Scholarly Articles

The below resources are intended for educators who are looking for valuable and interesting research that has been completed on ESL learners. These articles discuss various topics and subject matter that can help strenghten your understanding of ESL learners and provide information on what can be done to help these individuals learn and succeed.

"Why Didn't They Show Up" - Rethinking ESL Parent Involvement in K-12 Education

          By Yan Guo           

    Yan Guo’s article discusses the difficultly in getting ESL parents involved in K-12 education. Guo found that the absence of ESL parents from school was often misinterpreted as parents’ lack of concern about their children’s education; however, ESL parents indicated that they cared passionately. This article discuses the barriers that hinder some parents from participating in their children’s education, parents’ and teachers’ varying perspectives on ESL learning, and successful strategies to improve ESL parents participation. 

Why Didn’t They Show Up-” Rethinking ESL Parent Involvement in K-12 Education.pdf (71,2 kB)

    Roessingh’s article integrates findings from earlier research linking distinct patterns of achievement for diverse age-on-arrival cohorts of ESL learners on the grade 12 Alberta English language arts examination to their vocabulary and reading comprehension scores on a standardized measure over time. This article considers ESL program effects and the connection between age on arrival, vocabulary size, and achievement outcomes as reflected on the ELA examination and compares the ESL students’ scores with those of a random sample of their native-speaking academic counterparts to note patterns among the various cohorts of learners. The results suggest that measures of language proficiency can be used to gain direct insights into students’ academic achievement.

Variability in ESL Outcomes.pdf (200,6 kB)

ESL Students Speak Up: Their Stories of How We Are Doing

By Yasuko Kanno and Sheila Dermer Applebaum

    This study explores the ESL curriculum as experienced by students. Kanno and Applebaum invited three Japanese secondary-level students to discuss their experiences of learning English and analyzed their stories in terms of four curriculum commonplaces - learner, subject matter, milieu, and teacher. Their analysis revealed that for the students, learning English has to do with negotiating their identities in a new environment. As the current ESL curriculum focuses on the development of academic skills, these authors suggest that educators may not be providing enough support to ESL students to integrate them into the school community. In the absence of such support, some students may run the risk of continuing their marginality in the school and prematurely reaching a plateau in their English acquisition. With this said, some practical ideas to promote integration, some of which are already implemented in Canadian schools, are discussed.

ESL Students Speak Up.pdf (879,1 kB)

Teachers’ Assessment of ESL Students in Mainstream Classes: Challenges, Strategies, and Decision-Making

By Terry Milnes and Liying Cheng

    Given the increasing numbers of ESL students in Canadian classrooms, this study investigated how teachers of mainstream classes assess the written work of ESL students and whether they use different assessment strategies for ESL versus non-ESL students. Interviews were conducted with seven mainstream teachers from a private high school in Ontario. Although within-school variation was evident in the participants’ approaches to assessing the work of both ESL and non-ESL students, most participants modified their assessment strategies when marking the work of ESL students. The authors explain that this finding suggests a need for school-level discussions and structured professional development activities relating to assessing ESL students’ work.

Teachers’ Assessment of ESL Students in Mainstream Classes.pdf (84,3 kB)

Toward Quality ESL Education

By Hieu Van Ngo

    This article draws on the results from 18 round-table discussions and a symposium that involved community, education, and government stakeholders in building a vision for quality, equitable ESL education. The findings suggest six pillars of effective ESL education: comprehensive programming; responsive funding allocation; cultural competence; networking, collaboration, and coordination; capacity building and advocacy; and effective leadership. Also examined in this article are the notions of the educational entitlement of ESL learners and the roles of community, education, and government stakeholders in building effective ESL education.

Toward Quality ESL Education.pdf (651,2 kB)

ESL Placement and Schools Effects on Immigrant Achievement

By Rebecca Callahan, Lindsey Wilkinson, Chandra Muller, and Michelle Frisco

    In this study, the authors explore English as a Second Language (ESL) placement as a measure of how schools label and process immigrant students. Using propensity score matching and data from the Adolescent Health and Academic Achievement Study and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the authors estimate the effect of ESL placement on immigrant achievement. In schools with more immigrant students, the authors find that ESL placement results in higher levels of academic performance, while in schools with few immigrant students, the effect reverses. The authors do argue that this is not to suggest a one-size-fits-all policy as many immigrant students, regardless of school composition, generational status, or ESL placement, struggle to achieve at levels sufficient for acceptance to a four-year university program. This study offers several factors to be taken into consideration as schools develop policies and practices to provide immigrant students opportunities to learn.

ESL Placement and Schools.pdf (114,7 kB)

All articles were accessed through York University.