in cooperation with the National Association of State Directors of Special Education,

the National Education Association, the International Reading Association,

and the National Association of Bilingual Education.

Funding for this teleconference is provided by The United States Department of Education,

Office of Special Education Programs.

(music)

Hello, I'm Delia Pompa. Welcome to this year's final show in the Reading Rockets teleconference series,

"Achieving Success in Reading" Today, we're going to be talking about teaching English

language learners to read. In classrooms across the country, teachers need to teach reading

to children who don't speak English, but most of our teachers have not been trained to do this.

Today, we have three independent researchers. Dr. Diane August is a senior research scientist

for the Center for Applied Linguistics. Dr. Margarita Calderón is a senior research scientist

at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk at Johns Hopkins

University, and Dr. Fred Genesee is a professor in the Psychology Department at McGill University

in Montreal, Canada. And we have teachers, administrators, special education professionals,

and parents. Later in the program, we will take questions from the audience and open

the phone lines to viewers in this country and Canada. Thank you all for joining us.

Diane, why is teaching English language learners so hot these days?

Well, I think it's a hot topic for several reasons. First, there's been a dramatic increase

in the number of English language learners in the United States, especially in the last

ten years or so. So, I think lots of parts of the country that didn't have large numbers

of English language learners before now are experiencing these children in their classrooms.

So, that's one issue.

But the other is the No Child Left Behind Act. It is an act that has some very strong

accountability provisions that require all children within the next, well, 12 years to

reach standards in reading. And for the first time, the assessment data has to be disaggregated

by English language proficiency status. So, schools are very aware now of the strengths

and academic weaknesses of their English language learners, and schools will be held accountable

for making sure these children meet standards.

Well, given that as a base, what do we know about the characteristics of these learners

that might affect our work with them?

Well, I think one very important thing to keep in mind is it's a very diverse population.

But the label "English language learner" encompasses lots of different kinds of children. For example,

although most of the children are at the elementary school level, there are substantial numbers

of children both at the middle and secondary school level. Though about 70 percent of them

come from Spanish-speaking homes, there are also children from other first language backgrounds.

In addition, children come to school with very different literacy and language skills

in their first language, which impacts their ability in the second language. For example,

some children come to school literate in their first language, and these skills can really

transfer to literacy acquisition in their second language. Some kids come to school

with very well-developed oral language proficiency in their first language. This also positively

impacting their ability to become literate in English. Children come to school with different

levels of English oral language proficiency.

Some children who are a language minority and English learners actually have been born

and raised in the United States, so they have experienced a context wherein English is spoken

all around them. Other children come to the U.S. and start school as soon as they arrive

here, so they have not been in an English-speaking context before. So, there are many different

factors that differentiate these children, and I think it's a real mistake to think of

English language learners as one population of children.

I know you have been doing a lot of work on vocabulary development in the second language.

What role does that play in teaching the children to read as they acquire a second language?

Vocabulary is critical and, unfortunately, it's been neglected. For example, in research,

I'm a member of, and principal investigator for, the National Literacy Panel on Language

Minority Children and Youth. Since 1980, there have been three quasi-experimental studies

focusing on helping English language learners develop vocabulary in English. This is quite

amazing, because vocabulary plays such a critical role in reading comprehension. Children can

manage without knowing a few words in a task, but as soon as they don't know more than a

few words, they really have issues with comprehending that text. So, vocabulary plays a critical

role in reading comprehension, and it's something we need more research on -- and something

we need to explicitly teach.

Is that research helping you find out what instructional practices work best with these

children, and what would those be?

This is again a very long answer. It's a very broad question. As part of the National Literacy

Panel, we have reviewed all the research on practices that work for English language learners.

The first thing I should tell you is that there are 18 studies in all that look at the

development of component skills of literacy. When you compare this with the 400 studies

that are cited in the National Reading Panel report, you can see what a need we have for

more research in this area. But I can tell you these 18 studies tell us that working

on component skills of literacy is very important. And by the component skills of literacy, I

mean phonological awareness, word reading, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension -- things

like this. It's very important to target these skills.

We also found that you can really build on first-language reading research, but you really

have to make modifications in that research to make sure that the techniques work with

English language learners. With many of the studies that we have located, the practices

build on effective practices for English language learners, but there are modifications in these

practices to make sure they are effective with English language learners. And I could

give you a couple of examples.

If you could give us one, and then we will move on. But give us one example right now.

Well, one example. If we are talking about vocabulary in the way of comprehension, you

can't just sit an English language learner down with a chapter in a book, or three or

four pages, and expect them to read through these and understand. You need to pre-teach

some of the vocabulary. You need to scaffold the reading of the text with the children,

asking frequent questions to make sure that they understand what the text is about. Those

are some examples.

Diane, it seems like we know a lot about what it takes. What do we need to do to implement

these pieces of research that we've found and all the components of reading?

Yes. This is also a very complicated question, given the amount of research we have in this

area. I think it's very important to use research-based practices, so, again, we need a lot more good

research in this area. Given that, I think professional development is extremely important.

Teachers need to understand the theory that drives whatever intervention they're implementing.

I think having materials in the classroom is very, very important; because, quite frankly,

I don't think professional development alone does it. I think teachers need something to

work with. I think it's very important for teachers to pay attention to how whatever

programs and practices they're using in the classroom work for these children.

Assessment is critical. You can't assume that because something is "research based" it's

going to work for the children in your particular classroom. So, teachers need to attend to,

"Is this working?" And if it's not working, they need to really think about why it's not

working and what they can do to make improvements in whatever strategies they are using.

So, professional development and careful monitoring of student practice.--

Fred, Diane has given us a lot of ideas about what teachers need to be doing -- ideas -- and

different approaches and the whole panoply of solutions teachers need to look at. Are

there advantages or risks to different approaches that teachers should know about?

I would have to say yes. It's hard to answer without a specific approach in mind; but,

in effect, good teachers need a repertoire of instructional strategies to use when working

with English language learners. This is true for native English speakers. It's particularly

true for teachers working with English language learners, because, as Diane said, the children

come to school with very different cultural backgrounds and first-language skills, and

very different levels of literacy in the first or second language; and teachers need to be

able to tailor their instruction to respond to those individual needs.

There's another feature of working with these children which classroom teachers working

with English-speaking children don't have to deal with. They can come in at any grade

level -- grade five, six, secondary school -- and some of them present a particular

challenge, calling for specific kinds of instructional strategies.

Is there reliable research that tells us about how children learn to read in a second language?

And, what may be some of that research that teachers would need to know about how children

learn to read in a second language?

The National Literacy Panel, which Diane referred to, is really the first serious attempt to

look at the research in a very comprehensive way. And one of the driving questions is the

question as to whether reading in a second language is the same as reading in the first

language and, if there are differences, how do we respond to those differences? So it

would probably be premature for me to say on behalf of the panel what the findings are.

But it's my sense it would be interesting to see what Diane says as a researcher, that

there's a lot of converging evidence that learning to read in a second language is very

similar to the first language insofar as the underlying cognitive and skills are involved.

The same component skills important in the first language like: phonological awareness,

ability to name letters, vocabulary knowledge, how you use context to figure out the meaning

of words-- these are all foundation skills that children need, whether reading in a first

or second language.

But you always have to filter what might be regarded as a kind of almost universal processes

of language acquisition, reading acquisition, through the filters the kids bring, which

are the cultural and linguistic differences.

Margarita, what role does the native language play in the students' learning to read in

the second language?

Again, going back to the preliminary findings of the Panel, it plays a major role. Learning

to read in the primary language definitely helps students learn to read in the second

language. But, again, it depends on how well a program is structured and the development

of a program, as well as a very solid research-based transition into English reading that is critical.

I think that is one of the biggest hurdles we need to deal with in schools -- how do

we develop reading in the primary language so that it is very effective, very comprehensive?

And it's very much what they have mentioned already. It's all the different components.

Even reading in Spanish, for example, has to have a lot of phonemic and phonological

awareness, word knowledge -- everything Diane mentioned about vocabulary learning. If it

does not take place in the primary language, it will be very difficult for the children

to transfer a lot of concepts and word knowledge into English reading.

Do we know what aspects of learning to read in a first language carry over to the second

language? Diane, you look like you have an answer.

We are doing a lot of research funded through the National Institutes for Child Health and

Development and Institute for Educational Sciences, Office of English Language Acquisition,

we have done a longitudinal study from the end of second grade through the end of fifth

grade, looking at children who were instructed first in their native language, which happened

to be Spanish, and then into English-only instruction to see what components transferred

from the first to the second language. And we found that, regardless of whether they

were instructed in English or Spanish, phonological awareness skills transferred from the first

to second language. But for skills like word reading and experience to transfer, children

need to be instructed in Spanish first. So, language of instruction plays a major role

in transfer. Even though all these children were from Spanish-speaking homes, children

had to be instructed first in Spanish for the skills to transfer.

But I also wanted to say something in response to one of your previous questions about issues

related to implementing effective programs and practices for English language learners.

And I think we can't forget how important resources are in making sure we have sound

programs for these programs. And I say that because children entering kindergarten who

are very limited English-proficient and from poor families, for example, really need a

lot of support to master English literacy. They need extra time in school. They need

to be with a teacher who really is well trained, so that they know how to scaffold instruction.

They need to be in a small enough group so that the teacher can respond to the needs

of these children. And this we will not have unless we have sufficient resources. It's

not just a matter of research.

You know, this segment has had lots of interest. Not to put you all on the spot or anything,

but teachers were waiting for this particular segment, and one question we had was how often

should a teacher correct a second-language mistake that students make, and how does that

fit into instruction and reading?

Well, this is a question that comes up frequently in all forms of second-language education,

whether it's a bilingual or emerging program, or certainly when you're teaching literacy.

We are coming from a period where a lot of people felt we shouldn't provide correction;

but now thinking is changing a little to the point where people believe at certain times

correction is appropriate, because there are technical aspects of the language. Spelling

is a good example, also vocabulary -- how you organize text for a science report or

a narrative.

This is all knowledge that is in many cases acquired more easily if you are told explicitly

how to do it and if you are corrected when you don't do it correctly. So, I think if