CUIN 4361

Today I was able to interview an outstanding teacher, Karen McGee, and get to know some of her insight on working with ELLs. Karen has been working with English Language Learners since she started teaching seven years ago. You can tell in her voice and facial expressions how much love she has for her ELL students. In the video, I found it interesting when she said how she wished that her students could have a tighter bond through having a dual language program. A dual language  program  a ccording to Wright  is, "For both groups of students, dual language programs aim to develop bilingualism and biliteracy, academic achievement in two languages, and cross-cultural understanding" (2015, pg. 100). I can agree with her statement, I believe that it would make the learning field more equal possibly, but it is also just benefits the children.    According to Wright, "Teachers who look at language teaching and learning from a monolingual perspective may feel ...

In this video, I had the chance to video a high school senior, Kevin Zavala, who is from El Salvador. Spanish was his first language and he was forced to learn English when he came to  America. When it comes to  gram mar , vocabulary, pronunciation and the structure of words, Kevin explains it was easiest for him to  pro nounce   words . According to Wright, "Students are able to take much of the content-area knowledge and literacy skills they gained in their L1 and transfer them to their L2" (2010, pg. 55). However, Kevin had a lot of trouble trying to transfer the skills from one language to another. I thought that it was  really interesting  to learn how Kevin started off taking the TAKS test in his dominant language at the time. As his dominate language switched over to English, the test then became in English. According to Wright, "When CBI was introduced, ESL teachers used content areas such as math, science and social studies as vehicles for lan...

Wright defines an English Language Learner as " a student  who is in the process of attaining proficiency in English as a new, addition language" (2010, pg. 1). Being so close to Mexico, I think that Texans sometimes get lost in the fact that and English Language Learner student can be more than just a child who only speaks English. We live in a world where people come from all different languages, cultures, and backgrounds. There are so many different types of ELLs. It is important that each  student's  gets the proper attention  in order to  succeed in school. Luckily the federal government established the No Child Left Behind Act, which according to Wright "refers to ELLs as limited English Proficient students, defined as those whose difficulties in speaking, reading, writing or understanding the English language may be sufficient to deny the individual -- ( i ) the ability to meet the State's proficient level of achievement on State assessments...; (ii)...