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Comparing and Contrasting L1 and L2 Acquisition

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Comparing and Contrasting L1 and L2 Acquisition

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This article helps educators understand why and how students acquire language.

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This document provides practice scenarios for educators to recognize scenarios based on L2 acquisition.

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This TED-Ed video can provide educators with a basic understanding of Universal Language.

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What do all languages have in common? - Cameron Morin

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This activity is a great example of the Structure of English and a fun practice activity for ELL's.

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In any English phrase, adjectives are arranged before nouns in a certain way. Disrupting the conventional order will usually result in unnatural utterances. A native speaker feels that 'green great dragon' doesn't sound quite right, but 'great green dragon' does.

"...if you mess with that word order in the slightest, you'll sound like a maniac." - author Mark Forsyth

Can we find any specific patterns in the ordering of words according to their structure, meaning, or perhaps sound? In The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase by Mark Forsyth, the order of adjectives before a noun is professed to be fixed:
opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose

To give us an example, Forsyth fabricates an incredibly long string of adjectives: 'lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife'. We hardly ever use all types of adjectives for every noun we introduce, but there surely is some hierarchy at play. It's natural to say that you've adopted a 'cute little black puppy' but not a 'black little cute puppy'.

Corpus linguists have performed an experiment, analyzing pairs of adjectives and their adherence to the given order. Their results confirmed our native intuition, albeit with some exceptions. The rule of conventional ordering accounts for 78 percent of the data.

Clear, but...

It seems there are some other factors that influence the order of adjectives. Some collocations seem to have been used too frequently to conform to the rules. Both 'big bad world' and 'big bad wolf' place the opinion adjective after the size.

Another factor is the strength of connection. The material in 'polyester little black dress' is placed at the beginning of the phrase because 'little black dress' acts as a single item. The expression has been in use since 1920 and the times of Coco Chanel and its popularity made it a generic name for a black evening or cocktail dress.

A guideline to follow?

As with anything, we should be cautious when judging something as correct or incorrect. Language evolves in its own way. We should use the proposed order as a guideline that most noun phrases adhere to, but it would be folly to see it as an unbreakable rule.

Becoming an adjective-skilled English speaker requires practice.
Make it a reality with Engramo, the best language-learning tool on the market.

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Green great dragons? A structured world of adjectives

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In English, adjectives are arranged before nouns in a certain way. Disrupting this order can yield unnatural utterances. But there is a method to this madness that you can learn.

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This article provides educators with practice to include students with multicultural or multilingual backgrounds.

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Inclusive Practices in Multilingual Classrooms

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Making connections to the culture of the students you serve can reap great rewards!

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This is a multicultural book about a girl who's name is difficult to pronounce. This story is a great way to promote multicultural awareness in your classroom.

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This is a list of programs for English Language Learners and a step in advocating for ELL's.

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Programs for English Language Learners (OCR)

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The Office for Civil Rights (OCR), U.S. Department of Education developed these materials in response to requests from school districts for a reference tool to assist them through the process of developing a comprehensive English language proficiency or English language learners (ELL) program.

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This article provides insight of the positive and negative factors of the school system when teaching English Language Learners.

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New research indicates that where English-language learners attend school can determine how quickly they are reclassified as English-proficient.

A Michigan State University research team found that schools in Texas-second only to California in total number of K-12 English-learners-vary widely in how they determine if students should be reclassified as English proficient, affecting their chances of success in school and beyond.

Using state data, the researchers estimated reclassification rates for English-learners throughout Texas over seven years. They found that an English-learner in the El Paso metropolitan area, for example is almost twice as likely to be reclassified by the end of 7th grade, compared to a student performing at the same level in the Rio Grande Valley.

"It seems curious to me that we would have students in different parts of the state being reclassified at different rates if they have similar scores on English proficiency and academic achievement assessments," lead researcher Madeline Mavrogordato told Education Week.

Mavrogordato-an assistant professor of K-12 administration at Michigan State-argues that an ELL student's reclassification often determines their educational trajectory. When it occurs too early, English-learners could find themselves struggling without the support services they need. If too late, students may be restricted from taking higher-level courses that would prepare them for college.

The research is timely because the the Every Student Succeeds Act now requires all states to standardize how they identify and reclassify English-learners. That could prove to be a daunting task for many states that don't have the capacity or manpower that Texas does. Even in a place such as Texas, which has had policies in place since the 1990s that seek to standardize ELL reclassification, inconsistencies persist.

As part of their research, Mavrogordato and Rachel White, a doctoral candidate at Michigan State, also observed eight Texas elementary schools while educators conducted annual meetings required to determine the status of English-learners. They observed differences in what happens during the meetings, including how technology, data, and teacher assessments guide decision-making.

The researchers concluded that the likelihood of reclassification appears to be linked to how well educators understand state policies and what role they play in implementation.

"In schools where the teacher's recommendations trumped all other data, we saw lower rates of reclassification," Mavrogordato said. "The people who are involved in this process ... need to be well-versed in the consequences of these decisions."

Mavrogordato spent time as a bilingual teacher of 3rd- and 4th-graders in the Rio Grande Valley as a Teach For America corps member in the mid-2000s and also taught in northern California, where she worked with ELLs.

With the passage of Proposition 58 in California last fall, public schools across the state now have more running room to operate bilingual and dual-language programs. But during Mavrogordato's time as a teacher there, Proposition 227-a measure that led many districts to drop their bilingual programs entirely -was still on the books.

Her varied experience in California and Texas sparked her research interest.

"One of the things that became really apparent was just how differently English-learners were being served in these two different contexts," Mavrogordato said. "That just started making me ask a lot of different questions about the policies and the way that we serve these kids."

Here's a link to the study: //journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/yIBQ3w8efPhNwg8EPy7e/full

The final, definitive version is available through the Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis at //eepa.aera.net
For Further Reading Photo Credit: Andrew Echeverria, left, gets help from Joel Miller, a veteran educator who teaches a course for long-term English-learners at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. The course was created to help students who have struggled to become proficient in English. --Emile Wamsteker for Education Week

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English-Language Learners: How Schools Can Drive or Derail Their Success

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Recent changes in federal law require all states to standardize how they identify and reclassify ELLs; a researcher says it may prove difficult.

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The History of Bilingual Education in Texas

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The History of Bilingual Education in Texas

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This relates to my career specifically because I plan to teach in Texas. It is important for educators to be aware of the history of Bilingual Education overall and at a more local level.

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The History of Bilingual Education in Texas

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This article provides the policies throughout the U.S. as well as identifies achievement gaps. Understanding and tracking these trends will be important for efforts to identify system weaknesses and better target actions to address them.

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English Learners in Select States: Demographics, Outcomes, and State Accountability Policies

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States are in the midst of designing new policies to hold schools accountable for the education of English Learner (EL) students, as mandated by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This series of fact sheets sketches the characteristics of immigrant and EL students in 25 states, the gaps between their educational outcomes and those of their peers, and the accountability policies each state is developing.