English as a Second Language

Programming

The needs of the learners should drive the design of ESL. This approach is based upon actively valuing the students and providing services that are the most efficient at helping them become bilingual and bicultural, while simultaneously developing their academic skills. In schools where the majority of students are ESL, fundamental curricular adaptations are necessary and appropriate. Ideally, all teachers in these schools will be trained in ESL and the curriculum will combine cultural understandings, fluency in oral and written English, along with high academic expectations. Teachers in schools with smaller ESL populations may have only a few ESL students in their classes. These teachers will need the support of an ESL specialist and may find it helpful to consult the Ministry document ESL Learners: A Guide for Classroom Teachers.

Goals of the ESL Service Delivery

Any service delivery involving an adaption or adoption of regular curricula should enable the ESL student to:

develop and maintain a sense of self-worth
develop and preserve a pride of heritage
develop communicative competence at a level commensurate with the student's peers, according to the full extent of the student's potential, in the areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing
become oriented to those aspects of methodology, curriculum, and extra-curricular activities that differ from those of the student's previous experiences
develop an understanding of and appreciation for cultural differences and similarities.

Principles of Effective Second Language Learning ⁴

ESL students' learning should build on the educational and personal experiences they bring to the school.
Students should be encouraged to use their previous experiences with oral and written language to develop their second language and to promote their growth to literacy. It is important that acquisition of the English used in the broader Canadian society and in school be seen as an addition to a student's linguistic experience. Attempting to replace another language with English is not in the best interest of the learner.
Cultural identities should be honoured by instructional practices that recognize the knowledge and experiences students bring to school rather than attempt to replace them.
Learning a language means, among other things, learning to use the language to socialize, learn, query, imagine, and wonder.
ESL students show considerable individual variation in their rates of development of oral proficiency and writing.
All teachers, not just ESL specialists, need to address the learning needs of ESL students and be prepared to adjust their instructional approaches to accommodate the different levels of English proficiency and different learning rates and styles of their students.
If ESL students are to "keep up" or "catch up" with their English-speaking peers, their cognitive and academic growth should continue while the second language is developing.
Integrating language teaching with the teaching of curricular content in thematic units simultaneously develops students' language, subject-area knowledge, and thinking skills.
Exercises in grammatical structures that fragment language at the word or sentence level and neglect the discourse level are not effective.

Addressing Cultural Differences

Teachers working with newly arrived ESL students should also be aware that they may sometimes respond in unexpected ways to particular classroom situations or events, due to cultural conditioning or to the fact that their cultural values and beliefs differ from those of students with whom the teacher has previously worked.

The chart on the following pages identifies possible cultural explanations for behaviours that ESL students sometimes exhibit. It is applicable to newly arriving students as well as to students who have been born and raised in Canada.

Cultural Differences in Student Behaviour

Perceived Behaviour	Possible Cultural Explanation
The student avoids eye contact.	Keeping eyes downcast may be a way of showing respect. In some cultures, direct eye contact with a teacher is considered disrespectful and a challenge to the teacher's authority.
The student tends to smile when disagreeing with what is being said or when being reprimanded.	A smile may be a gesture of respect that children are taught to employ to avoid giving offense in difficult situations.
The student shrinks from or responds poorly to apparently inoffensive forms of physical contact or proximity.	There may be taboos on certain types of physical contact. Buddhists, for instance, regard the head and shoulders as sacred and would consider it impolite to ruffle a child's hair or give a reassuring pat on the shoulder. There are also significant differences among cultures with respect to people's sense of what is considered an appropriate amount of personal space.
The student refuses to eat with peers.	Some students may be unaccustomed to eating with anyone but members of their own family.
The student does not participate actively in group work or collaborate readily with peers on cooperative assignments.	Cooperative group work is never used by teachers in some cultures. Students may thus view sharing as "giving away knowledge" and may see no distinction between legitimate collaboration and cheating.
The student displays uneasiness, expresses disapproval, or even misbehaves in informal learning situations or situations involving open-ended learning processes (e.g., exploration).	Schooling in some cultures involves a strict formality. For students who are used to this, an informal classroom atmosphere may seem chaotic and undemanding, while teachers with an informal approach may seem unprofessional. Such students may also be uncomfortable with process-oriented learning activities and prefer activities that yield more tangible and evident results.
The student refuses to participate in extra-curricular or in various physical education activities (e.g., swimming, skating, track & field).	Extra-curricular activities may not be considered a part of learning or may even, along with some physical education activities, be contrary to a student's religious or cultural outlook. Some students may also be required to use after-school hours to generate income.
The student seems inattentive and does not display active listening behaviours.	In some cultures, the learning process involves observing and doing or imitating rather than listening and absorbing (e.g., through note-taking)
Performance following instruction reveals that the student is not understanding the instruction, even though she or he exhibited active listening behaviours that suggested understanding and refrained from asking for help or further explanation.	In some cultures, expressing a lack of understanding or asking for help from the teacher is interpreted as a suggestion that the teacher has not been doing a good enough job of teaching and is considered impolite.
The student is unresponsive, uncooperative, or even disrespectful in dealing with teachers of the other gender.	Separate schooling for boys and girls is the norm in some cultures. Likewise, in some cultures the expectations for males and females are quite different. The idea that females and males should have the same opportunities for schooling and play comparable roles as educators will therefore run contrary to some students' cultural conditioning.
The student appears reluctant to engage in debate, speculation, argument, or other processes that involve directly challenging the views and ideas of others.	In some cultures, it is considered inappropriate to openly challenge another's point of view, especially the teacher's. In other cases, there may be a high value attached to being prepared, knowledgeable, and correct when one opens one's mouth.
The student exhibits discomfort or embarrassment at being singled out for special attention or praise.	To put oneself in the limelight for individual praise is not considered appropriate in some cultures, where the group is considered more important than the individual.
The student fails to observe the conventions of silent reading.	Some students may be culturally predisposed to see reading as essentially an oral activity and will therefore read aloud automatically. For others reading aloud is associated with memorization.

Ongoing Assessment and Support

As an ESL student begins to learn in the new school environment, ongoing assessment becomes necessary in order to:

identify gaps in the student's second language or dialect
evaluate the student's achievement of short-term objectives
adjust the instruction being provided and, if necessary, revisit the original placement decision
give the student concrete evidence of success.

With ESL students, as with their English-speaking peers, effective ongoing assessment involves little or no use of norm-referenced tests. Rather, it involves an emphasis on forms of criterion-referenced assessment such as observation, portfolios, and student self-assessment (for more information on these topics, see the Ministry's Assessment Handbooks Series).

Byung Soo

Byung Soo is a fee-paying student from Korea, who has been placed in a Grade 10 class. His parents want him to graduate from a Canadian high school and go on to university here. A high achiever, Byung Soo was accustomed to receiving good grades in Korea. His first few months in a Canadian school, however have caused him to feel frustrated and disappointed.

Because language and content are highly interdependent in most subject areas, the main challenge for teachers of ESL students is to determine if they understand the concepts and procedures integral to the subject area even though they are still learning English. Three general procedures can be used to adapting content area assessments to the needs of ESL students:

scaffolding: reducing language demands whenever possible by giving contextual cues for meaning (see the following tables for illustrations of scaffolding and how it might work in assessing understanding in science)⁵
differentiated scoring: providing separate scores on written passages for language conventions and for content knowledge
using visible criteria: providing students with information on how their work will be scored before the assessment is carried out

Assessment Examples	Without Scaffolding	With Scaffolding
Define/describe object or concept	Write a description of the object or concept and (if appropriate) label it	Write a list of the main features of the concept, or provide labels for objects in a picture that is provided
Provide examples of a concept and justify them	Provide 3 examples and explain orally or in writing why these are good examples	Select 3 examples from a list provided and explain orally why they were selected
Retell or summarize text	Write 5 main ideas from an article and give examples	Complete an outline, a T-List, or a semantic map
Write a word problem	Create a problem from own numbers; give equation, story, and question	Complete a word problem given examples and an outline of a sample problem
Summarize a science experiment	Write a summary of procedures in a science experiment following scientific principles	Complete a summary given a list of procedures in science experiments, including questions, materials, a plan, observations, and conclusions, or demonstrate the steps using actual materials

Procedures for Assessing What Students Know in Science - adapted from Holmes and Roser (1987)⁶
Technique/Description	Example	Advantage	Disadvantage
Nonverbal: Students follow directions or act out without speaking.	Teacher: Make a sound like a snake. Find a picture of a snake. Draw a snake. Do something a snake does.	Useful with students at beginning level of proficiency	Does not assess oral production or writing
Recognition: Teacher asks specific questions with answer options. Asks students to choose the one correct answer.	Teacher: Cold-blooded means (a) having cold blood, (b) having constant body temperature, (c) changing body temperature to one's surroundings, (d) never being too hot.	Good for finding out what students know, and very efficient to administer	Takes lots of time and skill to prepare items; limits information obtained; may not assess thinking skills as effectively as other techniques
Structured Questions: Teacher asks students probe questions about a topic.	Teacher: (1) Does a snake keep the same skin all its life? (2) What happens to it? (3) How does the skin come off? (4) How often does it come off?	Elicits the most information per minute of assessment time	May limit information obtained; requires preparation
Unstructured Discussion: Teacher asks students to tell about personal experiences on the topic.	Teacher: Have you ever seen or touched a snake? What happened? What did it feel like?	Useful for motivation of students; can be used to explore students' organization of knowledge	Not very efficient if time is limited
Free Recall: Teacher asks students to describe what they know about a given topic.	Teacher: Let's write a story with everything there is to know about snakes. What should it say? (Students respond.) Are you sure that's everything?	Takes least teacher preparation time; requires only one probe	Students must have adequate language and organization of knowledge to respond
Word Association: Teacher asks students to play a word game in which teacher says a word and students say everything they can think of.	Teacher: Tell me everything you can think of about the way snakes move.	Easy to use; easy to prepare for; gives more information than free recall	May be time consuming; students may get side-tracked

For further information on appropriate assessment procedures for use with ESL students, see the Initial Assessment for Placement section and the Appendix to this document.

Models of Service Delivery

Increasing numbers of students in ESL require a range of flexible service delivery models to accommodate their needs. For example, a school district with a high percentage of ESL students is able to offer a greater variety of service delivery models than a district with small numbers of ESL students scattered throughout a large geographical area. Organizational options will vary and may be based on any single model or combination of models (see those described on the following pages).

In determining the best service delivery choices for a specific geographical area and group of students, it is beneficial for districts to establish and maintain a central record of ESL students. Students for whom English is a second dialect typically are provided with services similar to those offered to advanced ESL students. Changes in the number of students requiring ESL services within a district can then be quickly determined and appropriate action taken. Patterns of settlement and yearly rates of change can provide district personnel with the opportunity to monitor and adjust delivery of ESL service, and plan for the future.

If ESL students are to "keep up" or "catch up" with their English-speaking peers, their cognitive and academic growth should continue while the second language is developing.

The following descriptions outline various models of service delivery currently in use in British Columbia school districts. School districts are responsible for choosing the model or combination of models that best provides the support students need.

When selecting a delivery model, factors to be considered include:

the number and location of ESL students (district demographics)
the number of trained ESL teachers
ESL resources and materials
availability of appropriate instructional space
transportation options available to students. In school districts with scattered ESL populations, ESL specialists involved in making placement and service delivery decisions may find it helpful to consult with individuals outside their districts to identify a wider range of service delivery options.

Self-Contained Classes: Full Day

Description	Role of the Teacher	Advantages	Disadvantages
· Classes consist entirely of ESL students. · ESL teacher teaches them for all or most of the day. · A small class is important because of the great heterogeneity of students' age; linguistic, cultural, and experiential backgrounds; amount of English known; academic foundations.	· Provides intensive and extensive instruction in reading, writing, listening to and speaking English. · Assists the students in learning social and academic English as effectively as possible. · Incorporates content material to build on the students' academic skills and knowledge.	· Students can receive intensive English training from one teacher who knows their needs and how to teach ESL. · Students' first experiences in Canadian schools can be in a nurturing, non-threatening environment. · Suitable materials can be available. · Cultural differences can be provided for. · Having the students in a self-contained class makes it easier to arrange integration placements. · Self-paced, individualized service delivery can be accommodated.	· The students may feel isolated from the rest of the school. · The students may lack opportunities to interact with their English-speaking peers. · If integration is delayed, attitudes among the ESL and the non-ESL population may become set and result in tension between the two groups. · Students may need to travel outside of their catchment area, resulting in a diminished sense of belonging

Self-Contained Classes: Half-day

Description	Role of the Teacher	Advantages	Disadvantages
· Students spend the morning or the afternoon in an ESL class and the rest of the day in the regular class where they are registered. · Students may come from other schools, attending the ESL class up to half time and returning to their own school for the rest of the day.	· Provides intensive and extensive instruction in reading, writing, listening to and speaking English. · Assists the students in learning social and academic English as effectively as possible. · Assists students to adjust to the new culture; provides cultural-bridging activities. · Incorporates content to build on students' academic skills and knowledge. · Integrates students when possible into classes such as art, music, physical education, math.	· Students receive intensive English training, but also interact with their English speaking peers in a school situation. · The ESL teacher is able to meet a wide range of students without having them all together in class at the same time. · Classroom teachers and students have an opportunity to interact with the newcomers, and help them learn English. · Where the number of ESL students is not large enough to warrant employing a full-time ESL teacher in one school, this option is suitable. · Appropriate materials can be available. · Cultural differences can be provided for.	· It is difficult to operate within the timetabling restrictions of a school, especially the secondary school with a rotating timetable. · Students tend to resent missing either ESL or their other classes. · In schools with a rotating timetable, classroom teachers find this model inflexible and inconvenient. · Students may need to travel outside of their catchment area, resulting in a diminished sense of belonging

Pull-out Classes: School-based Teachers

Description	Role of the Teacher	Advantages	Disadvantages
· Individuals or groups are withdrawn from their regular classes to receive ESL support (elementary). · Students are given blocks of ESL instead of certain subject courses (secondary). · Support time varies to provide for individual needs. · ESL teacher has designated space, supplies, and materials in one school.	· Identifies ESL needs and places students into appropriate groups for timetabling purposes. · Assists students with social and academic English. · Links ESL content with school events and curriculum. · Collaborates with classroom/subject teachers, facilitates cross-cultural activities.	· Students have immediate contact with their English -speaking peers. · Students can receive competent ESL instruction within appropriate groups. · Amount of support time can be monitored and adjusted as appropriate. · There is a sense of shared responsibility among the professional staff involved.	· Amount of ESL support may be based on teacher load, rather than student needs. · Students occasionally have to travel long distances to reach the school where ESL instruction is offered. · Learning may not occur at the time it is needed; it is delayed to suit the timetable.

Pull-out Classes: Itinerant Teachers

Description	Role of the Teacher	Advantages	Disadvantages
· Students are withdrawn from their regular classes singly or in small groups. · Support time varies to provide for individual needs. · ESL teachers travel among schools carrying materials with them.	· Identifies ESL needs and places students into appropriate groups. · Assists students with social and academic English. · Links ESL content with curriculum. · Collaborates with classroom teachers.	· Provides support from an ESL teacher to schools with small numbers of ESL students. · Students can remain in their neighbourhood schools.	· A large number of schools, or schools too far apart, results in limited ESL teacher time for working directly with ESL students. · Facilities and materials in the schools may be inaccessible if the itinerant teacher is not viewed as a member of school staffs. · If non-class times are used as travelling times, there is little or no opportunity for communication and collaboration between the ESL teacher and classroom teachers. · There is a high incidence of teacher burn-out.

In-class ESL Support: Elementary

Description	Role of the Teacher	Advantages	Disadvantages
· Students receive ESL help in their regular classrooms. · Collaboration is essential for classroom and ESL teachers to plan services for students. · Level of teacher collaboration progresses through planning for, to planning with, the classroom teacher. Ultimately, the classroom teacher plans student services independent of the ESL teacher.	· Identifies ESL students and their needs. · With the classroom teacher, establishes language support services and cultural-bridging activities. · Delivers suppport in regular classrooms. · Collaborates with classroom teachers regarding additional support stategies.	· In-class support encourages students participate more fully in mainstream classroom activities. · Students do not need to feel uncomfortable leaving their class to see the ESL teacher. · The ESL teacher offers assistance at the teachable moment. · There may be more opportunities for the ESL student to contribute to a broader cultural understanding among the class as a whole. · Classroom teachers can build on the knowledge and concepts the students bring to school with them, and become aware of a wider variety of learning styles. · The classroom teacher may generate new materials, resources and teaching strategies. · Can be readily combined with other models.	· Timetabling for in-class support may prove extremely complicated, especially in larger schools. · It may be difficult to provide oral English practice. · The time needed for consultation and collaborative planning places restrictions on the number of classroom teachers the ESL teacher can work with, and consequently on the number of students who receive the support. · If the ESL teacher does not play a key role in the planning of the ESL support, in-class support may be reduced to merely ensuring that the students can "do" the regular curriculum. The essential elements of ESL service delivery disappear. Working in specific classrooms makes it hard to group students from various classrooms who have similar ESL needs.

In-class ESL Support: Secondary

Description	Role of the Teacher	Advantages	Disadvantages
· Students receive ESL help in their regular classrooms. · Collaboration is essential for subject-area and ESL teachers to plan services for students. · Level of teacher collaboration progresses through planning for, to planning with, the subject-area teacher. Ultimately, the subject-area teacher plans student services independent of the ESL teacher.	· Identifies students and their needs. · With the subject-area teacher, establishes a language support plan and cultural-bridging activities. · Delivers the support in regular classrooms. · Collaborates with subject-area teachers regarding support services.	· Students are able to take a wide variety of courses with their English-speaking peers. · The ESL teacher, having collaborated with the subject-area teacher regarding curriculum content, is able to give precise and timely help.	· Adolescents may be very uncomfortable receiving assistance in front of their peers. · Students need to be grouped for specific ESL support with others whose needs are similar, and this grouping is logistically impossible if in-class support for all students is the only option. · The ESL teacher may not have the subject area expertise to plan co-operatively and provide subject support. · The ESL teacher spends a great deal of time moving from room to room and organizing the resource materials.

Two ESL Students

Integration of ESL Students

Clearly it is in the best interests of students in ESL to integrate into the mainstream as quickly as they are able. This does not mean, however, that these students should be placed directly into a mainstream class without support. Integration of students in ESL should be viewed as a process which is learner-centred. Factors that affect the amount and rate of integration for an ESL individual include:

the student's level of proficiency in oral and written English
The closer the student's English is to that of proficient English speakers, the greater the potential for successful two-way communication and the ability to complete age-appropriate tasks in English.
the degree to which the student's home culture compares to the school culture
The closer the student's home culture is to the culture on which the school system is based, the greater the potential for successful learning. Teachers and students who understand the learning styles and belief systems of more than one culture can facilitate the cultural adjustment process so that the perspectives of everyone are expanded. The school culture should reflect and accommodate the needs of its culturally diverse population.
the extent to which the student's concept development matches that expected in the school

Integrating language teaching with the teaching of curricular content in thematic units simultaneously develops students' language, subject-area knowledge, and thinking skills.

The ESL student's previous academic study will affect the ease of transition from one system to another. In the case of ESL children beginning school, it is important to be able to distinguish between linguistic ability and concept development (e.g., while the child may not know the names for colours in English, this does not mean the child does not know the colours).

Whatever approach to placement and service delivery is adopted (see the section on Service Delivery and Support for more information), it is recommended that basic language instruction be provided by individuals with training in ESL methodology.

⁴ Based on Margaret Early, "Enabling First and Second Language Learners in the Classroom," Language Arts 67, Oct., 1990.

⁵ O'Malley, J. Michael & Lorraine Valdez Pierce, Authentic Assessment for English Language Learners: Practical Approaches for Teachers (Toronto: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1996) pp 167.

⁶ O'Malley, J. Michael & Lorraine Valdez Pierce, Authentic Assessmemt for English Language Learners: Practical Approaches for Teachers (Toronto: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1996) pp.176

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