Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Preparation for Teachers of English Language Learners Mikel Cole, MEd Department of Teaching and Learning Language, Literacy, and Culture

ELLs are the fastest-growing population in US schools (McKeon, 2005)

Not only is the ELL population increasing, it is dispersing.

Currently, about 60% of US classrooms contain ELLs (American Federation of Teachers, 2008) Consequently, every prospective teacher needs to know about teaching ELLs

What Teachers Need to Know about Language TODAY’S PRESENTATION I.Theoretical Overview II.Wong-Fillmore and Snow III.Additional Thoughts

Language Acquisition and Language Learning Chomsky and Language Acquisition – Innatist view – Language development follows genetic cues – Input cannot explain complexity of young children’s language production

Language Acquisition and Language Learning Stephen Krashen – Agrees with Chomsky acquisition fundamental in L1 and L2 – ‘Comprehensible input’ key to acquisition – ‘Learning’ distinct from ‘acquisition’ – Affective filter

Interaction of L1 and L2 Jim Cummins and SLA – Common Underlying Proficiency Hypothesis – Basic interpersonal communication skills (BICS), typically 3-5 years – Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency(CALP), typically 7-10 years

Sociocultural Theory and SLA ‘Mediation’ (Vygotsky, 1978; Lantolf and Thorne, 2007) Voice, identity and agency (Bakhtin, 1973; Pierce, 1995)

Critical and Emanicipatory SLA ‘Conscientization’ (Freire, 1987) ‘Critical Language Awareness ’ (Fairclough, 1999) Language of power (Delpit, 1995)

Part Two: Wong-Fillmore and Snow (2000) " What every teacher needs to know about language"

Wong-Fillmore and Snow (2000) Essential oral language knowledge 1) What are the basic units of language? 2) What’s regular and what isn’t, and how do forms relate to each other? 3) How is the lexicon acquired and stored? 4) Are vernacular dialects different from “bad English”, and if so, how? 5) What is academic English? 6) Why has English acquisition by non-English speaking children not been more successful?

Wong-Fillmore and Snow (2000) Essential written language knowledge 1)Why is English spelling so difficult? 2)Why do students have trouble structuring narrative and expository text? 3)How should one judge the quality and correctness of a piece of writing? 4)What makes a sentence or a text easy or difficult to understand?

Wong-Fillmore and Snow (2000) Ideal training for all teachers would include: 1)Language and Linguistics 2) Language and Cultural Diversity 3)Sociolinguistics for Educators in a Linguistically Diverse Society 4)Language Development 5)Second Language Learning and Teaching 6)The Language of Academic Discourse 7)Text Analysis and Language Understanding in Educational Settings

Part Three: Closing Thoughts Some additional things teachers should consider: 1)Students are human beings – Hopes, dreams, agency 2)What you believe is as important as what you know – Beliefs and attitudes more resistant to change than knowledge