Teaching the English Language Learner

Catalog description

This course provides educators with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, insights, and resources to service English language learners (ELL) in their journey to becoming linguistically proficient while acquiring academic content to compete with native speakers in a consistently competitive global and information-driven society. Because accessing information is vital for all learners, teachers must be prepared to help second language learners in the classroom become self-directed, enabling them to confidently use English in listening, speaking, reading, and writing for social and academic purposes. Participants will become acquainted with the English language learner as well as with the most popular theories and best practices based on a strong body of research that guides second language instruction. The foundation of this course rests on the current Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) standards, which are included in the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) national standards for teacher education. These standards target five domains: language, culture, planning, assessment, and professionalism. TESOL standards aid teachers in constructing learning environments that support second language learning and literacy development as well as content area achievement. Other topics that are explored focus on oral language development, content reading and writing in English, and classroom and standardized assessment in ELL. Literacy instruction and assessment are targeted, as they serve to set the foundation for future academic achievement across the curriculum. Professional development and performance in the field round out this course by examining research in continuing education for ELL instructors, the history of second language acquisition in the United States, the perusal of grant opportunities for program support, and the…