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ELL’S SLA And Special Education Issues

Assessing Issues between an ELL’S SLA and Special Education

Effective communication involves a lot, not just mastering the vocabularies and speaking them out, it requires the knowledge and of intonation, dialect and intent. As we learnt from the previous lecture, your realize the main issues in ELL’S SLA and special education is that, in history SLA were considered to be disable and ELL’S were placed to learn in specials education classes and assigned teachers who didn’t know much about SLA. Though for some time the issues have changed but it’s still a challenge to understand what the SLA issues are and what other issues that the students might have are. In the SLA acquisition is basically categorized into 6 stages, where the first period is the silent period, where the student takes in the new language but not able to speak it. (Viel-Ruma, 2008) The second stage is where the student is now able to speak using short words and sentences, thereafter the speeches and sentences become more frequent but the student still lies mostly on context clues and familiar topics then other three stages follows after this and the student almost be familiar with language.

Another major issue between the ELL and special education is that some educators believe that by classifying ELL into special education help meet their need especially those who perform below average level. Some researchers believes that classifying ELL into special education is not always the best interest for them since this could make ELLs to take close to seven to ten years to become proficient in English and this often this leads to misdiagnosis of these group of students as having learning disability yet English is the problem. ELL who are not proficient in English and sometimes are a beat illiterate in their native language and when the bilingual evaluation is carried out, the student might not perform well and this can influence him / being categorized as having learning disability yet he’s in the process of acquiring a second language.

The ELL often experience a number of problems that act as a barrier to their English learning, and their needs can be addressed using the instructional models and a number of Response to Intervention approaches. The first approach that can assist the ELL is the standard treatment protocol, this standard protocol applies an intervention in a specific duration with a selected group students. (Shanahan, 2006)  This approach works by providing a research based intervention to the similar selected students, and thereafter it assumes that the quality and effectiveness of ELL understanding English language will improve or rather improving the quality. This approach works by testing students, those students who test at the struggling level are placed in a one hour session supplementary literacy instruction and those students who tests two grades below are placed in an intensive intervention or rather Tier 3.

Problem solving model can also be applied to address the learning problems of ELL,  this model involves a team of experts who identifies and evaluate problems faced by each students, thereafter the expert develops a simple intervention which is able to address the student’s needs. This model addresses the needs of the student in four stages; problem identification, problem analysis, plan implementation and plan evaluation. This model assigns each student with an intervention specific to them because it assumes that interventions vary depending on the student. Finally, hybrid approach has also been used to address the needs of ELL students; basically the hybrid approach is used based on the student’s needs.  Hybrid approach involves the combination of two approaches, the two approaches can be used together, or rather one approach at a time. This will entirely depend on the need of the student.

References;
  • Viel-Ruma, K. A. (2008). The effects of direct instruction in writing on English speakers and English language learners with disabilities.
  • National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority children and youth (U.S), August, D., & Shanahan, T. (2006). Developing literacy in the second language.

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