On Unexpected, Borderline ESL Students

ESL students are pretty easy to spot, you say. However, if you test the English proficiency levels of all the students at a grade level, native English speaking and non-native English speaking, you may be in for a surprise. Some children you would least expect may test at borderline ESL levels.

For the last nine years I have been testing the English listening and speaking levels of all students at the early childhood level at my school. Surprisingly, the test results show that more than a few children of native English speaking parents have very low English language proficiency skills in the area of speaking. Their scores are at the borderline ESL level!

This may seem like an unlikely scenario, but deeper analysis shows that it can have a very logical explanation. These children are born in a non-English speaking country. While their parents are at work, they are cared for by maids or nannies speaking a foreign language, and they later attend a nursery school in which all the teachers and workers speak a foreign language. Thus, the majority of their day is spent in a non-English speaking environment.

The parents speak to their children in English, of course, so they develop an understanding and basic ability to communicate orally in English—but often not at the level expected for their age. The parents are perhaps unaware of the problem, due to their busy work and social schedules; they figure they are native English speakers, so their children are as well.

When these same children enter the preschool program at an international school and are faced with all instruction in English, some become quite defiant and refuse to speak in English. They feel more comfortable speaking in the foreign language of the country.

Teachers become quite frustrated by such a situation, since they know that the parents are native English speakers and speak English at home; yet the child will not speak English at school. Test results show that even at the end of pre-kinder (three-year old program) some of these students have alarmingly low English speaking scores. By the end of Kinder I (four-year old program) many start to catch up. However, others need until the end of Kinder II (five-year old program) to close the gap.

Even then, at recess and during unsupervised times in classrooms, they often prefer to revert back to the foreign language.

A big advantage of living abroad is that your children can grow up bilingual, a true gift. However as the test results have shown, if you are a native English speaker living and working in a foreign country, you cannot simply assume that your children will speak English at the native speaker level. That is something you must take care to develop by reading, talking, and playing with your children as much as possible.

They need a lot of quality time with you and opportunities to use their native language. Otherwise, the foreign language that makes up the majority of their day will naturally become the one they prefer to use.

Ms. Billak is an ESL Specialist at International School Nido de Aguilas in Santiago, Chile. She also does consulting work in the field of ESL teaching and program design and evaluation.

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