After being in the teacher education program at ISU for a few years now, I always thought that we were lacking classes and instruction in how to teach students will special needs. I knew that in my English classrooms, I may run into many diverse situations and would need to be able to teach every student to the best of my ability. After reading this week's articles, I was appalled that most teachers have no idea how to teach ELL students, even though they will certainly encounter many.
It would seem obvious that ELL students are in other classes besides our own, but what if they aren't able to keep up? With many teachers being unaware and untrained, it seems that many schools are unprepared in teaching ELL students and helping them succeed in their academic lives. One of the most important points of the article, in my opinion, was that "...content-based ESL teachers seek to develop the students' English language proficiency by incorporating information from the subject areas that students are likely to study of from courses they may have missed if they are fairly new to the school system" (Echevarria et al., 6). In other words we, as pre-service TESOLers, are the link that ELL students can depend on. We can seriously help them succeed in their other classes by including vocabulary, discourse, and rhetoric that pertains to the academia they will learn in science, math, history, etc. This is important to remember. Providing this link will not only strengthen their English proficiency, but will also help them succeed in their future academic endeavors.
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