Road to Fluency

For the past decades, a vast amount of immigrants have made their way into our nation. For work, reuniting with family, fleeing from poverty, and various other reasons many immigrants have added to our already massive and diverse population. Along with picking up and moving their life to the United States, many of these immigrants that have fled to our nation have brought along their families. More specifically though is the many immigrant children that have been brought to America. By the time the new millennium reached in the year 2000, “over 3 million students in the U.S. schools were counted as ‘limited English proficient’, a number that is almost double what it was just 10 years before” (Olsen 2). With our nations’ schools increasing in English language learners it has now reached a point where these students are not always the minority. Because of this it puts more attention on theses students and it has been said by many specialists that not enough attention has been paid to including these English language learners appropriately since their arrival. However, the most challenging task for teachers has been to take these English language learners and make them fluent in English. In order for our nations’ teachers to meet the needs of the many English language learners, teachers today must incorporate strategies to successfully teach writing and literacy.

One can only imagine how it would feel to come to a new country and not know the native language, but for English language learners this is a challenge they face everyday. As immigrants, these students lack knowledge of the English language and as they are put in the U.S. school system they face the challenge of not only learning English but also learning other sub...

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...ively teach ELLs to be successful in writing and literacy, and more importantly to become successful and happy students.

Works Cited

Beckett, E. Carol and Perry Kay Haley. “Using Standards to Integrate Academic Language into ESL Fluency.” The Clearing House. 74. 2 (2000): 102-104

Brice, Alejandro and Celeste Roseberry-Mckibbin. Turning frustration into success for English Language Learners. Educational Leadership, 56.7 (1999): 53-55.

Jong, Ester and Candace A. Harper. “Preparing Mainstream Teachers for English- Language Learners: Is being a Good Teacher Good Enough”. Teacher Education Quarterly (2006)

Myer, Lois. “Barriers to Meaningful Instruction for English Learners.” Theory into Practice. 39.4 (2000): 228-36.

Olsen, Laurie. “Learning English and Learning America: Immigrants in the Center of A Storm.” Theory into Practice. 39.4 (2000): 196-202