6 Strategies for Teaching English

6 Strategies for Teaching English – Over 10 percent of students in the United States—more than 4.8 million kids—are English language learners (ELLs), and the number is on the rise. Though these students do not learn differently than their native-English-speaking peers, they do have particular educational needs.

6 Strategies for Teaching English

To learn about these needs and the best practices for addressing them I interviewed a range of educators and observers. Including Larry Ferlazzo, an educator and author of The ESL/ELL Teacher’s Survival Guide; longtime teachers of English as a second language (ESL) Emily Francis and Tan Huynh; and the journalist Helen Thorpe, who spent a year observing a teacher who works with ELLs. 

The group emphasized that the strategies listed here, which include both big-picture mindsets and nitty-gritty teaching tactics, can be incorporated into all classrooms, benefiting both native English speakers and ELLs.

Emily Francis, an ESL teacher in Concord, North Carolina, makes clear that she wants her students to “embrace their culture and their language as a foundation of who they are”. She considers that their acquisition of a new culture and language is not as subtractive, but as additive. To help support students who may never have attended school before or may be coping with migration-based trauma, Francis emphasizes that little things make a big difference. “The first thing that I need to think about is, how is my student feeling in my classroom?” she says. “Are they sitting next to a buddy they can ask a question in their home language? Do they feel comfortable tapping me on the shoulder if they have to go to the bathroom?”

Learn more about this topic by reading on Edutopia.

After reading “6 Strategies for Teaching English “, you can check important issues for ESL teachers on the section PDFs. And visit my channel by YouTube.