Teaching English Learners: The Stages of Second Language Acquisition

Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: What about English learners? What about those students who are just now developing their language?

We're going to understand that it's their second language and what opportunities have they had? So when you first come to this new language, guess what you're doing? We call it the silent period. It's not really so silent. But what it means is they're taking in this new language, and they're trying to figure out how it works. It's not that they're not learning. They're not yet willing to risk-take and speak to you. And then they move into those early production stages where they might speak in one- or two-word phrases or answer, simple yes-or-no questions. And then they move into, ah, now I can do some simple sentences. And they get really excited to share because now they are feeling much more confident because you have set up that environment. And then we say they move into the intermediate stage where now they're really conversing, they're engaging, they're going beyond the simple sentences.

They're speaking in more complex sentences. And finally they get to the advanced stage where we say it takes about five to seven years to get to that advanced language stage where they can communicate beautifully in this new language, and it's equal to their monolingual English speaking peers. So we've got to be patient, but we've got to be monitoring that second language acquisition. So every educator out there must know: what are those language milestones? What are they in your first language? And how does it develop in that second language, because we're going to apply that to our literacy instruction. It's very easy. If you're worried about some students that you can actually take a language sample and ask questions, engage them, ask them about what they did over the weekend. Ask them about, um, you know, what's their favorite hobby or their favorite sport, and get them to speak to you and to be a formal language sample.

And you can look to see what are the patterns that they have today? And can I explicitly work on some patterns that they need for tomorrow? And when I walk into classrooms, I see a lot of opportunities for students: sentence builders, sentence starters. But we need to get to the root of why aren't they speaking in complete sentences? What skills do they have? What does that syntax look like in their language? What does it look like in this second language? And how can I build upon that? Do they have the noun with the verb? Can they put a noun and a verb and an object together, right? Can they expand it with some conjunctions? Do they have pronouns? Do they have adjectives and adverbs? That's taking it from a very systematic and explicit approach. And that's what we do when we work with children that struggle with building those language skills.
We do it in a very systematic way. And I gave you what those milestones were: one-year-old, one word; two-year-old, 2; 3, 3; 4, 4; 5, 5; 6, 6; 7, 7. If they're speaking in seven- or eight- word sentences, I'm happy. You're good.