Research Shows Successful ELD Programs Leverage Students' First Language
According to CalEdFacts, 1.3 million students in California public schools are English learners, comprising 20.4 percent of enrollment, and a total of 2.6 million public school students speak another language besides English at home (some of these are English learners). Students and their school districts can benefit when educators support students’ use of their home language as a bridge to efficiently transfer existing knowledge and literacy to English. Home languages can be used judiciously in classroom management, social interactions and instruction to help students learn English, get up to grade level, and ultimately find success in school and beyond.
Benefits of Leveraging First Language for ELLs
Research shows that ELL students receive multiple benefits when schools use their first language (L1) to help them learn English (L2). Five separate meta-analyses have illustrated the same results: “that educational programs that systematically incorporate use of ELLs' home language result in levels of academic success, including achievement in literacy and other academic subjects, that are as high as and often better than that of ELLs in English-only programs (Genesee & Lindholm-Leary).”
Bilingual students benefit cognitively, academically and socially. But schools don’t have to focus on high bilingualism or dual immersion to benefit from leveraging students’ L1 skills for English learning. Studies show that ELLs fail because of a lack of comprehensible input (a minimal understanding of the assigned task). This often occurs when instruction is designed for English speakers (cf. Gunderson, 1985, 1986b, 2004, 2007) without leveraging native literacy. Students do better on standardized tests when they are taught using at least some of their primary language (Greene 1998), and when educators work on first language literacy before English (August, Calderón, and Carlo 2002). Students learn English faster and have higher academic achievement when schools design programs that support students’ use of L1 to access existing knowledge and literacy.
Socially, when students are encouraged to use their home language at school it builds student self-confidence, lets them better connect with their family and culture, and helps them build relationships in their community. Students also benefit cognitively with improvements in creative problem solving, advanced metacognitive development, and executive control. Bilingualism has even been shown to delay age-related mental decline in retrospective studies (Klimova, B., Valis, M., Kuca, K.,2019).
How and When Should Students use First Language in the Classroom?
Most districts know some of the reasons why they need to help students use their primary language to learn English, but they don’t know how best to implement classroom strategies that leverage L1 to improve student outcomes. They may ask, “How will students learn English if they are always speaking their home language at school?” The key is to have a purposeful plan in place that teaches students that their home language is a valuable tool for learning English and outlines when to use L1 and when to use English.
As a start, students should be able to use their home language to understand directions, learn about classroom routines and rules, and to learn vocabulary. Moving beyond the basics, educators should consider how many students in the class speak a particular language and consider how supporting native language will make learning more efficient and effective. A New York State Education Department brief on using first language for second language development outlines great ways to use L1 to support students during peer-to-peer conversations, collaborative work and in pre-writing.
Edweek reports on additional ways to leverage L1 to learn English as recommended by Tan Huynh, the head of the English Language Acquisition Department at Vientiane International School. He lists three reasons to integrate home language into instruction: 1) to foster comprehensible input (Krashen, 1981), 2) to encourage social interactions and 3) to facilitate comprehensible output (Krashen, 1981). Huynh outlines specific classroom examples in the article:
To foster comprehensible input Huynh allows students to use their home language to build context, understand vocabulary and read texts.
To boost social interactions he encourages them to work collaboratively and communicate opinions in their home language.
For comprehensible output he allows them at times to use their home language when writing text, learning grammar and talking as drafting.
Using Drawp to Support ELLs in L1 and L2
Bilingual scaffolding tools are crucial for supporting students as they make the transition from their primary language to English. Scaffolding tools help students access existing knowledge, transfer knowledge from L1 to L2, and acquire new knowledge. Teachers can provide a mix of native language, bilingual or English language scaffolding at different points as needed along a student’s learning journey. The most efficient and effective way to scaffold ELLs is with the NSF-backed Drawp ELL Tool.
The Drawp tool provides a bank of prewritten sentence frames and questions in a personalized mix of depth-of-knowledge and proficiency levels in L1 and L2. Teachers can adjust the level of scaffolding as a student progresses through English learning over time. Drawp’s text and audio scaffolding tools can be linked to any curriculum, and the Drawp platform also allows for meaningful collaboration between students and feedback from the teacher.
The research is overwhelmingly in support of using students’ primary language to learn English. Resources abound that illustrate ways to support L1 in your school or district. See the links below for resource lists, lessons and additional research.
Response: ELL Students' Home Language Is an Asset, Not a 'Barrier' - EdWeek
Response: Understanding the Benefits of a Student's Home Language - EdWeek
The Home Language: An English Language Learner's Most Valuable Resource - Colorin Colorado
Topic Brief 5: Dispelling the Myth of “English Only”: Understanding the Importance of the First Language in Second Language Learning - NY State Education Dept./West Ed
The Best Resources Explaining Why We Need To Support The Home Language Of ELLs - Larry Ferlazzo, Edublogs
The Use of First Language in the Second-Language Classroom: A Support for Second Language Acquisition - Madrinan, Gist Education and Learning Research Journal
The Drawp ELL Tool, a bank of bilingual scaffolding tools to support English learners, was created in partnership with the Los Angeles County Office of Education and the Val Verde Unified School District. The Drawp ELL Tool can be used to support all learners of any skill level and in any subject.
Drawp for School is an all-in-one K-12 platform for creation, collaboration, content and workflow management. It includes rich design tools, swipe-to-share collaboration and unlimited cloud storage. Drawp’s accessibility tools, text-to-speech, voice recording, and ELL supports help teachers reach students wherever they are. The free Drawp Resource Marketplace provides teachers with an easy-to-access repository of standards-aligned educational resources to download and share.
Drawp for School is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.
August, D., Calderón, M., & Carlo, M. (2002). Transfer of Skills from Spanish to English: A Study of Young Learners. Submitted to the Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students, ED-98-CO-0071.
Genesee, F., & Lindholm-Leary, K. (in press). The education of English language learners. In K. Harris, S. Graham, & T. Urdan (Eds), APA Handbook of Educational Psychology.Washington DC: APA Books.
Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does — and does not — say. American Educator, 32, 8-23, 42-44.
Greene, J. P. (1997). A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of bilingual education. Austin: University of Texas, The Tomas Rivera Policy Institute.
Gunderson, L. (1983a). ESL students: Don't throw them to the sharks. Highway One, 6, 33– 44.
Gunderson, L. (1985). “L2 reading instruction in ESL and mainstream classrooms.” In J. Niles & R. Lalik (Eds.), Issues in literacy: A research perspective (pp. 65– 69). Rochester, NY: National Reading Conference.
Gunderson, L. (1986b). ESL students and content reading. TESL Canada Journal, 4, 49– 53.
Gunderson, L. (2004). The language, literacy, achievement, and social consequences of English-only programs for immigrant students. In J. Hoffman & D. Schallert (Eds.), The NRC Yearbook (pp. 1– 27). Milwaukee, WI: National Reading Conference.
Gunderson, L. (2007). English-only instruction and immigrant students in secondary schools: A critical examination. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Gunderson, L., Murphy Odo, D., & D'Silva, R. (2014). ESL (ELL) Literacy Instruction: A Guidebook to Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Routledge.
Klimova, B., Valis, M., Kuca, K. (2019, October 19) Bilingualism as a strategy to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5656355/.
Krashen, S. (1999). Why Malherbe (1946) is NOT evidence against bilingual education. Accessed January 20, 2013 at http:// www.languagepolicy.net/archives/Krashen4.htm.
Krashen, S. (1981). Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
Kovacs, A.M., & J. Mehler, J. (2009). Cognitive gains in 7-month-old infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(16), 6556-6550.
Lindholm, K.J., & Aclan, Z. (1991). Bilingual proficiency as a bridge to academic achievement: Results from bilingual/immersion programs. Journal of Education 173, 99-113.
