Western offers help to ELL students

     By Damon Hodge
     View staff writer
      Imagine sitting in class and understanding only 10 percent of the course work.
      It's a problem many English Language Learners students face, says Brenda Taylor, ELL facilitator at Western High School.
      Jumping linguistic hurdles demands resolve. But the rewards, though simple, are empowering -- the ability to talk to a lawyer, fill out a scholarship application, answer or, in the case of Taylor's students, do skits on the parts of speech.
      Nearly 20 percent of Western's 2,100 students are English Language Learners. They come from dozens of countries and 19 different language bases, all with one goal: to learn English.
      Western's ELL program began four years ago. A staff of three full-time teachers and Taylor cater to 400 pupils, including 100 ELL graduates whose scholastic progress is being tracked.
      Taylor, who has a master's degree in ELL and English from the University of Texas, specializes in language acquisition. A stickler for grammar, she gives ELL students pre-class exercises on capitalization, punctuation, identifying parts of speech and combining sentences.
      It's part of immersion.
      "We have three years to teach them 11 years of English," she said. "If they come to us in the 11th grade, then we have even less time to teach."
      The first step is measuring aptitude. Tests determine what and how many courses students take. Socioeconomic factors, background, lifestyle and individual learning capability dictate learning and teaching style.
      Someone who's lived on a farm and communicated with gestures may have difficulty with mouthing a new language, Taylor said. If you come from a place where oral communication dominates, learning to writing a new idiom can be tough.
      "They're not taking a foreign language, they're learning a new language," Taylor said. "Once foreign language class ends, you don't speak the language again until the next class. We're teaching language acquisition -- linguistics. This is a totally new language."
      Wasen Alemu, a 16-year-old junior from Ethiopia, still speaks her native Americk tongue in the home even though her parents speak English. She's been in the United States a year and is gaining confidence in her English.
      Part of immersion, teachers say, involves conditioning to read, think, write and respond in English.
      The newest immigrants -- here less than six months -- get placed in the American Language Course which is being piloted at Western this year.
      The curriculum is taken from Lackland Air Force Base's English-immersion program. Thousands of military and civilian students from more than 70 countries come to the San Antonio military base's Defense Language Institute English Language Center to learn English.
      The Clark County School District purchased the $30,000 program last year, becoming one of the first school districts in the nation to do so. Rancho started with a program for beginning-level students; Las Vegas used the first four levels.
      Jane Parsons, administrative specialist for secondary programs for the English Language Learners Department, said the Lackland program is in place at Clark, Desert Pines, Mojave, Rancho, Valley and Western -- schools with the highest ELL populations. Several middle schools have less-intensive versions of the course -- they take two classes instead of four. She said there are 25,000 ELL students in the school district.
      "From what I've seen on school visits, students are happy with the program and seem to be learning well," she said. "Teachers also like it because it seems to be getting results."
      Parsons said the grammar component strengthens language fundaments and the extensive assignments provide valuable practice. There's also a reading component.
      Next year, she said, ELL instruction should be available in core content areas -- science, math and social studies. The school district is also looking into language-enhancing software in reading, writing and math.
      Most Western pupils have been in the United States since August. ELL teacher Jeff Goebel's sixth-period class has students from seven countries; 95 percent of their parents don't speak English. His class has progressed from the alphabet to short sentences.
      Taylor's students like the pre-class grammar exercises.
      Omar Ortiz's group prepared a musical skit on prepositions and the types and uses of conjunctions. The students also created a mock test asking about prepositions and conjunctions.
      By creating tests, the students demonstrate understanding, Taylor said.
      Edgar Serrano, a 16-year-old freshman from Mexico City, said he's learned English pretty fast in 18 months, thanks to the structured curriculum.
      "It's hard, but fun," he said.
      But it's not all work. ELL students with perfect attendance, good behavior and with few missed homework assignments get lunch with a mentor from the community. It's a reward, Taylor says, for staying in school despite the learning curve.