Chapter 2: Ells And L2 Acquisition Theories

Samantha Oríz came to the United States from Honduras when she was six years old. Samantha started school from the first grade. She was required to receive the daily ESOL service because she didn’t speak English. Her father spoke some English and worked on a sod farm; her mother did not speak any English and stayed home to take care of the children. Every day Samantha’s mother checked her schoolwork and that of her siblings to make sure that the children completed their homework. Samantha was shy but polite. By the end of the second grade, Samantha was able to speak English. In fact, her oral English became very good and she could tell stories in English. In the third grade, Samantha was mainstreamed. However, at the beginning of the fourth grade, her teacher noticed that Samantha struggled with her social studies, math, and science lesson content. She could not understand the concepts in these subject areas. Her teacher was confused about why she could speak English so well but could not understand the content lessons in English. What Samantha struggled with most was understanding math or science concepts. This made the teacher think that Samantha could have a learning disability. According to the teacher, if Samantha had fluent oral English, she should be able to understand the lesson content in English. The teacher knew that Samantha had been in America for four years and thus began to think that Samantha might need to be diagnosed to see what her learning disability issue was.