-listening is use the most frequently out of the four main language skills
-listening requires a much higher demand cognitively than just listening to someone speak; you must be able to know the context its been used in, mannerisms (used when talking),  their tone of voice, and prepping for your own response that fits well into the conversation 
-this obviously makes speaking/understanding English much harder for ELL students in comparison to normal American speaking students
-Many Americans don't use proper grammar, grammatical sentence structures, etc. and replace with slang or terms used from where they grew up or the people that molded them
-Listening and speaking in a normal convo gives ELL students very few time to analyze, interpret, and react accordingly with the corrects words in response thus taking more time for ELL students to understand English proficiency
-Many tests fail projecting the aspect of struggles beyond just trying to understand how to speak and listen in English for ELL students; they forget a huge part of this stems to nonverbal communication as well

-ELL are not only expected to read the material, but also interpret what the academic content their reading means
-its a disadvantage in the work force to not be able to read and write proficiently, so jobs for ELL in America can become a lot more limited 
-no aways reading is one of the most controversial and political out of the four language skills
-language structure, vocabulary, and dialogue are keys to getting down proper reading skills   
-Reading Self Assessments:  many teachers use this to track the progress of their students to ensure they are progressing weekly
-When I was younger I remember using Reading Logs and having to read a certain amount of time and then get one of my parents to sign off on it
-the first stage of reading is also the hardest for ELL students because they typically don't understand the context of the material so they start by decoding certain key words and putting it all together piece by piece

-huge struggle for ELL students is learning to write before they are even fluently proficient in English
-unlike the other three language skills, the writing is very similar to English proficient speakers
-ELL home language is a major factor/ predictor of how easy/ difficult the process may be for English proficient speakers
-developmental stages spanning from introduction to English to almost mastery level is divided up into 6 stages: Scribble writing/ drawing, strings of letters, letter repping whole word thoughts, stylized sentences, emerging standardized writing, and then lastly standardized writing 

-talking about the different strategies/ instruction that might work best for certain categories of ELL students 
-able to understand tables, charts, and organizational strategies in textbooks

 

-testing can be stressful for ELL students because a lot of them are determinants on where they are going to be placed in the classrooms
-on the teacher side, its very important teachers take their own assessments of student's to track their growth and progress 
-negative aspects of assessments are biasness, validity, and observation 
-rubrics are how tests for ELL are graded and assessed