Chapter 9: Technological Skills for Teaching English Language Learners

According to the U.S. Census, it is estimated that more than 55 million people in the United States are minority speakers, with Spanish the most common minority language having a total of 34.5 million speakers, followed by Chinese with 2.4 million speakers, and French with almost 2 million speakers (Shin & Kominski, 2010). Immigrants are transforming the face of America in a way similar to how European immigrants did during the 19th century. But the present wave of young immigrants is highly diverse, and they are presenting many challenges for the teachers that have little experience with them. The majority of immigrant children have been categorized as English language learners (ELLs) upon arrival in the United States. However, students in this category show different levels of English proficiency. More than 70% of newcomers report that they have a certain level of English proficiency, some even report that they speak only English at home, and a small percentage have very limited English proficiency (Garcia, Jensen, & Scribner, 2009). Currently, it is estimated that around 14 million children enrolled in schools are ELLs (August & Shanahan, 2006), an incremental increase from the 10.8 million reported in the 2000 U.S. Census (Capps, Fix, Murray, Ost, Passel, & Herwantoro, 2005). This number is expected to keep growing steadily and faster than for other populations, especially considering that the newcomers have more children than other parents (Capps et al., 2005; Garcia et al., 2009).