What Works For English-Language Learners

To learn any language, you have to build an environment in which a person can get used to that language. Moreover, the classrooms in the countries like the USA which is one of the biggest homes of the immigrants are now having more and more students whose first language is not English. These students due to weak English and grammar are facing numerous issues in their academics like writing grammatical wrong essays and same issue in the coursework help as well. Which is why the need of teaching these students English language first is building and now become the only option before allowing them to get further education. However, it is not as easy as teaching science or math. Though there are some methods of teaching which are working for the English-language learners.

If a teacher wants to help his non-English speaking students in both concept building and English grammar, he or she first have to think like a language teacher. There are various ways to which teachers can adopt this role, and the best ones are written below.

Be aware of student’s needs:

You have to understand the students first before crafting a syllabus for them. You have to know about their past education and background. Information like the years the student has spent in the US school or was educated in the country of origin, is literate or not in his native language may provide you with a better understanding of the student which will help you n meeting his educational needs.

Students need to follow the same pattern every day:

You can play with your schedule or methods of teaching while teaching any subjects like chemistry and physics. But when it comes to learning the English language, you have to make sure that your method and pattern of teaching remain same throughout the year or semester. You have to keep the same pattern in which you should ask them to speak, write, read and listen to English so you can cover every aspect of communication in your class. This practice is essential for their language development and will help them to improve their English language.

Revise your content:

Teaching in the US school means your syllabus content is also in the English. A teacher doesn’t have this authority to change the curriculum content however he or she can revise the content. English is the language of numerous polysemous words. Polysemous is a term which is use for the phrases which have multiple meanings. Once your student has learned and understand one meaning of any polysemous word, then try to avoid using it in other context or it will make confusion in his mind. For example, using the word plot in the geography lesson and using the plot again in literature class will create confusions in the minds of the students and will make harder for them to understand your lesson.

Understand the language assessments:

To aid the learning of the students, you have to assess their language development time by time. Language proficiency assessments may vary in your district but do it at regular basis is important to evaluate the student performance as well as your method performance. By assessing, you can evaluate the results and can identify where you are lacking or which point is helping you the most.

Build a strategy that matches the language proficiency:

You cannot show any monotonous in your strategy of teaching the English language to the non-English students. You have to know the level of English language proficiency to make strategies for each level which can help the students of each level. Your learners are on the different levels, so you have to create the strategy for each level to cover all the students equally. Knowing about the level of students’ level will take time but once you know this, teaching the English language will become a lot easier for you.

Collaboration is important for Celebration:

Most of the students who need the English language proficiency development would also be getting taught by different teachers. Being a professional it is the duty of every teacher to concentrate on the language proficiency of the students before teaching them other subjects in the language which they do not know very well. That is why you have to seek the support of other teachers too which is important to work with the English language learners. Moreover, other teachers can also support you by helping you out in driving the better strategy for the language proficiency development. Creating and sustaining the professional learning communities is important for the fast and smooth English language proficiency development.

Final Words:

English is an international language. More than half of the countries in the world teach English in their schools which shows that teaching English to non-English students is not as hard as it is considered to be in the USA. With pure dedication and good enough planning, a teacher can increase the English language proficiency for any student.