According to Syria (2011, p. 15), LTELs denote students or learners who have been registered within USA schools for over 6 years, are not progressing towards proficiency of English and are academically struggling. They lack English skills required for academic success. Moreover, they have accumulated academic gaps within their elementary school or within middle school years.
Long-term English students have features including living all or most of their lives within USA, are always orally bilingual, moreover, sound native English speakers lacking well-established academic literacy skills within English. Besides, always have habits of learned passivity, non-engagement, as well as invisibility, within school. Perform poorly in writing and reading due to, difficulties in every content area. Additionally, they have low overall school performance, with poor grades, making them at risk of dropping out (Olsen, 2010).
Administrators, instructors, parents, and learners must join hands to embrace a uniform definition of LTEL, to enable collection of data for monitoring, early identification, as well as responding to challenges of LTELs. The learning stakeholders must adopt effective and appropriate English development academic content and materials with language objectives. Administrators and teachers must offer consistent messages and counsel, across corrective action, accountability, and compliance functions in line with English learner research. There should be provision of professional resources to prepare administrator and teachers to work mutually with English learners. In addition, there must be joint efforts by all education stakeholders to ensure full access of curriculum by English learners.
In summary, principles to meet LTELs’ needs, for instance, a focus on special needs of LTELs, urgency, techniques to handle language development and academic gaps, relevance and rigor, primary language development, relationships, as well as incorporation without sacrificing access must be instated.
References
Olsen, L. (2010). Reparable Harm: Fulfilling the Unkept Promise of Educational Opportunity for California’s Long Term English Learners. Long Beach, CA: California.
Syrja, R.C. (2011). How to reach and teach English language learners: Practical strategies to ensure success. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
