About this SiteThis site is the culmination of a research and outreach project by University of California, Berkeley Summer Session students in Psychology 140: Developmental Psychology. The aim of this site is to support teachers of English Language Learners and provide them with information relevant to the instruction of their students.
By making teachers aware of the cognitive processes surrounding Second Language Acquisition, and biological and environmental factors paramount in language learning, we underscore the relevance of technology in aiding non-native speakers learn and master English--both in social and academic settings. While our research centered on middle school aged children, the findings are relevant for all ELL students and teachers, because they highlight the importance of social context in acquiring a language, and social context is always a factor, whether the learner is 2 or 22. |
Current Problems with English Language Education
More than half of students learning English in America are not proficiently speaking it by the time they graduate. Why is that? The current school system and the way it is structured reflects how educators expect children to learn, but how students actually learn has more to do with where they are developmentally, the environments and social contexts in which they learn, and whether they are truly engaged in material they perceive to be relevant. It is not merely only a problem with how we expect children to learn, but also how children actually learn during their developmental years. Lessons in pure grammar and syntax have no ecological bearing on how we communicate in the real world. Moreover, no degree of fluency can be achieved without the social interaction to guide language acquisition.
Although the solution for this problem is not a simple one, we further elaborate on why the majority of students are not reaching adequate levels of performance in the current schooling system under the section “The Brain and Language Learning” from two major points of view. The first is the biological basis of children's brain maturation at that point of time and the second is the social aspect which is integral to these growing children.
In subsequent sections, we explore ways to create lesson plans that are congruent with the ways students efficiently learn language. We give suggestions based off of our research to ameliorate the cognitive deficiencies and alleviate the social struggle that reduce the performance of adolescents. By employing technology, English language teachers can overcome many of the challenges they face in instructing non-native speakers. As we will describe, visual, auditory and tactile aids can bridge the gaps of comprehension and reduce the speaking and performance anxiety commonly present in ELL classrooms.
Although the solution for this problem is not a simple one, we further elaborate on why the majority of students are not reaching adequate levels of performance in the current schooling system under the section “The Brain and Language Learning” from two major points of view. The first is the biological basis of children's brain maturation at that point of time and the second is the social aspect which is integral to these growing children.
In subsequent sections, we explore ways to create lesson plans that are congruent with the ways students efficiently learn language. We give suggestions based off of our research to ameliorate the cognitive deficiencies and alleviate the social struggle that reduce the performance of adolescents. By employing technology, English language teachers can overcome many of the challenges they face in instructing non-native speakers. As we will describe, visual, auditory and tactile aids can bridge the gaps of comprehension and reduce the speaking and performance anxiety commonly present in ELL classrooms.