is training our Spanish-speaking teachers how to pre-assess and deliver intervention. In Maryland, 50% of our ELL’s come from homes where Spanish is the spoken language and 8% come from French speaking homes. Middle schools have an in house secret weapon to aid in RTI, which is their foreign language teacher. Many foreign language teachers are fluent in both Spanish and French. They also have a deep knowledge of those languages on a linguistic level and can help a reading intervention teacher determine the level of basic literacy an ELL has in their first language. A foreign language teacher could also help in the screening process to determine if a reading deficit exists because of a learning disability (if they had the proper training). Using our foreign language teachers as resources in RTI also helps them out as well, since their classes and positions are often first on the chopping blocks when funds are cut.

            

But the great irony in reading intervention and ELL’s is highlighted in a study that appeared in Developmental Psychology, Volume 39 (2003). Nonie Lesaux worked closely with a school system in Vancouver, Canada to study 1000 students. She created a highly specialized curriculum that was rooted in phonics and used small group instruction. They collected more than average data (true RTI) and found that by second grade (the study began in kindergarten), the ELL students out performed their native English-speaking counterparts. In conclusion, bilingualism seemed to give the ELL students a leg up in acquisition of literacy. So if we could truly unlock the root of the problem in reading intervention for our ELL’s, then we could deliver the proper intervention and accelerate them through thus closing the achievement gap. Perhaps we should look at our influx of ELL’s as something of a possible achievement windfall if we can unlock our students at the primary level. If Lesaux’s study is true then small group instruction and individualized learning plans are particularly important at the primary elementary level. And of course everything we already know about intervention is that early is best. Additionally let’s be smart with our teacher talent and work in partnership with foreign language and language arts departments.