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Adjusting Instruction for ELLS with disabilities: Auditory Processing Disorders

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Adjusting Instruction for ELLS with disabilities: Auditory Processing Disorders

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This video includes strategies teachers can use when planning and adjusting instruction for students who have disabilities. This video is specific to auditory processing disorders but includes recommendations teachers can use with all students with disabilities.

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Adjusting instruction for ELLs with disabilities: Auditory Processing Disorders

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Educator Toolkit Using Educational Technology- 21st Century Supports for English Learners

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Educator Toolkit Using Educational Technology- 21st Century Supports for English Learners

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This resource provides tools educators can use when using technology with language development. The Educator Toolkit provides information about each tool, what to do and questions to ask.

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This resource can be used to help students develop their academic language in each of the content areas. This resource provides 12 academic language functions teachers can use to help students with their academic language. Each function includes different examples, strategies, and cue words for teachers to use with each of the functions.

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Linguistic Scaffolds for Writing Effective Language Objectives

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Linguistic Scaffolds for Writing Effective Language Objectives

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This is a great resource to use when writing language objectives. It provides different examples of language objectives teachers can use for different reading, writing and listening and speaking standards.

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Writing Effective Language Objectives Handouts (1) (1)

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This document provides different examples of language objectives educators can use for various subjects in elementary school. It also includes some educators can use for secondary education.

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Oral Language Development and ELLs: 5 Challenges

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Oral Language Development and ELLs: 5 Challenges

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This article is important because it highlights different challenges teachers may encounter and how to help the students be successful. It also includes different scenarios teachers can review in case a similar situation occurs in their classroom.

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione shares five key challenges related to the oral language development of ELLs, as well as tips for addressing each of the challenges.

Dr. Moses Guccione is the co-author of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies That Cross Proficiency Levels ( Heinemann, 2009).

Getting Started

As a former elementary teacher in a bilingual school, I developed a love and passion for finding effective ways to support oral language and oral reading development of emerging English language learners (ELLs). I discovered this passion when I began my first year of teaching in a second-grade classroom, where I encountered a handful of challenges related to my students' oral language development.

Many students were transitioning from a classroom with Spanish instruction into my classroom with instruction provided in English. I had students ranging from monolingual English speakers to students who had just recently moved to the U.S. from a Spanish-speaking country. The range of language proficiency levels crossed the entire spectrum. Having minimal experience with this range of diverse students and needs, I began reading, researching, and implementing new instructional ideas into my classroom. With each challenge I encountered, I gained new information about my students and their parents. I also began learning more about my own methods of instruction, and I learned a great deal each year about new challenges and successes.

Currently, I am fortunate to work with many teachers who have the opportunity to impact the lives of children and families who speak more than one language. As I work with these teachers and families, I have found five common and reoccurring challenges that they seem to face in the area of oral language development that parallel my own experiences. I detail these challenges and questions below, as well as suggestions for addressing each challenges based on strategies I used in my classroom.

Questions and Classroom Scenarios

1. What do I do if they don't know ANY English?

Understanding the characteristics of language learners at different proficiency levels helps to think about how we can best support students in their oral language and reading development. Below is a chart that gives a description of the first two levels of language proficiency as well as implications for using oral reading. This is a nice place to start when thinking about how to interact with and support our Starting and Emerging English speakers.

Levels of Language Proficiency

Description

Implications For Using Oral Reading

Level 1: Starting
Students are in a silent period in which they listen, but do not speak in English. They may respond using nonverbal cues in attempt to communicate basic needs.

The teacher and other more advanced students should model oral reading. Students in the silent period should not be forced to speak, but should be given the opportunity to participate in a group activity where they won't be singled out.

Level 2: Emerging
Students are beginning to understand more oral language. They respond using one- or two-word phrases and start to produce simple sentences for basic social interactions and to meet basic needs.

Teacher and students should continue to model oral reading. Students should be encouraged to begin taking risks with simple, rehearsed oral reading in non-threatening situations.

Opitz & Guccione (2009). Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies that Cross Proficiency Levels.

2. How do I provide instruction and support for the ELLs without holding back the students who are fluent in English?

Differentiation is the key to effective instruction for all students. Students of varying proficiency levels can learn the same content when the teacher provides a wide range of learning opportunities for students with different academic and linguistic needs. Three key strategies for this approach include differentiating or modifying the texts, creating grouping structures, and targeting the amount and nature of support based on students' needs (Opitz & Ford, 2008).

Modifying the text: Teachers can differentiate the text by selecting various levels of text difficulty on similar content, or they can also divide the text up into smaller portions appropriate for certain groups/individuals for a jigsaw activity. Another idea is to summarize text that might be too difficult and provide ways to make the text more accessible (such as vocabulary support, visual support, connecting to background knowledge, etc.).

Creating grouping structures that set students up for success: While some grouping structures can be established according to language or literacy skill levels and needs, it is also important to think about providing students exposure to interact with peers who demonstrate a wide range of different language and literacy skills. Additionally, teachers can improve engagement and motivation by creating choice/interest groups where students gather, read, discuss and work together on topics of common interest.

Targeting the amount and nature of student support: It is important to think about scaffolding the experience and using comprehensible input to make it accessible for all students. Comprehensible input means that students should be able to understand the gist of what is being said or presented. There are many ways to do this, such as selecting key vocabulary, using context or visual cues, building background knowledge, building on experiences the students have had, using consistent language, and providing images or visual representations to support vocabulary and content. Teachers can support their students by embedding comprehensible input into their whole-group instruction, but this also becomes particularly effective when used in the different grouping structures. Teachers can also modify the amount of support and interaction between teachers and students depending on their individual and group needs.

3. This student knows English - I hear him talking to his friends and on the playground. He just doesn't want to try in class.

I have heard many teachers discussing variations of this same idea. However, I would caution teachers and parents about jumping to this conclusion. Academic language (or the language specifically related to school and/or academic content) can be complicated to acquire. Students often first develop social language and demonstrate near proficiency or proficiency in English in social settings. A student may be demonstrating sophisticated use of social language, but they may have difficulty using language in more formal settings such as school.

Much of the academic language required to be successful in school - everything from instructions to expectations to content-specific vocabulary - requires assistance in acquiring. Students hear and use their social language in various settings from home, community, and school, but academic language is often only used in the school setting. These students need specific instruction and support surrounding their language development in this area.

The same children who appear to be functioning at a high level of English proficiency in social settings may actually be functioning at a beginning stage in other settings, depending on how they are called on to use language. The students need to feel safe and in a low-anxiety environment in order to begin to feel comfortable taking risks with their oral language. When they have less exposure and instruction related to academic language, this can often cause students to feel intimidated and less likely to be willing to share in class.

One idea for reducing anxiety and encouraging students to experiment with language might include allowing students to read, practice, and discuss their responses in partners and small groups before sharing out to the entire group. This allows students an opportunity to hear language modeled by peers, practice what they want to say, and possibly revise their original thought and/or language before sharing it in a public way. As students find more success with their language production and classroom participation, they will be more likely to share and take risks, and in turn continue building their confidence.

4. How is the child ever going to learn English if they don't speak it at home?

It is important to celebrate being bilingual and biliterate. Research has shown that development of a students' first language can facilitate development in the second language (Genessee, Geva, Dressler, and Kamil, 2007). Understanding this helps parents, teachers, and children to encourage the use and development of the students' home language while they are at home. All of the home literacy activities that we recommend for English speakers, such as reading aloud, making lists, discussing books, reading environmental print, etc., should also be encouraged for the English language learners in their home language. Students can begin to use more English as they feel comfortable in different settings, but it is important to note that speaking two languages will not hinder their English development.

Another important idea to remember is that we want to invite parents to feel confident in their interactions with their children regardless of their English proficiency level. As they begin to read or retell stories and discuss them at home, they are developing vital oral language and comprehension skills, and these skills will transfer over into their school language.

5. What kinds of activities should I be doing to help the student develop their oral language and oral reading?

McCauley and McCauley (1992) report four factors as necessary for acquiring a second language: a low-anxiety environment, repeated practice, comprehensible input, and drama. These are all important components of setting children up for success and language development.

A low-anxiety environment includes a setting where students feel nurtured and supported by their teacher and peers, and in turn, they feel safe to take risks without the fear of being laughed at or made fun of.

Repeated practice is just like what it sounds! Students need repeated practice hearing and using a new language. They need multiple opportunities to comprehend and express their ideas in a new language. Like with anything new that we learn, practice helps us get better.

Comprehensible input, as explained above, means finding different ways to make what is being said comprehensible and easier to understand. Things to consider with comprehensible input might include using speech that is appropriate for students' language proficiency, providing a clear, step-by-step explanation of tasks, and using a variety of techniques to support their understanding.

Drama, or a sense of excitement and engagement, can be found in activities like Reader's Theatre, dramatic play, puppetry, narrating wordless picture books, etc. All of these activities also have the other three factors embedded within them. These activities assist in the development of oral language in addition to introducing students to oral reading and rich literacy experiences and responses in a classroom setting.

Closing Thoughts

As you can see from these questions and examples, there are a lot of different approaches to helping ELLs build their oral language development skills, and you may have to try different activities until you find what works for your students. The most important thing, however, is to build your students' confidence while giving them new words and phrases to practice. Don't be afraid to try something new - and most of all, don't be afraid to have fun doing it!

About the Author

Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione is a coauthor of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies that Cross Proficiency Levels. She is an assistant professor at the University of Northern Colorado and teaches courses in Early Childhood Education, Literacy, and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education. She is a former elementary teacher of English language learners and is currently researching how ELLs make sense of texts.

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Oral Language Development and ELLs: 5 Challenges and Solutions

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In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Dr. Lindsey Moses Guccione shares five key challenges related to the oral language development of ELLs, as well as tips for addressing each of the challenges. Dr. Moses Guccione is the co-author of Comprehension and English Language Learners: 25 Oral Reading Strategies That Cross Proficiency Levels ( Heinemann, 2009).

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Reading 101 for English Language Learners

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Reading 101 for English Language Learners

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This article includes different strategies teachers can use to help ELL students develop their phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. It also provides videos to watch for help with reading instruction for ELLs.

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Learning to read is a complicated process. If you teach English language learners (ELLs), however, there are a number of ways you can support their literacy and language development through targeted instruction.

This article highlights ELL instructional strategies based on the five components of reading as outlined in Teaching Children to Read by the National Reading Panel (2000). This report is a study of research-based best practices in reading instruction and it focuses on the following five instructional areas: Phonemic Awareness, Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency, Comprehension. In addition, the article includes information related to two additional important areas of instruction for ELLs, oral language and the role of the home language.

Each of these topics is explored below, and each section includes:

a definition

an explanation of why the component is important when learning to read

challenges that ELLs may face

strategies for ELL instruction

You will find references to more in-depth information about ELLs and effective reading instruction from recommended resources below.

Note: Since this article includes in-depth information on a number of topics, we encourage you to use it in professional learning communities, jigsaw activities, and other collaborative settings!

What does the research say?

Before jumping in, it's important to note that, in general, what we know about effective literacy instruction for English speakers holds true for ELLs, but modifications and adjustments may be needed (Goldenberg, 2008). Since the original National Reading Panel did not include ELLs' literacy development as part of its research review, a subsequent panel reviewed the research related to language learners and released a report authored by principal investigator Dr. Diane August and panel chair Dr. Timothy Shanahan titled Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth.

Within the executive summary of that report, the authors note that, "Instruction that provides substantial coverage in the key components of reading - identified by the National Reading Panel (NICHD, 2000) as phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and text comprehension - has clear benefits for language-minority students." They continue, "However, while approaches that are similar to those used with native-language populations are effective, the research suggests that adjustments to these approaches are needed to have maximum benefit with language-minority students." (p. 3)

For example, many practices may need modifications or scaffolds which may not be reflected in different reading programs or materials (August, 2018; Goldenberg, 2008), and in some cases, certain strategies may not be appropriate even with adjustments. In addition, the authors note the important role of two areas that were not addressed in the original National Reading Panel: students' home language and oral language.

Many examples of specific modifications are outlined in the strategies below, along with discussion of home language and oral language. You can find additional research resources at the end of the article, including a recent working paper published by Pivot Learning, Narrowing Down to Find Common Ground: Shared Agreements for Effective Literacy Instruction in California.

An in-depth video book study highlighting Literacy Foundations for English Learners by Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan is also publicly available on YouTube.

When working with ELLs, students' home languages are a powerful tool that educators can use - even if they don't speak those languages or are working in a classroom with students who speak many languages. Drs. August and Shanahan write, "Oral proficiency and literacy in the first language can be used to facilitate literacy development in English" (2006, p. 5). And in hisColorín Colorado article about the value of students' home language, Dr. Fred Genesee writes:

Extensive research, again from around the world, has found that children who are learning to read in a second language are able to transfer many skills and knowledge from their first language to facilitate their acquisition of reading skills in the second language. The best evidence of this comes from studies showing that students with strong reading skills in the home language also have strong reading skills in their second language. Much of this work has been done on ELLs in the U.S. (August & Shanahan, 2006; Riches & Genesee, 2006).

Tapping into students' home languages (also referred to as a first or native language) as a resource can take different forms:

Helping students make connections between their language and English in order to identify similarities and differences, such as English/Spanish cognates

Providing opportunities to use the home language in the classroom for reading, writing, and discussion

Encouraging students to draw on all of their language skills across languages, which is called translanguaging

Promoting biliteracy through bilingual or dual-language instruction, which can support students' future opportunities and family ties (not to mention brain health!), with initiatives such as the Seal of Biliteracy, which has been adopted in many states

It is important to keep in mind that the extent to which a student's literacy skills from their first language transfer depends on many factors, such as how similar the alphabetic systems between the two languages are and whether they share any connection in their origins, such as two languages that both derive from Latin (Nieser & Cárdenas-Hagan, 2020, p. 65). The students' levels of literacy in their home language will also have an impact on their literacy development in their new language. Learning more about the languages students speak can help educators target instruction, notice patterns among speakers of the same language, and help students understand the relationship between their language and English

You can also provide students and families with access to bilingual books and texts and encourage families to continue using and developing the home language through activities such as rhymes, storytelling, and conversation at home. You will also find specific strategies related to home language throughout the key components below.

Recommended resources

In addition, as you will see below, oral language has a role to play across all reading skills, yet it often does not receive much attention as a critical part of ELLs' language and literacy development. Drs. August and Shanahan write, "Instruction in the key components of reading is necessary - but not sufficient - for teaching language-minority students to read and write proficiently in English. Oral proficiency in English is critical as well - but student performance suggests that it is often overlooked in instruction." (2006, p. 5)

Oral language supports students' literacy skills in different ways. For example, students need to be familiar not only with the sounds and letters they are learning but also the words in which they appear in order to support their word recognition and comprehension. Other more global oral language skills, such as facility with English syntax and grammar, and the ability to navigate specific language functions like describing, predicting, and comparing, also contribute to both reading and writing development for ELLs.

In addition, strengthening oral language supports students' ability to participate in peer groups and their proficiency in speaking and writing using academic language. Students need opportunities to practice applying their emerging oral language skills through partner talk and peer work (scaffolded with supports such as sentence frames), activities such as partner reading, and responding to comprehension questions using academic language.

Dr. Carrie Simkin, the director of our sister site AdLit.org, offers the following suggestions related to oral language:

Make it a learning target for lesson planning (e.g. be intentional about planning for it).

Consider how much of the learning time in your classroom is text based vs. discussion. Do students have opportunities to discuss ideas or do they mostly respond in written formats? We want to engage students in lively discussions!

Consider if students have opportunities to work in pairs as well as small groups and not just respond to teacher-generated questions.

Have you modeled how to orally respond to questions using the question as a sentence starter? Do you have sentence starters visible for share-outs?

Our strategies related to oral language are also woven throughout the components below.

Recommended resources

Note: You can read more about the role of oral language in the foreword of Comprehension and English Language Learners.

Phonemic Awareness and ELLs

Keeping the areas of home language and oral language in mind, let's dive into the five key skill areas, starting with phonemic awareness.

Phonemic awareness is an important indicator of how well children will learn to read. Sometimes it is difficult, however, for speakers of a second language to "hear" and say sounds in the language they are learning. If you have had a student who could not master a particular sound in English, the sound may not have been a part of the student's native language.

In her chapter of Literacy Foundations for English Learners, Dr. Virginia Lovelace-Gonzalez notes that, "Phonological awareness skills can transfer across languages when students have opportunities to build these skills in their native language and English" (2020, p. 53).

For example, there are multiple sounds in English and Spanish that will directly transfer between languages, even if the sounds are associated with different letters (p. 50). Dr. Lovelace-Gonzalez writes, "For ELs, phonemic activities in English can be complicated by having to recognize sounds in English that do not exist in their native language...Instructionally, it is important for teachers to determine some of the similarities and differences between English and the student's native language to ensure the opportunity to learn" (p. 53).

Phonemic Awareness: Considerations and Strategies

What: The ability to hear and manipulate the different sounds in our language.

Why it matters: Phonemic awareness is the foundation for spelling and word recognition skills.

Considerations for ELLs

Learn more about the students' home languages.

Start by visiting a resource such as MyLanguages.org or Omniglot.com, which shares an overview of many different global languages.

Ask bilingual colleagues about how their languages are similar or different from English and common areas that need attention when learning English. For example, a group of Ukrainian teachers shared some of the questions that Ukrainian speakers have when learning English in this Colorín Colorado article.

Identify whether there are any sounds that your students' languages share with English. Use these as a starting point in your instruction. In addition, find out which sounds might be new to your students and be sure to include explicit practice of those sounds.

Help students think about the connection between their language and English.

Ask students how their language is the same or different than English in terms of how the language is written, the sounds that letters or symbols make, and words that might be related.

Help students become familiar with sounds, letters, and symbols that are shared between languages, as well as those that are not shared between the languages. (Some examples across different languages are included in Literacy Foundations for English Learners.)

Ask students if they have words that begin with a particular sound, or if there are any words related to a particular word in English. This can work with students who have limited literacy skills in their first language too.

Help beginning readers learn to identify sounds in short words.

Have students practice identifying the sounds in the beginning, middle, and end of these words. You may wish to use words that begin with a consonant, have a short vowel, and end in a consonant (CVC words) such as mat, top, and bus.

One very effective method is having students match pictures of words that have the same beginning, middle, or ending sound.

Use words that students already know in English.

Videos

Learn how to pronounce the 44 phonemes in English.

Phonics and ELLs

Phonics instruction aims to help new readers understand that there are systematic and predictable relationships between written letters and spoken sounds. Students benefit from learning and practicing sounds and symbols, including blended combinations. ELLs often show many strengths in mastering early phonics skills but it's important to remember that decoding while reading and correctly spelling words does not ensure good comprehension.

That's why it's important to ensure that ELLs are familiar with the words they are learning to decode in order to support their comprehension. The authors of Words Their Way with English Learners write, "English learners need structured opportunities to learn many new words to add to their repertoires so that these words can become the material of their literacy learning" (2011, p. 79).

Phonics: Considerations and Strategies

Considerations for ELLs

Use a word study approach.

Word study is a powerful approach that connects letters, sound, meaning, word parts, and usage so that students are learning explicit foundational skills within a meaningful context. For example, ELLs need lots of opportunities to connect the sounds, letters, and words they are learning.

The authors of Words Their Way with English Learners write, "What is key to literacy development for English learners in the emergent stage is that they use language with teachers and peers and see oral language they understand captured in print" (Helman et al, 2011).

Look for opportunities to reinforce phonics in context.

Using literature and content material, you can introduce and reinforce:

letter recognition

beginning and ending sounds

blends

rhyming words

silent letters

homonyms

Vocabulary and ELLs

Vocabulary plays an important part in learning to read, as well as in understanding what is read.

As students learn to read more advanced texts, they must learn the meaning of new words that are not part of their oral vocabulary. For ELLs, vocabulary development is especially important as students' develop academic language - in all subjects and activities! There are numerous ways to support explicit vocabulary instruction, which is essential for developing students' vocabulary knowledge. Dr. Coleen D. Carlson writes,

For EL students, drawing attention to unknown words during the initial presentation of the text, providing appropriate levels of definitions (e.g., providing English labels for words for which concepts and labels in one's native language are understood, quick definitions or demonstrations for simple words) and tying to background knowledge is critical. No amount of simply reading and rereading words will produce knowledge of unknown vocabulary. (2020, p. 97)

Vocabulary: Considerations and Strategies

Considerations for ELLs

Draw upon students' home languages.

You can draw upon students' home languages to build vocabulary by:

It is important to give students as much exposure and experience with new vocabulary words as possible before asking students to use them in a lesson or activity.

Select words that will support the reader's understanding of the story or text, as well as for other phrases and connectors that affect comprehension (even though, except, etc.). You can pre-teach vocabulary by using English as a second language (ESL) methods such as:

Role playing or pantomiming

Using gestures

Showing real objects

Pointing to pictures

Doing quick drawings on the board

Using the equivalent in students' languages and then asking students to say the word in English

Providing a student-friendly definition

Using graphic organizers

Cognates are words in different languages that are derived from the same original word or root. About 40% of all English words have cognates in Spanish (such as the English/Spanish cognate "family/familia"). This is an obvious bridge to the English language for Spanish speakers if the student is made aware of how to use this resource.

Teach students to recognize and use cognates, or words that are related across languages, and encourage students to be on the lookout for cognates from other languages as well.

Give students an opportunity to practice using new words.

As the teacher, you can explicitly teach word meanings to improve comprehension. However, to know a word means knowing it in all of the following dimensions:

The ability to define a word

The ability to recognize when to use that word

Knowledge of its multiple meanings

The ability to decode and spell that word

The ability to use different definitions word accurately in different contexts

Ensure students understand a new word by asking them to produce it themselves either orally or in writing.

I taught a summer school unit on habitats and healthy environments, and every student had to learn the phrase, "Reduce, reuse, recycle." Over the course of four weeks I gave students many opportunities to use those words to describe what we were doing: "We are reusing the grocery bag," or "We reused the scratch paper."

Build students' academic vocabulary.

You can increase students' academic vocabulary by teaching common structures and terms used in a specific content area. For example, sentence frames are a great way to get students familiar with these structures and can be used in writing and speaking:

You can learn more strategies in this related article.

The _____ is ______ than the _____.

I can conclude ______ because _______.

Videos

ESOL Specialist Sheila Majdi: Using sentence frames with ELLs

ESOL specialist Sheila Majdi from Arlington, VA explains what a sentence frame is and how she might use this strategy with ELLs.

Interactive reading of a story

In this classroom clip, first-grade teacher Albuquerque teacher Ali Nava leads her students through an interactive reading of Burro's Tortillas, a Southwestern adaptation of "The Little Red Hen."

Focusing on language in literacy instruction

In this classroom clip, fifth-grade teacher Clara Gonzales-Espinoza helps her students expand their understanding of the way language is used in a picture book version of Cinderella.

Instruction of key academic vocabulary with high school ELLs

In this lesson, students read a letter that Captain John Smith of the English Army wrote to Queen Anne in 1616. You can see lesson materials and reflection interviews from ELL teacher Anne Formato in our related classroom module.

Fluency and ELLs

Fluency is a tricky area when it comes to ELL reading instruction. For native English speakers, fluency and reading comprehension often share a strong correlation because fluent readers recognize words and comprehend at the same time. This is not always the case for ELLs.

Many ELLs can be deceptively fast and accurate in their reading because they are good readers in their primary language and have strong decoding skills. Yet they may demonstrate little understanding of the text, and hearing the text out loud may not necessarily provide a step towards comprehension as it is likely to do for native speakers. One important factor in the connection between fluency and comprehension is ELLs' oral language skills, which Dr. Carlson describes as "an important foundation that supports the role of fluency as a bridge to comprehension" (p. 93).

Fluency: Considerations and Strategies

Inaccurate indicator of ELLs' comprehension

It is not unusual for an ELL student to read a passage beautifully and then not be able answer more than a couple of comprehension questions correctly. Decoding skills (sounding out words) and comprehending the text are two different skills.

Limited benefit from hearing texts read aloud

Native speakers who are not strong decoders can often comprehend text that is read to them better than text that they read themselves. That's because when someone else is doing the reading, they can focus on meaning without having to struggle to get the words off the page.

With ELLs, however, comprehension problems tend to be associated with limited vocabulary and limited background knowledge. Thus, listening to text read by someone else won't enhance comprehension.

Comprehension and ELLs

Comprehension is the understanding and interpretation of what is read. To be able to accurately understand written material, children need to be able to 1) decode what they read; 2) make connections between what they read and what they already know; and 3) think deeply about what they have read. Comprehension can be the most difficult skill to master, however, and can elude students who have mastered word-level skills. According to the executive summary of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth,

An important finding that emerges from the research is that word-level skills in literacy - such as decoding, word recognition and spelling - are often taught well enough to allow language-minority students to attain levels of performance equal to those of native English speakers. However, this is not the case for text-level skills - reading comprehension and writing. (p. 4)

ELLs at all levels of English proficiency, and literacy development, will benefit from explicit instruction in comprehension skills along with other skills because improved comprehension will not only help them in language arts and ESL classes - it will help them in content-area classes and in daily activities. It will also improve the chances of their interest in reading for pleasure.

Learn more from the following articles:

Comprehension: Considerations and Strategies

Considerations for ELLs

ELLs who struggle with comprehension may read more slowly, have a hard time following a text or story, have a hard time picking out important events, and feel frustrated. They may also have problems mastering new concepts in their content-area classes or completing assignments and assessments because they cannot comprehend the texts and tests for these subjects.

Check comprehension frequently.

As students read, ask them open-ended questions about what they are reading, and informally test students' ability to sequence material from sentences or a story by printing sentences from a section of the story on paper strips, mixing the strips or word order, and having students put them in order.

Use questions after reading.

After the ELLs and/or whole class have completed the reading, you can test their comprehension with carefully crafted questions, taking care to use simple sentences and key vocabulary from the text they just read.

These questions can be at the:

Videos

This video showcases a 5 th-grade team planning a science lesson about the difference between vascular and non-vascular plants. ESOL specialist Katy Padilla plays a key role in advocating for ELLs throughout the lesson planning process and sharing her strategies for engaging and supporting students.

Making Dual-Language Immersion Work

This video provides an introduction to Claremont Immersion School's dual language model and shows how teachers collaborating to develop a language arts language in English and Spanish.

Assessment for ELLs

Learn how third-grade teacher Samantha Kirch uses informal assessment in her classroom to better evaluate ELLs and their progress.

Story setup: Pre-reading strategies for comprehension

Learn about pre-reading strategies that will lay the groundwork before high school newcomer ELLs tackle a new text.

Teaching ELLs in upper elementary, middle school, and high school

Older ELLs bring a lot of valuable experience and interests to the classroom. At the same time, they face the double challenge of needing to learn content and a new language at the same time, which is further complicated if their literacy skills are limited. While they may still need foundational skills work, it can be hard to find materials that are age-appropriate. You can learn more about specific tips for supporting this diverse population from the following resources:

For great classroom videos at the secondary level, see our classroom video library!

Concluding Thoughts

This is a lot of information, but we hope that these resources and recommendations can inform your work with students as well as the conversations about literacy in your setting. The more familiar your team is with best practices for ELLs, the more effectively you can determine which practices and resources will best support your students in their ongoing literacy development - and future successes!

Recommend Resources

This new working paper released by Pivot Learning reflects collective consensus among literacy experts on key topics concerning (1) literacy and multilingual and English learner students; (2) early screening and assessment; and (3) foundational skills.

To learn more about the paper and how it was developed, see Can common ground be found on teaching reading in California? (EdSource)

Research articles and chapters

Books

Literacy Foundations for English Learners by Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan (You can see the related book study on YouTube.)

Words Their Way with English Learners: Word Study for Phonics, Vocabulary, and Spelling (2nd Ed.) by Dr. Lori Helman, Dr. Donald R. Bear, Dr. Shane Templeton, Dr. Marcia Invernizzi, and Dr. Francine Johnston

Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners by Dr. Nancy Cloud, Dr. Fred Genesee, and Dr. Else Hamayan

Dual Language Instruction from A to Z: Practical Guidance for Teachers and Administrators by Dr. Else Hamayan, Dr. Fred Genesee, and Dr. Nancy Cloud

Webcasts

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Reading 101 for English Language Learners

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Learning to read is a complicated process. If you teach English language learners (ELLs), however, there are a number of ways you can support their literacy and language development through targeted instruction. This article highlights ELL instructional strategies based on the five components of reading as outlined in Teaching Children to Read by the National Reading Panel (2000).

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Using Science to Develop ELLs' Language Skills 

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Using Science to Develop ELLs' Language Skills 

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This article includes a sample lesson and provides ideas of how to use science with ELLs. The article also provides how to get the lesson started. This article includes different links that can help with science instruction for ELLs.

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Using Science to Develop ELLs' Language Skills

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"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka! I found it!' but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov "Oh, you mean the life cycle." This was my pre-school daughter's response to my long explanation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly.

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Preparing an Engaging Social Studies Lesson for English Language Learners 

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Preparing an Engaging Social Studies Lesson for English Language Learners 

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This is a great article to refer back to because it includes different elements to include in social studies lessons. It also includes a video at the end about how to build social studies background knowledge.

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Consider the following scenario:

A fifth-grade teacher was preparing her class to learn about the American Revolution. She enlisted the students' help in acting out the events that led to the Revolution with elaborate props and exercises. When the class ended, the students were told they would read more about the Revolution the following day. As they left the room, an ESL student stopped and asked urgently, "But who won?"

This situation highlights some of the challenges that teachers face when helping English language learners, or ELLs, master social studies content:

Background knowledge
ELLs may not have the same background knowledge that their peers have or that textbook authors take for granted, as explained in this video clip with ELL teacher Amber Prentice.

Different perspectives
ELLs bring their own valuable and important experiences to the classroom. Often those experiences can be connected to the content in meaningful ways; however, if different points of view or ideas aren't expressed or identified, students may miss key concepts and ideas in the lesson.

Academic language and vocabulary
ELLs must learn the academic language and vocabulary needed to comprehend and produce new content - all while learning the new content and concepts at the same time!

For content-area teachers with limited experience working with ELLs, planning a lesson that engages them and helps them learn new material may seem daunting. The good news is that there are a number of ways to engage ELLs with social studies content and draw on their own unique background knowledge and perspectives. This article will describe some strategies for planning social studies lessons with ELLs in mind.

In addition, I recommend taking a look at the following resources:

Note: Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs (Chapter 2 of Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas), is available online and provides a number of helpful resources, including a checklist for modifying lesson plans for ELLs. In addition, Appendix Two of the book (not available online) provides a lesson modification worksheet.

Lesson Planning Strategies

Identify key concepts necessary for understanding the lesson

When choosing your key concepts, keep in mind the following:

Background knowledge
ELLs with limited or interrupted schooling may not have that same level of knowledge as their peers, especially when it comes to historical or cultural topics. When starting a new lesson, look for references or concepts that may need to be explicitly explained.

Language proficiency
Students may already possess content knowledge that they cannot yet demonstrate in English. Look for opportunities to make associations between students' experiences and new content.

Perspective
Students may have a different perspective on the content than their peers. These differences provide an important opportunity for class discussion and learning as long as they are handled in a sensitive and respectful ways.

In addition, plan to find out what students know about the topic you are teaching before getting started. This will help you fill in gaps and build on prior knowledge. A great tool for this activity is a Circle Map, in which you place the main topic in a small circle and add student ideas in a bigger circle around the topic. You may wish to allow ELLs to use their native language with peers for a quick brainstorm before presenting their ideas to the whole class.

Identify content and language objectives

These objectives are a great way to focus on the most important information and language structures you want your students to master. Content objectives focus on the material while language objectives focus on vocabulary or language structures that students should be able to use throughout the lesson (Haynes and Zacarian, 28).

Think about how you are going to:

introduce these concepts using simple language,

break the concepts down into the most basic elements,

keep the objectives visible to students during the unit (i.e., post them on the board or provide a simple outline to keep in binders).

Identify key vocabulary and academic vocabulary

Identify key terms, words, idioms and phrases - TWIPS, according to Dr. Zacarian (19). Choose the vocabulary that your students need to know in order to support their reading development and content-area learning, in addition to key content vocabulary. Remember to prepare student-friendly definitions for TWIPS ahead of time. It may be helpful to look at other social studies vocabulary lists as well.

In addition:

Look for problem areas
Clarify potential areas of confusion, such as homonyms or words with more than one meaning.

Include signal and directional words
Remember that students may also need explicit instruction in signal or directional words ("because" and "explain"), especially those words that are likely to appear frequently in the content materials or activities.

Don't overlook the basic words
There may be many words used through a lesson that native English-speaking students will understand but that ELLs don't know. Keep an eye out for these words, no matter how basic, and make a list of words that your students have questions about so that you can refer back to it when teaching the lesson in the future.

Use visuals and manipulatives when possible
Having a visual reference for new words is particularly helpful for ELLs.

Keep words visible and accessible to students
Post words on a word wall, or try using a "portable word wall" chart that students can put in their binder. The chart might include categories such as new words, old words, people, everyday words, words to review, etc. (Haynes and Zacarian, 59-60).

Remember to include lots of student practice
For students to really know a word, they must use it - or they will lose it. Use new words in class discussions or outside of class in other contexts if appropriate, such as on field trips. Give the students as many opportunities to use and master the new vocabulary as possible, both in writing and speaking activities. You may find this six-step process for teaching academic vocabulary from Dr. Robert Marzano helpful.

Prepare to preview the text

One strategy is a "chapter walk", where students predict what the chapter will be about based on pictures and highlighted features of the textbook.

An activity like this may take some time at first because it's time-consuming to teach. If you use it with regularity, however, it will become easier and quicker, and students will be able to do this on their own at the beginning of a new chapter.

You can also use the "BIG FOX" strategy, published by McGraw-Hill. This graphic organizer helps students pick out important terms and pieces of information before reading. I recommend practicing this strategy with some simple readings about familiar topics before jumping in with the textbook. The students will understand the strategy better if they start out with concepts that they understand.

Prepare multimedia, visuals, and related readings

These resources can be used to build background knowledge and provide context for ELLs, especially when students are learning new concepts and words. Ideas include:

Using photos from books, magazines, or the Internet to supplement textbooks.

Showing brief, focused video clips of history or social studies programs.

Listening to a short podcast or radio clip of an interview or speech.

Discussing additional readings such as related articles, poems, letters, and graphic novels.

Enlist native language support when possible

These strategies can help students identify content they already know, or master new concepts before transferring those ideas and learning how to express them in English:

Collaborate with a bilingual paraprofessional and identify areas where bilingual language support will be most helpful.

Look for related content materials in the students' native language from publishers like Scholastic or National Geographic/Cengage.

Plan group work in which students can use their native language with peers to discuss main ideas or vocabulary words.

Plan to include group work throughout the unit

Peer learning activities such as Reciprocal Teaching and Think-Pair-Share can be powerful tools for engaging ELLs with content learning.

Use modeling and clear instructions to ensure students understand:

how the activity works

their role in group work

the objective of the activity

any key vocabulary or phrases they should be using.

Here are some other tips on group work for ELLs from Haynes and Zacarian:

Assign students group roles that match their language ability (37).

Promote students to new roles as their language skills improve (42).

Make sure that mainstream students understand that they will be working in diverse groups, and that everyone's contributions are important (41).

Keep an eye on the balance of student participation; if some students are speaking more than others, ask them to think of some ways to even participation out (42).

Ask students to reflect on their group work after they have finished an activity. Haynes and Zacarian include a chart in their book with some guiding statements for student reflection (48).

Plan plenty of opportunities for students to interact with the content

Give students lots of opportunities to engage with and review the material in different ways:

Graphic organizers
Use graphic organizers to review key concepts and vocabulary words.

Flash cards
Have students make their own flash cards with pictures, definitions, key facts, etc.

Working with the text
Teach students to underline, highlight, and make notes. You may also find that sticky notes, Wikki Stix, and highlighting tape are a big hit with students (68). According to Haynes, some school districts order extra textbooks for their ELL classes so that teachers can keep a highlighted copy on hand as a student reference.

Use acting
Have the students write skits about the material they are learning, or create an activity in which students provide a physical representation of a particular event or vocabulary word.

Be creative and flexible with writing assignments

Writing can be an important way for students to show what they've learned:

Be creative and flexible
When choosing writing activities for students, be creative and open to different ways for students to express their new knowledge. I have seen students successfully convey what they learned by writing letters, poems, news articles and mosaics with vocabulary key points. Writing an essay may be more difficult for ELLs, and although they need to learn how to write a good essay eventually, they should be allowed to demonstrate their learning through a variety of writing activities.

Look for writing exercises that relate to the topic at hand
This may include a biography or autobiography, a letter from the point of view of a historical figure, or a short news article about a famous event.

Provide models
Give ELLs explicit structures and sentence frames to follow. Frames may vary in complexity and specificity, but they will help students to model correct structures and usage from the beginning.

Plan to adapt homework and assessment as needed

While it's important to have high expectations of ELLs, it is also important to have realistic expectations of the amount of work they can do. Haynes and Zacarian note, "The teacher's goal should be to making learning accessible and meaningful for every student without lowering expectations or sacrificing rigor" (104-105).

They continue in Chapter 7 of their book to provide a number of helpful rubrics and step-by-step procedures for evaluating your homework and assessment activities with ELLs in mind. In Twenty-Five Quick Tips for Classroom Teachers, Haynes suggests that teachers "adjust homework assignment to your ELLs' English language proficiency (and) modify assessment so that your ELLs have an opportunity to show what they have learned."

As you look for ways to help your students learn this new content, remember that you aren't just teaching them required social studies standards - you are helping your students adjust to a new life and country. That preparation has a potentially significant ripple effect because your students may be helping their own parents navigate this new country as well, and they may need to prepare for a U.S. Citizenship exam one day in the future.

Through social studies lessons, you also can prepare your students to be engaged and well-informed participants in our society and democracy, an opportunity they might not have had in their own country due to their religion, gender, or ethnicity. When you think about it that way, teaching ELLs to master new social studies content is so much more than adapting a lesson plan - it's a chance to prepare a new generation of young people to lead us into the future.

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Preparing an Engaging Social Studies Lesson for English Language Learners

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Consider the following scenario: A fifth-grade teacher was preparing her class to learn about the American Revolution. She enlisted the students' help in acting out the events that led to the Revolution with elaborate props and exercises. When the class ended, the students were told they would read more about the Revolution the following day.

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Technology Integration to Support Language Development

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Technology Integration to Support Language Development

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This article focuses on the flipped classroom method. It provides a video of a teacher preforming a read aloud. The article also provides ideas of how to implement formative and summative assessments into the classroom when using the flipped classroom method.

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Technology Integration to Support Language Development

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A few strategies coupled with technology integration can enhance English language learning in the primary classroom.

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Literacy Engagement Fueling Academic Growth for English Learners

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Literacy Engagement Fueling Academic Growth for English Learners

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This is an article that provides strategies and important things to consider for reading and writing development.

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Tools and Resources for Addressing English Learners with Disabilities

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Tools and Resources for Addressing English Learners with Disabilities

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This resource provides tools for Educators to use when teaching their English language learners who have disabilities. It includes recommendations for teachers so they are successful while teaching their ELLs who have disabilities.

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Scaffolding Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners

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Scaffolding Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners

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This video includes how the social studies teacher and language arts teacher are working together to teach a unit. It is a great video to refer back to because it includes suggestions for teachers to use when picking a complex text for students to read.

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Scaffolding Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners

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Caitlin LeClair, seventh-grade social studies teacher at King Middle School in Portland, Maine, supports her students to read complex texts—fiction and nonfiction—about South Sudan. LeClair supports her diverse group of learners by choosing compelling topics; working through a progression of increasingly complex texts; and providing scaffolding and support to build their skills as close readers.

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Science Writing: A Tool for Learning Science and Developing Language

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Science Writing: A Tool for Learning Science and Developing Language

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This is a great article to refer back to because it describes what science writing is and how to implement it into the classroom. The article includes examples of science writing to show how it can be used in different lessons with ELLs. It also provides some ideas on how effective science writing will be if teachers are prepared and utilize science writing correctly.

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This article provides how teachers can use sentence frames in math. It also describes the difference between new labels and new concepts. This article is important because it is crucial for teachers to make math lessons applicable for ELLs.

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Understanding Language - Language, Literacy, and Learning in the Content Areas Teaching Resources Math

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Understanding Language - Language, Literacy, and Learning in the Content Areas Teaching Resources Math

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This link includes different ways teachers can support English Language Learners in math instruction. It includes different resources teachers can use for their math lessons. This will be a great resource to refer back to because sometimes it can be hard to differentiate instruction and make math lessons applicable for every student in the classroom.

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SUPPORTING ELLs IN MATHEMATICS

The goal of these materials is to illustrate how Common Core aligned math tasks can be used to support math instruction and language development for ELLs at three grade spans (elementary, middle, and high school). We used or adapted tasks from two publicly accessible curriculum projects, Inside Mathematics and Mathematics Assessment Project.

To learn more, see the annotated lessons below and read our Guidelines for Math Instructional Materials Development.

These tasks all provide substantial opportunities for ELLs to engage in the mathematics, present their mathematical reasoning, develop verbal explanations of their solutions, and develop explanations of their solutions in writing.

Download Supplementary Files

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Understanding Language is devoted to improving education for English Language Learners in light of the new Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. Based on the latest research, we provide resources to help teachers, administrators, and policy makers recognize the language demands in mathematics, science, and English language arts.

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This article incorporates information on assessing students in the classroom. It includes different things to consider when creating an assessment including validity, time, and teacher knowledge and training. This article is important to refer back to because it provides information about the different types of assessment and creating authentic assessments for every student.

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The BUENO Center for Multicultural Education

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Bilinguals United for Education and New Opportunities (BUENO)Located in the School of Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder, The BUENO Center is

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This is a brief video that summarizes each of the first language acquisition theories. This will be a great resource if I ever need to refresh my memory on what each theory is.

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Stephen Krashen's Theories (5 Hypotheses)

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Stephen Krashen's Theories (5 Hypotheses)

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This video focuses on the second language acquisition theories developed by Stephen Krashen. This video summarizes the main points included in each theory.

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Stephen Krashen's Theories (5 hypotheses)

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This is a website that focuses on the different elements of the English language. It includes a review of morphology, different sentence types, and a review of the different parts of speech.

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Introduction

This web page is intended for students who are following GCE Advanced level (AS and A2) specifications in English Language. This resource may also be of general interest to language students on university degree courses, trainee teachers and anyone with a general interest in language science. It contains a basic guide to the structure of the English language.

Please note that I have not set down prescriptive rules which must be obeyed. I have described language, using both traditional terms and some of the categories and descriptions of modern grammar. English is not "derived" from Latin (whatever Prince Charles thinks) but has a Germanic origin, although much of our lexicon comes from French and the classical languages of Greek and Latin. None of this classical lexis was found in Old English, of course - it has entered English from the Renaissance onwards, most of it in comparatively modern times, thanks to its extensive use in science.

Some of the language categories of traditional grammar have more coherence than others. Nouns and verbs are fairly coherent, while adverbs (or all the words classed by lexicographers as such) are certainly not.

If you have any comments or suggestions about the guide, please contact me.

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We can study the structure of language in a variety of ways. For example, we can study

classes of words (parts of speech),

meanings of words (semantics), with or without considering changes of meaning,

how words are organised in relation to each other (syntax),

how words are formed (morphology),

the sounds of words (phonology) and

how written forms represent these (lexicography).

There is no universally accepted model for doing this, but some models use the notion of a hierarchy, and this may prove fruitful for you. The framework (description of structure) you will study here is written to be comprehensive yet succinct. Elsewhere, in studying language theory, you will focus on a selective area, and investigate this in more detail.

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The most basic units of meaning are simple words (e.g.: dog, yes and swim) or the elements of complex words (e.g.: un- -happi- and -ness in unhappiness). These basic elements are called morphemes, and the study of how they are combined in words is morphology.

The study of how words are organised into phrases, clauses and sentences is usually referred to as syntax.

A longer stretch of language is known as discourse, the study of its structure as discourse analysis.

This hierarchy is partly explained by the table below, from David Crystal's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. The right hand column should be read upwards, in the direction of the arrow.

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sentences
are analysed into
clauses
are analysed into
phrases
are analysed into
words
are analysed into
morphemes

↓ ↑

sentences
are used to build
clauses
are used to build
phrases
are used to build
words
are used to build
morphemes

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The following table shows a three-part model of the structure of English.

Morphology

Syntax

Discourse

morphemes

↓

words

phrases

↓

clauses

↓

sentences

relationships between sentences in longer stretches of language

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Morphology

This is the study of the structure of words. The name comes from Greek morphos (=shape or form). The smallest units of meaning may be whole simple words (e.g. man, run, big) or parts of complex words (e.g. un-, -faith- and -ful in unfaithful) which are called morphemes.

Some morphemes, such as faith in un-faith-ful or dream in dream-ing can stand alone as words which make sense. These are known as free morphemes. You will see how very many simple words are free morphemes, but can combine with other morphemes, both free and bound (see below) to form complex words.

Where two simple words are joined together to form a new complete word, this is called a compound word. Examples include teapot, starlight and careworn. When these terms are first coined, they are shown in some dictionaries with a hyphen, as light-house or fish-finger.

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Other morphemes, such as prefixes and suffixes (collectively called affixes), cannot stand alone - they need to be part of a complex word to make sense. Examples are dis- in dis-miss, dis-pute or dis-grace, -ing in dream-ing, -ness in happi-ness or sad-ness and even -s used to form plurals, as in boy-s or horse-s. These morphemes are said to be bound morphemes.

Inflection and derivation

Bound morphemes are traditionally divided into two further classes. Sometimes a word is changed in its form to show the internal grammar of a sentence (quot;agreementquot;). Examples would be plural forms of nouns ( dog + s → dog-s) or past (imperfect) tenses of regular verbs ( want + ed → want-ed). The study of such changes is inflectional morphology (because the words in question are inflected - altered by adding a suffix).

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Other compound or complex words are made by adding together elements without reference to the internal grammar of a sentence. For example, the verb infect suggests a new verb disinfect (=to undo the action of infecting). New words are often formed by noun + -ize, noun + ism, or verb + able ( scandalize, Stalinism, disposable). The study of such words, "derived" from existing words or morphemes is derivational morphology. The elements of which the word is made may have a grammatical relationship within the word (you may find this idea difficult), but their formation is independent of the syntax of the clause or sentence in which they occur. If you find this puzzling, two things may help:

Inflectional morphology is much easier to recognize. A relatively small number of types of inflection (showing number or tense, say) covers most cases.

All compound and most complex words show derivational morphology. If a complex word does not show inflection it will show derivation.

But note: a complex word may show both inflection and derivation! A derived word may be inflected to show, for example, tense or number: deported or disposables (as in nappies or diapers).

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This table shows how the most common kinds of inflection are found in three word classes:

Nouns

Verbs

Adjectives and adverbs

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This table illustrates how derivation can occur:

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Remember that morphology is the study of the structure of words. The structure of words can also be studied to show how the meaning of a given morpheme, or its relation to the rest of the word, varies from one complex word to another. Consider how sun works in the following words: sunbeam, sunburnt, sundial, sunflower, sunglasses, sunlight, sunrise, sun-spot (scientific sense), sun-spot (tourist sense), suntan.

Inflection does not really yield "new" words, but alters the form of existing ones for specific reasons of grammar. Derivation, on the other hand, does lead to the creation of new words. David Crystal ( Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language; p. 90) lists four normal processes of word-formation, of which three are examples of derivation:

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Prefixation

(derivational)

Suffixation

(derivational)

Compounding

(derivational)

Conversion

(not derivational)

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Words considered as wholes can be categorized according to how they work within phrases, clauses or sentences. These categories, traditionally called parts of speech are now more usually known as word classes. Parts of speech are labels for categories in which words are usually placed. But in a given sentence a word from one category may behave as if it were in another. A dictionary will only record established or standard usage.

The traditional parts of speech were of eight kinds, excluding the two articles ( a/an, the). These were nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs, and interjections. Modern linguists prefer to list words in classes that are coherent - all the words in them should behave in the same way. But if this principle were applied rigidly, we would have hundreds of classes, so irregularities are tolerated!

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Closed and open word classes

Table of closed word classes | table of open word classes

Some classes of words are called closed because they contain a relatively small number of items to which no new words can normally be added. These are words (prepositions and conjunctions) which make connections (connectives or connectors), pronouns and words (including articles) like the, some, each that co-occur with nouns - these are called determiners.

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She, them, who, that, himself

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Problems of classification

Some words are difficult to classify. Not all grammatical descriptions will place them in the same word class. This, these or those are sometimes classified as demonstrative (or distinctive) adjectives or pronouns. Possessives, like my, his, their, are sometimes classified as pronouns (showing the word from which they are formed), sometimes as adjectives, showing their grammatical function of qualifying nouns: usually they are pronouns when alone ( I like that) and adjectives when they precede a noun ( I like this weather). Traditional lists of adverbs contain words like very which qualify other adverbs or adjectives. This word class is sometimes called a "dustbin" class, because any word which defies classification will be put in it! Among words which have sometimes been classified as adverbs are the following: however, just, no, not, quickly, tomorrow and when.

This incoherence has long been recognized by grammarians who subdivide adverbs into further categories, such as adverbs of time, place or manner.

In trying to organize words into coherent classes, linguists will consider any or all of the following: what they mean (semantics), their form (morphology), provenance (historical origin) and function in a phrase, clause or sentence (syntax).

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Some words, such as numbers, do not fit in any of the word classes given above. They can behave as adjectives ( one loaf or two?) or pronouns ( I want one now!). And no one description of word classes is regarded as finally authoritative. Some classes (such asverbs or conjunctions) are fairly coherent. You should be able to discuss the problems of how or where to classify words which seem not to "fit".

Also note that a dictionary does not (or should not) prescribe, but indicates the word class or part of speech where a word is usually placed. But in a given sentence, if the speaker or writer has used it as if it were in a different class, then this is where it should be placed.

For example, toilet is usually classified as a noun. But UK primary school teachers often speak of toileting children ( I had to toilet John twice today). In describing such a sentence, you should be guided by the internal grammar of the sentence (syntax) rather than the dictionary. Here toilet is a transitive verb. If this usage becomes standard, lexicographers will record it. This kind of word formation is called conversion, a self-explanatory name.

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Kinds and Functions of Words:
Word Classes or Parts of Speech

Every statement is a combination of words, and every statement says something to communicate information. The simplest possible kind of statement - for example, Dogs bark - has two kinds of words in it. It has a what word, dogs, and a what happens word, bark. These kinds of words are the most basic parts of any statement. If a person only says dog, no statement is made, and no information is conveyed. A sound is made that calls to mind a common, four-footed animal, but nothing regarding it is learned.

The what words are called nouns. They tell what is being talked about. They are identifying words, or names. Nouns identify persons, places, or things. They may be particular persons, places, or things: Michael Jackson, Reykjavik, World Trade Center.Or they may be general nouns: singer, town, building. Concrete nouns indicate things that can be seen such as car, teapot, and potato. Abstract nouns denote concepts such as love, honesty,and beauty.

It is rather odd that English grammar should retain this abstract-concrete distinction for nouns. It appears to be a survival from the philosopher Plato, who divided the world into mind and matter. If it has any value it is in the philosophical field of epistemology (theory of knowledge). It does not really reveal anything for linguists beyond itself. That is, we can, if we wish, try to place nouns in the sub-categories of concrete and abstract, but once we have done so, this categorization has no further value for the study of language. Moreover, modern science confuses the issue, since it shows that many things we once supposed to belong to mind, are in fact, embodied in matter. A thrill is not only abstract, since it involves matter at the level of biochemistry.

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The what happens words are called verbs. They are the action words in a statement. Without them it is impossible to put sentences together. It is the verb that says something about the noun: dogs bark, birds fly, fish swim. Verbs are the important words that create information in statements. Although nouns alone make no statement, verbs can occasionally do so. Help! gives the information that someone is in trouble, and Go away! tells someone or something emphatically to leave.

Besides nouns and verbs there are other kinds of words that have different functions in statements. They are pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, articles, prepositions, and a very few words that can be called function words because they fit into none of the other categories. All of these kinds of words together are called parts of speech. They can just as well be called parts of writing because they apply to written as well as to spoken language.

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Nouns and articles

Nouns can be particular or general: the house, a house. The words the and a are articles, or, in more technical terms, determiners. A house can be any house, but the house is a quite definite building. When a noun begins with a vowel ( a, e, i, o, u, and, occasionally, y) the indefinite article a becomes an for the sake of easier pronunciation - an apple, an elephant, an orange. Sometimes an is used before words that start with h, especially if the h is silent: an onorary degree. If the h is sounded h a is the standard form: an 'otel, a hotel.

Nouns can be singular or plural in number: cat, cats.

In some cases es is added to make nouns plural: dress, dresses.

Some nouns change their forms in the plural, without adding an s but by changing or mutating a vowel: foot, feet; man, men; mouse, mice; goose, geese.

Some nouns do not change at all in the plural: sheep, fowl.

There are also group nouns, called noun phrases. This means that two or more nouns, or a noun and an adjective, are put together to form what amounts to, or works like, one noun: football stadium, rock concert, orange tree. In each case certain nouns - football, rock, orange - are attached to other nouns, and each modifies or describes the second noun in some way to convey a different kind of object. A football and a football stadium are two entirely different things, though they both have to do with the same game.

Some nouns are one-of-a-kind names: Suez Canal, Elvis Presley, Empire State Building. Also called proper nouns, they are capitalized to set them off from general nouns. Sometimes adjectives (words that describe nouns) are also capitalized. This normally happens when the adjective is made from a proper noun, especially a place or person: literature, American countryside, English theatre. Elizabethan

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Proper nouns are contrasted with common nouns (naming words for general classes of things which contain many individual examples). In fact many of the nouns that we consider proper are still names for more than one individual, as with the name of a model of car (like Ford Escort or VW Beetle, which might have been produced in the millions). Like the abstract-concrete distinction, the common-proper categories may originate in Platonic philosophy, which contrasted the many things in the real world with unique ideal originals of which they are imperfect copies. It is of more practical concern, since it is meant to inform the written representations of words (whether or not to use an initial capital). Unlike German (which uses a capital for all nouns) or Norwegian (which never does), English has a mixed and inconsistent system which changes over time, and which is confused by the individual tendencies of writers. One problem is that a descriptive phrase (like the second world war) can become petrified into a title, so that we write Second World War or World War Two. And Queen Juliana is or was the queen of the Netherlands, but Queen Elizabeth II is, to many of her subjects, simply the Queen, or even The Queen. In these cases, the "correct" forms are not universally standard for all writers of English, but more a matter of publishers' house styles.

Many introductions to English grammar for schoolchildren are to blame for presenting this common-proper distinction as if it were very straightforward - by referring only to well-behaved kinds of proper noun, such as personal names or the names of cities, rivers and planets. In such introductions the distinction is introduced chiefly to lead onto instruction about the use of capital letters in writing such nouns.

Nouns are used in different ways: The dog barks. The man bit the dog. In the first case, dog is the actor, or the one that initiates the action of the verb. In the second, dog is acted upon. In The dog barks, dog is the subject of the verb. In the other sentence, dog is the object of the verb.

Sometimes a noun is the indirect object of a verb: He gave the dog a bone. Bone is the direct object; it is what was given. Because it was given to the dog, dog is considered the indirect object of the action.

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Nouns can also be objects of prepositions - words like to, in, for, and by - so the above sentence could read: He gave a bone to the dog. The words to the dog are called a prepositional phrase.

Some verb forms take nouns as objects: Drinking milk is good for you. In this sentence, milk is the object of the verbal form drinking. Such a combination of verb and noun is called a verbal phrase.

Nouns can show possession: The dog's collar is on the table. The collar is possessed, or owned, by the dog. All possession does not indicate ownership, however. In The building's roof is black, the roof is on, but not owned by, the building. Adding an apostrophe and an s to a noun shows possession ('): the cat's tongue, the woman's purse. If the noun is plural or already has an s, then often only an apostrophe need be added: the mothers' union (that is, a union of many mothers). The word of may also be used to show possession: the top of the house, the light of the candle, the Duke of Wellington.

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Pronouns

Personal pronouns | Demonstrative pronouns | Indefinite pronouns | Relative and interrogative pronouns

There are several words that are used to replace nouns. They are called pronouns. Pro in Greek means "for" or "in place of".

Personal pronouns

Some pronouns are called personal pronouns because they take the place of specific names of persons, places, or thing, as in: Has Fred arrived? Yes, he is here. Here he is the personal pronoun that replaces Fred. As indicated in the table, there are both subject and object personal pronouns as well as those that show possession. In His house is the white and green one, his is a personal possessive pronoun.

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*Some authorities give my, your, his, her, our, your and their as possessive adjectives or pronominal adjectives,as they qualify nouns.

Some personal pronouns are formed by the addition of -self or -selves as a suffix: myself, ourselves, yourself, himself, herself, itself, and themselves.

Demonstrative pronouns

Some pronouns - this, that, these, those - refer to particular people or things: This is mine, and that is yours. These are demonstrative pronouns. The demonstrative words can also be used as adjectives: this house, those cars.

Indefinite pronouns

Pronouns that refer to people or things in general are called indefinite pronouns. Like the demonstrative pronouns, they can be used as adjectives: another day, both animals, many weeks.

Relative and interrogative pronouns

The words who, whose, whom, that, which, and what are called relative pronouns. (The word that can be a demonstrative or a relative pronoun.) They create relative clauses in a sentence: The committee, which met last night, discussed your report. The words which met last night form a relative clause that describes the subject of the main clause, the committee.

Sometimes a relative pronoun is used as the subject of a question such as Who ate the pizza? Here it is classed as an interrogative pronoun. Interrogate means "ask" (questions).

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Verbs

Verbs are the action words in a statement. They tell what is happening - what a noun is doing or what is being done to it, or the state of being, becoming, thinking or feeling. A verb with a subject, which will be in a particular tense is a finite verb. Without a subject it will be the infinitive form (for example, to think, to dream) or a gerund (the present participle, used as a noun: is bad for you). smoking

When a verb denotes what a noun is doing, the noun is said to be the subject of the verb: The man speaks. When the verb denotes what is being done to a noun, the noun is the object of the verb: The man eats jelly. The noun jelly is the direct object of the verb. Verbs can also take indirect objects: Parents give children toys. In this sentence, toys is the direct object, (what is given) and children is the indirect object. The parents do not give children but toys.

Verbs that take objects are called transitive verbs, and those that normally do not take an object are intransitive verbs (but note that an intransitive verb may be used transitively in non-standard speech or writing). Some common transitive verbs are: tell, give, show, eat, buy, take, and see. Some verbs can be both transitive and intransitive: a story (transitive), and Tell Time will sleep, walk, rest, come, and tell (intransitive). Verbs like go are nearly always intransitive. The most common verb of all, to be, is intransitive in all of its forms: am, are, is, was, were, and been.

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Tenses (time signals): Verb tenses tell the time when an action takes place. Any action or condition may be in the past, present, or future: he was, he is, he will be. Most common verbs simply add an -ed to show the past time, or form the past tense, as it is normally called. Thus walk becomes walked. Other verbs, sometimes called irregular (or strong) verbs, do not add -ed. Instead they undergo an internal change: sing, sang, sung; fly, flew, flown; go, went, gone.

Auxiliary verbs: In the sentence She will sing even though he cannot stay, the verbs will and cannot are called auxiliary, or helper, verbs. Other auxiliary verbs are the incomplete or modal verbs: can, could, may, might, shall, should, and would.

The various forms of the verb to be can also be used as auxiliaries: I am going. He was singing. They have been shopping. The verb have - and its other forms has and had - are also common auxiliaries to indicate past action.

Participles: The verb form used with auxiliaries is the participle. There is a present participle , talk talk ing, and a past participle, I talk (present tense) or I am talking (present continuous) to show present action and ed. Thus, a person can say either I talked (imperfect), I have talked (perfect), or I had talked (pluperfect) to show past action. When a present participle is used with an auxiliary verb, the purpose is to show continuing or ongoing action. She the laundry. He is doing when someone interrupted him. Note that this uses a present participle with a past tense auxiliary verb ( was) to indicate continuous was speaking past action.

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Verb flexibility: Verbs and verb forms can be used in a number of ways in sentences. A verb can be the subject of a statement ( To walk is good exercise) or its object ( I like to walk). In each case, the infinitive form to walk is used as a noun. Participles can be used in the same way: He likes swimming. Flying is great sport. In the first sentence, swimming is the object of the verb, and in the second, flying is the subject.

Verb forms can also be used as adjectives, or words that describe nouns. In a wrecked car, the word wrecked is a past participle used as an adjective.

Occasionally a verb form or verb phrase can be used as an adverb: He was pleased to meet her. The phrase to meet her modifies the adjective pleased.

Adjectives and adverbs

Adjectives and adverbs are descriptive words, sometimes called modifiers because they restrict meaning. They add detail to statements. The difference between the two is that adjectives modify only nouns, pronouns, and verb forms used as nouns; adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.

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Adjective function: An adjective may be a single word: blue, tall, funny, warm. As a single word, it may come before the noun - the blue sky - or after the verb - the sky is blue . Adjectives may be positive ( tall), comparative ( taller) or superlative ( tallest). Adjective phrases usually follow the noun they describe: the girl . The phrase with blond hair with blond hair describes girl. Adjective clauses also usually follow the noun: The child wins. The clause who finds the most Easter eggs modifies child. who finds the most Easter eggs

Adverb function:The most common use of an adverb, of course, is to describe verbs: He ran quickly. Actually, however, adverbs can modify anything but nouns or verb forms used as nouns. Typically adverbs express:

time (now, then)

manner (happily, easily)

degree (less, more, very)

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Although many adverbs are formed by adding -ly to adjectives ( quick, quickly; happy, happily), adverbs have no characteristic form. They must be identified by the function they perform in a sentence. In the sentence That is a fast car, fast is an adjective. But in He ran fast , it is an adverb.

Certain adverbs (how, when, where, why, whenever, and wherever) are called relative adverbs because they introduce relative clauses in a sentence: The keys are upstairs where you left them. The clause where you left them modifies the adverb upstairs.

Other adverbs are called conjunctive adverbs because they join one clause with another. Some of these adverbs are: therefore, accordingly, besides, furthermore, instead, meanwhile, and nevertheless.In the sentence He was tired; therefore he stayed home, the word therefore modifies the clause of which it is a part and connects that clause to the previous part of the sentence. Note that therefore is not to be used as a conjunction, hence the semi-colon.

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Conjunctions

Conjunctions are joining words: they connect words, phrases, or entire clauses. There are two general kinds of conjunctive words: coordinate and subordinate.

Coordinate conjunctions join elements that are grammatically the same: two or more words, two equivalent phrases, or two equivalent clauses. The most common coordinate conjunctions are: and, but, or, for, nor, so, yet.

He wants both money and power.

Neither money nor power matters.

Either she will go, or she will stay.

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Subordinate conjunctions. While coordinate conjunctions connect equal grammatical elements, subordinate conjunctions introduce dependent or conditional clauses.

Although she has money, she buys few luxuries.

Because he was late, he missed the train.

After the movie is over, we shall have dinner.

Other word uses. Words that operate as conjunctions can often be used in other ways: as adverbs, prepositions, adjectives, or even pronouns.

We have met before (before is an adverb).

Before they leave, let us have dinner (before is a conjunction).

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There are other words besides conjunctions that serve as connectors (or connectives) in sentences. The relative pronouns who and which are often so used.

Some of the conjunctions work both as adverbs and conjunctions in the same sentence. This is often true of consequently, however, therefore, and nevertheless.

Note the semi-colon (;). This is standard here but is non-standard before but or and. (This appears to be changing, as speakers and writers treat words like nevertheless as conjunctions.)

It is possible to make clauses with conjunctions into separate sentences, especially when writing for literary effect.

In the second case the clause is so obviously dependent that it would not stand alone as a sentence and make sense. It can only be written that way for emphasis or some other effect.

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Prepositions

Prepositions are words or groups of words, that introduce phrases; and these phrases modify some element in a sentence. What follows a preposition is normally a noun, pronoun, or noun clause. A word that follows a preposition is its object, and, in the case of pronouns especially, this affects the form of the word.

He walked near her (never He walked near she).

He gave them to her and me (neverHe gave them to she and I or He gave them to her and I).

One of the problems in spotting prepositions in a sentence is that many of the words that are usually prepositions can also be used as adverbs.

They sat before the counter (before is a preposition,and the whole prepositional phrase serves as an adverb, modifyingsat).

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Noun: A noun is a name for someone or something. It can be someone or something in particular, or someone or something in general.

Pronoun: A pronoun is a substitute for a noun or a noun phrase.

Verb: A verb is the action word in a statement. Some verbs link the subject to a noun, pronoun, or adjective.

Adjective: An adjective is a modifier. Usually it modifies, or makes more exact, the meaning of a noun or pronoun.

Adverb: An adverb is a modifier. Usually it modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.

Conjunction: A conjunction is a connector. A coordinate conjunction connects words or groups of words that are grammatically the same. A subordinate conjunction connects a subordinate, or dependent, clause to a main clause.

Preposition: A preposition is a connector that introduces a prepositional phrase. It usually connects a noun or noun phrase to the part of the sentence modified by the whole prepositional phrase, and it shows the relation between the two.

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Modern language scientists have devised other categories of word in relation to syntax, which you should know. A few of these are explained in the table below.

Auxiliary: A word whose function is to assist the main verb in a clause to express basic grammatical contrasts such as person, number and tense. The primary auxiliaries are forms of be, have, do. The modal auxiliaries are such verbs as may, might, should.

Connective: A word which links language units, such as conjunctions and some adverbs

Determiner: A word which co-occurs with a noun to show meanings such as number, quantity or identity (the, some, each)

Head: The main element in a phrase; it may be pre- or post-modified

Intensifier: Traditionally classed as an adverb; a word which adds force or emphasis to a qualifier (extremely stupid, very cleverly)

Modifier: Word or phrase which gives more information about the head element in a phrase (All the beautiful (pre-modification) fish (head) in the ocean (post-modification)

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Syntax and syntactic structures

Parts of speech, or word categories, indicate what words usually do, or may be expected to do. Some of these categories - such as nouns and pronouns - make sense when we consider words in isolation. Others - such as conjunctions or prepositions - only make sense within a longer structure, a phrase, clause or sentence.

Note that these three terms are traditional, and do not easily describe how strings of language work. All are broad categories. The sentence, especially, is much more characteristic of written than of spoken English, and of formal rather than informal usage. Alternatively, we may say that spoken English contains sentence types not usually found in writing.

The internal grammar of phrases, clauses and sentences refers to the principles (sometimes mistakenly called "rules") of structure and organization. Be aware of the tension between model structures devised for textbooks and guides for learners of the language, and the syntax of real sentences (those you have found in speech or writing), which you are subjecting to analysis.

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A phrase is a useful all-purpose name for any short sequence of words (or even a single word, considered as an element in the structure of a clause or sentence), especially a grouping which could be replaced by a single word. A phrase which works like, or equates to, a noun is a noun phrase, one which qualifies a verb is an adverb phrase and so on.

A clause may be short or long, but must contain at least one main, finite verb. A short clause may in fact be identical with a verb phrase: the two terms reflect differences of emphasis or analysis in regard to the language string in question. If you are analysing a sentence, you will look first for clauses; if you wish to see how words have been combined in simple sequences, you will look for phrases. Phrases are especially important for analysing spoken data, and some kinds of written text (such as advertisements or information leaflets) where (written) sentence forms are not considered essential.

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Phrases

Noun phrases | Adjective phrases | Adverb phrases | Pronoun phrases | Prepositional phrases | Verb phrases

Noun phrases

(not part of noun phrase)

Buns

are for sale.

The

buns

are for sale.

All

the

currant

buns

are for sale.

Not quite all

the

currant

buns

are for sale.

Not quite all

the

hot tasty currant

buns

are for sale.

Not quite all

the

hot tasty currant

buns

on the table

are for sale.

Not quite all

the

many

hot tasty currant

buns

on show on the table

are for sale.

Not quite all

the

very many

fine hot tasty currant

buns

which I cooked

are for sale.

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Adjective phrases

These are usually formed from an intensifier, followed by the head (an adjective, shown in bold below). Examples include very happy, not too awkward , and cold enough. They may also be formed from an adjective and a verb construction, such as easy to please, loath to do it.

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Adverb phrases

These are intensifying expressions formed from an intensifier (optional), followed by the head (an adverb, shown in bold below), followed by a postmodifier (optional). Examples would be: terribly slowly, very happily indeed, exceptionally carefully, completely utterly dangerously, quite often and very soon .

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Prepositional phrases (adverbials/adjectivals)

These are formed from the head (a preposition, shown in bold in the examples), followed by a noun phrase. Examples of prepositional phrases are in the teapot, on the bog, and round the bend.

They may be called adverbials since their usual function is to qualify a verb in the same way as an adverb does. You can test this by replacing a given prepositional phrase with an adverb - for example: Fred swam in the river and Fred swam swiftly . Both of these are grammatically standard forms.

They may also function as adjectives: the pirate with the wooden leg .

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Pronoun phrases

These are restricted to a small number of constructions, and are sometimes regarded as a minor type of noun phrase. They are formed from a head (a pronoun, shown in bold below) with a pre- or postmodifier. Examples would be: Silly me! You there! she herself, we all, nearly everyone , and such relative clause types as those who knew Fred .

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Verb phrases

These are quite simple syntactically, although the verb in them may contain important grammatical information, such as tense, number, active or passive voice and so on. (All of these are explained above in the section on word categories). One or more auxiliaries may precede the head (a verb participle, shown in bold below). Examples would be: has died, may have gone, might have been listening . You may be puzzled by the simplicity of these models. Don't be. In order to explain the more complex function of verbs in the predicates of sentences (what they say about their subject), we use the structural model of the clause.

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Sentences and clauses

In the syntax of English and other modern European languages, such as Dutch, French, German or Italian, the two most important structures are almost certainly clauses and sentences. Please note that:

the sentence as we know it, is not found in all languages

the sentence is not a necessary structure in natural language

many written texts and most spoken data are not organized into regular sentence forms

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Before you look at descriptions of either structure, you may wonder why they appear together in the heading above. This is because neither makes sense without the other. Writers of language textbooks may put either of them ahead of the other, depending upon whether their structural model builds (or synthesises) smaller structures into larger ones ("bottom up") or analyses larger structures into smaller ones ("top down"). This is explained at the start of this guide, and briefly again below, under the heading Building or analysing? This guide places clauses before sentences, in keeping with its "bottom up" or synthetic approach. You should try to explain the subject with both synthetic and analytic models.

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Clauses

We can understand a clause in several ways. Simply it can be seen as a verb and the words or phrases which cluster round it. Professor Crystal ( The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 449) describes it as "a structural unit smaller than a sentence but larger than phrases or words". The problem here is that in some cases a clause may appear identical with a sentence or phrase, but the term we use tells us about a different structural feature. A more difficult explanation to follow is that a clause is a syntactic unit consisting of a verb, together with its associated subject, objects or complements and adverbials. Note that the only obligatory ("must have") elements are the subject and the verb (usually, but not always, in this order). So before you can go further, you need to know about these different clause elements (parts of the clause).

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Clauses and clauses

You may have met the term clause in other contexts - it is used to identify short passages within longer ones (such as paragraphs) in such texts as legal or parliamentary documents. The writers of these will often construct artificial sentences which are broken into a series of clauses, so that these can be named. This allows us to write such things as "Paragraph x , clause y of the Sale of Goods Act, 1979 protects consumers." Here clause identifies the unit of syntax (and its meaning or semantic content) but may not in every case exactly match the models explained here or in grammatical reference works.

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Clause elements

Subject | Object | Verb | Complement | Adverbial | Vocatives

These are well worth learning about, as you will certainly want to use them to explain the syntax of language data you are studying in exams or investigations. If you are not able to describe or identify clause types, it is usually acceptable and always helpful to consider how these elements work together. You may use them to explain how sentences work, also. They are:

subject (S), object (O), verb (V), complement (C), adverbial (A)

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Subject

The subject is a noun or noun phrase, pronoun or subordinate clause.

The dog was sick. Fred felt funny. (n)

Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. (NP)

I am happy. They are jealous. (pn.)

What she said is untrue. (sub.clause)

In this kind of analysis a series of noun phrases is a single clause element.

Pronouns used as subject are in the subject case (I, she, they not me, her, them)

The subject controls singular-plural verb agreement (You go; she goes ) and agreement of reflexive pronoun objects (I injured myself; they amused themselves )

A subject is usually present in a clause, but it may be omitted in non-standard (especially spoken) structures (Drinks like a fish. Gets here when?) or imperatives (Listen to this).

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Object

Objects usually follow the verb. They may be direct or indirect.

Direct object: Fred bit his thumb. The chimpanzees groomed each other.

Indirect object: Jane gave the gorilla a kiss. Jane gave a kiss to the gorilla. (Note that here there is also a direct object =a kiss)

Just as with subjects, they may be nouns, noun phrases, pronouns or subordinate clauses.

Just as subjects are, pronouns are in the appropriate (object) case (me, her, them).

As above, reflexive pronoun objects agree with their subjects (They amused themselves ).

But unlike subject, the object has no effect on agreement of verb.

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Verb

This is the central and obligatory element. A clause must contain at least one verb phrase, which may be a single verb: Jesus wept. They are drowning. The cow jumped over the moon.

The choice of verb will largely determine what other elements are in the clause.

The verb usually has a subject. A transitive verb is one which takes a direct object. (Strictly this is a tautology since transitive = "taking a direct object")

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Complement

Complement (verb) means "go with". (Do not confuse withcompliment). In clause syntax, the complement is anything which adds to the meaning of the subject (subject complement) or object (object complement).

Subject complement usually follows the verb. The most common verb for a subject complement is the verb to be, but some other verb may be substituted where the meaning of be is expressed. These are called copular (= linking) verbs or simply copulas. In the examples complements are in bold, copular verbs underlined: She is a doctor. That smells heavenly. The students are feeling dazed and confused.

Object complement usually follows the direct object: Football makes me very happy. The voters elected Clinton president of the USA.

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Adverbials

These clause elements add to or complete the meaning of the verb element. They may be single adverbs. But they also include nouns, noun or verb phrases and subordinate clauses: They ran quickly. He went home twice nightly. We walked on the playground. My girlfriend phoned me this morning. I was happy when I saw her again.

Adverbials may appear in several positions in the clause, but are most common at the end: Often I dream. I often dream. I dream often.

Adverbials may perform different functions:

Adding information: I walked quietly .

Linking clauses: The bus was full. However, Fred found a seat.

Adding a comment on what is expressed: Quite frankly we disapprove of violence.

Some verbs (like put) must have an adverbial to complete their meaning: Please put the gun down. The path runs around the field.

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Vocatives

These are optional elements used to show the person to whom a sentence is addressed. They may occur in various positions in the clause. They include names, titles, evaluative labels, the pronoun you and certain kinds of clause: John, it's me. It's me, darling. Hello, Susan, how are you? You daft git, what do you mean? Honey, I shrank the kids. Come out, whoever you are. Come in, ladies, and sit down. Madam Speaker, I will give way.

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Clause types

Clause elements combine to form clauses. The number of patterns is small. According to David Crystal (The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 221) there are only seven basic types.

S + V: I / yawned

S + V + O: Fred / opened / the door

S + V + C: The dinner / is / ready

S + V + A: Dick Whittington / went / to London

S + V + O + O: Romeo / gave / Juliet / a kiss

S + V + O + C: Henry / got / his feet / very wet

S + V + O + A: Sam / put / the bottles / in the cellar

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We can vary these patterns using directives (such as advising, instructing or commanding): Turn left at the junction. Help yourself to a drink. Go to hell! You be quiet.

We can also vary the patterns through pro-forms (words which replace long constructions) and ellipsis (omitting an understood element).

Pro-forms: I've got a lovely cold drink and you've got one as well. (Here one is the pro-form, understood to mean a lovely cold drink.)

Ellipsis: I'd like to drink some tea, but I won't. (Here drink some tea is understood to follow but I won't.)

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Building or analysing?

To understand the contrast in these approaches, see the table at the start of this guide to structure. The two approaches are shown in simple form below:

"Bottom up"/synthetic model: morpheme è word è phrase èclause è sentence

"Top down"/analytic model: sentence è clause è phrase è word è morpheme

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Clause functions and sentence structures

Coordinate clauses

The simplest sentences may contain a single clause. (Simple is a standard description of one kind of sentence.) Where a sentence contains more than one clause, these may be considered of equal grammatical importance. If this is so, these are coordinate clauses. They are joined by a coordinating conjunction, such as and or but. (Some grammarians call the first clause of the sentence the main clause, and the others coordinate clauses). Here are some examples. Apart from the conjunctions ( or, so and and, everything else is a main/coordinate clause):

You can travel by tube, you can drive or you can take the train.

The weather was hot, so I went on my bike.

Lucy opened her window, and in came Count Dracula.

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Subordinate clauses

Sometimes the clauses are placed in a hierarchy: the more important ones are main clauses, while the less important are subordinate clauses. A main or coordinate clause could stand on its own as a sentence, but a subordinate clause works only subject, object, complement and within a sentence. A subordinate clause can do the job of other clause elements. It can work as adverbial, as in these examples:

Subordinate subject clause: What you say is stupid.

Clause as subject = What you say; main clause = X is stupid, verb = is

Subordinate object clause: I did not know that you were here .

Clause as object = that you were here; main clause = I did not know X; verb = did not know

Subordinate complement clause: Your first job is learning this grammar.

Clause as complement = learning this grammar; main clause = Your first job is X; verb = is

Subordinate adverbial clause: Come round when you're ready.

Clause as adverbial = when you're ready; main clause = Come round (X); verb = Come

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Clauses that function as subject, object or complement replace noun phrases, so they are called nominal clauses. Those that function as adverbs/adjectives are adverbial/adjectival clauses.

Some other kinds of nominal clauses are shown below. For clarity, they are all shown in object position. This is not the only place where they may occur, but is the most common.

That clause: I think (that) you know each other. (That may be omitted if understood.)

Wh- clause: I know what you did last summer. (Clause introduced bywho, when, what, why, whether.)

-ing clause: I don't recall seeing her there. (Clause introduced by present participle.)

inf. clause: I wish to confess to my crimes. (Clause introduced by to + infinitive.)

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Adverbial clauses

These are introduced by a subordinating conjunction, which explains the adverbial meaning of the clause. These include when/before/after/while (time); because/since (reason); if/unless/lest (condition), as in these examples:

When the bell sounds, you may leave the room.

We cannot send you the goods, because we are out of stock.

Unless you are good, Father Christmas will bring you nothing.

Two minor types of adverbial clause are inf. and -ing clauses.

Inf. clause: I went to the shop to buy some bread. (Clause introduced by to + infinitive.)

-ing clause: Jane broke her arm while fighting. (Clause introduced by present participle.)

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Adjectival clauses

A familiar type is the relative clause, introduced by a relative pronoun ( who, whom, whose, that, which), as in these examples:

Here is the woman (whom) I married.

This is the book (which) I am reading.

The drink (that) I most like is orange juice.

The relative pronouns are in brackets, as they may be omitted if understood.

Two minor types of adjectival clause are -ing and -ed clauses.

-ed clause: She is the celebrity pursued by the press.

Since past participles do not all end in -ed we may find other verb forms in such clauses: The tea drunk by the students or the exam taken by the pupils .

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Clause elements may be single words of the appropriate category, they may be phrases or even some kinds of subordinate clause. Explaining even simple structures is difficult. Verbal explanations are less easy to make than diagrams. These work best when there is a hierarchical level, as sentences are analysed into clauses, which are further analysed into (more clauses and) phrases, which are analysed into words, which are analysed into morphemes.

In an exam, you are very unlikely to be required to analyse long sequences. Use clause analysis (or phrase analysis) selectively, to establish some point about language acquisition (learning to make or understand structures), about language and society (how structures embody social attitudes to language), language change (how structures or paradigms change over time) or stylistics (how structures embody style).

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The sentence

Sentence types

In many respects, sentences can be analysed in the same terms as clauses, that is separating the elements into the categories of subject, object, verb, complement and adverbial.

However, sentences are also described in terms of:

how clauses are arranged

functions of the sentence

traditional patterns which are used for particular effects in speech and writing

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Clause structures in sentences

The most basic sentence form contains a single clause. This is known as a simple sentence:

Mary had a little lamb.

Chocolate is delicious.

Down fell the rain.

A compound sentence joins two coordinate clauses together:

Mary had a little lamb and took it to school.

I drank some tea and felt better.

Here is a wug and here are two wugs.

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A multiple sentence links clauses of essentially similar type, with coordinating conjunctions.

I came home, sat down, put the kettle on, lit the fire and sat down with a book.

A complex sentence uses subordination to link clauses. It is not necessarily very "complex" in the everyday sense (that is, difficult to analyse), but it may be:

I hope that she will come.

Lest you forget, here is my address.

Having played football, I sat in the bath, while the kettle boiled, thinking of how to spend the evening, which loomed before me promisingly.

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Functions of the sentence

This is a simple kind of classification. Sentences are traditionally categorized into four types: statement, command, question or exclamation. These are readily illustrated by examples (note alternative names).

Exclamation: How happy I feel!

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Other sentence types

Tag questions | Exclamatory questions | Rhetorical questions | Directives | Echoes

David Crystal ( The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 218) notes some other categories. Among these are:

Tag questions

Here a statement is turned into a question, with an interrogative tag at the end. Tags are typical of speech where the speaker changes the function of the sentence in mid-utterance:

Jolly nice day today, isn't it?

Exclamatory questions

Here the structure is that of a question, but the meaning (indicated in speech by intonation) equates to an exclamation:

Didn't she do well? Have I got news for you?

Rhetorical questions

Again the structure is that of a question, but the speaker (or writer) expects no answer. They are used as emphatic statements:

How on earth should I know? Is the Pope a Catholic? Do bears crap in the woods?

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Directives

These are akin to imperatives, but Crystal expands the category to include related functions of instruction, direction and so on. He lists: commanding, inviting, warning, pleading, suggesting, advising, permitting, requesting, meditating, expressing wish or imprecation. Crystal notes that many use the verbs let and do in non-standard ways:

Let me see. Let's go. Let us pray.

Do come in. Do be quiet. Don't do that again.

Echoes

These sentences of a special kind, which reflect the structure of a preceding sentence from a different speaker in a language interaction (usually conversation):

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Special or minor sentence types

Professor Crystal ( The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 216) records some unusual types of sentence, which cannot be analysed in a regular way. They are found in particular kinds of text and discourse - some are common in real speech or fictional dialogue, while others are found in such things as headlines or slogans, where a message is presented as a block of text. They do not follow all the rules of normal grammar, such as verb agreement. Among the types noted by Crystal are:

Formulae for set social situations: Cheers, Hello, Ciao, See you, How do you do? Ta!

Proverbs or aphorisms: Easy come, easy go. Least said, soonest mended.

Short forms as used in messages, instructions or commentaries: Wish you were here. Shearer to Beckham. Simmer gently. Hope you are well.

Elliptical words or phrases with a structural meaning equivalent to a complete exclamation, question or command: Brilliant! Lovely day! Coming? Drink? All aboard! Drink up!

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Structure and style in sentences

Loose sentence | Balanced sentence | Periodic sentence

For purposes of analysing style, sentences may be described as loose, balanced or periodic.

Loose sentence

Here the writer or speaker states fact after fact as they occur, seemingly freely and artlessly, as in the opening of The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe:

"I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull: he got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznoer; but by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write our name Crusoe, and so my companions always called me. "

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Balanced sentence

Here the writer or speaker has a concern for symmetry - the second half of the sentence contains a similar or opposite idea to the first half. These techniques are very effective in persuasion, and are sometimes known as parallelism or antithesis. Consider this from Francis Bacon (1561-1626):

"Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter: they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death."

Or this from Viscount Grey of Fallodon, on the eve of the First World War:

"The lamps are going out all over Europe: we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime."

Or, finally, this, spoken by President John F. Kennedy:

"Ask not what your country can do for you: ask what you can do for your country."

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Periodic sentence

Here the climax of the sentence comes at its end. A good example is in the opening of Edward Gibbon's 18th century Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:

"It was in Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind."

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Studying Language: sources of information

A comprehensive bibliography is published by AQA/NEAB. You and your teachers will use some of the reference works on this list. In addition you may make use of any of the following sources of help.

Dictionaries are an excellent source of information. The best of these give etymologies, identify word classes, record standard and non-standard words and show variant spellings. Some modern dictionaries use a language corpus to indicate words among the thousand (or other number) most commonly used. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and The Shorter Oxford Dictionary are the traditional authorities, but there are excellent dictionaries published by Chambers, Longman, Collins, Cambridge and others.

The most comprehensive reference works are The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language by David Crystal. The former can often be purchased at a discount by joining a book club. At the opposite extreme an excellent introduction to traditional grammar can be found in Dorothy Paull's The Ladybird Book of Spelling and Grammar.

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Broadcast material can also be helpful, and some is available on video or audio-tape from the broadcasters. This includes Professor Jean Aitchison's 1996 Reith Lectures for BBC radio: The Language Web, and Robert McCrum's TV history: The Story of English. A long-running radio series, which investigates a comprehensive range of language issues is R4's Word of Mouth.

For a very full explanation of syntax, especially the function of the independent main clause, see Shirley Russell's Grammar, Structure and Style (OUP, Oxford, 1993; ISBN 0-19-831179-6)

The World Wide Web has a huge range of sites dedicated to language use, too many to list here. Very helpful are translation engines (most browsers or search engines have these) which will alter a given text into English (or a different variety of English). The Web also, of course, will give you access to the language departments of many academic institutions.

Click here for a link to many more on-line sources of information.

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Index of tables

© Andrew Moore, 2000; Contact me

Use the search box on the left or the link below to go to Amazon.com for books, video tapes, DVDs and much more.

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This study guide supports study of grammar for A-level English.

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Methods/ Approaches of Teaching ESOL: A Historical Overview

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Methods/ Approaches of Teaching ESOL: A Historical Overview

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This chapter provides an overview of each of the different ESL methods that can be used in the classroom. This is a great resource because it includes examples and suggestions of how to use the methods in the classroom.

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This link provides an overview of the 6 principles for teaching English Learners. This is a great resources because it includes a video that reviews the 6 principles and how they can be used in the classroom.

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What Are The 6 Principles?

TESOL International Association has defined a core set of principles for the exemplary teaching of English learners. The 6 Principles are universal guidelines drawn from decades of research in language pedagogy and language acquisition theory. They are targets for teaching excellence and should undergird any program of English language instruction.

The 6 Principles

1. Know Your Learners

2. Create Conditions for Language Learning

3. Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development

4. Adapt Lesson Delivery as Needed

5. Monitor and Assess Student Language Development

6. Engage and Collaborate within a Community of Practice

You must implement the 6 Principles as a whole. You cannot just know your learners, for example, and then not act on that knowledge when you plan instruction.

The 6 Principles were developed by a team of language experts. Grounded in research and with contributions and support from educators around the world, the TESOL Board of Directors, and TESOL Staff, these principles are the result of 2+ years of exploration, inquiry, conversation, and collaboration.

The 6 Principles Writing Team:

Deborah J. Short, Lead Writer

Helene Becker

Nancy Cloud

Andrea B. Hellman

Linda New Levine

Video: The 6 Principles with Deborah Short

Source: Language Magazine, 21 May 2018

Why Do We Need The 6 Principles?

TESOL's mission is to advance the quality of English language teaching around the world. As the number of English learners soars, a common understanding of second language learning and effective instructional and assessment design is needed.

In some settings, teachers need more preparation to effectively educate English learners. When TESOL professionals fully implement the 6 Principles, their students participate in high-quality lessons for language development and experience educational success.

The 6 Principles provide teachers with the knowledge to make informed decisions to improve instruction and assessment, so curricula and courses for English learners are rigorous, relevant, and designed and delivered with second language acquisition in mind.

Using the 6 Principles for planning policies, programs, and practices will ensure curricula and courses for English learners are rigorous, relevant, and designed and delivered with second language acquisition in mind.

When the 6 principles are well implemented, students will participate in high-quality language lessons and experience educational success.

Who Can Use The 6 Principles?

The 6 Principles are for all educators who interact with English language learners. They are applicable across different educational contexts, such as classrooms with children or adults, dual language learners, emerging bilinguals, and multilingual students.
The 6 Principles will help educators:

respect, affirm, and promote students' home languages and cultural knowledge and experiences as resources

celebrate multilingualism and diversity

support policies that promote individual language rights and multicultural education

guide students to be global citizens

Permissions

THE 6 PRINCIPLES FOR EXEMPLARY TEACHING OF ENGLISH LEARNERS® is a trademark of TESOL International Association. The corresponding text is a copyright of TESOL International Association. No part of this website or The 6 Principles for Exemplary Teaching of English Learners books or Quick Guides may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher. For permission and other requests, please contact TESOL Press Permissions: permissions@tesol.org.

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TESOL International Association has defined a core set of principles for the exemplary teaching of English learners. The 6 Principles are universal guidelines drawn from decades of research in language pedagogy and language acquisition theory. They are targets for teaching excellence and should undergird any program of English language instruction.

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Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching: CLT, TPR, Audio-Lingual

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Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching: CLT, TPR, Audio-Lingual

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This website provides a description of each of the approaches but also includes a video of how it is used in the classroom during lessons. This will be a great resource to use when I need a review on the historical and contemporary ESL methods or when planning a lesson.

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This article includes strategies to use in the classroom to help students with their oral language development. This is a great resource to come back to when I need ideas for helping beginner student develop their oral language.

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When students first start school, they need to know key phrases and expressions that they can use to communicate with teachers and classmates during the school day. Being able to communicate effectively with others is key for learning to take place. Through meaningful and fun interactions, students can develop the type of everyday communication skills that facilitate learning. Teachers can use a strategy called Total Physical Response to help students in these early stages of language development.

Learning key phrases through Total Physical Response

Total Physical Response (TPR) activities greatly multiply the language input and output that can be handled by beginning English language learners (ELLs). TPR activities elicit whole-body responses when new words or phrases are introduced. Teachers can develop quick scripts that provide ELLs and other students with the vocabulary and/or classroom behaviors related to everyday situations. For example, "Take out your math book. Put it on your desk. Put it on your head. Put it under the chair. Hold it in your left hand."

Students become ready to talk sooner when they are learning by doing. TPR activities help students adjust to school and understand the behaviors required and the instructions they will hear. This will help them in mainstream classrooms, in the halls, during lunchtime, during fire drills, on field trips, and in everyday life activities.

TPR strategies are good teaching strategies for all students, not just ELLs.

Classroom strategies: How to use Total Physical Response

There are seven steps for the TPR instructional process:

1. Introduction

The teacher introduces a situation in which students follow a set of commands using actions. Usually props such as pictures or real objects accompany the actions. Some actions may be real while others are pretend.

2. Demonstration

The teacher demonstrates or asks a student to demonstrate this series of actions. The other students are expected to pay careful attention. At first, students are not expected to talk or repeat the commands. But soon they will want to join in because the commands are easy to follow and the language is clear and comprehensible. For example, the teacher gives a command such as "Take out a piece of bread" and the students say the sentence and do the action. "Now, spread peanut butter on it", and so on until a make-believe sandwich is made and eaten.

3. Group action

Next, the class acts out the series while the teacher gives the commands. Usually, this step is repeated several times so that students internalize the series thoroughly before they will be asked to produce it.

4. Written copy

Write the series on the chalkboard or chart paper so that students can make connections between oral and written words while they read and copy (or even substitute ingredients of their choice).

5. Oral repetitions and questions

After students have made a written copy, they repeat each line after the teacher, taking care with difficult words. They ask questions for clarification, and the teacher points out grammatical features such as "Yesterday we ate half a sandwich. Today we will eat a whole sandwich. Did you notice the difference between ate and eat? Yesterday we spread grape jelly, today we will spread orange jelly. Did you notice that the verb spread didn't change? Let's say the words soap and soup. Let's say the words cheap and sheep."

6. Student demonstration

Students can also take turns playing the roles of the reader of the series and the performer of the actions. Meanwhile, the teacher can check on individual students for comprehension and oral production.

7. Partner activities

Finally, students work in pairs or teams of four to tell or read the series. In teams of four, two students give commands and two respond physically. Meanwhile, the teacher monitors each team and suggests ways to elaborate on the vocabulary by adding new words.

Here is one example of the process:

1. Let's go to the zoo. Open the door and get in your car.

2. Turn on the engine in your car.

3. Drive to the zoo.

4. Park the car.

5. Get out of the car.

6. Buy your ticket with a $5.00 dollar bill.

7. Hold out your hand for your change.

8. Walk to the entrance.

9. Give your ticket to the person at the gate.

10. Open the gate and go in.

11. Wave at the giraffes.

12. Walk like a giraffe.

13. Wave at the monkeys.

14. Laugh like a monkey.

15. Wave at the elephants.

16. Wave your trunk like the elephants.

Other ideas

Before reading a children's story, select some action words and ask the students to perform these actions as you encounter them in the pages. List them on the chalkboard.

After reading the story, ask children to summarize the story by acting out the words you have demonstrated.

After reading the story, ask the children to select some words or phrases that they would like to turn into actions.

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When students first start school, they need to know key phrases and expressions that they can use to communicate with teachers and classmates during the school day. Being able to communicate effectively with others is key for learning to take place. Through meaningful and fun interactions, students can develop the type of everyday communication skills that facilitate learning.

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Increasing Academic Language Knowledge for English Language Learner Success

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Increasing Academic Language Knowledge for English Language Learner Success

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This is a great article that includes strategies teachers can use to help students develop their academic language. This resource will be very useful because i will be able to use these ideas when I want to help my ELLs improve their academic language.

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In college I enrolled at a university in Spain - all courses were taught in Spanish. My comprehension of my courses went something like this... (translated into English and the accompanying gibberish I heard.)

"So it is obvious from the way qyuekfksno , that the Greco style was qyueuoammo . If you look closely you notice xawoeirje and it reminds you of woieysksdufe ."

The only clue I had to aid my comprehension was a slide of the famous painting. I struggled to make meaning of the language, but I could not comprehend the professor's points. I was able to correctly answer in Spanish when asked a question such as, "What is a characteristic of the Greco style?" I would answer, "It is qyueuoammo ." I knew this because I had " qyueuoammo " written in my notes, but I still had no idea what the word meant.

I believe many ELL students have a similar experience in their classes, and that many of them are able to manipulate the English language to supply a correct answer, but still not understand the content. This does not become apparent until the student fails the unit test. The teacher may think the student wasn't listening or didn't try, when actually the student needed more explicit instruction in the academic language connected to the content. When teachers introduce and reinforce academic language they can see some amazing changes in ELL student learning.

There are three things to keep in mind when teaching academic language.

1. Academic language must be introduced and then reinforced.

2. Academic language can be more than content area vocabulary.

3. It is important to create assessments that measure knowledge in a meaningful way.

Introduce and reinforce academic language

What to do

1. Preview the text or topic and identify vocabulary or sentence structures that might be new for the students.

2. Write these words and phrases on the board and have students write them in their notebooks or on index cards.

3. Use visuals, acting, translation or synonyms to relay the meaning of the word to the students.

4. Reinforce the newly learned language by asking the students to draw it, act it out, or use it in an appropriate sentence. You can also ask for a translation if you speak the student's first language.

How to do it

Here are the steps demonstrated in a science lesson on the life cycle of a frog:

1. Preview the lesson and identify academic language vocabulary such as:
Write the words on the board and/or ask students to write them in their notebooks or on index cards.

2. Teach the academic vocabulary.
Science lends itself easily to visuals and hands on learning, so many words would be easily taught through labeling parts and identifying terms by examining frogs. In addition to teaching the vocabulary by labeling items, make sure students understand vocabulary concepts such as "cycle." A visual such as a bike tire that goes around is useful. The stages of the frog's life cycle can be taped to the wheel while explicitly using the vocabulary first, second, third and fourth to describe the life cycle.

3. Have students demonstrate the vocabulary concepts by using them in explanations, or drawing pictures in their journals.
It is important that students be given the opportunity and guidance to use the academic language to answer discussion questions or complete group work. Listen for the use of vocabulary words and praise students who attempt to use it. Follow up with the class by sharing examples, "I heard some really good discussion in the groups. I heard someone correctly describe a step in the life cycle by saying, 'The eggs get fertilized." Reinforce vocabulary not heard by fishing for "other ways" to say it. For example, "Who can tell me another way to say, 'The tadpole turns into a frog?" Encourage students to look at the academic vocabulary on the board, and say, "A tadpole develops into a frog."

Go beyond vocabulary

What to do

In the example above, there were many vocabulary words. Some of them were directly related to visual clues, but some were more abstract such as "cycle" and "developing." Words such as these may be overlooked by teachers because content lessons tend to focus on the "new vocabulary," that is, the specialized vocabulary related to that particular lesson, while assuming knowledge of what I call "functional" vocabulary. Functional vocabulary is the language needed to use the new words meaningfully. The teacher must model the correct use of content and functional vocabulary. ELL students may not feel comfortable using new language phrases in the classroom and benefit from more support and structured opportunities to begin using and fully comprehending academic language and phrases.

Guide students by asking them to repeat a phrase and complete the sentence. "In the life cycle..." Students fill in the blank, and have an opportunity to use the academic sentence structure verbally. It may also be useful to guide students in the use of appropriate academic discussion phrases. If a student says to another, "That's not right," ask them if they can think of another way to say it (using more academic language - maybe referring the student to the word wall or notebook). The student may then offer, "I don't agree with you." Or, "Could you show me evidence of that?"

Measure knowledge in a meaningful way

What to do

Assessments that let students "show what they know" may take some time and practice to develop and teachers may want to start with just one unit in order to practice this new skill. Many textbook series include unit tests that may have a number of multiple choice and fill in the blank questions that may or may not allow the student to demonstrate his/her understanding of the content. A teacher may have observed a student who was very engaged in the lessons and seemed to understand it, yet didn't do well on the test. This is frustrating to the teacher and the student. A meaningful assessment directly addresses the objectives of the lesson and will also measure the student's use of appropriate academic language. Here are a few suggested ways to do this.

How to do it

1. Students write a response to a question following rubric guidelines telling them what will be evaluated. Students tell the teacher in their own words what they learned in the unit regarding the concepts and the language.
In the science example above the rubric may be as simple as:

1. include all the steps in the life cycle

2. use five of the vocabulary words we studied

3. correctly explain why the life cycle is important in our environment

2. If students' verbal skills are stronger than their literacy skills, a teacher may have the students do a presentation - again using the rubric to evaluate their work. The rubric may include a guideline that each person in the group must speak and use a key vocabulary word.

3. Students can work in small groups and respond to some true and false sentences such as, "A frog lays eggs and then they hatch into baby frogs." The students need to explain why that is not true (using the academic vocabulary they learned). For example, a student might say, "That's not true because first a frog lays eggs, then they are fertilized, and then the cells begin to divide until a tadpole develops." Once again, a rubric would be used and students get credit for correct answers and the use of academic vocabulary.

In summary, explicitly instructing students in the academic language needed to be successful in the lesson will be rewarded with engaged students who are able to interact meaningfully with the content taught. If the lesson content is a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs, then the academic language is the plate and silverware needed to digest it. When teachers increase students' academic language knowledge, they are giving them the tools they need to digest a lifetime of learning and continue to expand the limits of their world.
Webcast: English Language Learners and Academic Language
Featuring Dr. Robin Scarcella, providing an overview to academic language instruction for English language learners, as well as teaching strategies, activity ideas, and recommended resources.
ESL/Bilingual Resource Guide for Mainstream Teachers
For a quick guide to working with ELL students, check out this resource from the Portland Public Schools (OR). You'll find useful, practical information in an accessible format that you'll return to again and again, including an excellent language acquisition chart and a glossary of ELL terms.
Catherine Snow: Word Generation
Catherine Snow's new website provides information and resources for educators who would like to learn more about Word Generation and how it is implemented. Includes links to comprehensive academic word list that students need to master to comprehend academic content.
Benefits of Using Sentence Frames
Sentence frames are one easy way to focus on a language structure, provide scaffolded support for ELLs and explicitly teach English language structures.
Best Evidence Encyclopedia: ELLs
The English-language Learners section of the Best Evidence Encyclopedia summarizes the impact of a few online reading programs for English-language learners and other language minority students in the elementary grades.
Vocabulary Activity: Prediction and Confirmation
An activity for vocabulary prediction and confirmation featured on the Florida Center for Instructional Technology website.
Teaching English Language Vocabulary
Here you will find a variety of activities and lesson plans designed specifically for vocabulary instruction for English language learners.
The Clarifying Routine: Elaborating Vocabulary Instruction
From our sister site, LDOnLine.org, comes this excellent article by Edwin Ellis outlining effective techniques for teaching vocabulary.
Building Academic Vocabulary
This site by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) offers lots of information about how to help students build academic vocabulary. Although designed to promote instructional materials sold by ASCD, the site has information that any teacher could use to enhance vocabulary instruction.

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Increasing Academic Language Knowledge for English Language Learner Success

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In college I enrolled at a university in Spain - all courses were taught in Spanish. My comprehension of my courses went something like this... (translated into English and the accompanying gibberish I heard.) "So it is obvious from the way qyuekfksno , that the Greco style was qyueuoammo .

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Summative Assessments: Overview & Examples

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Summative Assessments: Overview & Examples

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This video is a great resource because it provides a definition of what a summative assessment is and examples of how it can be used in the classroom. It also provides suggestions teachers can use when preparing to give a summative assessment to their students.

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Summative Assessment: Overview & Examples

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This article focuses on how teachers can support their ELLs who are also gifted and talented. The article also focuses on culturally responsive identification of Gifted and talented students.

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English language learners (ELLs) have historically been underrepresented and underserved in U.S. gifted and talented (GT) programs. To move the needle in a more promising direction, we can begin by asking ourselves how we can increase the visibility of diverse learners in GT screening. What does equity look like in identifying language learners for gifted services? And how can we actively improve culturally responsive supports for exceptional ELLs in our classrooms?

Traditional concepts of giftedness cast a narrow net-narrow enough, in fact, to silo giftedness into nearly homogeneous compartments. Outside of far-East Asian subsets, most of those boxes are reserved for white, English-speaking students.

Gifted screening protocols can reinforce these perceptions. Conventional markers for giftedness are rooted in assessment data and previous high academic achievement. This can be especially inequitable for ELLs, whose language output and cultural orientation may mask exceptional promise.

Reframing Conceptions of Giftedness to Support Inclusivity

To change this, we've got to be uncomfortably honest about what our collective picture of giftedness looks like. What are our perceptions and expectations of exceptional students? Do we-as teachers and as schools-lean in to certain student types, ethnicities, or socioeconomic groups, or to one gender? How are we influenced by a child's parents or other educators?

At a minimum, a more inclusive framework should include three vital components:

A comprehensive definition of exceptional ability that encompasses a spectrum of cognitive, social and emotional, artistic, linguistic, and logical-reasoning capabilities,

Multiple avenues and entry points-such as student interviews, performance-based evaluations, or nonverbal instruments-that reach beyond standardized assessment data for GT identification, and

A system for mindfully growing the exceptional talents and gifts of all learners, including ELLs.

Now we can critically evaluate the degree to which our definition is also culturally responsive. Map a full learning day for a new-to-English student. Where can we find expressions of gifted characteristics? Language learners can-and do!-demonstrate exceptional content-specific talents. Additionally or alternatively, the promising gifted ELL may:

Acquire the new language at a faster than typical rate,

Demonstrate an ability to code switch or translate at an advanced level,

Show aptitude for negotiating between cultures,

Display inventive leadership and/or imaginative qualities,

Read significantly beyond grade level in the heritage language,

Effectively assume adult responsibilities at a young age,

Exhibit notable street smarts and/or rapid integration into American culture, or

Problem-solve in creative, nonconforming ways.

A Culturally Responsive Process of GT Identification

Even high-flying ELLs are not likely to be detected through traditional GT screening, as I mention above, because our screening protocols are not designed to detect them. Widening our net and moving toward a realistic representation of marginalized populations in gifted programming requires that we break with our dependence on convention.

One reasonable solution is to move beyond isolated quantitative data points and toward qualitative portfolios of potential. Inclusive GT portfolios of potential may include:

Nominations or referrals from parents and school staff,

Summative data, including English language evaluations and nonverbal GT assessments,

Formative data, such as student work samples and problem- or project-based portfolios, and

Anecdotal data, including behavior and acculturation scales, classroom observations, home visits, and interviews with parents, teachers, and peers.

Ensure that curriculum is culturally responsive: Culturally responsive practice seeks to recognize, value, and authentically represent students' heritage virtues in the school setting. Wondering how to connect this pedagogy to GT programming? Begin learning units with background knowledge surveys or embed multicultural connections and community engagement as a means of enrichment.

Provide opportunities for self-directed learning: Self-directed learning is an effective tool for student engagement that supports higher-level thinking. By introducing the element of choice, we draw out a learner's natural curiosity through creative problem solving and experiential learning.

Start slowly as you navigate this territory. Begin with a maximum of three choices. Hold students accountable for rotating through stations, centers, or learning tasks, but place the onus of control on the student to choose the order in which the learning goals are completed.

Capitalize on student interest surveys, flexible seating, and kinesthetic learning. These are all low-prep, low-cost, high-yield means of promoting self-directed, student-invested learning.

And consider exploring multiple pathways of discovery. Try embedding social and emotional learning skills practice into a social studies lesson, or incorporate STEAM learning into a literature experience. These types of activities foster low-risk opportunities for expression and encourage students to demonstrate abilities in innovative ways.

Use assessments that allow for diverse expressions of understanding: Offer choice in how students demonstrate knowledge, skills and understanding. Project-based learning (PBL) works exceptionally well in this context. PBL "is a dynamic classroom approach in which students actively explore real-world problems and challenges and acquire a deeper knowledge." This type of open-ended learning allows ELLs to show what they know in ways that are less language dependent, such as tactile design, sketching, computer programming, or art.

Consistently work toward the elimination of educator bias: Teachers and parents play a critical role in the gifted identification process-they are most likely to nominate students for consideration and are directly involved in a child's day-to-day endeavors. We can better prepare both groups to advocate for ELLs who demonstrate exceptional gifts and talents.

Parents are often the first to note a child's gifted potential, even if it has not presented at school. This may be especially true of students who have not yet gained linguistic confidence or students from collectivist cultures, who typically avoid standing out in the classroom. Caretakers-especially those whose cultural experience with school involvement differs from Western norms-can be explicitly encouraged to recommend their child for GT screening and review. Educators, meanwhile, can benefit from training to reduce bias and spot latent talents in underrepresented populations.

Like all successful school programming, achieving effective and equitable GT services is a collaborative effort.

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An inclusive framework for finding gifted and talented students can ensure that English language learners don't slip through the cracks.

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This article details the importance of formative assessments and why they should be used in the classroom. It also gives different examples of formative assessments teachers can use.

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Formative assessments matter because teachers make important instructional decisions based on the data they provide.

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Formative Assessment (Strategic Assessment System, Part 1)

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Formative Assessment (Strategic Assessment System, Part 1)

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This video provides a great overview of formative assessment and how it can be used in the classroom. It explains how important it is for teachers to use formative assessments in their classrooms to check for student understanding.

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Formative Assessment (Strategic Assessment System, Part 1)

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15 Tips for Improving Identification of Gifted EL Students

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15 Tips for Improving Identification of Gifted EL Students

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This article provides advice teachers can use to identify English learners who are also gifted. This will be a great resource to refer back to if I ever need advice on identifying students who are ELs and gifted.

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EL students often are under represented in gifted and talented programs. The National Center for Research on Gifted Education (NCRGE) developed these 15 tips for identifying gifted EL students. The tips are based on NCRGE research findings from visiting schools that have a record of successfully identifying EL students for their gifted programs. In addition to providing a one-page tip sheet that can easily be reproduced for distribution, the NCRGE also offers an attractive tri-fold as well as the full report detailing the research supporting the identification tips. Links for these are at the bottom of this page. All NCRGE material can be reproduced and freely distributed. This research was funded by the OELA through a grant administered by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education PR# R305C140018.
Adopt Universal Screening Procedures
1. Adopt a policy of universal screening of all students in one or more grade levels for the identification process.

2. Select assessment instruments that are culturally sensitive and account for language differences.

3. Assess the speed of English language acquisition and monitor the rate of mastering reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills in English.
Create Alternative Pathways to Identification
4. Consider including reliable and valid nonverbal ability assessments as part of the overall identification process.

5. Use other identification tools to supplement results of universal screening.

6. Use native language ability and achievement assessments as indicators of potential giftedness, when available.

7. Maintain a list of multilingual school psychologists who are qualified to administer assessments in the student's native language.

8. Establish a preparation program prior to formal identification procedures that provides students with learning opportunities to enhance knowledge and academic skills necessary for a student to be recognized.

9. Create a talent pool list of students who exhibit high potential but are not yet enrolled in gifted and talented programs. Observations, daily interactions between teachers and students, informal assessments, and formal assessments provide multiple opportunities to gauge students' learning progress. Make identification of giftedness an ongoing process rather than a single event.
View Professional Development as a Lever for Change
10. Establish an identification committee that includes representatives who have key responsibilities in various roles and departments.

11. Develop and implement intentional outreach to the school community, particularly parents/guardians/caretakers. This process should utilize multiple pathways in languages appropriate to the population.

12. Emphasize collaboration within and across specializations/departments (e.g., general education, English as a second language [ESL], special education, gifted education) so people view themselves as talent scouts.

13. Provide professional development opportunities for school personnel about effective policies and practices to support equitable representation of ELs in gifted and talented programs.

14. Develop a systematic approach to analyzing district and school demographics and the status of students identified/not identified for gifted and talented programs.

15. Promote efforts to diversify the teaching corps so that the adult community of a school reflects the student population.

Download a one-page PDF of these tips

Download the full NCRGE EL report supporting these tips

Download a tri-fold brochure on improving identification of EL students for gifted programs
Some content on this website may require the use of a plug-in, such as Adobe Acrobat Viewer.
Download our comprehensive review of literature on gifted EL students

July 2022 TESOL Connections article ( http://newsmanager.commpartners.com/tesolc/issues/2022-07-01/2.html)

Journal Articles Based on This Work

Introduction to English language special issue - Journal for the Education of the Gifted - December 2020, Vol. 43, No. 4 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353220955163 - Del Siegle

Promising Practices for Improving Identification of English Learners for Gifted and Talented Programs - Journal for the Education of the Gifted - December 2020, Vol. 43, No. 4 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353220955241 - E. Jean Gubbins, Del Siegle , Pamela M. Peters, Ashley Y. Carpenter, Rashea Hamilton, D. Betsy McCoach, Jeb S. Puryear, Susan Dulong Langley, and Daniel Long

Proficiency and giftedness: The role of language comprehension in gifted identification and achievement - Journal for the Education of the Gifted - December 2020, Vol. 43, No. 4 = https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353220955225 - Rashea Hamilton, Daniel Long, D. Betsy McCoach, Vonna Hemmler, Del Siegle, Sarah D. Newton, E. Jean Gubbins, and Carolyn M. Callahan

Identifying and serving English learners in gifted education: Looking back and moving forward - Journal for the Education of the Gifted - December 2020, Vol. 43, No. 4 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0162353220955230 - Rachel U. Mun, Vonna Hemmler, Susan Dulong Langley, Sharon Ware, E. Jean Gubbins, Carolyn M. Callahan, D. Betsy McCoach, and Del Siegle

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15 Tips for Improving Identification of Gifted EL Students | National Center for Research on Gifted Education

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EL students often are under represented in gifted and talented programs. The National Center for Research on Gifted Education (NCRGE) developed these 15 tip ...