Hearing anyone discuss nonnative English speakers as if they lack something switches on Jacelyn Smallwood Ramos’s advocacy instinct.
“They’re not a problem to be solved,” says Smallwood Ramos, an assistant English professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Bayamón.
“Students must know that their native language fluency has been valuable from the start and will be valuable to their future. With any other material, we start and build on what is already there. It reminds me of the work of Richard Ruiz.1 He said we approach language historically as a problem, when it can also be seen as a resource and a right.”
English learners (ELs) are the fastest-growing demographic in US public schools. Migration to industrialized nations like the US will continue to drive that growth.
By 2031, 72% of jobs in the US will require postsecondary education or training.2 English is the common language for both business and academia worldwide, so the gainfully employed must communicate well in English.
But it is wrong to think about the 10% of American students—five million of them—who are learning English as if they are filling a void. Since when is learning more a bad thing? What they’re doing is gaining sought-after skills for a global economy.
“Language is a tool and a right because we are responsible for educating our children and helping them succeed,” Smallwood Ramos adds.
Unfortunately, ELs also graduate from college at lower rates than the general population. It’s clear that mastering English is key to college preparation, but Smallwood Ramos encourages complete literacy in both native and target languages.
“Students are often allowed to abandon their native language as if, once they have English down, they can approach subject-matter courses in English,” Smallwood Ramos said. “Literacy skills are paramount no matter which languages you’re learning. Those skills will transfer to the target language.”
Literacy skills—reading, writing, speaking, listening—carry the day because ELLs naturally use native and target languages interchangeably.
Smallwood Ramos herself grew up having older family members speak Spanish to her while she answered in English. When she was teaching English to native Spanish speakers at a Title I school in Maryland as an adult, her students were free to use both—translanguaging.
Seeking cognates—words that share the same origin and meaning and similar spellings and pronunciations—also helps students in the process. English, a Germanic language, borrows roughly 60% of its vocabulary from Latin languages like Spanish and French.
“It’s this Puritan mentality that you shouldn’t taint a language by mixing them,” Smallwood Ramos said. “They’re already overlapping and becoming interrelated in our brains… [Using cognates] allows students to feel more comfortable expressing their thoughts. I had an epiphany when I realized students have to feel safe in order to make mistakes. We don’t grow without making mistakes, but we have to feel safe to take those risks.”
Bridge to Confidence
Attending college, with varying levels of English fluency, is another academic risk ELs want to take. Many ease themselves into postsecondary education via community colleges—some 30% of all American undergraduates attend community colleges.3
Still, a 2019 statistical analysis showed that just 9% of ELs graduated with an associate’s degree within three years of enrolling in a community college (19% within six years of enrollment), and only 1% transferred to a four-year university within three years (10% within six years).4
Jose Serena Jr., dean of student services at Merced (CA) College, said seeing ELs struggle to advance in their education had become an equity issue within California Community Colleges (CCCs). Schools would test and then send ELs into corresponding remedial English and math classes. The tests didn’t tell the full story, remedial courses weren’t transferable to four-year schools, and students were spending money without progressing to degrees.
In 2018, California Assembly Bill 705 then required all 116 CCCs, which have open admissions policies, to consider a student’s high school coursework and GPA, rather than just placement tests, to determine if they were ready for credit-bearing work. The CCCs, the largest educational system in the US with over two million students, were told to place high school graduates in transfer-level English classes right away.
It was determined that ELs who graduated high school did better going directly into transfer-level courses than if they started with remedial courses.5
Serena explained that CCCs are now teaming with four-year institutions to build pathways that include transfer-level, English as second language (ESL)–equivalent courses. And ELs are getting real-time support through tutors embedded in classrooms, as well as traditional tutors beyond that. The schools are also placing certain students in cohorts for introductory courses so they feel welcomed and supported.
Peer Support
Jessica Sanchez, College Board’s BigFutures Teacher of the Year for 2023–24, has students work together in the BigFutures program at Union City (NJ) High School.
“In our building, we already had peer mentors,” Sanchez said. “Through BigFutures, sophomores hear seniors talk about preparing for college, and then they naturally envision themselves getting there as well.” It is a powerful academic and social exchange when ELs experience support from their peers. “When my seniors speak, my sophomores get really comfortable asking questions,” said Sanchez of Union City High, which is 94% Hispanic. “They’re not concerned about being judged. Then, their speaking skills improve. Someone asks a question in Spanish and gets an answer in English. Their listening skills get a workout. Then they are more invested in researching everything else, so their reading skills improve.”
Better Testing
The literacy skills that Sanchez and Smallwood Ramos mention are key to the acquisition of language and preparing for college work. Still, if ELs’ literacy skills are not evaluated correctly, they can be undervalued.
The CCCs saw that in reverse when the law mandated putting ELs straight into credit-bearing classes. They were directed to take that risk, but then those students did fine. In decades past, ELs would not have had a chance to try the classes for credit without passing a standardized test.
“Standardized tests can evaluate many elements [of language learning], but they don’t always hit all of the markers,” said Karin Rossbach, director of the English Language Teaching Department at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala.
The markers Rossbach mentions—she works with the College Board validating items for the PAA Suite, exams analogous to the AP exams and SAT for Latin American countries—are the five areas of “communicative competence.”
Communicative competence is a philosophy of language acquisition that looks at one’s ability to communicate appropriately in various contexts and social settings. The areas are accuracy, which refers to how well we use grammar and pronounce words; fluency, which is how well we keep the flow of conversation going without it breaking down; complexity, which shows how deep and appropriate our vocabulary is while talking about real things; appropriacy, our ability to vary language depending on the context and audience, like saying “hi” vs. “good morning”; and capacity, which refers to the range of ideas and the depth of ideas we can discuss.
“Teachers tend to reduce learning to fluency and accuracy,” Rossbach claims. “Standardized tests do work well for efficiency, rather than for testing academic abilities. Yet they’re not the be-all and end-all. We need a variety of modalities, including a face-to-face or screen-to-screen evaluation of oral skills. There are also AI-aided tests that measure speaking [abilities] such as pronunciation, fluency, and rate of delivery.”
Multiculturalism and Multilingualism Matter
When properly evaluated and supported, ELs can then open other doors. They embrace the beauty of their native languages and cultures.
Yanire Marquez Etxabe, director of the Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish Language and Culture course, and Stephen Johnson, senior director for the AP Spanish Literature course and department head for AP World Languages at the College Board, have seen the value of AP students using both languages in class while also participating in the AP’s WE Service program. The WE Service program takes native-Spanish-speaking students back to their communities to translate for other native speakers.
“So many Spanish speakers have grown up translating for families, then go into careers naturally fulfilling the same role,” Johnson said. “Yet they never realized they should be compensated for it. That skill is so valuable beyond home. They have to be reminded that translating is a gift they’re giving someone, that their intercultural competency is so important because it allows them to interact with the world.”
However, bilingualism is not the same as biliteracy. “It’s important for Spanish speakers to also get a formal education in Spanish,” Etxabe said. “They’re bilingual but not fully biliterate, which is critical when they prepare for careers.”
Etxabe says that universities can better prepare their own professors by teaching intercultural competency. Something simple, like knowing how to pronounce Hispanic names, enables students to feel seen, comfortable, and ready to learn.
Learning in Context
In college, you learn to think critically, communicate, and persuade. Keeping that process connected to the process of acquiring another language, instead of separating them as distinct pursuits, expands students’ potential to excel.
“We have to foster in students a willingness to continue that sort of learning while they’re managing their university work,” Rossbach said.
Do students need to be fully fluent to succeed in college? “However you define ‘college ready,’ it should be the same for everyone,” Sanchez says. “I don’t ever want my [EL] students to feel pigeon-holed or limited… And that’s why, at our high school, we push them out of their comfort zones. Then they know they have to do the same for themselves to succeed in college.”
Links
1. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08855072.1984.10668464
2. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/projections2031/#:~:text=Press%20Release-,Summary,at%20least%20some%20college%20education
3. www.usnews.com/education/community-colleges/articles/reasons-to-consider-community-college
4. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1340105.pdf
5. https://edpolicyinca.org/publications/english-learners-pathways-californias-community-colleges-under-ab-705
Luciana Chavez is a freelance writer and high school board member based in California. Reporting in English and occasionally Spanish, she has written for publications ranging from the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer, the Sporting News, the Everett Herald, and the long-gone Montreal Expos game-day magazine.
