ESL Supplemental Exam Transcript Slide 2--.57 seconds · ESL Supplemental Exam Transcript Slide 1--...

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ESL Supplemental Exam Transcript

Slide 1-- Hello, my name is Dr. Minda Lopez and I am an Assistant Professor of Literacy at Texas State University at San Marcus. For approximately the next hour, we will go over the three domains and the competencies in the ESL Supplemental Exam. I will give you some sample questions and walk you through how to answer those questions effectively. I will also cover methods, theories and instructional strategies in ESL. Finally, we will talk about history and law of ESL education and we will look at cultural competency and how to be an advocate for your ESL student. All of this is part of the ESL exam, and I hope that this will help prepare you to pass the test. Let's get started!

Slide 2--.57 seconds This review covers the material for the ESL Supplemental exam. It may also help you if you're taking the EC-6 plus ESL TExES exam.

Slide 3-- 1 minute .08 seconds Before we go into the different domains, I'd like to talk a little bit about how you can prepare for the test and what to expect from this PowerPoint presentation. First of all, the TExES exam has been designed to measure entry level knowledge and skills for teachers in Texas schools. In this case, we will be teaching ESL students. When you use this PowerPoint to prepare for the exam, I want you to pay special attention to words that are in bold print or a different color than the rest of the PowerPoint. This is designed to show you that these are important terms that you'll need to know and be able to apply in the classroom. On this slide, you will also see at the bottom, the official website for the TExES exam. That website has more details and offers preparation manuals that have been prepared for teachers taking all the teachers taking the TExES exams. I'd encourage you to download the preparation manual for this exam, which is the ESL Supplemental #154. Back to the bold print here on this slide, I'd like to draw your attention to the notion that this TExES exam is a criterion referenced test. What that means is that the TExES exam is going to measure your knowledge on the test in relation to an already established standard or criteria. When you get your scores back from the test, you want to see a 240 or above, that means you've passed the test. That score reporting shows you that they judged your performance in relation to a particular criteria or standard. Another kind of assessment is the norm referenced test. On a norm referenced test, your scores would look different. Your scores on a norm referenced test would tell you what percentile you scored in. For example, on a norm referenced test you might get your scores back and it would say "You scored within the 90th percentile on this exam.". What that means is that in a norm reference test, they are judging your performance on the test in relation to others who have taken the test, to the population of test takers. So the main difference in criterion reference and norm reference is how they report out the scores to you.

Slide 3--3 minutes .47 seconds

This particular test has 70 questions--60 count and 10 are pilot questions, or they don't count.

You have about 5 hours to take the test whether you take it pencil and paper means, or if you take it on the computer.

All questions will be multiple choice


o Some of the questions may contain what the preparation manual calls "stimulus material". Essentially those are scenarios or situations that you would use to answer several questions.

o Overall, the questions are designed to test your ability to recall facts, but there also are questions designed for you to analyze situations and apply the knowledge and skills in ESL to a classroom setting.

Slide 4--4 minutes .41 seconds For paper and pencil test, you will receive your score about 4 weeks after you take it.

For the computer administered test, you receive your scores in about 3-5 business days. o As I said earlier, minimum passing is 240 or above out of 300.

In the preparation manual, they talk about how they score your exam. They use a process called scaled scoring. In the preparation manual they describe it as "is not the percentage of items answered correctly and is not determined by averaging the number of questions answered correctly in each domain." When I first read that, I wondered what that meant. What that means is in scaled scoring each item may be worth a different amount. So, question number 1 might be worth, for example, 5 points. Question number 2 might be worth 2 points. It's not that the answer choices are worth different amounts, it's that the item or actual question is worth a different amount.

Slide 5--5 minutes .49 seconds Let's talk now about some general tips for the test. First of all, you need to know yourself. Know your strengths and weaknesses, and also think about what kind of material is going to be on this test. So, I always recommend that you study areas on the test where you have less experience and/or background knowledge. So think about if you are a math teacher and you don't teach reading and you don't teach young children, you might not have a lot of experience with reading or with language acquisition. Those might be some areas you should brush up on and read more about. If your an early childhood teacher, you probably work a lot with language development, and probably also teach emergent literacy. That's going to help you on this test, but you may not know certain terms and concepts that are very specific to ESL. So in that case you might want to brush up on specific terms, acronyms, and language acquisition. Overall, don't panic. You're going to have plenty of time to finish this test. You'll have about 5 hours to answer 70 questions. One strategy that you definitely want to keep in mind is when you look at each question and answer choices, carefully read the question, underline and circle key words, and then attempt to eliminate two answer choices immediately. Usually you can to this fairly easily, and then you have it down to two choices. Then you can go back and analyze the question and really look at the choices that are left to see which one is the best choice. When your eliminating answers here's a few things to keep in mind. Absolutes are usually the wrong answer. What we mean by absolutes are things that say always, must, never, those kinds of very strong words. Another thing to keep in mind is that the answer choice includes referring a student to special ed, that's probably not the direction you want to go. It's not to say that we don't collaborate with our special education colleagues, but for this test, if the answer choice is just very straight forward "send them to special ed" or "test them for special ed" that gives the connotation that you're not going to do everything you can to try to help this child. In terms of choosing the correct answer, trends or popular methods and points of view will often point you to the correct answer. Also terms, terms that have a more


positive connotation. So throughout the presentation today I'll be talking about those different terms, which terms are positive or negative, and what are some popular methods and points of view.

Slide 6--8 minutes .51 seconds So as I talked about earlier, know yourself, know your background knowledge, and use your experiences, but always through this perfect world of the test. Some of the trends and best practices in education include things like multiple intelligences. With multiple intelligences, we are looking at the different ways that kids have strengths and the different ways that children learn and are able to apply their learning in the classroom. So you want to think about building on students strengths and acknowledging that students have strengths and weaknesses in different areas. A very, very important concept would be the concept of balanced literacy. On this test, when you approach literacy, you want to approach it first from this bigger notion of meaningful texts, meaningful stories. So when we teach reading and we approach that for an ELL, we'll first approach reading as meaningful text, meaningful stories. So we might read a story aloud...we might have students write in their journal...and then from that, we also will take out certain things like sounds, asking students to manipulate different sounds, looking at words, different words and how they are made up. But first we approach literacy activities from this bigger more meaningful approach. Then within that approach we understand that there are smaller more discrete skills such as, phonics, words studies, etc. etc., but then we would engage in within that overall meaningful lesson. Some other trends involve brain research, and understanding that there are certain elements to learning that now we know are related to the brain, and how the brain works. Some of that is also related to language acquisition. Another important concept is the notion of cooperative learning. So in an ESL classroom, we would want our students to always be working with each other, to have opportunities to interact, to talk about what they are learning, to learn from each other and share their knowledge. All those different aspects of cooperative learning where students are also asked to have some level of independence, but there is also interdependence. You'll also see multi-sensory activities. So when students are learning language, you want to encourage that they use all of their senses to interact with things. So we want them to be able to see it, be able to touch it, manipulate it, and use as many senses as possible when they are interacting with concepts and things in the world. Finally, this notion of differentiated instruction is very important for this test. So when we think about differentiated instruction for the ESL classroom, typically what we look at is that we differentiate the instruction and the learning that takes place according to the level of proficiency that the students demonstrate in English. So what that means then is that when you have a beginner ELL, you might do very different things than if you have an advanced ELL. There might be some things that you do that are the same, but for this test, I definitely want you to start thinking about what kinds of things we do for beginners? What kinds of things work with beginners? On the other hand, what would be thing we would be more likely to engage in with advanced students? What kind of strategies and methods are more appropriate to use with advanced students? You might even create a T chart and as this presentation goes through different things, have one side of the T chart for beginners, and you jot down all the different things that would work for beginners under that T chart (the left side). On the right side might be advanced, and then you would list the things that we talked about that would be good for advanced students. This will help you distinguish, in your mind, before you go into the test the different things we would do for beginners vs. advanced students. So you would already have an idea of how to differentiate instruction in that way.


Another tip is that when you approach this test, understand that there are many diverse ELL's in the state of Texas. Although about 90% of our students in Texas speak Spanish as their first language, we have so many other languages represented. Over 120 languages are represented in the state of Texas. So on this test, they will talk about Spanish speaking ELL's, but they will also talk about students whose dominate language is another language. Such as, Vietnamese, Russian, Arabic, Urdu, and the list goes on and on. So may message to you is, don't be thrown off by other cultural and linguistic groups other than Spanish speaking. Sometimes teachers feel that while I'm very familiar with Spanish student, but I've never encountered a Mandarin speaker, for example. If they see that language on the test, they might freeze up or feel like they don't have enough knowledge to answer the question. My advice is that often that is a detail that is not necessary to answer the question. In fact, the people that created the test put those descriptors of students into your questions to distract you from answering the question and to take up more of your time. So often you don't even need to look at that information as important.

Slide 7--15 minutes .12 seconds This first bullet goes back to that notion of balanced literacy. For this test, you want to approach literacy teaching and learning as most importantly being about "meaning making". So if they ask you about teaching literacy and the choice is a discrete language art skill or what I call a nitpicky little skill, such as phonics or sound segmentation, that's probably not going to be the answer you choose. Because your first chose of action should be a more broad way of approaching language or text. Another thing to pay attention to is the tone of the answer choices. If the tone ever alludes to watering down the curriculum, or bringing in low expectations, or a lower grade level, be wary of these answer choices. They could be wrong. The second bullet talks about a glossary. There's a glossary on the TEA website that is very helpful for ELL terms. Also, pay attention to all the terms that are included in the handout and on the power point that are bolded or important. Often in this test, the answer come down to vocabulary, and if you don't understand that acronym or the term that their using, it will be very difficult for you to answer the question correctly. Also on the test, understand that there's an emphasis for being proactive as a teacher of ELLs. You don't wait for things to happen but you are very proactive. You go out and seek help and information. So on the test, don't think practically. Don't think "oh our district doesn't have money to do this", "we can't find someone who speaks this language". That shouldn't be what we think about the test, think about we would make it happen if it's the right thing to do.

Slide 8--17 minutes .20 seconds For this test, these are the three domains that it covers. The first domain is Understanding Language Concepts and Language Acquisition. This domain covers about 25% of the test, but you'll notice in this presentation, that I'd spent quite a bit of time on Domain I. One of the reasons I do that is because Domain I is the foundation for Domains II and III. Another reason I do that is I have found that Domain I is often the most foreign concepts for teachers. So while teachers are often exposed to culture awareness (which are Domain III) and their teaching those to different methods of instruction (which those are Domain II) they are often not given a solid background in linguistics and the different aspects of language and language acquisition. So I will spend quite a bit of time on Domain I, even though here it says it's only 25% of the test.


Domain II which covers instruction and assessment asks you to apply many of the concepts in Domain I into the ESL classroom. So a lot of those questions are going to be classroom scenarios and this is almost 50% of the test at 45%. Domain III covers foundations of ESL education (which includes history and law) and it also goes into cultural awareness and family and community involvement. For the rest of this presentation, we will follow the Domain's in that order. First we are going to talk about Domain I then we will cover Domain II and finally Domain III.

Slide 9--19 minutes .08 seconds Domain I: Language and Language Acquisition consists of these two standards. Standard I is where the ESL teacher understands fundamental language concepts and knows the structure and conventions of English. Standard III is where the ESL teacher understands processes of first and second language acquisition and uses this knowledge to promote students' language development in English.

Slide 10--19 minutes .34 seconds Some terms that you'll encounter on the test on the left side, these terms are for the learner (students whose dominant language is not English). They may speak some English, but it's not their dominant language. Or they may not speak English at all. The first one is LEP or some people say L.E.P. This acronym stands for Limited English Proficient. It's used most often for government documents; it's also used on PEIMS. So any time the test covers things related to the law or the government, they will probably use this term LEP. But in research and in instruction, we've moved away from the term LEP because it's an older term that appears to be deficit oriented (talking about the limitations). Now we use the term ELL. This stands for English Language Learner. This term is thought to be a little more positive but some people are beginning to use another term, Emerging Bilingual. This is the most recent term and you've probably won't see it on the test. You'll definitely see LEP and ELL. When we talk about the programs or classes for ELLs, there's one major term that's used as an umbrella term, and that's ESL. ESL stands for English as a Second Language, that's used for various programs and classes for ESL students, or ELLs. Another term you'll see is (and it could be on the test) ESOL. That stands for English to Speakers of Other Languages. In Texas, it's used primarily in high schools to identify a class that's offered to immigrant students only and is the equivalent of English I or freshman English. The important thing about ESOL I is that students in this class receive state credit. If they were just to enroll in ESL class, they might only get local credit which doesn't carry as much weight for graduation. So if you see ESOL I or ESOL II on your exam, know that this is a class only for ESL students and that it is a high school English class.

Slide 11--22 minutes .06 seconds OK, so talking about language, the overall big picture of language is that it's flexible, is responsive and it's always changing to meet the communication needs of its speakers. But the big idea is that language is all about communication.


Within that notion that language is meaningful and it's about how we can communicate with each other, we also acknowledge that language is systematic. It has rules, it has grammar, and those rules are there for us to be able to understand each other. Language is also generative. What that means is that is changes, it's flexible, there's new words coming in to English all the time, and old words going out. Why? Because the big picture is that it's about communication. It's about meaning making.

Slide 12--23 minutes .04 seconds The next few slides are going to cover some different components of language, of all languages. The first one is phonology. Any time you see phon, you should think sound. So, phonology is the system of sounds of any language. Some important terms that will be on this test are first phonemes; know that phonemes are the smallest unit of sound. For example, the word "cat" has 3 phonemes, "c", "a", and "t". The word "back" also has 3 phonemes, "b", "a", "k". So remember that phonemes are not always equivalent to the number of letters, but phonemes are equivalent to the sounds. On the test, they could ask you how many phonemes are in the word "back". You would know the answer there is 3. Another important term related to phonology is the notion of allophones. Allophones are letters or combinations of letters that make the same sound. In English, we have many different allophones. So if we are thinking about sound "k", we have many different ways we can make that sound. We can use a "k" or a "c". My son who is 6 asked me recently, "Mom why do we spell cat with a "c" and kitty with a "k"?". The concept of allophones and that we have different letters that make the same sound is a difficult concept even for native English speakers. For ESL students who sometimes come from languages where each letter makes a constant sound every time you see it, and has only one sound related to it. The idea of allophones can even be more difficult, so remember that allophones are letters or combinations of letters that make the same sound. In English "k" can be made with c, k, ck, ch, and a variety of other letter combinations.

Slide 13--25 minutes .28 seconds Next we have this notion of morphology in a language. Morphology is looking at words and words as a single unit. It's not words in relation to other words, but it's looking at that word and how that word is made. In English, we have roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes), and that's how we understand different meanings of words. Those different parts of words that have meaning and are called morphemes. The word trees ( with an s) has two morphemes. The "tree" part of the word and the "s" part of the word which in that case signifies more than one. You could also have other words with prefixes and suffixes, and you could have pretty long words. So if you write down the word "uninterestingly", look at that word and think about all the different parts that make up that word that have meaning. Let's take root "interest" and think about what it means to be interesting or what it means to hold someone's interest. Then if we look at the prefix "un", what does that tell us? That tells us not. If we just had "uninterest" or "uninteresting", you know it's not interesting. Then we have "ing", that suffix. That tells us something is present progressive or it's happening at the time. Then if we look at the last suffix "ly", that tells us how something is done or it signifies that it's an adverb. The word "uninterestingly" we have 4 morphemes or 4 parts that have meaning.


Slide 14--27 minutes .29 seconds Semantics, the level of language that's called semantics refers to meaning of words. So for this area you want to think about, can a student understand what a words means, can they give you synonyms and antonyms for that word? The big picture there is, does a student understand the term? Something that is related to this notion of semantics are cognates. Cognates are words in two or more languages related through the same origin.

Slide 15--28 minutes .03 seconds Usually cognates have Latin roots when we are talking about English-Spanish cognates. The more closely the language is related, the more likely there will be cognates. The content area like science has quite a few English-Spanish cognates. Photosynthesis in English is fotosintesis in Spanish. Remember that cognates should be used as a resource. If a student knows what photosynthesis means in English, then fotosintesis will be easily understood in Spanish.

Slide 16--28 minutes .43 seconds The next level of language is syntax. Syntax is referring to sentence structure or grammar. Syntax can encompass word order like when we say “Pass me the blue crayon, please”. A Spanish speaking ELL might mistake that word order and say “Pass me the crayon blue, please”, because in Spanish your adjective often comes after your noun. Syntax can also refer to how a words function in a sentence. For example, the word blessed can be a verb or an adjective, depending on how the word is pronounced or used in a sentence—“The priest blessed the couple.” “It is a blessed event.”

Slide 17—29 minutes .32 seconds The final component of language is pragmatics. Pragmatics is difficult for many ELLs, because pragmatics requires not only that you understand what words mean, the order they go in, how to pronounce them, but you also have to know is this socially acceptable. So you can think of pragmatics in many ways as the same thing as manners, or as how to use the language acceptably in a variety of cultural contexts. In English we don’t have formal address in our grammar (such as the Spanish Ud. Versus the informal tu, other languages have other variations), but we do have certain times (such as job interviews or if a student is going to talk to the principal) when more formal language is expected. This is an example of pragmatics. Another example of pragmatics includes how we use language in our culture that is often hidden or it’s implicit. It’s not taught explicitly, or it’s not stated explicitly. For example, in English when we are going to talk about someone’s attractiveness, if we are talking about a woman we typically say that they are pretty. If we are talking about a man, we don’t say that they are pretty. But if you have an ESL student and they are writing a text and they want to talk about someone who is attractive they might look at Webster’s dictionary and it might just say pretty. So it’s not always going to be very evident or be very explicit of what is or is not culturally acceptable. So as teachers we need to start including those kinds of lessons into our teaching so that our ESL students will also understand the pragmatics or the culturally acceptable way to use different words in language.

Slide 18—31 minutes .35 seconds A few more terms that you’ll see on the test include code-switching. I think of code-switching as something like language switching. Essentially what you’re doing is going in and out of two different languages. You have to be


bilingual to code-switch because it involves using one language and then rapidly using the other. For example someone might say, “I will go a la casa de mi tia because I’m really hungry and she makes lingua I me conta lingua.” So, you are speaking and going in and out of two different languages, that’s code-switching. Language borrowing, on the other hand, you don’t have to be bilingual to do this. In fact in English we do this quite frequently. We have borrowed words from other languages and we use them as part of our English lexicon, or our English vocabulary. For example we might say, “Let’s go to the rodeo.” and we don’t even think about it as rodeo being originally a Spanish word. Why? Because we have borrowed that term and now English speakers all over the U.S. use that term rodeo, we’ve borrowed that term into English.

Slide 19—32 minutes .50 seconds Keep in mind when we are looking at language and language acquisition that students should be allowed to use all of their linguistic resources. Sometimes students rely on their native language while they are learning English, and this is very common for beginners. As a result you might see some resistant interference from a students’ native language into English. This happens across all different components of language. So they might ask you on the test, identify certain errors that students have made and what kind of interference they are experiencing. It could be phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic, or pragmatic. Keep in mind that if something does not exist in your native language, it might be one of the hardest things to hear and learn in the next language that you’re learning.

Slide 20—33 minutes .44 seconds We know that language varies. Languages vary according to many different features such as: different people, topic, situation, purpose, social class, ethnicity, etc… For the purposes of this test we want to think about two main kinds of language variation, dialects and registers.

Slide 21—34 minutes .10 seconds Dialects, what you want to remember for a dialect is that typically we speak one dialect. Dialects can be regional, social, or both. That’s how it’s determined which dialect we speak. We typically tend to think of dialects according to geographical area, so you might have to have Australian English or British English or American English, those are the larger geographical areas. Then within those dialects you have regional varieties or ethnic varieties depending on where you live or what ethnic background you have. Not always, but sometimes, people with different ethnic backgrounds use a different dialect. Often those are tied very closely to geographical regions. Dialects are marked by different ways of pronouncing words. It would be something like pecan or pecan. Another way dialects are marked by vocabulary choices. Such as: “I would like a coke.” (in Texas) or “I would like a pop.” or “I would like a soda.”. You can think on and on and on of the different ways you can say that. It typically depends on where you live. You would choose a different word for a carbonated beverage. There could also be variations in syntax or grammar in different dialects. Remember that we typically speak one dialect, then, within that dialect we have registers. That is further variation. So think of a register as being according to the communicative functions or needs of what you are communicating, and also it is tied to your audience or the context you’re in. Registers include both oral and written mediums.

Slide 22—36 minutes .15 seconds (Green Screen) We are now going to talk about 4 main of learning and of language acquisition, including behaviorism, nativism, cognitivism, and dialectical constructivism.


The first one, behaviorism, follows the work of Skinner and views the process as desiring a change in behavior. So behaviorists would rely on stimuli in an external environment in order to produce behavioral change. In terms of language learning it’s this idea that language is learning by imitation and developed by a system of habits, that for every action there is a reaction. So the ways teaching or the methods that you would see in a behaviorist learning classroom, include repetition, mimicry, memorization, reinforcing desired behavior, and stimulus response.

Slide 23—37minutes .14 seconds Nativism, also called Innatism or Generativism is a theory by Chomsky, and this pertains specifically to language but not necessarily second language. Chomsky thought that language was something that we all have the capacity for as human beings, and that we have this innate capacity in our mind through what he called the Language Acquisition Device or “LAD”. This device helps us to understand and learn language. So if we are in a language rich environment, we are surrounded by a lot of language, then we don’t need to teach grammar explicitly in the beginning. We can delay that explicit instruction in grammar and instead we can focus on function. We can focus on context. According to Chomsky, language learning will occur because we have innate capacity to do this in our mind.

Slide 24—38 minutes .21 seconds Cognitivism is the next theory, and cognitivists follow Piaget. Piaget felt that in order to learn, you had to go through particular stages that were part of your cognitive structuring. Those structures related to the stages of development that Piaget came up with. He felt that learners would progress predicatively through these ordered stages of learning. An implication for the classroom would be that the learning environment needs to be deliberately constructed for each student’s stage. Differentiation is not accounted for in a cognitivist environment instead it’s this idea of sequencing and stages and that intelligence and learning is a function of age.

Slide 25—39 minutes .20 seconds Dialectical Constructivists or Interactionist follow the work of Vygotsky. Vygotsky felt that in order to learn people had to interact with their environment. They were going to use all their senses in order to make sense of what they were experiencing. They were going to see it, smell it, and interact with it in a variety of ways. Interactionist feels that language is learned through interacting both with their environment and with others. So a lot of things that you will see in an Interactionist classroom include cooperative grouping where students are learning from each other and with each other using manipulatives or real world objects(called realia in ESL), they will be engaged in multisensory activities, and you’ll see lots of discussion. In an interactionist environment, students construct knowledge and language with support to help them grow and develop in language.

Slide 26—40 minutes .32 seconds They also have two main theorists in second language acquisition. These include the theories of Stephen Krashon and Jim Cummins.

Slide 27—40 minutes .45 seconds Krashon talked about as you’re gaining a new language, a second language (this is all second language acquisition) there are two different processes for developing proficiency. You can develop this proficiency through acquisition, which Krashon talked about as a positive way to develop your proficiency. It’s very similar to the way children acquire their first language and it’s a subconscious process, often they don’t even realize they are doing it.


Krashon talked about the learning process for developing proficiency as a not so positive or not a desirable way to gain your proficiency in a second language. If you were to learn the second language, it would be a very explicit presentation of rules and grammar, it’s the same as you would see in classroom instruction, and it’s very formal. So in this sense, acquisition is more desirable than learning.

Slide 28—41minutes .49 seconds Krashon also talked about the Input Hypothesis and he said “ESL students are able to acquire language by understanding what the teacher is communicating.” This is called comprehensible input. It’s what the teacher is trying to teach to the student, the input is going into the student then. But we as teachers have a duty to make that input comprehensible. Ways that we can do that are to use visuals, enunciate clearly as we are speaking, and slow down our rate of speech.

Slide 29—42 minutes .26 seconds Krashon also described the Affective Filter in his hypothesis. He said that there affective or emotional elements that can also effect the acquisition of language. As teachers, we need to cover the language, the linguistic, the intellectual or cognitive sides of learning, but we also need to cover the emotional or affective sides of learning. If you’ll imagine that affective filter as some physical thing that you can raise or lower, you want to lower the affective filter so that a student’s learning is not blocked. If you raise the affective filter, you can visualize that there would be a block for that child’s learning; they would not be able to learn as effectively. So the affective filter is lowered by attending to those emotional sides of learning, and lowering anxiety in the classroom, helping students develop a good self-image, helping them feel a part of the classroom and providing meaningful activities that would then be aligned with student motivation, interests, and possibly even their cultural background. Often times you’ll see native language use and cultural background tied into the affective filter. The reason for this is that your native language and culture is very strongly tied to your identity. Your identity is often an emotional side of you. In order to lower the affective filter, a teacher might also learn some key phrases in a student’s native language and use them with that student in their class in order to send the message that they value who that student is.

Slide 30—44 minutes .19 seconds Krashon also talked about the Monitor Hypothesis and what he said is, as you’re acquiring a language you begin the process of monitoring your conscious corrections. The more proficient you become in English the more aware you are of what is or is not correct. In this sense, errors and error corrections are signs of developmental growth. This shows us that our students are progressing because as they monitor and as they self-correct, we are seeing what they do and don’t know.

Slide 31—44 minutes .54 seconds Krashon also described the Silent Period in his work in looking at second language acquisition. What Krason said about the silent period is that this happens with beginners. Students who are new to a language, and he says that this is a normal part of developmental process that new or beginner students may not be ready to produce the language yet. They may not be ready to provide output. The implications for the classroom are that students should not be forced to communicate, but instead allowed to build up their linguistic competence by actively listening to what we as teachers make comprehensible for them.


Slide 32—45 minutes .48 seconds Now we are going to move to the theories of Jim Cummins. Jim Cummins talked about there are two types of language within this broad spectrum of any language around the world. He did study ESL settings, in particular, and he talked about if we are looking at language there’s these two main types: the BICS and the CALP.

Slide 33—46 minutes .05 seconds Cummins talked about BICS as being the social or conversational language. This is the language used to communicate in everyday settings. Often that language is contextualized. What that means is, you can see it. So if I’m at a party and talking about the food that’s being served at the party that is BICS or a conversational or social language. I’m talking about something we are doing at the time, and it’s contextualized. Cummins says that it takes about 1-2 years for an ESL student to reach the same level of proficiency in BICS as a monolingual student. So you can see that they would catch up in BICS fairly quickly.

Slide 34—46 minutes .48 seconds The other side of language is the CALP. This is the academic language, and is used to develop higher order thinking skills. The academic language or the CALP is often very abstract, its context reduced, it might be difficult to see, it’s also highly technical, and it’s going to require more thinking. Cummins research suggests that it takes about 5-7 years for an ESL student to reach the same level of CALP as a main stream student. This is the case (the 5-7 years) if the ESL student has a solid foundation in their native language.

Slide 35—47 minutes .31 seconds If the ESL student doesn’t have a solid foundation in their native language, it could even take up to 10 years for them to reach the same level of CALP or academic language proficiency as their mono-language speaking peers. This slide show a visual of what I just described in terms of BICS, the ESL students catch up fairly quickly but in CALP it takes much longer. The native English speakers are developing CALP and their rate of CALP is growing or moving more rapidly than BICS. Cummins describes this in terms of CALP; the ESL students are attempting to hit a moving target.

Slide 36—48 minutes .21 seconds Broadly speaking, language acquisition is influenced by many, many factors. It’s influenced by Age, motivation and attitude, first language proficiency, intelligence, previous schooling, amounts of exposure to language, and language models.

Slide 37—48 minutes .41 seconds This wraps up Domain I. We’ll now continue with Domain II talking about ESL Instruction and Assessment.

Slide 38—48 minutes .54 seconds This repeats Standards I and III from Domain I.

Slide 39—49 minutes .00 seconds We also add Standards IV, V, and VI. The ESL teacher understands methods and uses this knowledge to plan and implement ESL instruction, the teacher has knowledge of factors that would impact their learning, and the ESL teacher understands formal and informal assessment.

Slide 40—49 minutes .20 seconds


We were talking about BICS and CALP under Cummins theory relating it to language and language acquisition; we also want to talk about language proficiency and what that looks like in the classroom. That would take into account BICS and CALP. Broadly speaking language proficiency is the level of skill students demonstrate in a language, but it encapsulates many, many different skills within this broader notion of language. Can that student understand messages? That’s the input. Can they also express meaning effectively? Can they then provide output? Are they able to use language fluently across a variety of contexts? This is similar to what we talked about in terms of register. And finally, are they able to self-correct? This relates back to Krashon’s monitor hypothesis.

Slide 41—50 minutes .21 seconds In Texas, we divide the ELL Proficiency Stages into these four main stages: Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced, and Advanced High. These stages are used with YELPS and the TELPAS.

Slide 42—50 minutes .38 seconds When we look at the different proficiency stages, we want to be sure that we can differentiate between what a beginner ELL student would need, and especially what advanced or advanced high ELLs need.

Slide 43—50 minutes .57 seconds Before thinking about beginners, a beginner listener is going to understand mostly common and everyday words and words that are repeated often in a particular setting. In this example, the beginner listener understands the bolded words that are underlined. They are understanding phrases such as “Good morning”, “Today”, “math class”, “open your books to page on hundred”, “seventy-two”, “top”, “page”, “today”, “book”, “math”, “two”, “textbook”, “rectangle”, “two circles”.

Slide 44-51 minutes .39 seconds If we go to the other end of the spectrum, think about what an advanced or an advanced high listener understands. They are going to understand everything that is going to be underlined, what they don’t understand is what’s italicized. So if you look at what they understand, and then think about what they don’t understand. What they don’t understand are things that used differently in different context. So, let me read this paragraph and I will not read the italicized words. You think about what kind of words those are.

Good morning, class. Today we are going to study something new in math class. It’s difficult, so I’m going to need everyone’s . Open your books to page one hundred seventy two. At the top of the page is the word. Today’s lesson is a two-dimensional model. The of a cylinder is in your textbook. Does everyone see the rectangle and two circles? That is the of the cylinder.

So advanced and advanced highs students really tend to understand everything, but what they don’t understand are these highly technical terms or terms that are used differently or in different context, such as net or brand. There are also idiomatic sayings that students might not pick up on, such as brand new or undivided attention and other words that they may miss are words that are irregular, such as shown for the past tense.

Slide 45—53 minutes .24 seconds I want to talk now about the English Proficiency Standards. English Language Proficiency Standards have been provided by TEA and are designed to help us understand the instruction we must provide to ELLs in order for them to have the full opportunity to learn English and succeed academically.


The English Language Proficiency Standards, also called the ELPS, are meant to be implemented in classrooms as an integral part of instruction in each area and they enrich along with the TEKS.

Slide 46—54 minutes .03 seconds Because we know that ELLs need to learn both social and academic language, and that they have to read, write, listen and speak with increasing complexity. The ELPS have been designed to help teachers integrate second language acquisition with content area instruction (math, science, social studies, etc.) for all language skills. So the ELPS will contain student area expectations in 5 areas:

Learning strategies

Listening

Speaking

Reading

Writing

Slide 47—54 minutes .36 seconds Here are some ELPS examples. The learning strategies ELP asks that students be able to speak using learning strategies such as requesting assistance, employing non-verbal cues, and using synonyms and circumlocution(conveying ideas by defining or describing when exact English words are not known). So in the classroom we would want to gauge in activities that would show students how to do these things. How to request assistance? How to use non-verbal ques? How to use synonyms? Also, we would encourage circumlocution. Some other examples for listening include; we would ask for a student to use a visual, contextual, and linguistic support to enhance and confirm understanding of increasingly complex and elaborated spoken language.

Slide 48—55 minutes .33 seconds In speaking we would want the students to express their opinions, ideas, and feelings ranging from using single words and short phrases (as a beginner would) to participating in extended discussions on a variety of social and grade-appropriate academic topics. In reading we would want our students to comprehend increasingly complex English by participating in activities such as shared reading, retelling, or summarizing material, responding to questions, and taking notes commensurate with content area and grade level needs. In writing we would ask students to narrate, describe, and explain with increasing specificity and detail to fulfill content area writing needs as more English is acquired. So as you can see the ELPS are written broadly to cover the needs of all ELLs. You want to think about what kinds of things you want to be able to do? What would they need from me as a teacher? Then on the other side what would an advanced student need?


Slide 49—56 minutes .44 seconds (GREEN SCREEN) We are now going to talk about methods for teaching ESL. First we are going to talk about some old approaches. The grammar translation method is an outdated approach that is no longer used. In this method the emphasis is on reading and writing skills with very little concern for oral language. Stress is on isolated grammar structures and vocabulary lists. You typically use the first language to explain and translate to the second language. Little attention is paid to the content of text which are treated as exercises in grammatical importance. The next method is called the audio lingual method. This follows behaviorist theories. The audio lingual method focuses on dialog and oral speaking and listening. It’s taught primarily through mimicry memorization and manipulation drills. There’s an emphasis on isolated grammar that’s sequenced carefully to prevent student errors. Although very little use of the first language by teachers is permitted and successful responses of students is immediately reinforced, there’s the focus on speaking and listening and the use of tapes, language labs, and visual aids is crucial to the audio lingual method. We know longer use both of these methods because they are very focused on grammar and grammar is the most important method for teaching language in these approaches. After Chomsky’s theories of Innatism, ESL teaching changed drastically and we no longer emphasized grammar as the primary method for teaching language.

Slide 50—58 minutes and .37 seconds Now we use some other new approaches such as the Natural Approach. The natural approach follows the theories of Krashon. In the natural approach, the emphasis is on the acquisition process. Techniques focus on providing context in the classroom for natural language acquisition to occur. So the teacher maximizes comprehensible input and tries to create low-anxiety situations. The natural approach is a great approach to teaching language but often it’s not standards based, it’s not used in pre-k through 12 schools. TPR is an approach that has been around a long time and this is an approach that is thought to follow behaviorist theories of learning and it’s also very good for beginners. In TPR, the teacher gives commands and models physical movement. Students then respond by both speaking and moving their bodies physically.

Slide 51—59 minutes .49 seconds The Communicative Approach focuses on authentic communication. Unlike grammar translation where a student may be involved in skits that are carefully crafted for the grammatical structure that is being taught. In the communicative approach there is authentic communication that is sought. Skits and roll play are used, but they are much more authentic. For example, we would pretend that we were going to go into a bakery. One student would pretend to be the customer and the other would pretend to be the baker. Students would not memorize their lines but instead work to understand each other through the language that they are learning. Next we have Critical Pedagogy or Critical Literacy. This is based on the work of Paulo Freire a Brazilian educator. Critical Pedagogy is a method in which a teacher listens to get to know their students, to get to know their lives, and get to know the context of their lives. Students are taught how to think about their lives and the power structures in their lives. Teachers and students engage in learning as co-learners and use problem solving and thinking critically, drama and other methods for understanding and challenging the power structures in society. So the important part of Critical Pedagogy is that students and teachers learn together and figure out some of the challenges in their lives and they use literacy and their language to try to move to action to solve some of the problems that they are confronting.


Slide 52—61 minutes .52 seconds Culturally Relevant Pedagogy is a technique that was created by Gloria Ladson-Billings. With culturally relevant pedagogy the idea is that a teacher would bring in a student’s culture into the curriculum to help develop them academically. The teacher would work on effectively helping students to read, write, speak, and engage in all kinds of learning behaviors to solve problems, but also to understand themselves as well as the dominant culture. The end result is the curriculum uses the students culture or there are connections being made from the students culture to academics.

Slide 53—62 minutes .46 seconds Another new approach is called Cognitive-Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA). You can imagine from the title that this approach is focused on academic skills and language and therefore is probably best for more advanced students or for students that have already developed their BICS. CALLA focuses on academic skills throughout the content areas and really focuses on high academic achievement and success.

Slide 54—63 minutes .23 seconds Next we have Sheltered Instruction or SIOP. SIOP stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol and is a brand of sheltered instruction. Sheltered instruction encourages comprehensive planning and best practices for ELLs. So sheltered instruction takes best practices from many different theories and methods and brings them together into one approach. In the approach, the attempt is to make academic content, language and materials more accessible to ESL students and therefore they are exposed to high level rigorous content area subject matter much faster. Two important things to remember for sheltered instruction: Language and content are taught together; and you typically have mainstream students and ESL students taught together in the same class.

Slide 55-64 minutes .21 seconds Generally some rules of thumb that you want to remember for ESL instruction is that we capitalize in what exists in a student’s first language. So as the teacher, we are prepared, we have done research to understand the students first language and then we also try to predict what kind of challenges those students have in English. Also, what we can capitalize on in terms of their first language and then the strengths that the students bring. We also want to think about how we group students. So for ESL students, we want to think about how we group them and who they work within our classroom. We want to group them homogenously, that is all ESL students together. At are very specific and intentional times to work on specific strategies that they may need due to their first language and to the structures that are in their first language or if they have missed out on some key content area concepts because they have not been educated in this country. But for the most part we will group them heterogeneously. That is, they will be mixed with mainstream students and with students that speak English more proficiently than they so. This way they can learn from the people that speak English at a more proficient rate than they do.

Slide 56—65 minutes .52 seconds Another thing we want to think of in our methods of instruction is that we start with what students know and gradually build new knowledge. So we want to be very purposeful in how we build lessons. That we don’t add too much too quickly, but that we start with what we know students can do and then we gradually add more and more layers so that they will be able to learn and do more and more. If we’re confronted with a choice, we always want to begin with experiences; we always want to think about how we can help our students understand this concept by engaging in it through an experience. That is going to be deeper learning than merely teaching vocabulary. If at all possible we want


to begin with experiences; we want students to be using all of their senses and keep in mind the different learning styles that they have and the different ways that they have strength and weaknesses. Then we move on to vocabulary, reading, and text. But text should be one of the final things that we do and all the time that we are using language will be focusing on using comprehension.

Slide 57—67 minutes .16 seconds Now we are going to be talking about teaching reading to ELLs.

Slide 58—67 minutes .23 seconds (Green Screen) Teaching reading is a very complex subject and requires a lot of knowledge, practice, and skill. For the purposes of this test, we will focus on a few key areas and we also want to focus on what do we do to teach a beginner vs. an advanced ESL student to read.

Slide 59—67 minutes .45 seconds In ready theory, when a reader is approaching a text they use these three main queuing systems in order to gain meaning from the text. Look at these three queuing systems and think about which one an ESL student would benefit from using the most. If we start on the left hand side we have the syntactic queuing system. Syntax, as you remember, has to do with structure or grammar of a language. So to use the syntactic queuing system, a student uses their knowledge of grammar to decide if what they read is correct. The semantic queuing system is linked to this notion of semantics. Again, if you remember from an earlier section of linguistics, semantic refers to meaning or meaning making. With the semantic queuing system a student uses prior knowledge and experience to make sense of the content in the text. On the far right, there is the graphophonic queuing system. In this system, a student refers to letters and looks at how those letters look and thinks about those letters may make one or more sounds in a word. So the student looks at the word and thinks about the sound/symbol correspondence and decides if a word is visually correct. For ELLs who are learning to read in English, the semantic queuing system will typically be the one they rely on the most. Why? Because it’s tied to meaning and meaning making. ELLs have background knowledge in experiences that they can connect to text from either language that they know. The queuing systems of syntax are not helpful because they may not have an internalized understanding of English grammar yet, and the graphophonic queuing system requires that a student automatically tie letters to English sounds. While learning English the ESL student may still be relying on their knowledge of syntax and sound letter correspondence from their first language and may not have that automatically down in English yet.

Slide 60—70 minutes .06 seconds Thinking about beginning readers who are ELLs, typically they are new to English, they have minimal ability to derive meaning from English text without support, and they tend to read very slowly and word by word. In order for a beginner ESL student to figure out what they’ve read, they rely heavily on prior knowledge of the topic, the limited number of words and phrases they know, and they rely on information from pictures or visuals.


Because their English is limited, their comprehension quickly breaks down when they are reading text that are written for non-ELLs at their grade level. When teaching these students we always want to do things to introduce a text that’s going to connect a meaning, so we will ask students what they know about the topic that’s being covered in the book. We might also ask students to look at the pictures, through for example, a picture walk. To look at the pictures and think about kind of meaning can they gain from the visuals in the text. That’s an idea of context clues that we want to focus on for beginner ESL readers. We also want to focus on comprehension and meaning making and we can think about different strategies and methods that might help a beginner reader learn to read. Some of these are mirrored in what we do with emergent readers who are English speakers such as, repetition and patterns in books. Repetition can include not only repeated phrases in a book, but also repeated readings of the same text. When you have repeated readings of the same text a student can attend to and pay attention to different aspects of the text each time that they read. This increases the depth of knowledge that they gain from the text. Another idea related to repetition and patterns is that we the teacher ask the beginner ESL students similar or the same questions after each reading of the text. In this way the ESL student can predict what we are going to ask them related to the text. This helps them hone in on important information that they need regarding that text. Other things we want to focus on are safe ways for students to hear and practice correct pronunciation. These are things like echo reading where the teacher reads then the student reads; choral reading where we all read together; and other activities such as read alouds and read along centers.

Slide 61—73 minutes .01 seconds Intermediate readers who are ESL students have a larger English vocabulary and a better sense of the structure or grammar of the English language. But they still tend to interpret text very literally. They also rely heavily on what they already know about a topic to confirm meaning of the text and increase their comprehension, and pictures can be a needed support. Overall, intermediate students can read and understand simple text on familiar topics with scaffolding although they still have difficulty with materials written for native English speakers on their grad level. What we want to focus on our intermediate readers who are ESL students is increasing their fluency. We can increase fluency through activities such as readers’ theater, through increasing the sight words that we have our students know, and again by repeated readings. Other things we want to do for students as this level is increase their vocabulary and we want to encourage them to read texts on the same topic but on various levels. This way sometimes they’re reading text that are much harder for them and will have harder words and they can also read text that are easy for them so they can have a bit of a brain break so they can feel successful and see how far they have come.

Slide 62—74 minutes .28 seconds Advanced readers who are ELLs can read longer, more complex texts because they are more familiar with the structure of English. They use this knowledge to construct meaning. They can also understand text that can introduce them to new topics and they often move beyond literal comprehension to apply much more abstract and critical thinking skills as they read.


However, students may still have difficulty with certain words and structures as compared to their native English-speaking peers, but with some assistance they can usually understand materials written for their grade level. For advanced ESL readers we want to focus on more academic language and very technical vocabulary. We want to focus on the mechanics in the texts, we want to focus on developing much higher order thinking skills and we can use new genres and introduce students to new kinds of texts. We do this often through the idea of mentor texts. This is a term that is used mostly in writing to talk about bringing in a text to show students how to engage in a particular practice. For example if we want our students to write using alliteration, we would find a text that uses alliteration; we would read it to them and then we would analyze how that text used alliteration. Then we would ask our students to engage in their writing.

Slide 63—76 minutes .03 seconds A few things to keep in mind when teaching reading:

You don’t want to ask the student to read aloud for purpose of testing reading comprehension. In this case students will worry about pronouncing the words, not thinking about making meaning from the text. However, if you have students that are early readers and they are still reading aloud all the time because they haven’t learned to silent read yet, then this doesn’t apply.

In terms of spelling instruction, you don’t want to have students memorize spelling rules. Instead you want to focus on patterns in language much like the “Words their Way” books use that is a method of analytical phonics, and uses word families and word sorts to understand patterns in English spelling.

Slide 64—76 minutes .58 seconds When teaching reading something important to remember is that the skills developed in a students’ first language are transferred to the second language. These are skills that are the base to succeed in the target language (in this case English). There’s this idea that people only learn to read one time. So if you learn to read in your native language, you have already learned the very difficult processing skills that it takes to learn to read but you’ve learned it in a different language. The wonderful thing about that is you have a database and you have skills and strategies that can be used to transfer meaning into the second language.

Slide 65—77 minutes .45 seconds This follows a theory by Jim Cummins, Common Underlying Proficiency of Languages (CUP). What this says is that on the surface languages appear to be different. So Spanish appears to be very different than English. They sound differently; they use different spelling patterns; they look different. But deep down the languages are interdependent. If you’re a bilingual person, you don’t have two separate brains that don’t communicate with each other. Instead you have one common source of thought. What it says here on this slide is “irrespective of the language in which a person is operating”, so it doesn’t matter if that person is speaking English or Spanish, all the thoughts that accompany talking, reading, writing, and listening come from the same central place in your brain. So when a person speaks two or more languages, there’s one integrated source of thought. This is true also for reading.

Slide 66—78 minutes .58 seconds This is the notion of Common Underlying Proficiency. So if you look at this slide it’s almost as if these are two icebergs and that wavy line is the surface. At the top, the languages may appear to be very different, but really deep down you


have language universals. A noun is a noun whether it’s in English or Spanish. You also have academic knowledge that you have developed. So if you understand concepts, you understand them whether it’s being talked about in English or in Spanish. You also have life experiences that help you in your background knowledge and cognitive development.

Slide 67—79 minutes .38 seconds So this goes back again to this notion that if you learn to read one time and you learn to read in your native language, as you’re learning English, you transfer skills over to your reading in English. So what kinds of things transfer?

If you have knowledge about certain concepts, that will transfer.

If you have particular habits and attitudes, that tends to transfer.

Your self-esteem (your ability to read) that often transfers.

Learning context cues to predict meaning. If I’m going to pick up a book in English, I'll also look at the images. The images help me to understand about the text. I do this whether I'm reading in English and Spanish. That's the strategy of using context cues to predict meaning.

Slide 68--80 minutes .31 seconds Keep in mind that things that transfer are things like strategies and skills, but not certain aspects of a language that's going to be very specific of that language or to a culture. So something like a spelling rule in English, will not transfer into another language.

Slide 69--80 minutes .54 seconds Thinking again about teaching reading and how our students develop literacy, there are also things that can impact our students literacy development.

Things like interrupted schooling. If you have someone that is ill or someone in the family that is ill, or if they have migrated from one place to another, or if they have been spending time in refugee camps, all of these things might lead up to interrupted schooling. This could impact their literacy development.

Other things also include literacy status in the first language. Prior literacy experiences that students have had. What are their experiences with print and if print is important? How do we communicate around stories? All of these different aspects could impact a child's literacy development.

Slide 70--81 minutes .48 seconds Now let's talk about technology. In terms of technology, what do teachers need to know for ELLs? First our students should be consumers and producers of technology in the classroom. It's also important to recognize that technology does not replace instruction but instead supplements it. One way technology can supplement instruction is by contextualizing concepts. Technology is also thought to be a tool for narrowing the achievement gap between ELLs and your mainstream population. One reason people think this is that technology can differentiate according to a student's need.

Slide 71--82 minutes .31 seconds Computer Assisted Instruction (also called CAI) or Computer Assisted Language Learning (also called CALL) is the practice of using technology or computer based resources to present information to reassess learning. Sometimes computer assisted instruction can be much more efficient because it can be differentiated more easily and the student can be


taught on their independent learning level. In this way computer assisted instruction is very student centered, that is perhaps the biggest benefit. Other benefits include: it's motivational, students like the technology, it can provide contextualized information and learning, and often you can incorporate more authentic real world activities using technology.

Slide 72--83 minutes .31 seconds Assessment--What do ESL teachers need to know?

Slide 73--83 minutes .38 seconds We need to know that we use both informal and formal assessment methods to evaluate language learning, to monitor our instructional effectiveness, and shape instruction. We should use on-going assessments with second language learners and for this test we should know how to use a variety of assessment procedures. Keep in mind the distinction between formative and evaluative (also called summative) assessments.

Slide 74--84 minutes .10 seconds (green screen) There are two main types of assessments. The first one is formative. This kind of assessment I view as "for me" as the teacher. I'm the teacher and I need this kind of assessment to help me with my instruction. I use this kind of assessment so that I can adjust my instruction to help my students achieve their learning goals. Some examples of formative assessment are teacher made tests, performance assessment such as labs or centers, teacher observations, anecdotal records, goal setting along with the student. The other type of assessment is called evaluative or summative. These tend to be end of course exams or end of course assessments that are given to determine if the students learned or didn't learn. Usually there's higher stakes involved and typically the teacher doesn't have time to go back and adjust their instruction. Some examples of evaluative or summative assessment include TAKS, STAAR, end of course exams, benchmarks, end of chapter tests, and the SAT.

Slide 75--85 minutes .19 seconds Some grading recommendations for ESL students. Think about how you can assess them according to growth and then grade accordingly. Typically when an ESL student comes into your class, they don't have the same language background as your other students and sometimes they don't have the same content background. Because in their home country the same kinds of things weren't taught. If this is the case, especially in terms of the language, you want to assess where they are at when they come to you, and then be able to assess periodically in order to see what kind of growth you're students have made. One of the hardest things to do with ESL students is to distinguish between the language proficiency levels that they have and the content area knowledge and skills. Often students know a lot more than they can communicate to us in English.

Slide 76--86 minutes .22 seconds Assessments are used for both LEP and Non-LEP students in Texas. They form a linguistic and academic picture of our students. They include reading proficiency assessments (TPRI in English and the Tejas LEE in Spanish K-2), criterion referenced tests such as the STAAR and the TAKS, norm referenced tests like the ITBS and the SAT.

Slide 77--86 minutes .46 seconds We also have state tests on LEP students. These are assessments that are used for our LEP population only. They include oral language proficiency tests such as the LAS and the TELPAS (Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System). This system of assessments covers reading, writing, listening, and speaking for all students and students in grades 2 and above, also includes the content areas.


Slide 78--87 minutes .16 seconds The TELPAS and the ELPS use the same proficiency levels descriptors of beginning, intermediate, advanced, and advanced high to define the 4 main stages or levels of English language proficiency in your ESL students.

Slide 79--87 minutes .33 seconds Let's talk now about Domain III. Domain III covers foundations of ESL education, cultural awareness and family & community involvement .

Slide 80--87 minutes .42 seconds The standards assessed in Domain III include:

ESL Standard II--the ESL teacher has knowledge of the foundations (which is history and law) of ESL education and factors that contribute to an effective multicultural learning environment.

ESL Standard VII--the ESL teacher knows how to serve as an advocate for ESL students and to facilitate family and community involvement in their education.

Slide 81--88 minutes .09 seconds There are some major court cases and federal rulings that have impacted ESL education in the United States. If you get a question that covers the history of ESL education, Ii recommend that you think about what kinds of things were going on in society at the time. Use your background knowledge of history to answer the question. Typically throughout our history in the U.S., we did not do a whole lot to help our ESL students in public education. However, that changed after the civil rights movement in the 1960's. The civil rights movement in the 1960's brought about this idea that we needed to have an equal educational opportunity for all students. Out of that time period we now have the Office of Civil Rights, which was an office under the U.S. department of Education. Another federal mandate that came out of the 1960's and civil rights era was the Bilingual Education Act of 1968. This expanded our notion of ESL students from LES (Limited English Speaking, which really only focused on listening and speaking) to LEP (Limited English Proficient--this including reading and writing along with listening and speaking) as important skills for our students to have. If you think about it, this also means we elevated our academic expectations for our students. These are very important steps, but you notice in the language, that ESL students were still seen as deficit. Another part of the Bilingual Education Act that was very important is that funding was now made available to schools and states that were interested in figuring out better ways to instruct ESL and bilingual students. These funds were called Title VII funds and this funding lasted until the mid 1990's. A court case that was very significant for ELLs is the court case of Lau V. Nichols. This was a supreme court ruling in 1974. What happened was a group of Chinese immigrant parents, in San Francisco, decided to sue their local school district on the basis of equal educational opportunity. The parents were thinking that their students who attended school in English, but did not speak English, were not receiving the same educational opportunity as the other students in the school. This court case went all the way up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court sided with the parents and said "we agree, we don't think that your children are receiving an equal educational opportunity because teachers aren't trying to do anything different for your children to help them understand. Immediately all states were required to come up with a plan to educate ELLs in their state. Because we have a decentralized education system in the U.S., the Supreme Court didn't tell each individual state what they had to do. They just told the states that they had to do something to meet the needs of ELLs and to make sure that their educational opportunities were equitable to all other


students. As you can imagine then, this had a significant impact for ELLs all over the country. That's also why different states have different programs available to ELLs. Currently the federal law that governs what we do in education is No Child Left Behind and Title III pertains to ESL and bilingual students.

Slide 82--92 minutes .08 seconds In Title III the funding is there to "ensure that LEP students attain English proficiency, reach high levels of achievement and meet the same challenging state content and academic achievement standards as their English speaking peers".

Slide 83--92 minutes .24 seconds Funding comes from the federal government under No Child Left Behind Title III to the districts, but it's very specific that the funds must supplement, not replace what the district is providing. The funding is distributed to districts with the formula using PEIMS data. PEIMS is the Texas student database. When a student is identified as LEP, in Texas, that code goes into the PEIMS database and is reported out to TEA. Then TEA reports that data to the federal government. Then the funding that the district receives, both from TEA and, in this case through No Child Left Behind, the federal government. It's based on the number of LEP students they have and how many of those students are recent immigrants.

Slide 84--93 minutes .11 seconds Texas law and guidelines referring to the education of limited English proficient students are called the Commissioner's Rules, Chapter 89. You can find the Commissioner's Rules Chapter 89 at the following link list on this slide. http://www.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter089/ch089bb.html

Slide 85--93 minutes .27 seconds (green screen) In Texas, we have two types of programs to help meet the needs of our ELLs. First, we have Bilingual programs. Bilingual programs are only required to be offered in Elementary schools in Texas, according to the law. Bilingual programs utilize two languages for instruction. Typically the native language. In most cases Spanish is used for content area instruction and reading instruction while the child is also learning English. In Bilingual programs, the teacher must be bilingual and the students typically speak the same native language. In ESL programs, the point is to teach English as the primary language of the instruction and so the teacher does not have to be bilingual and the students can sometimes speak multiple native languages. The state never says you cannot use the students native language, in an ESL program, but typically the use of native language is minimal because of English is used at the primary language of instruction.

Slide 86--94 minutes .40 seconds Anytime you see the italics like this, in this last Domain, I'm quoting from Chapter 89. Chapter 89, the Commissioner's Rules states:

That a district is required to offer a bilingual or ESL program, in Elementary only, if the district has an enrollment of 20 or more limited English proficient student in any language classification in the same grade level. So 20 or more at the same grade level is the magic number to offer bilingual education.

A district is required to offer an ESL program anytime any student is identified as English limited proficient, and this is for all levels. Pre-k through 12

http://www.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter089/ch089bb.html


Slide 87--95 minutes .34 seconds Districts always want to know how they are going to design the program once they have to offer it. Chapter 89

says that districts will modify the instruction, pacing, and materials to ensure that the students have a full opportunity to master the essential knowledge and skills or the TEKS.

Districts also want to know how much instructional time should be used for the program. Chapter 89 says that instruction should be commensurate with the student's level of English and may vary according to the language arts time given in the regular program. What this means is if you have 90 minutes of English language arts time in the regular program, students need to be instructed for 90 minutes in ESL.

Slide 88--96 minutes .22 seconds The test may ask you a question something like this: According to convergent research, which is the most effective program for ESL? This slide has been designed to give you that information. At the top, the bullet says immersion or submersion. Immersion can be a little confusing because in bilingual education there is an immersion education that is positive. In this case for ESL, immersion is not positive and that's why we have submersion. Immersion is essentially no program, sink or swim. This is not considered to be effective. The next type of program is Pull-out, other people call it Stand Alone. A Pull-out program typically consists of a teacher going to different classrooms and pulling out kids that are ESL kids. This is not thought to be all that effective because the students are missing out on the core instruction in their regular classroom. It can also stigmatize students and make students feel less intelligent and less desirable as they go to ESL. The next two bullets of Self-contained/Content Based/English Plus, Newcomer programs and Sheltered Instruction are all equally as effective depending on what populations they are serving. So Self-contained is thought of in terms of Elementary. In an Elementary self-contained classroom, you teach all subjects all day long and you have your class with you during that day. That would describe a self-contained ESL class at Elementary as well. The teacher is ESL certified and teaches all content areas to the same students which could be a mixture of ESL and mainstream students all day long. A Content Based class is also like that, but typically that language is used at the secondary level. It's typically thought of as a Sheltered Instruction scenario, or a Content Based scenario when you have say, integrated physics and chemistry at the high school level as taught by that teacher, but that teacher also incorporates ESL techniques and has both mainstream and ESL students in the class. A Newcomer program is designed specifically for recent immigrant students and typically those programs teach language and content and culture. Newcomer programs are also short in duration. Students go to newcomer programs for a short period of time and then they move over into a mainstream classroom.

Slide 89--99 minutes .05 seconds In PEIMS, they describe a pull-out program as one that focuses on English Language Arts instruction exclusively.

Slide 90--99 minutes .20 seconds PEIMS describes the content based programs as programs that integrate ESL instruction with subject matter instruction. They use that language as a medium to learn different content areas.


Slide 91--99 minutes .39 seconds Some people describe these two main types of programs in ESL as Stand Alone vs. English Plus. In Stand Alone think about these programs as focusing on one thing. So being alone is typically one thing, Stand Alone programs are typically one thing. All ESL students that focus on linguistic development. Examples of Stand Alone are pull-out ESL, or a resource or class period of ESL, such as ESL 01. English Plus can be all ESL students or a mixture, but think of English Plus as integrating more than one thing. So it's English Plus something else. So the program focus is typically both linguistic and content are learning, and your class period could have ESL students and mainstream students. Some examples of are bilingual education and sheltered instruction.

Slide 92--100 minutes .43 seconds They also may ask you to identify which bilingual program models are most effective. They may ask, "according to research in bilingual education, which is the most effective bilingual education model?". This slide, yet again, has been designed from top to bottom to go from least effective to most effective. A transitional, also called early exit bilingual program model, is the minimum requirement law in the state of Texas. A transitional program typically lasts a short amount of time: kinder, first, second grade, and then students are transitioning out. The population in a transitional bilingual program is typically all ELLs. A Developmental or late exit, also called maintenance bilingual education program, lasts longer in duration. Typically students in bilingual education are in the program: k, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5th grade. However, the population again is all ELLs. In a Two Way Immersion or Dual Language program, this program is considered the best program according to research and also is considered the most additive. Two Way Immersion or Dual Language programs are also long term, such as the Developmental or late exit bilingual education model, but the main difference there is that you have mainstream English speaking students in the class learning Spanish alongside ELLs who are Spanish speakers first and they are learning English as well. So you have a mixed population or a heterogeneous grouping where the students are learning from their peers and also from the teacher and the ultimate goal is bilingualism.

Slide 93--102 minutes .36 seconds Keep in mind that under state law, each campus is required to have an LPAC or Language Proficiency Assessment Committee. The LPAC is designed to ensure that LEP students are receiving equal opportunities; that the LEP students are identified correctly based on state criteria; that the programs are being implemented according to the state law; and the LPAC also looks at achievement and accountability for LEP students in schools.

Slide 94--103 minutes .12 seconds It's important to remember who serves on a LPAC committee. It's different whether you're at a bilingual campus or an ESL campus. If you're at a bilingual campus you are required to have 4 members or more, and those members are made up of a campus administrator, 2 professional educators and a parent of a LEP student. That LEP student must be participating in the program and cannot be a LEP denial. ESL campuses, their LPAC is made up of 2 or more members. One must be a professional educator and the other should be a parent of a LEP student. Again, that student must be participating in the LEP program. Keep in mind that you can always have more than these members, but you must have at least this number of members.


Slide 95--104 minutes .02 seconds An LPAC must be trained, and their job is to review all pertinent information on LEP students upon enrollment, throughout the school year, and at the end of the school year.

Slide 96--104 minutes .17 seconds It's very important to remember that the LPAC always works as a committee, and the LPAC committee does things like determine identification, gives written notice, recommends program placement, collects documentation, ensures testing, and also monitors students after that have met basic criteria. The LPAC must monitor students after they have exited the program for 2 years.

Slide 97--104 minutes .47 seconds The LPAC has to meet a sufficient number of times to meet their duties within the four week window of a limited English proficient student.

Slide 98--105 minutes .01 seconds We're going to turn now to looking at how students are identified as ELLs using the TEA flowchart.

Slide 99--105 minutes .09 seconds If you look at your TEA flowchart, in the state of Texas at the very top, when a student comes in to enroll, they are given a home language survey. That's the second rectangle there in the flowchart. The home language survey is required by law, and it contains two questions. The questions are:

1. What language is spoken at home most of the time? 2. What language is spoken by the student most of the time?

If you look at this flowchart, keep in mind that there is different paths that this student can take. Depending on what their answer is on the home language survey, they may be just labeled non-LEP(that's on the left hand side). If the parents answer English, they go into the mainstream and they are coded as non-LEP. The numbers you see on this flowchart are all PEEMS codes. In the middle under home language, you see if the parents wrote English and any other language; or on the right hand side, if the parents write anything other than English, that opens the door for us to test them. So then you see that rectangle that says test. If the student is in Pre-K, K, or first grade, they are given an oral language proficiency test only. If the students are in 2nd through 12th grade, they receive the oral language proficiency test and a norm referenced standardized achievement test in English Language Arts. After they are tested and there's an LPAC meeting, and the LPAC committee reviews the scores. If the student scores below the 40th percentile on their test, they qualify as a LEP student. Then the LPAC in their meeting, they look at all different factors. They look at what grade level the student is on; was the student in Elementary or in Secondary? If the student is beyond Elementary, typically a bilingual program is not offered. Another thing they consider is what is the language background of the student? If it's Spanish, they most likely can go into a bilingual program and they are at Elementary. If the language is other than Spanish, then they will most likely go into an ESL program. The LPAC determines which program they will recommend, and then they are required to notify parents. You see that rectangle, it's in gray on your decision chart. From the time a student enrolls in school to the time that the parents are notified of program placement, that must all take place within four weeks or twenty business days. This is very, very important. We're going to follow the right hand side after parental notification where it says placement required ESL program.


Let's say we recommend that the child be placed in an ESL class, we've given the parents notification and if they say yes, everything is fine and the students go into ESL. But if you look on the far right, under parental permission, what if the parents say no? in the state of Texas, if the parents say no after we have recommended that they go into ESL, the district is required to code that child as LEP denial in their PEEMS data, and then to ask the parents to come in for a parent conference. In the conference, district personnel provide the parents with rational that states why we recommend that this student be placed in ESL. If the parents still say they do not want their child to be enrolled in the ESL program, the district must recognize the parent's wishes and that child would not be serviced in ESL. That student would be labeled in PEEMS as LEP denial and they would proceed to the general education classroom. However under law, those LEP denial children are still required to be a part of the TELPASS assessment system until they meet exit criteria. We will talk in a minute what exit criteria is, but remember once the student meets exit criteria they can return back into the program if the parents give permission. This is why the LPAC has to monitor the students after they exit to make sure they are doing well and they continue to progress.

Slide 100--109 minutes .55 seconds These slides follow a lot of the information that I just covered. This first one is about identification testing and classification. This states that students who have a language other than English on their home language survey are given certain tests.

Slide 101--110 minutes .13 seconds It's important to note that if ELLs is also special ed, then the ARD must meet with the LPAC committee. They would decide what entry into bilingual education or ESL would pertain to. So the ARD and the LPAC work together. One committee does not have more clout than the other. Both committees have equal footing in deciding the course of action for an ELL who is special ed.

Slide 102--110 minutes .49 seconds From the time of enroll to parental notification, this must happen within four weeks of enrollment.

Slide 103--110 minutes .57 seconds Students must score below the 40th percentile on the assessments in order to qualify.

Slide 104--111 minutes .05 seconds The LPAC also makes decisions regarding testing.

Slide 105--111 minutes .12 seconds (green screen) In terms of LEP exit criteria, LEP students that are in bilingual ESL programs and parent denials, the LPAC must consider the students oral and language proficiency. They look at teacher grades, teacher recommendations, TELPASS scores, and other materials. They also look at language arts assessments. So the student must score at the 40th percentile or above on a norm-referenced language arts reading assessment that's approved by TEA. The student also meet passing standard on state assessments in English.

Slide 106--111 minutes .50 seconds If you have a student who is special ed, in order to exit from bilingual education or ESL or from designation as a LEP denial, the determination on whether to exit them needs to be based on all of the following:


The TEA-approved tests that measure the extent to which the student is developed oral and written language proficiency and satisfactory performance on the reading assessment under TEA code or an English Language Arts assessment administered in English and again have a score at or above the 40th percentile on a norm-referenced assessment that is approved by TEA.

Slide 107--112 minutes .34 seconds Just as when a student is entering the program, the LPAC and the ARD must meet together to determine entry in order to exit the ARD and the LPAC must also meet and decide what would be appropriate for a student to exit both ELL and special ed.

Slide 108--112 minutes .56 seconds Now let's talk a little bit about cultural diversity and what ESL teachers need to know.

Slide 109--113 minutes .01 seconds It's very important that the ESL teacher demonstrates an understanding of how cultural diversity can affect the classroom and that the teacher creates a classroom climate where diversity and also similarities of groups and individuals are appreciated. In this way the ESL teacher would be taking an approach to appreciate the differences of all their students. This is different from a color blind approach where a teacher might say "oh I don't see difference, all my students are the same.". In an ESL setting, we want the teacher to see the differences in children, to see the linguistic differences in their background; the cultural differences; but to see the strengths and weaknesses of students, capitalizing on their strengths; and always seeing cultural and linguistic difference as something that you can celebrate.

Slide 110--114 minutes .03 seconds The ESL teacher should then be aware of a variety of characteristics such as:

Ethnicity

Cultural heritage

Language background Also to know how that comes into play with learning.

Slide 111-114 minutes .19 seconds The teacher should know how to use diversity both inside and outside the bilingual/ESL classroom to create an environment that nurtures a sense of self, a sense of community, respects differences, and fosters in all learners an appreciation of their own and others' culture.

Slide 112--114 minutes .40 seconds (green screen) When a student comes to a new culture or a new place, they go through stages of acculturation. This is a neutral term that describes the process of becoming adjusted to a another culture. When a student first encounters a new culture, they might experience euphoria. It might be exciting that they are in this new environment. But then they may start to feel a little depressed, a little irritable, and notice that there is very much difficulty in adjusting to a new culture. This is often called culture shock. So far, as a student is facing acculturation, they've been on this euphoric high and then the culture shock might bring them down a little bit, almost like a roller coaster ride.


After a student has been in a particular culture and place for awhile, they may experience acceptance or recovery from their initial shock. What helps this often is when language proficiency increases and the student feels more successful and more confident and begin to make friends. They also then start to understand the culture that they are now living in. This is very simplistic, but then it is thought that the student is able to decide will they adapt (which is a positive thing) to the new culture, or will they assimilate (assimilation is thought of a negative thing--a subtractive process) where students lose their initial self. We hope that our students would choose adaptation or a more adapted way to look at both their old or former culture and language as it mixes with the new culture and language in the United States.

Slide 113--116 minutes .34 seconds There are also some ways that teachers can lessen the culture shock experience. First and foremost they should value the students' home culture and language. They can do this by learning some short phrases in the students home language and also by making a concerted effort to pronounce the students name correctly. Teachers also need to be aware that other cultures might have different ways of showing respect. Such as not looking the teacher in the eye, or even calling the teacher "teacher". Some American teachers take this as forms of disrespect, but ESL teachers would understand that is merely the students native cultural way of showing respect. The ESL teacher should also advocate for student and family rights. In this way, the ESL teacher can help educate the student and their family about our educational system in the U.S., and what their different options are. ESL teachers should be aware that they can teach lessons that teach much more than just content, but they can also infuse cultural issues as well. Finally, teachers should show compassion and understanding for all the adjustments ELLs have to make when they are learning a new culture and language.

Slide 114--117 minutes .57 seconds A question that sometimes gets asked is "Can an ESL teacher use Spanish in the classroom?". Absolutely! In the state of Texas it is not forbidden to use any other languages other than English in a classroom. In fact, we are aware that as ESL educators, that while we use English as the primary language of instruction, sometimes it's very beneficial to use students' native languages as well. Often teachers want to know how they can help parents work with their children at home. Teachers should never tell parents to speak only English at home, this could have a detrimental impact on their language learning. Not only does it send a message that we don't value students' native language, but if a parent does not speak English, it would be a negative thing for that parent to think that they have to only speak English at home. Instead, you want to encourage parents to use their native language because we know that if a student is strong in their native language, these skills would transfer from their native language over to English.


Thank you for your participation today. I hope this session has helped prepare you for the ESL test. A couple of points to remember as your taking the test...First, you'll have plenty of time. So be sure to take your time and take a deep breath and read through all of the answer choices very thoroughly to make sure that you are making the right choice. Another tip is to think about ESL students from all backgrounds. In the state of Texas, although we are most familiar with Spanish speaking ELLs, you'll also find lots of questions on this test about various language backgrounds. Remember that that is usually not an important detail to answer the question. Instead of focusing on that, focus on what level is this student on, and what specific skill are they asking you to work on. Finally, we have additional resources on this website that we hope you will use. There are different handouts and sample tests that will help you prepare for this test. We hope these materials have helped you and we wish you the best on this test!

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