This English Language Development course is designed to support English Language Learners as they develop beginning English proficiency. The major emphasis of this course is to promote a balanced English Language Development (ELD) program that provides students who are English Learners with opportunities to develop skills in English reading, writing, listening, speaking, and language to comprehend texts and tasks in both English/Language Arts courses and other contentarea courses. In alignment with the California English Language Development standards, instruction in this course will focus on building students’ proficiency with collaborative language (engagement in dialogue with others), interpretive language (comprehension and analysis of written and spoken texts), and productive language (creation of oral presentations and written texts), and in developing their metalinguistic awareness (their awareness and self‐monitoring of language) and accuracy of English language production. Students will learn systematic strategies in English reading, writing, and organization that will enable them to listen, speak, think, read, and write about content material for any core course. Instruction includes Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) strategies in order to foster language acquisition through stated/written language objectives, comprehensible input, TPR, phonemic awareness and decoding, word recognition, and effective scaffolding strategies that ensure rigor is maintained while higher levels of language proficiency are attained.
Representative performance outcomes and skills are the ability students show to: 1) develop English reading, writing, listening, and/or speaking skills that are necessary for reclassification; 2) contribute pertinent information to class or group discussions and participate in other appropriate oral language situations; 3) give examples of literal and implied meaning of words and trace their derivations; 4) follow directions and a sequence of events or ideas presented in oral or written form; 5) distinguish between major and minor facts and details, opinion, and inference in content area materials; 6) trace the etymology of words and use knowledge of roots and affixes to understand their meanings; and 7) use various reference materials (e.g., dictionary, thesaurus, card catalogue, encyclopedia, online information) as aids to writing.
