EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

Educational Programs

Educational Programs

Every school district is responsible for providing all students an English language arts program that includes the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) of oral communication, reading with comprehension, composition, and the mechanics of language. Students of limited English proficiency (LEP) (Kessler 2006)will need to receive instruction in language arts as a subject as well as language as medium for instruction in required subjects other than language. Administrators should provide a quality language arts program that develops expanded meaning of language, builds vocabulary, and teaches word recognition and comprehension techniques to both LEP and native English-speaking students. English-speaking students in the regular classroom have acquired prereading and basic reading abilities they can add to the specific requirements a language arts program demands. Therefore, these students have a good start in attaining a mental framework upon which to establish the additional competencies needed for successful reading in a language arts program.

The content areas must be taught in the primary language as well as in English commensurate to the student's needs in the Bilingual program. Bilingual teachers need to teach the ESL TEKS when instructing students in the content areas as well as language arts and reading. Particular attention needs to be paid to the modifications stated in the TEKS. (Kessler 2007)

On the other hand, the LEP student who is struggling to speak, read, and comprehend the English language will have few, if any, of the preskills necessary for academic success in language arts. The reading requirements are often extensive and unrealistic, and these students' comprehension of the abstract concepts basic to much reading comprehension is minimal. Success in mastering language arts concepts is possible only to the extent that the LEP students have acquired the basic oral proficiency and reading skills, specialized abilities, and knowledge demanded in the content area. To ensure that a quality English language arts program is provided for LEP students: (Kessler 2006)

Instruction must include all the characteristics of a quality English language arts program for native speakers of English

Administrators must provide this program through a required bilingual education or English as a second language (ESL) program (Kessler 2007)

Transferring Skills Between Languages

Transfer is the process of connecting prior learning to present learning. Bilingual education as a mode for teaching English language arts is based upon the positive transfer process whereby original learning in the primary language boosts comprehension and retention of information given in the course of English instruction.

Recent research on effective schools includes Effective Teaching Practices (ETPs) in the areas of:

teaching strategies

time on task

feedback techniques

learning climate (Kessler 2006)

Enumeration of these strategies as they affect LEP students provides administrators and teachers with some important indicators of the quality of the programs they are directing. Teachers and administrators should be aware that:

teachers need to provide information in a way that is clearly understood. For the LEP student, this means that instruction may need to be given in the student's primary language and through ...