Do you have English Learners (ELs) in your classroom who struggle to achieve at the same rate as their peers? Do you ever have a hard time figuring out why they are struggling? Sometimes, the natural language acquisition process can cause our students to share characteristics with our struggling learners who are native English speakers. This means that it can be hard to tease out if an English Learner is experiencing learning problems in addition to their experience acquiring English.
This list of ten ways English Learners may struggle in the classroom will provide you with new perspectives. Differentiating learning problems from the natural language acquisition process will always be a challenge, but my hope is that this list will offer some clarity.
Because there’s so much to learn, this topic has been split into two posts. You can read Part 2 here.
Are you ready to learn? Let’s dive in! Here are the first five ways English Learners might struggle in the classroom.
1. English Learners may have difficulty following multi-step directions.
Students who are developing their English proficiency may have difficulty processing directions the first time they are given. As a result, they may only catch the first or last steps and forget the rest! If the student did hear and understand the directions, it can still be challenging to recall those directions in the second language later on.
Picture this scenario: a student confidently recalled and carried out the first step in her science assignment but then she could not recall the rest of the steps. The directions were given a few minutes ago and they were presented in the student’s second language, which are two reasons it will be challenging for the student to recall those directions without support.
How we can help: Provide directions in small, manageable chunks. Ask the student to check in after completing each chunk. Provide a written or visual checklist for the student to refer to. Repeat the directions as often as necessary without reprimanding the student for their perceived inattention or forgetfulness.
2. ELs may have difficulty with phonological awareness.
Are your English Learners struggling with phonemic awareness drills? Take a moment to consider or research the difference in sounds between English and the child’s first language. You can do an internet search for “sounds in English that are not used in [insert child’s first language].” For example, the sounds /sh/ and /th/ do not exist in Spanish. The /j/ sound does not exist in Portuguese, and the letter j represents the /zh/ sound. Students may struggle to produce these sounds without adequate practice.
How we can help: Figure out which English sounds are not present in your student’s first language. Then, learn the articulatory gestures for these sounds and explicitly teach them to your students. Articulatory gestures are the actions required to produce a speech sound. Examples include placing your tongue between your teeth to produce the /th/ sound or placing the tip of your tongue behind your front teeth to produce the /l/ sound.
Also, consider that orally blending and segmenting nonsense words and unfamiliar words is more challenging than manipulating familiar words. This is true for native and non-native speakers. For your English learners, even a common word like dog may be unfamiliar to them and consequently, it will be more challenging for the student to blend and segment the sounds in the word.
3. English Learners may be slow to learn sound-symbol correspondences.
For students who have some literacy skills in their first language, it can be difficult to learn new letter/sound correspondences and spelling patterns. For example, the letter j represents the /h/ sound in many Spanish-speaking regions. It represents a sound similar to /ch/ in other regions! It will take time and practice for your ELs to learn new letter/sound associations, such as the English sound for j.
For students with no prior literacy skills in their first language, it may be difficult to pronounce unfamiliar sounds (see #2 above), which impacts their ability to read and spell with accuracy.
How can we help: Provide robust structured literacy instruction at the student’s developmental level. Do not progress until the student has acquired mastery of each new skill.
4. English Learners may have difficulty recalling “sight words.”
Before we dive into this, remember that a “sight word” is any word that a reader recognizes with automaticity. Irregularly spelled high frequency words like of and could can be sight words. Regularly spelled words like mom and cat can be sight words. Pharmacy and Amoxicillin are likely sight words for you. There’s nothing special or magical about a “sight word” and most of the time, there’s no need to memorize words with visual memory, no matter how they are spelled.
Back to business: Our earliest readers who are native English speakers will have difficulty memorizing words by sight before they have developed the necessary early literacy skills. It is the same for our ELs, whose early literacy skills may be delayed simply due to the second language acquisition process.
Another factor is that it can be difficult to recall a word when no meaning is attached to it yet. The orthographic mapping process requires students to make connections between a word’s meaning, its sounds, and its spelling. If one of these parts is missing, it will be more challenging to commit the word to memory as a “sight word.” As students expand their oral vocabulary in English, they can also expand their sight word vocabulary because they will be able to map words with more ease.
Lastly, irregular spelling patterns can be difficult to decode when English Learners are at an early stage of language acquisition. This is the same for our native speakers. When a student is reading at a kindergarten level and is developing their fluency with CVC words, they may struggle to map words like said and could. This is normal and expected.
How can we help: Provide robust structured literacy instruction at the student’s developmental level. Do not progress until the student has acquired mastery of each new skill.
5. ELs may have difficulty retelling a story in sequence.
In any student, receptive language skills typically develop more quickly than expressive language skills. The same is true for people learning a second language. English Learners may have an adequate grasp of a story they have listened to or independently read, but it can be challenging to retell the story because their expressive skills in the second language have not yet caught up to their receptive skills.
How we can help: If possible, do not evaluate a child’s comprehension solely on their ability to retell a story. When possible, use test formats that require recognition (multiple choice, matching, true/false and fill in the blank with an associated word bank) in favor of test formats that require an expressive response (essay, fill in the blank without a word bank, writing definitions, providing oral retells).
Ready for more?
Read Part Two, which describes five additional ways that ELs may struggle in the classroom.
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Source: Klingner, J. K., & Eppolito, A. M. (2014). English language learners: Differentiating between language acquisition and Learning Disabilities. Council for Exceptional Children. (Amazon Affiliate link)
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