Challenges and Implications

An Analysis of the Different Challenges and Implications

That Occur While Teaching Writing to ELL Students,

and Learning to Write English as an ELL Student

Kara Schlesinger

Bay Path University

An Analysis of the Different Challenges and Implications That Occur While Teaching Writing to ELL Students, and Learning to Write English as an ELL Student

When teaching English Language Learner (ELL) students, there are challenges that present themselves for both the teacher and the student while learning and teaching writing. There are also implications and adaptations that both the teacher and student can take to better accommodate for an equally enriching learning experience as non- English Language Learner students in the writing process. With ELL students, there are also different types of writing assessments that can be taken to measure the ELL students ability to comprehend and perform the appropriate tasks.

When teaching writing to an ELL student, it is key to remember that both reading and writing are integrated together and learned as a joint unit. ELL students need a lot of additional practice writing compared to non-ELL students. When they are doing their practice, they are also suggested to sound out the phonetic sounds as they write to aid them in success. Because ELL students need to use most of their cognitive resources to express and organize their ideas, (Deussen, Autio, Miller, Stewart, & Turnbaugh Lockwood, 2008) it is important to remember that fluent spelling is one of the key success components to fluent writing. In other words, it’s vital to demonstrate eloquent spelling in other to have voluble writing. Using a writing journal daily can help aid in this process.

 According to Deussen, Autio, Miller, Stewart, & Turnbaugh Lockwood, 2008, it is important to not use red pen and not mark every error wrong. The reasoning behind this is because it doesn’t effectively make a different in a student’s writing. The errors distract the reader as opposed to disfigure the meaning of the writing piece, like one would think. Instead, it was suggested that teachers observe the errors their student makes in writing and keep an open mind to a pattern and/or constant mistakes that can be solved upon interpretation. This allows the instructor to have insight on the student’s thought processes with enough observation.

According to Lenski, & Verbruggen, 2010, scaffolding instruction and assignments as well as providing multiple portrayals of concepts can be really helpful to the ELL students. For example, providing examples and aids for writing paragraphs could look something like a fill-in-the-blank type aid. It could allow the student to see the structure the writing needs to be in but countenances the student to make his/her own original ideas.

One key element in the teacher’s instruction is to understand that there is a big difference between conversational language and academic language. To touch upon this, instructors should provide specific instruction in an academic language to portray this language onto the student to become familiar with it.