Delia Pompa: One group that presents teachers, all teachers, a number of challenges are students who are newcomers. Who come to us at the secondary level. Often haven't had a lot of education in their own country in their own language. And they have a short period of time before they have to graduate from high school and get all the credits. What is the role of both language teachers and content teachers in getting them to a level of having some academic language?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: We have a responsibility to our students, to all of our students, no matter when they enter school, no matter what their educational backgrounds are, to teach academic language. We have some excellent approaches and especially some good curricula materials available to provide students with the intensive English language instruction that they need at the secondary levels.
Students who arrive late in our system do need more instruction. We far underestimated the amount of instruction in English that they acquired-that they need to acquire academic language. So they might need to be in a three hour or four hour intensive language classroom and then take some other classes in addition to that.
And it might be the case that they need to take summer school. They might need to go before school, after school. If they need an extra year afterwards, our goal is to make sure that they have acquired enough academic language so that they can go on and be successful in the United States. And so I would say, yes. Give them more. Absolutely.
Delia Pompa: It seems to me that we often as educators of English language learners focus on that group of students who just came in, the newcomers. But there's also another group of students who are long-term ELLs, who have been in this country a long, long time, who have some of the same gaps in language, in academic language.
I know on a day-to-day basis, you work with college students, you work with older students. What are some of the challenges there? And what are some of the strategies? What can educators do at that point?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Oh, thank you. This is the largest growing population that we have in the United States. Our newcomers, especially at the secondary level, is rather small compared to this huge group of students that we have. Instruction, instruction, instruction. Practice. But knowing that it's practice perfect makes good practice, not just practicing. Students tend to acquire the language of those with whom they associate. We all do.
And so our students, such as my student whose letter you read, came into the United States and acquired the language of the friends with whom she associated. And she speaks a wonderful variety of informal English. But as you noted, it won't do her very much in terms of getting her ahead in academic settings.
So what we need to do is make sure that we get-that she attends to the language by using dictation exercises, for example. By using both oral close, a sentence completion activity. Or a written close activity where students fill in the blanks as we dictate a passage.
They need to summarize. We tell passages they need to write a lot with intensive feedback. And yes, we know that they can achieve high levels of success. They can become bi-dialectal, bi-lingual, multi-lingual.
Delia Pompa: For older students and for younger students, there must come a time when the support for academic language needs to sort of pull back. The teacher needs to pull back. And they need to become independent users of academic language. Does that happen magically? Or are there some strategies?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: A lot of our schools hope that that would happen. But we can't teach on hope. So what we really need to do is plan very explicitly. Think about it as I do with my own child, going onto college and beyond. You want to make sure that the child develops good learning strategies that will help that child to continue to learn.
I want all English learners in the United States to know about learner dictionaries and to use them. A learner dictionary is not just a dictionary that an individual has.
Delia Pompa: Tell me, because I don't know what a learner dictionary is.
Dr. Robin Scarcella: They're wonderful dictionaries. Many different publishing companies have them. They're really good. They tell a student what a word means. And then they give the students a lot of information about the word. They give the students even grammatical and discourse information about the word.
So they might say the word "discriminate" is used with the word "discriminate against someone." And then they give sample sentences. So I tell all of my students, whether native or not native, that they must have these dictionaries for English language learners. They're actually written for students. They're very appropriate beginning at grade four and beyond.
Delia Pompa: So it's a teacher in your pocket sort of.
Dr. Robin Scarcella: It's a teacher in your pocket. So they need that. They need to have self-editing skills. So that's why if teachers begin correcting young children and children love corrective feedback. They don't think it's wrong. They expect a teacher at age five and six.
They'll begin to give instructional feedback in the very young ages. And continue it. But always with the goal of making the student a self-editor. So that the student, when the student is finished with the ESL, ELD class, when he's in a mainstream class, the student goes to them and says, okay.
I'm great in these aspects of language. And I'm not so good in these aspects. I'm going to have to continue to work on subject/verb agreement. I know that I have a weakness in word forms and related parts of speech. And I'm going to be correcting those.
Because, you know, our goal in schools is not to make people perfect native English speakers. But we want to help people achieve a mastery over the English language as best as they can get.
Delia Pompa: You know, we've talked a lot about what teachers can do to help students gain academic language. And we often put it all on teachers. But what about other people in the educational system? What about principals? What about school district personnel? What can they do to help here?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Thanks, Delia. It's so important that we get principals and vice principals, everybody in the administration, to understand that it's not easy to teach academic language. And students really need to have good curricular programs. They need to investigate the very best curricular programs for teaching academic language.
So that the students have a coherent program for English language development. And we need to get the principals in the classrooms to watch the teachers. So that they'll understand how hard it is to teach academic language.
And to make sure that teachers get the appropriate support to teach academic language. We've had three generations of teachers who really haven't had much instruction in grammar themselves and can't tell the difference between a noun and a preposition.
Delia Pompa: Oh, dear.
Dr. Robin Scarcella: And oftentimes, they're ashamed of that. There's no reason to be ashamed at all. That was just the case of our public schools.
Delia Pompa: So what role does professional development play in all of this? Should administrators be shaking professional development in a certain way?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Yes, they need to make sure that when teachers are teaching content, for example, they may need to know how to scaffold the content to make sure that they're teaching language objectives. And when I'm in classrooms and I'm watching teachers teach in Los Angeles or wherever I am, I notice that what teachers are having the most difficulty with are language objectives, identifying what language they can teach to help students access the content and participate in the content instruction.
Delia Pompa: You know, teachers often talk about not having the time to plan together and collaborate together. What ideas do you have for creating that space for teachers to collaborate around common academic language targets?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Yes. Thank you. Teachers do need the time. It takes time. It takes them time to learn the language themselves. To teach students and the strategies. And so they need to have lesson planning time in which they come together to talk about the curriculum for English language development.
So that they work together as teams with their ESL, ELD coaches, with the reading specialists, the reading coaches, with the administration, with all the specialists in the schools. So that they give students more of a seamless education. And they get everybody on the same train going in the same direction.
Delia Pompa: I feel like we've just scratched the surface. What are some other resources you can tell us about quickly before we wind up that teachers could use or turn to in developing academic language?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Yes, thank you. If you go into our websites, and I'll leave you a list of our websites, you'll find that we have developed many websites for helping teachers develop grammar, vocabulary, a discourse of English language for helping students correct their own writing and for developing their grammar and vocabulary.
We also have useful websites where teachers can have the most recent sort of cutting edge research on what works for teaching English language learners.
Delia Pompa: We will certainly put a list of those up on the website. But is there one right now that you could tell us about as an example, a website, that's good for teachers to go to?
Dr. Robin Scarcella: Yes, the "What Works" website is an excellent place. Because it gives very useful information about the types of strategies that are research based, that have been tried and tested with English language learners. And it demonstrates some of those for teachers as well.
Delia Pompa: Are there misconceptions out there about academic