ESL/Learning Results Toolbox Glossary

ESL/Learning Results Toolbox Glossary

Authentic Assessment: An integrative and comprehensive approach for collecting demographic, outcome, and process data on LEP student learning, particularly as it relates to their acquisition of English and academic subject mastery.

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS): A component of second language proficiency which usually occurs on an informal level that precedes the more complex skills of cognitive/academic language proficiency occurs. If only an oral assessment of a student’s skills is taken, the student may appear proficient according to BICS. BICS are less abstract and more concrete than the more demanding cognitive/academic language proficiency skills. (See Cognitive/ Academic Language Proficiency Skills [CALPS].) BICS can be acquired in fewer than two years; CALP will require upwards of five years.

Bilingual Education: A program of instruction which uses more than one language as the medium of instruction.

Bilingualism: The ability to communicate in two languages. A balanced bilingual is one who can use both languages equally well. Most bilingual persons prefer one language over the other depending on the context of the communication.

Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA): Developed by A.Chamot and M O’Malley (1987), CALLA is an intermediate and advanced transition program that permits LEP post-elementary students to more acquire English fluency and content area mastery by teaching them unique learning strategies.

Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency Skills (CALPS): A component of second language proficiency which occurs at the complex higher language acquisition level after the simpler Basic Interpersonal Cognitive Skills (BICS). According to V. Collier (1995), it may take at least four and as many as ten years for a LEP student to reach national grade-level norms of native English speakers in all subject areas of language and academic achievement, as measured on standardized tests. The span of time for acquiring CALPS is directly influenced by factors, such as: 1) age at arrival in a second language culture, 2) amount of uninterrupted schooling in the heritage language, 3) length of residence (See Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills [BICS].).

Comprehensible Input: Understandable messages through which young students acquire the second language as they learn other academic subjects. According to S. Krashen (1982), such input assures that the learner understands the communication.

Content-based "sheltered" ESL Instruction: An approach to second language teaching which utilizes content-area subject matter to teach language. With contextualized and understandable concepts attached to content area school subjects, the second language acquisition process is enhanced. Concepts and vocabulary may be set at a lower academic level to target the student’s level of English proficiency. This approach helps the second language learner maintain the cognitive structures that may have already been developed in the native language. The ESL teacher usually pursues this approach.

Content Standards for Maine’s Learning Results: These are broadly defined descriptions of the knowledge and skills that Maine students should acquire that are listed among a series of performance indicators in the Learning Results. They appear in the introduction to each area of learning.

Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students: An increasingly popular reference to students with special needs and whose native language is not English and/or students whose native culture does not originate in the U.S. The reference is sometimes interchanged with English language learner because it is more positive in connotation than limited English proficient and is occasionally used for other LEP students who do not have special needs.

Culture-Free Tests: Culture free tests or assessment instruments purport not to discriminate on the basis of a student’s non-U.S. culture. Many will agree that culture-free tests do not exist. For example, asking a student who was raised in the rural heartland about skyscrapers may produce an inappropriate response. Testing should measure what is intended to be measured, and not a culture-related perceived shortcoming.

Developmental Bilingual Education: See two-way bilingual education.

IASA Title VII: The seventh major section of the Elementary and Secondary Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1968 and amended through 1994 under the Improving America’s Schools Act (IASA). This law enables bilingual education to be offered to LEP children when there are enough children of the same language background attending the same school. IASA is a federal funding act, not a civil rights enforcement act.

ESOL: English for Speakers of Other Languages. Special English language instruction for non-English speakers.

English as a Second Language (ESL): LEP students are placed in regular English-only instruction for most of the day. During part of the day, however, these students receive extra instruction in English. This extra help is based on a curriculum designed almost solely to teach English as a second language. The non-English home language may sometimes be used in conjunction with ESL instruction.

ESL Pullout: The least effective approach short of submersion (which is illegal) services to LEP children are provided in isolation from the regular curriculum and the regular content classroom. Instruction is typically one on one or in very small groups offered for almost 40 minutes daily.

Entry and Exit Criteria: Standards developed to define when a LEP student begins or has completed a language support program. Policy and procedures are described with practices that support such policy. Students are enrolled or removed from language support based on an evaluation of whether they will benefit from the program to permit them entry in a mainstream program of education with English-only peers.

Fully English Proficient (FEP): A language proficiency category which refers to formerly LEP students who become capable of functioning in an English-only educational environment in the skills areas of comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing. FEP students perform at the Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency (CALPS) level.

Guiding Principles of the Learning Results: Arguably the foundation or building blocks for successful and fulfilled adulthood in the 21^st Century, they are the principles by which each Maine student must leave school with having attained the Learning Results. They are: 1) a clear and effective communicator; 2) a self-directed and life-long learner; 3) a creative and practical problem-solver; 4) a responsible and involved citizen; 5) a collaborative and quality worker; 6) an integrative and informed thinker.

Heritage Language: The student’s native or primary language, See Primary or Home Language other than English.

Home Language Survey: A simple form, administered by school systems to determine the language spoken at home by a student. Such surveys are often in English and another language. The survey, by itself, does not determine English proficiency.

Individual Learning Plan (ILP): A process used to define the special language services needs of LEP students. Each student has such a plan developed for him/her. Such a process is analogous to the Individual Education Plan (IEP) developed for handicapped students.

Itinerant ESOL: Conventionally, one or two periods of English language instruction given on a "pull out" basis by a teacher who travels to more than one school per day.

L1: The native or first language of the student.

L2: The second language of the student, usually English.

Language Minority Students: Students whose primary or home language is other than English.

Language Proficiency: Language fluency skills acquired in one or more languages.

Learning Results, Maine: A document, established by statute, that defines what knowledge, skills and abilities that all Maine students are expected to possess at the end of grades Pre-K-2,

3-4, 5-8, and 9-12. All Maine schools must have evidence that they are supporting all students in achieving the Learning Results by the fall of 2002.

Learning Strategies: Individual tasks or activities that help learners to foster independent learning or to engage in independent learning. According to Rebecca Oxford (University of Georgia), there are direct strategies for managing language and indirect strategies for learning in general.

Learning Styles: Individual learning characteristics that are not culturally influenced.

Limited English Proficient: A descriptor for one who comes from a non-English language background and whose language skills limit that person’s ability to function successfully in an all-English classroom. A LEP student is not fluent in all communicative skills areas of English speaking, listening, writing, or reading and cannot compete with peers in an English-only academic setting.

Limited English-Speaking Ability (LESA): Students with a primary language other than English who have difficulty with speaking English.

National Origin: The origin of a person rooted in a country other than the United States. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of a person’s national origin in any program or activity which receives federal financial assistance. Such national origin protection includes limited English proficiency.

Native Language: The language normally used by an individual, the family, or both at home. Also referred to as the heritage or first language.

Non-English proficient (NEP): The student has virtually no command of English in the communicative skills areas of speaking, listening, reading, or writing.

Peer Tutoring: Non-LEP students who help LEP students in class. This is generally performed by students who can speak the LEP student’s native language but who understand English better.

Peer tutors are sometimes referred to as English language informants.

Performance Indicators for the Learning Results: Checkpoints that describe or define in specific terms the stages of achievement that Maine students should know and be able to do from one level to the next to demonstrate attainment of a content standard of the Learning Results.

Primary or Native Language: The first language the student acquired and which he/she normally uses; generally, but not always, the language usually used by the parents of the students. This is frequently referred to as the heritage language.

Proficiency: Proficiency in conversational English is that which is well developed by native speakers by the time they reach school and is used informally for interpersonal relations. This level of proficiency may not be sufficient to allow LEP students to excel in school subjects. The kind of English proficiency which does relate with school achievement can be referred to as "academic English." This is the kind of language skill required for literacy skills, such as decoding meaning from context, study skills, writing mechanics, and vocabulary development. This kind of proficiency is most often measured on norm-or criterion-referenced tests of language, reading, writing, and mathematics. See also Basic Interpersonal Cognitive Skills (BICS) and Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency (CALP).

Pullout ESL: See ESL pullout.

Qualified ESL Personnel: Educators who have received special training in English language methodology and linguistics with attention to all four communicative language skills--listening, speaking, reading, and writing. In many states ESL licensures (certification and endorsements) determine such credentials.

Rubrics: Often used in conducting authentic assessments, these are fixed scales used to describe what a LEP student can or cannot do. A continuum of four benchmarks is commonly used as a checklist of data on student performance outcomes.

Sheltered English: See Content-based "Sheltered" English instruction.

Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE): An approach designed for LEP students at the intermediate or advanced level in English acquisition, that may utilize some simplification of the English language for subject area content at a higher academic level than occurs for less fluent students. It is used at the middle to secondary levels. Actual content is the same as that taught to non-LEP students. Instruction is provided by the content area teacher in collaboration with the ESL teacher.

Structured Immersion: Comparable but dissimilar to English "sink or swim" submersion, structured immersion instruction is also instruction conducted in English but with significant differences. The immersion teacher understands the non-English home language, and students can address the teacher in the non-English language; the submersion teacher, however, generally replies only in English. Furthermore, curriculum is structured so that prior knowledge of English is not assumed as subjects are taught. Content is introduced in a way that can be understood by the student. The student, in effect, learns the second language and content simultaneously. Most immersion programs also teach the non-English language arts for 30-60 minutes a day. Submersion as an approach for teaching LEP students English is illegal. Structured immersion differs from the transitional bilingual instruction in that the non-English home language is rarely used by the teacher (except where it is a subject) and subject area instruction is given in the second language from the beginning of the program. Emphasis is on contextual clues and with syntax and vocabulary adjusted to a student’s level of proficiency. See also submersion.

TESL: Teaching English as a Second Language, usually used as a reference to teacher training programs.

TESOL: Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. TESOL is the international professional organization for those concerned with the teaching of English as a second or foreign language and of standard English as a second dialect.

TESOL Standards: Developed in 1998 by national leaders in the ESL profession, these are nine developmental foci defined under three broader goals that address the following linguistic, social, and cultural needs for students of limited English proficiency as they acquire fluency in English: 1) the development of basic interpersonal communication skills; 2) the development of cognitive academic language proficiency; 3) social and cultural development in the new English language environment. The TESOL Standards are designed to support state standards such as Maine’s Learning Results and, as such, are easily aligned with them to support students for whom English is a new language.

Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE): Instruction is provided in both the non-English home language until the students’ second language (English) is fluent enough for them to participate successfully in an English-only classroom. ESL is often used to help minimize the time needed to master English, particularly in the area of reading. Use of the non-English home language for instruction is phased out as English instruction is gradually phased in. TBE is differentiated from ESL by the use of the non-English home language for instruction in subject areas that are less English intensive, and by teaching literacy in the non-English language as a school subject.

Tutorial Program: Students receive one-on-one and small group instruction in English and regular subject, usually by a paraprofessional. A tutorial program may also be done bilingually. If conducted by unqualified staff, by student peers, or not done as part of an organized system of instruction, it may not pass legally sufficiency by the U.S. Office for Civil Rights.

Two-way Bilingual Education: Also called developmental bilingual education, this additive bilingual approach is a maintenance model in which speakers of two languages are placed together in a bilingual classroom to learn each other’s language and work academically in both languages.

Vocational English as a Second Language (VESL): Similar to English for Specific Purposes, VESL targets workforce communication skills.