ESL Quick Facts: Challenges for Els in Content Areas

ESL Quick Facts: Challenges for Els in Content Areas

ESL Quick Facts: Challenges for ELs in Content Areas

Reminder about grading of ELs-please consult the Help! My Student Doesn’t Speak English handbook or the district’s EL Plan to review JEFCOED’s EL grading policy. Contact your ESL teacher immediately if you have questions or concerns.
ELs are often faced with specific challenges in each content area and teachers must determine strategies to make the content comprehensible to them. Following are examples of content specific challenges faced by ELs and some suggested strategies to assist teachers. Contents included are Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies.

Challenges in Reading:
  • Comprehending the meaning of a text.
  • Comprehending a text that contains a large number of unknown words.
  • Understanding text that includes idioms, homophones, homonyms, and synonyms.
  • Deciphering regional U.S. dialects.
  • Understanding the cultural background depicted in a literacy piece.
  • Recognizing correlation between letters and numbers.
/ Strategies for Reading:
  • Help ELs build background knowledge before reading.
  • Provide student experiences. Show videos.
  • Teach unfamiliar vocabulary before presenting a new concept.
  • Use pictures.
  • In small group tell ELs about the story before its read. Act out the story.
    If using a textbook, highlight the most important facts you want the ELs to learn.

Challenges in Writing:
  • ELs have a limited vocabulary and are reluctant to use inventive spelling.
  • They use verb tenses inaccurately and often write in the present tense.
  • Some ELs have not internalized the sentence structure of English grammar.
  • Some students are reluctant to share their work during peer editing. When they do, they prefer working with same language peers who may not provide appropriate feedback.
  • ELs don’t have a sense of what sounds right when they read their writing aloud.
  • In many cultures, students are not encouraged to express their opinions.
  • ELs may have little experience with creative writing in their native language.
/ Strategies in Writing:
  • Teach nonfiction reading and writing. ELs can easily access facts and language chunks that they can use in their writing.
  • Spend more time helping ELs in the prewriting stage. Generate oral sentences and make a chart of facts about nonfiction topic. This helps them learn to speak the words they are going to write.
  • Use graphic organizers to help students gather facts.
  • Create a web to help students learn how to organize information. Have students practice writing from the web.
  • Model repeatedly.
  • In small group with teacher, help students brainstorm vocabulary and themes.
  • Don’t expect ELs to edit their work because they usually don’t find their mistakes. Pick out one skill for them to edit, provide a mini-lesson for this skill, and group EL with a partner to edit this skill.
  • Show ELs models of good writing at their language level. If student is learning how to write an opening paragraph let them see several pieces of good work.
  • Give students real writing situations such as letters, invitations, postcards, lists, and classmate interviews.

Challenges in Math:
  • Students with low reading comprehension skills will struggle in math.
  • Mental math is the norm in many cultures. Students have difficulty explaining how they arrived at an answer.
  • In many cultures math concepts are not taught over a period of time. For example, students might have no prior exposure to estimation, rounding, or geometry.
  • Numbers and problems are sometimes formed or written differently. In the U.S. we use decimals to separate the dollars and cents. In South America they use a comma to mark this distinction.
  • Using the U.S. measurement system and Fahrenheit.
  • Using math manipulatives. ELs can view this as play.
  • Understanding time on a 12-hour clock. Many cultures us a 24 hour clock.
  • Understanding math vocabulary. A huge problem.
/ Strategies in Math:
  • Pre-teach vocabulary and use visuals for clarification.
  • Assess students through questioning to make certain they understand the process. Never use yes/no questions.
  • Explicitly teach how to solve problems and demonstrate how to show your work. Model and use Think Aloud and Questioning strategies.
  • Show students how to properly use math manipulatives and let them know it is not meant for play.
  • Know your students culture and be prepared to provide lessons on the U.S. measurement system, etc.
  • Give students suggestions on how to help them express their ideas.

Challenges in Science:
  • In some cultures science is based on rote-learning and not hands-on learning.
  • Making predictions and drawing conclusions.
  • Science vocabulary.
  • Following multistep directions.
  • Understanding visuals.
  • Using lab equipment.
  • Applying the scientific method.
  • Drawing conclusions and making hypotheses during the discovery process of the lesson.
/ Strategies in Science:
  • Give ELs one-step directions at a time. Allow them to complete one step. Assess/re-teach and give the next step.
  • In small groups demonstrate Think Aloud while making predictions and drawing conclusions.
  • Pre-teach vocabulary and use pictures to help support the vocabulary.
  • Before the lesson: teach students the names of the lab equipment and make equipment vocabulary cards with the names of the equipment written on the cards and placed next to the object.
  • Explain the use.
  • In small group model the thinking process for drawing conclusions and making hypotheses.
  • Ask guiding questions while avoiding yes/no questions.
  • Place ELs in cooperative learning groups so they can hear other students’ ideas and reasoning. Allow ELs to work with many different groups.

Challenges in Social Studies:
  • Facts are not relevant to the student.
  • No background knowledge to understand new concept.
  • Uses high-level thinking skills for reading and writing.
  • Reading text contains complex sentences, passive voice, and multiple pronouns.
  • Taking notes.
  • Comprehending large blocks of text during class.
  • Deciphering what is important in the text.
  • Accessing background knowledge.
  • Understanding nationalistic or culturally focused maps.
  • Recognizing the proper names of countries, cities, and oceans that are not the same as they have learned in their country.
  • Understanding passive voice in English texts.
/ Strategies in Social Studies:
  • Find similar ideas of the topic and link to student’s culture and history.
  • Provide opportunities through role playing so students can feel the experience.
  • Use nonfiction books related to the topic that is at the ELs reading and comprehension level.
  • Use graphic organizers to help students’ record facts and organize information.
  • Decide what is most important for the student to learn and write this on paper for the students.
  • Use simple sentences and vocabulary at the students’ level of comprehension.
  • Use videos to help with comprehension.
  • Pre-teach vocabulary and have pictures to match the vocabulary words.
  • Teach lessons on how to find important facts and information from the textbook.

If you have any questions – please let me know!