Highlights from Chapter 1

1. Chapter 1:
English Language Development

2. TODAY

3. Demographic Trends
• 47 million (18%) speak language • Over 9.7 million LM students in
American public schools (one of
other than English in the home every six!)
• Largest % of non-English • 5 million (2005-2006) in need of
language assistance to perform
speakers (37%) live in the west, in public schools
more and more are from rural
midwestern parts of country • ALL states must provide
(15% from South) language services for this
population, Spanish-speaking or
other
• Arkansass
• Grades PreK-3, 44%; grades 4-8
35%; grades 9-12 19%
• California, New Mexico, Texas,
New York, Hawaii, Arizona, and • 81% US born or naturalized!
New Jersey
• Changes
• Largest % increase in Nevada –
193%
• Census

4. Now that you have seen some
numbers….pyschological factors
• Naming conventions may be different
• US- first, middle, last; other cultures may have family name first, middle, and first (any change
is a completely different person)
• Hispanic students may use three names: given name, father’s surname & mother’s surname
(Marisol Hernandez Valdez may be listed as Marisol Hernandez)
• Vietnamese three parts –family, middle, given
• Taiwan – family, given
• Out of respect teachers in many parts of the word are called simply that TEACHER as a sign of
respect. We may think it is a lack of respect in US culture.
• Work with student privately to get name right
• Do not change a student’s name or use Americanized version until checking with the student’s
family. Think how important your name is to your identity.

5. Age & Acquisition: when
is best?
• Many believe that children acquire more rapidly than adults
– not necessarily true
• Biology determines if one can learn – does not seem to be
supported any more
• Advantage for young children is pronunciation (accent)
• Adults bring to the learning task other abilities which
suggests that any age can learn language
• Learner’s L1 helps them achieve in school
• Should we allow the use of the L1 in our classrooms?

6. Stages of language
development
• Preproduction – silent period
• Early production – single words, short phrases
• Speech emergence – beginning to offer independent responses
with errors!
• Intermediate fluency – sense the beginning of conversations and
control of language (albeit it with plenty of errors)
• Should we correct those errors as they occur?
• Can we speed up the process?
• What do we do with students in our classrooms who may be in
the early stages?

7. Adapted Instruction
Note
• Encourage families to maintain L1 at home
• IMPORTANT: Learner’s listening/speaking
abilities MAY BE SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER than
reading/writing abilities

8. Social-Emotional Factors
• Self-esteem – the way we express ourselves (language)
very important – schools that promote all language help
with self-esteem
• Inhibition big part of language learning – emphasizing
fluency rather than accuracy helps learners to feel more
relaxed about learning new language
• Motivation – instrumental & integrative
• Anxiety and language learning – can be the factor that
causes learner to take long time to produce language
• Attitudes of the learner toward the TL

9. Psychological Factors:
cognitive
• Visual/verbal & holistic/analytic cognitive styles
commonly utilized in classrooms
• Schools (think also standardized testing) tend
to favor verbal and analytic
• Some cultures do not emphasize these two
styles which may make it more challenging for
them in US schools
• Cognitive styles inform learning styles

10. Codeswitching
• A L2 learner strategy to negotiate new language
• Alternating use of L1 and L2 to express oneself. It
may be found at the word, phrase or sentence
level
• Some discourage its use; however, by
codeswitching, you allow a learner to try to
communicate with you in English
• What would you do as the teacher if a student
uses codeswitching with you?

11. Sociocultural Context of
ESL
• Language cannot be separated from culture – culture can
influence or inhibit language learning just as much as the learning
of individual words might seem to be a deterrent
• Patterns from the person’s first culture may be applied in the
second culture (American) and may cause misunderstandings
• Success in a second language may be dependent upon
• Status of primary language in relation to English
• Own speech community’s view of the English language and
community
• Dialect of English they hear and learn in relationship to a standard
English
• Patterns of social and cultural language usage in the community
• Compatibility between the home culture and the cultural patterns
and organization of schools.

12. Social variables important to
acculturation (Schumann, 1978a)
• Primary-language & English-language groups view
each other as socially equal
• P-L and E-L groups both desire that L1 group assimilate
• Both P-L and E-L groups expect the primary language
group to share social facilities with E-L group
• P-L group is small and not very cohesive
• P-L group’s culture is congruent with that of E-L
groups
• Both have positive attitudes toward each other
• P-L group expects to stay in an area for an extended
period

13. Family values
• Amol (p. 21)
• School and home may differ – only true for ESL
students?
• American school values may include – speed and
efficiency in learning, task orientation (in which
students stay on a schedule, perform tasks, avoid
wasting time, achieve academically so that they attain
personal (individual) worth
• Working alone valued, competitive
• Some cultures, on the other hand, value group work –
cheating known to US schools is just collaboration in

14. Use of the L1
• Mixed attitudes about L1 use in American
schools
• What would be the best way to work with a
student whose ways of learning may be very
different culturally?
• Meanwhile, teacher should be model of most
standard form of English s/he is able to
produce, providing examples for language
learners