Teacher Perspectives on the Best Instructional Models for DLLs

Submitted by Judy Hanning on Tue, 2017-03-28 05:00
In an era of divisiveness and racist rhetoric, California has recently given dual language learners a reason to celebrate, by voting to bring multilingual educational programs back to their 1.4 million students. That said, while it is exciting for DLLs to have more opportunity to learn in a multilingual setting, it is still a hot topic on how to best structure a program.
There are primarily five models for multilingual programs, those being: Self-Contained, Pull-Out, Push-In, Bilingual education and Dual language. The push-in and pull-out methods aren’t generally liked by professors, but they see promise in the bilingual and dual language methods, depending on which language a student is initially stronger in. As the percentage of DLLs grows (10% now), more research will be necessary to determine the best method moving forward.
First, ESL push-in and ESL pull-out were the least popular instructional models for DLLs of all levels of proficiency in their home languages or English. By contrast, respondents rated dual language models as effective for DLLs with strong literacy skills in English regardless of their level of proficiency in their home language.
~ New America

Key Takeaways:

1
There is a difference between home language and how one speaks at home.
2
Teaching ESL assists students in their ability to code switch between home and school speech.
3
The best ways to teach ESL are the ways that the teacher finds easiest, including on the DLL model.
Read the full article here:
http://www.readingrockets.org/news/teacher-perspectives-best-instructional-models-dlls