Enhancing ELL Students Engagement through Effective Writing

Abstract 

Teaching students who speak a foreign language to know how to speak English and involving them in a lesson in a mainstream seems challenging for them to attain maximum performance in the lesson. The involvement of ELL students seems to be difficult because of differences in multicultural that exist among the teacher and many diverse nationalities that encompass ELL students. Writing has been noted to be an effective tool for involving students from all paradigms on material taught and declining occurrences of foreign language among ELL students. This research studies the incidence of foreign language in various classes for ELL students to establish how writing effectively alleviates the occurrence of anxiety for student in coincidence with English or second language assignments and if it helps ELL students get out of their beliefs to facilitate retention and learning of English for the students learning English as second language. 

Introduction 

Teachers are often on the move to find ways to enhance classroom performance. This is with the aim to help English language learners in a classroom. To increase the probability of continuity and success for ELL students writing has been identifying as an important tool to facilitate completion of complex activities needed for learning English. It was discovered that writing and group activities might help to reduce strictness of language anxiety and writing apprehension and improve performance achieved by ELL students in the completion of English language activity. The value of coupling ELL students into groups employing associative learning skills shows that these situations support oral participation as ELL students cooperate with each other through writing and group learning. There emerged increase in their motivation, the students took the initiative and encountered lower levels in anxiety considering their learning. The use of writing by teachers as a tool to improve performance for ELL students has proved to be more effective and successful. 

Benefits of Enhancing Adolescent Age Students in Writing 

Adolescents need to be competitive in writing for their achievement of best results in their lives, workplace, and school. Writing viewed as a flexible tool applied in meeting various goals, it enables adolescents to converse with other peers from various places. This promotes a heritage sense and purpose in large organizations and groups. In China, there was a national unity fostered in the adoption of writing standard system over 2,300 years. This brought a powerful means in convincing other youths. Adolescents apply writing in exploring their experiences, combat loneliness and identify themselves. Writing about an individual's experiences and feelings, for instance, is beneficial physiologically and psychologically. Writing is viewed as a useful learning tool for an adolescent. When a group involves in permanent writing, they generate available information for evaluation and review. This improves adolescent’s connections and sharing of ideas that may foster unexamined exploration assumptions. 

Research 

Primary research guiding question in the review was instructional practices in enhancing adolescent students’ quality writing. Adolescents who did not learn how to write better were disadvantaged in many disciplines. According to National Commission on writing, the journal states that weaker adolescent writers were less likely in comparison to skilled classmates apply writing in extending and supporting learning in classrooms (National Commission on writing, 2009). Their grades were likely to hurt mainly in lessons where writing was the key method of assessing progress. Opportunities of going to college were reduced due to increase in universities writing an application in evaluating applicants’ qualifications. Writing was viewed as a promotion and employment gateway in companies mainly in salary positions. 

Despite the writing benefit, too many adolescents do not engage in learning quality writing to attain the school demands or employment sector. Findings from the Journal of National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that adolescents lack competitive development in writing required at their qualified grade levels. Apart from minor improvements shown from previous assessment, more students in 12 th , 8 th , and 4 th grade were seen as below proficiency grade. 

In the report of National Commission on Writing, it finalized that US student writing was not what was perceived (National Commission on Writing, 2009). Similarly, college instructors predicted that 50% percent of graduates from high school were not equipped for writing demands of college level, whereas US businesses spend over $3.1 billion yearly for remediation writing. 

According to Kelly Gallagher in his, book Reversing Readicide, one possible factor why adolescents’ writing was not the way it was perceived to be was due to administrators and teachers acquiring confused voluminous material coverage with educating adolescents how to read and think critically (Gallagher, 2010). This was based on a notion that facts change thus schools need to nurture skills and attributes, which are based on emerging expert inhabitants in creatively solving issues, embracing teamwork and appreciating failure and success. Gallagher adds that when guiding our students to be thoughtful adults possessing desired qualities, we should be willing to tackle the underlying issue where America’s students are lacking general disinclination and reading proficiency. The author being a teacher takes five periods in English 9 th grade where his class has 68 percent population of Hispanic students, over a third are ELL, and 40 languages were spoken in University (Gallagher, 2010). He explains that the main factors involved in the creation of illiteracy in students are trend-reversing, educators over teaching books, teachers under teaching books, limitation of schools authentic experiences and school development of test takers than readers. 

The valuable approach applied in the identification of instructional practices, which had power in transforming skills in students writing, was to perform a systematic review on writing research intervention (New York Times, 2008). Relevant investigations meta-analysis was conducted. Meta-analysis was applied in summarizing the direction and magnitude of obtained effects in the form of studies of empirical research in the examination of similar basic phenomena. The New York article reports on comprehensive meta-analysis that was boosted by Carnegie Corporation (New York Times, 2008). The main purpose review of the article was to identify effectual teaching practices of writing to youths who are students enrolled in grades starting from 4-12. The analysis attributed best suits research paper due to the provision of quality writing in adolescent students. The sufficient availability of studies enabled examination of the relationship among particular study in person-selected topics having high interaction levels with peers involving acquiring of generally positive feedback. 

The research performed by National Universities Commission explains that to reap literacy benefits in developed technological era, adolescents are required to enhance strong writing techniques (National Universities Commission, 2011). This goal being critical is seen as un achievable by American youths. These adolescents future aspirations seems to be in danger due to strong writing experience required to be victorious at the postsecondary level in obtaining over the menial workforce and participating fully as community adult members. 

Lack of Technology 

Lack of technology by ELL students exposes them to some challenges during their learning process when the teachers employ technology in teaching. Educators find it an effective way to teach different skills to students using digit technology. They state that technology plays a vital role by offering ELL students structured and on point English practice that they require (Beck & Llosa, 2013). ELL students who do not have this technology find it hard to learn, as they demand the skill of it to enhance their engagements and learning. Digital technology is presented as a supplement tool for teaching as it enhances communication among ELL students hence increasing verbal exchange happening within the classroom environment. Lack of digital technology within ELL students makes learning hectic for them as the teacher employ the use of it. The students will have a difficult time in during inter activity among them (Beck & Llosa, 2013). ELL students who lack digital technology find it hard to learn basic language techniques and learn how to apply them later in their communal setting. Digital technology permits students to be deeply involved in the language since it brings a feature of unpredictability, through mixing up things so that ELL students remain engaged in mode traditional class do not permit. Therefore, without technology in ELL learning students will achieve his predestined performance in English. 

Communication Difficulties 

Communication has become an overriding issue for teaching ELL students. The essence of poor communication between teachers, students, community and parents pose a great challenge in improving ELL student’s performance. Well-organized web-based discussions and chats boards' permits students' reliable way of communication that encourages active participation among students and teachers (Beck & Llosa, 2013). This is because ELLs is perceived to be introverted because of language barriers, through online discussion they can post voice and hear without having to worry about their details of spelling or mispronunciation. This implies that with ample communication there will be reduced issues of misbehaving among the ELL students. The reason being that the ELL students have a platform to air out their grievances or any issue they feel uncouth to them via communication. When ELL students find it hard to communicate in English and face some ridicule from fellow native English speakers' students and teachers for mispronunciations they turn to be arrogant. They feel intimidated leading to most of them start misbehaving during learning lesson and not paying attention. This indicates that for efficacy in ELL education, there must be good communication between students, teachers, and community to curb misbehaving among ELL students. Through a good means of communication, students can engage with each other well and improve their behavior. 

Blooms Taxonomy 

In employing blooms taxonomy, the teachers have an added advantage to enhance higher order thinking in the classroom. This will promote both communications between ELL students and teachers hence reducing the incidence of misbehavior among ELL students. It is also vital that teaching English language teachers must employ high point of thinking techniques. Through incorporating Bloom's Taxonomy and IT into Classroom proficiency in the English language can be improved (Beck & Llosa, 2013). Teachers can use Bloom's Taxonomy as a teaching to create higher order thinking skills. Information technologies such as podcasts, blogs, Facebook, Twitter Prezi, text messaging, search engines and blogs are useful in creating open ended, constructivist and thematic tasks that facilitate English mastery and profound learning of English (Beck & Llosa, 2013). These technology tools and Bloom's Technology promote deep learning, comprising of students' self- esteem, critical thinking, decision-making, solving of problem practically and self-direction. 

Teachers can employ these by teaching their students first lower order thinking techniques and develop to higher thinking order skills. Teachers should design their visuals to be used in teachings contain all the six phases of Bloom's Taxonomy. Firstly, they must design model to enable ELL student to acquire knowledge at this stage student can easily remember materials previously learned. The second step is comprehension where they design means to assist students to know the meaning of material learned. The third step is the application, where teachers should make the student be able to apply material learned in real and new situations. The fourth part is analysis, whereby teachers should master that their students can break down materials to components parts, which may be well understood by organizational structure. The fifth level, synthesis is the higher order level of thinking where teachers ought to ensure that their students may use relationships or communications to gather the parts together and form a new thing. Lastly, Evaluation is the last level and highest order level in thinking skill, at this point, teachers should enhance students to be able to critic the value of the material in any given purpose. In the application of these Taxonomy level, the students may show how to complete a project by applying option presented to them. 

References 

Beck, S. W., & Llosa, L. (2013). The Challenges of Writing Exposition: Lessons From a Study of ELL and Non-ELL High School Students. Reading & Writing Quarterly , 29 (4), 358-380. 

Gallagher, K. (2010). On Developing Readers: Readings from Educational Leadership . Alexandria VA. 

National Commission on Writing (2009, November 15). Teachers Are the Center of Education: Profiles of Eight Teachers. The National Commission on Writing and College Board Series of Reports . 

National Universities Commission (2011, October 9). National Universities commission, National virtual library. African Studies Companion Online . 

New YorkTimes (2008). Teaching Science to English Language Learners: Building on Students' Strengths. ELL adolescent students are writing .