Steps to English Proficiency (STEP):
The backgrounds of ELL’s present challenges to teachers and other educators who are expected to ensure academic success for all ELLs, regardless their achievement and opportunity gaps (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015). Research has shown that ELLs academic and literacy achievement gaps become wider as they move to higher grades, leading to higher dropout rates and disappearance from higher-level academic courses in later school years (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015). While some research suggests that’s ELLs lag behind in their academic and literacy achievement, this research fails to take into account the diverse backgrounds of ELLs and variable language development patterns among them (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015). Without enough knowledge about the complexity of ELLs’ language and literacy development patterns, it’s difficult to ensure that ELLs are given sufficient support for their learning (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015).
Steps to English Proficiency (STEP) is a new assessment framework developed for teachers to assess, track, and support the language proficiency development of English language learners (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015). STEP comprises of three sets of descriptor-based developmental ranges—oral communication, reading, and writing—for each of four different grade clusters: Primary, Junior, Intermediate, and Secondary (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015). Each field includes six proficiency STEPs, each of which is characterized and differentiated from the others using a set of factors that are intended to track language behaviours observable in the classroom (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015). The highest proficiency level, STEP 6, reflects the language proficiency that is necessary to meet the language demands of grade-level content (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015).
STEP provides teachers with a process to record students’ English language development by drawing the teachers’ attention to the relationship between curricular knowledge and the language required to master it (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015). Indeed, by identifying this connection between language and content, STEP has the potential to serve as an educational tool, compensating for teachers’ underdeveloped assessment knowledge (Jang, Cummins, and Wagner 2015).
Inviting Conversation:
Teachers need to see the gap between what is and what could be. One way to do this is to encourage ELL students to share their first language and cultural stories. Purdy (2008) recommends 3 methods in which teachers and other educators can provide the support ELL students need in order to achieve success in language proficiency and developmental skills.
Questioning:
By planning beforehand questions that invite a deep response, and by reflecting on how these planned questions will contribute to student learning (Purdy 2008). Teachers should step out of the comfortable communications that are typical of guided reading procedures, such as questions with one right answer (Purdy 2008).
Teaching vocabulary:
Vocabulary knowledge is strongly related to reading proficiency, and many studies show that vocabulary development is essential for the reading success of ELL students. There is often a huge gap between the vocabulary knowledge that native English speakers bring to school compared with the word knowledge of ELL students (Purdy 2008). Consequently, the teacher may explain new vocabulary in a quick manner rather than link the new word to known words and concepts (Purdy 2008). Then, educators should review the word many times and limit the introduction of new words to seven or fewer in any one lesson (Purdy 2008).
Collaborative talk:
A third suggestion for teachers to build conversations with their diverse students is to engage in collaborative talk. Collaborative talk is defined as “talk that enables one or more of the participants to achieve a goal as effectively as possible” (Purdy 2008). Collaborative talk emphasizes both the personal and social aspects of learning. When children use language in a social context for rational purposes, collaborative learning is the result (Purdy 2008).
The Role of Bilingual Teachers and Data Collection:
The results of certain studies provides room for a discussion of how bilingual educators can help prevent incorrect referrals to special education (Ortiz, Robertson, Wilkinson, Liu, McGhee, Kushner, 2011). Findings across studies show that bilingual education teachers play a critical role in preventing student failure and in supporting struggling learners in their classrooms (Ortiz et al., 2011).
To guide instruction, and ultimately to inform referral decisions, teachers must collect data that describes language and literacy skills and tracks changes in performance, in each language over time (Ortiz et al., 2011). This suggests a need for data collection systems that link student information across school years (Ortiz et al., 2011). Since student progress data is collected for different purposes, data should be combined and stored in a format that is easily available to all personnel who work with ELLs (Ortiz et al., 2011). Assessments that use procedures that are equal across languages provide a description of what students know in each language and what they know across both (Ortiz et al., 2011). Without this information, students’ abilities may be underestimated, increasing the likelihood of remedial or special education referral and placement (Ortiz et al., 2011). Performance in one language should be compared to the other. Such comparisons can help determine whether native-language proficiency, level of English proficiency, or both, explain school failure (Ortiz et al., 2011).
Transitional Needs, from High School to University:
Findings suggest ELLs are academically capable, however; many are inadequately prepared for the literacy demands of university and are at academic risk (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012). Recommendations are made for policy, transitional programming, and the establishment of services that support academic achievement at the university level (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012).
Generally, ELLs can develop communicative abilities within 2 years of their arrival and participation in an English-speaking school setting (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012). Developing academic language proficiency, on the other hand, is a long and gradual process (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012). Even with strong language support in the K-12 system, many academically competent ELLs are not able to “beat the academic clock” (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012). Hence, much attention needs to be focused to the plight of ELLs as they make their way from high school into university.
Schools and universities may be advised to thoroughly identify and track students at risk, as a result of their underdeveloped English academic proficiency. Next, they should implement a support system to address this gap beginning as early as kindergarten, where the increase in numbers of this profile is now appearing (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012). ELLs with marks in the range of 55–60%, in Grade 12 English examination, may benefit from intensive summer programming, that targets the development of academic language demands of first year studies (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012). More gradual integration into their programs of choice may also result in better long-term academic outcomes (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012).
Ultimately, the next generation of young ELLs beginning their academic journey must be identified early in kindergarten. A range of interventions must be introduced at the start of the educational path and tracked and sustained over time (Roessingh, Douglas, and Scott 2012).