Beyond the Beginnings: Literacy Interventions for Upper Elementary English Language Learners

Chapter 2: English Literacy Development and English Language Learners: A Theoretical Overview

This chapter discussed the difference between conversational and academic aspects of language proficiency, emphasizing the importance of instructional planning for English Language Learners. For the past forty years three constructivists views have affected our understanding of literacy and how children learn to read and write. These views are psycholinguistic, cognitive-interactive, and the sociocultural perspectives. In the psycholinguistic view readers and writers use a cueing method to derive meaning of texts. Such cues are syntactic, semantic and graphophonemic. Through this view, we can see how a reader processes and constructs meaning by relating new information to what is already known. The cognitive-interactive view is the mental process that readers and writers use to construct meaning through written language such as the use of schema or prior knowledge. Finally in the sociocultural views a child’s language is developed through social interactions with others. For this reason teachers are expected to design instructional activities that promote social interactions. The chapter also provided two scenarios of classroom instruction based on different teacher perspectives. It is stressed that acquiring a second language is a complicated process that takes time. However, it is also said that ELLs are at an advantage for learning a second language because they are already cognitively developed in a first language and can use the same process to acquire the second language. Two issues that affect second language learners are comprehensible input and the affective filter along with interpersonal and academic language. Comprehensible input refers to the complex and sophisticated language the learner is exposed to while affective filter refers to the attitude the learner has towards learning the second language. Interpersonal and academic language is basically language used in social settings and school. Social language may be acquired in a short period of time while academic language takes much longer to acquire. It is extremely important for ELLs to receive a cognitively-challenging and suitable content-level education in order to achieve academic and cognitive growth.


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