Beginner ELLs: What Is the Right Balance?

There is fairly common agreement that a young child’s proficiency in oral language is the foundation on which he or she will build later literacy skills. Just about all programs for English Language Learners (ELLs) recommend daily oral language instruction, at least until students have reached a threshold level of proficiency in English. What structures best support us in providing this?

Researchers from universities in California and Texas conducted a yearlong study of programs in the two states, to see which structures best supported the oral language learning of students from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Around 1,400 students across 34 schools participated in the study. The schools had a variety of program types, including English immersion programs and bilingual Spanish-English programs. The researchers were interested in three questions:

1. Were teachers implementing a separate block of instruction for oral language development in English?

2. What content was being taught in the separate language block (if there was one), and in the regular language arts block?

3. Did the evidence of student achievement support the implementation of a separate block for oral language development?

What were the results?

• Some 58 percent of classrooms had a separate block designated for oral language development in English. This did not vary substantially across the different types of programs. In most of the schools, the oral language block was taught by the same teacher as the rest of the program.

• English immersion classrooms with a separate oral language block devoted more time overall to oral language activities (35 percent of the total time available for English language learning, as opposed to 21 percent in classroom with no separate block). Most of these oral language activities took place in the separate block.

• Teachers who had a separate oral language block tended to use the time as intended and were more efficient in their use of time, with less time consumed by non-instructional activities.

• Students in classrooms that had a separate oral language block made higher gains over the year in measures of oral language proficiency and word identification.

What does this mean for our classrooms?

The authors of the study suggest that their findings indicate support for implementing a separate block for oral language development within Kindergarten programs for English language learners. I am not sure whether it necessarily means that we need to block time out separately. However, an obvious implication of these findings certainly seems to be that when we invest time specifically in a particular objective, we are likely to achieve it.

If we are to develop the oral language capacity of young learners of English, we need to have specific objectives in this area and create specific learning situations through which we can meet these objectives. It seems that in the classrooms investigated in this research, a separate block for oral language development helped teachers organize their time efficiently to achieve this. It may also be possible that simply having clear, specific oral language objectives may support teachers in dealing with oral language in a more integrated way. More research would be needed to determine this.

Reference

Saunders, W., Foorman, B. and Carlson, C. (2006) “Is a separate block of time for oral English language development in programs for English learners needed?’ In The Elementary School Journal 107 2, pp. 181-198.

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