ELL Instruction. Politics and Performance

Essay from the year 2011 in the subject Didactics - English - Pedagogy, Literature Studies, grade: A, Northern Arizona University, language: English, abstract: There is intense political polarization over immigration in border states like Arizona and California, and public schools are a major battleground in the cultural war. Most elected officials and the pressure groups that court them piously claim that their particular agenda has no motive beyond doing what is best for the children, and likewise share the goal of teaching English to students who have little or no faculty with it. There has been a plethora of academic studies about the relative merits of both bilingual and immersion strategies, though like the political debate that inspires them they tend to generate more heat than light. Beyond the heated rhetoric and nativist passion, it seems that both styles of language instruction can be successful if they are girded by the things all students need: quality instruction and learning materials, patience, and individual attention.