First, before I can argue on whether or not African American students should have access to language support services, we must first understand what an ELL student is. “English language learners are students who speak a language other than English as their first language and who are in the process of acquiring English as a second or additional language. They are not fully proficient in English and we can refer to them as “emerging bilinguals”” (Orosco, Almanza de Schonewise, De Onnis, Klingner, & Hoover, 2008) Other researchers like Walqui (2005) point out that some ELL students are true immigrants to the United States while other ones are born here in the Unites States. All of the sources on the matter note that all ELL cases our unique and are dependent on the student’s upbringing. Almost all of the sources, especially Linguistic Society of America, state that Ebonics is a full language (Rickford). However, as was noted in the 1996 case in Oakland there can be backlash in every facet of the community when Ebonics is labeled as the student’s first language (Nunberg). What we need to change is not whether or not we are going to label Ebonics as a first language but rather changing the requirements for ELL students. Sylvia G., Rousseau is currently arguing that African American student should have access to language support services. She gave a speech on April, 21st of 2014 in Los angles where she laid down her fundamental arguments:
The cognitive structures expressed in the language of home are no longer acceptable and the support to acquire a Standardized language is absent. The distinction in academic performance between African American students, who are categorically classified as English Only without any assess...
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... American English). Retrieved 5 3, 2014, from Linguistic Society of America: http://www.linguisticsociety.org/content/what-ebonics-african-american-english
Rousseau, S. (2014). An Inclusive English as a Second Language Approach for Standard English Learners. Los Angeles: University of Southern California.
Rousseau, S. (2014). Standard English Learners . Presentation to Committee of the Whole (p. 17). Los Angeles: University of Southern California.
Smitherman, Geneva (1997). Moving Beyond Resistance: Ebonics and African American Youth. Journal of Black Psychology, 23 (3), 227-231.
Tatum, A. W. (2005). Teaching reading to black adolescent males: Closing the achievement gap. Portland, Me: Stenhouse Publishers
Walqui, A. (2005). Who Are Our Students? In P. Richard-Amato, & M. Snow, Academic Success for English Language Learners (pp. 7-21). White Plains, NY: Longman.
Our world is full of different cultures and languages. Many of these different languages are mainly used in schools. Most of the time none english speaking students have a hard time transitioning between english and their native language. This could be a reason why school boards have provided programs like ESL, to help students adapt and learn american standard english. Recently one of the main languages that have been giving students problem to succeed in their education is African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Recent studies have been conducted to bring AAVE in schools which will result in higher test score, however people are disagreeing with the idea because they don't want their children to learn “slags”, but AAVE is not a slang, just like standard english AAVE is a language.
“Standard English was imposed on children of immigrant parents, then the children were separated from native English speakers, then the children were labeled “inferior” and “ignorant” (Hughes 70) because they could not speak Standard English. In addition to feeling inferior about their second language skills, these students also felt inadequate in regard to speaking their own mother tongues” (qtd in Kanae)
Monzó and Rueda (2009) conducted a study examining the concept of passing for English proficient in Latino immigrant children. They studied a group of Latino English language learners (ELLs) in and outside of school. They not only observed these students but also interviewed them as well. Within these interviews students opened up about their feelings about their first language, English, and their place in American society. Monzó and Rueda (2009) then found within their data the most common forms of passing for English proficient that these students used.
Flynn, K. & Hill, J. (2005). English language learners: A growing population. Mid-Research For Education And Learning, 1-11.
...e into consideration the characteristics of young English language learners and their language development, the learning conditions that are most effective for these learners, and the kinds of instruction that best meet their needs.
Vogt, M. & Echevarria, J. (2008). 99 Ideas and Activities for Teaching English Learners with the SIOP Model. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.
United States. Reading to Achieve: A Governor's Guide to Adolescent Literacy. Washington: National Governors Association, 2005. Print.
Meanwhile, as the pressure of schools losing their students due to dropout, it is important that the inner city students have the support they need in school or at home, because many years of oppression have kept African-Americans from having the will to do better. Now young African-Americans have that same oppressed feeling in the schools that they are attending. When the students give up it seems as though everyone around them wants to give up. In fact, “In many parts of the country, the problems present withi...
As of right now in the United States, the school system is not doing its best to promote the growth of African American students who speak Ebonics at home. Obviously something has to be done, because students from predominantly AAVE speaking areas are succeeding at a level well below students who are familiar with Standard English coming into school. The way the education system is set up, schools build upon existing skills that students already have especially in primarily white communities. Adding value to these skills promotes rapid growth causing them to excel past the AAVE speaking African American students. (Rickford, 1999) Those whom are n...
In our society, there are many cultures with language and dialect variations, but Standard English is the language of the dominant culture. Therefore, it is necessary for all students to learn to write and speak Standard English effectively. However, for many students of Urban school districts, especially African Americans, writing and speaking effective Standard English can occasionally pose a problem. Many African American students speak a variation of Standard English (Black Vernacular Speech) whose linguistic patterns sometimes conflict with those of Standard English. It is true that African American speech is an essential aspect of their African American culture, so the educational system would be doing African American students a disservice by insisting that they learn Standard English as a primary discourse. It is also a fact however, that in order to be viewed as a successful, functional member of society, Standard English, if learned as a secondary discourse, should be written and spoken as fluently as the primary discourse.
The purpose of this assignment is to explain the impact of English language learners in the classroom. As a foreign student, English language learner in the United States faces multiple challenges for achieving academic success. To successfully complete a task, they need to master both English as a language and how it is used in core content classes especially when they are an adult. When trying to assist in instructing English language learners, they usually have many concepts and language abilities that they need to master, as do the teachers that are trying to teach them. With the incorporation of the concepts and approaches to identify and assess the issues and concerns that we have learned in our classroom instruction, such as lesson preparation,
Sharma, B., 2008. “World Englishes, English as a Lingua Franca, and English Pedagogy”, Journal of NELTA 13 (2), pp. 121-130. Available from
English language learners in the classroom and how to teach them effectively, with good will, and in their best interests is a highly-contested subject. Civil Right Laws and the Fourteenth Amendment are supposed to guarantee that all students have an equal opportunity to receive a good education however because of how the classification process for ELL students in school systems work this has become an area of contention (Wright, n.d.). There have been a vast amount of court cases and legislative decisions that surround this topic. This paper will look at the background of how ELL students have been classified, legal issues that were caused by these classifications, and how the ELL student have
Throughout this course, my beliefs have been reaffirmed regarding the literacy needs of culturally and linguistically diverse learners in a few ways. First, I have been implementing sheltered instruction observation protocol in my classroom. “Sheltered instruction teachers use the regular core curriculum and modify their teaching to make the content understandable for ELLs while at the same time promoting their English language development” (Echevarria, Short & Powers, 2008, pg. 42). The sheltered instruction I have been using in my classroom includes slow and clear speech, scaffolded instruction, visual representations, connecting prior knowledge to learned knowledge, cooperative learning, and targeted vocabulary development (Echevarria, Short & Powers, 2008). This course has reaffirmed the importance of using sheltered instruction to support the needs of the diverse
In the essay, I set the English as a foreign language (EFL) context with a group of Chinese middle school students aged from fifteen to eighteen who mostly have an intermediate level of English proficiency.