Teaching the English Language Learner in High School

In the last couple of years, as the fervour for implementing the science of reading swept through our high school, I constantly questioned the amount of reading students were actually doing in the classroom.

As we took on the important work of assessing students coming into the high school and identifying their struggles at every pillar of reading aligned to the science of reading, the discussions rarely addressed my main concern – I did not actually see much reading taking place in the classrooms. I discussed this in one of my earlier blog entries.

When I came over to Australia with my family of five children, we were surprised that we didn’t have to buy any texts. In Singapore, buying textbooks and carrying those textbooks to school was the norm. Texts were colourfully annotated, diligently bookmarked and thoroughly used as students studied their way through them. Here, the texts were going to be provided through the loan system. For my kids, in their private school, this worked out quite well for the first few years. The school was well resourced and my kids had access to these texts and for English, they could bring the books home for reading and study.

When I started teaching in this new environment, I realised the resourcing didn’t always allow for students to take a personal copy of the book home – for many, the only time they could access the books was when they were in the classroom. The organisation of the access really depended on the school and sometimes, teachers.

And when materials started to be digitised, access to the texts really depended on students’ access to technology at home – which again, is not always equitable. Paul Kirchner discusses this move into the use of digital texts in his article, “Too Fast, Too Confident, Too Digital?” as the level of outcomes linked to the widespread use of technology is increasingly questioned today. There is evidence now that there is a distinct difference in the depth of comprehension of texts read digitally and in print. This issue begs to be explored further as it certainly has repercussions for the EAL/D learner, but digital texts are great for providing accessible texts.

In her article ” Most middle and high school teachers still assign full books — but only a few, study says” ,Lily Altavena discusses the RAND report on texts assigned by teachers. A few interesting points have been highlighted in Altavena’s article and the RAND report. Firstly, there is little research into how the use of full texts impacts on student outcomes. Personally, I believe there is significant impact – and hope to share research that proves it. Secondly, there is more exposure to full texts in schools in affluent areas rather than lower socio-economic areas. Of the 9% of teachers who stated in the surveys that they didn’t intend to assign whole texts, most taught students with disabilities, and EAL/D learner. That may explain some of the lagging outcomes for this group. The report also highlighted that teachers who worked with publisher created texts are more likely to not assign full texts.

I would argue that it is critical for reading to be accessed from both full texts as well as extracts, the kind you find in published textbooks, for focussed study. While I was teaching in Singapore, published texts were used for the teaching of specific language skills – whether comprehension skills, syntax or vocabulary focus. Full texts were used in our literature classes. (English and Literature were two separate subjects. Literature in Singapore aligns to some extent to the subject “English” in Australia. ) The RAND report highlights the tension between “teacher autonomy” (where teachers felt they could use their professional judgement to decide on how to teach the students sitting in front of them – including when to assign suitable reading texts) and the need for “fidelity” to teaching programmes at the risk of outcomes not being reached. This really touches then on the professionalism of teachers. Sad indeed, if we have reached the stage when teachers cannot be trusted to make decisions to meet the needs of the students sitting in front of them.

The EAL/D learners must have access to their texts and they must be reading every lesson, every day. I’d like to list some key considerations to bear in mind.

• The language learner must have a full text that they can take home for further study. They need extra time to work with the texts because they are learning the language (which requires slower, more focussed reading), even as they are analysing the text in high school (which requires more selective, deeper reading of the texts as they collate the required information). My personal preference is for students to have a physical text in their hands when reading a whole book. I teach my students how to annotate texts for easy reference, and it facilitates my discussions with them.
• For the EAL/D learner, it is important that reading widely is encouraged. In my early years of working in the Intensive English Unit of the school, we actively encouraged this and supported students to identify for themselves the most suitable books for their skill and interest when we took them over to the library each week. Classrooms had class sets of a wide range of texts (at various levels to meet language proficiency needs). When our students moved into the inclusion space, these dedicated support mechanisms were lost and students, especially refugees who may not have had prior experiences with reading extensively lost out.
• Digitised texts are excellent for the lower bandscale student who can use text to speech and translators to access the work. We do, however, need to ensure that students are also being taught to read without these props. There is a fine balance between the need to know how to read on one’s own, and on getting the information required to complete the task. The cognitive load of trying to do both of these at the same time is too great for the student, especially when faced with tight timelines in high school, so teachers must develop a fine balance between texts used for various purposes.
• Use short excerpts to focus the learning experience. This isn’t meant to take away from students reading a whole text, but supports our need to provide accessible texts that students can be taught with. I suspect publisher created texts fall within this category as they utilise short excerpts to hone in on the building of language or skills. Choose your text and its complexity to match the language proficiency of your language learner. This selection can be made at the point of unit planning – when you identify 6 to 8 extracts for the unit so that the teaching of skills, language and discussion of themes can be facilitated for all students.

The teaching of reading, even in high school, is critical as we acknowledge how the texts student access for their learning is constantly increasing in complexity. I’d like to put it out there that all this emphasis on the building blocks to reading goes nowhere if we do not provide texts that students must engage with each and every day, in each lesson.