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Ellie's Use Of English As A Second Language

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Within the library, all the students are given a new reading assignment; however, there is one girl, Ellie, who is set apart from the rest. Ellie is a recent immigrant from Israel whose English is not adequate enough to comprehend anything the librarian has told her and must struggle to keep up with her classmates. This is the plot of the movie Foreign Letters, which details the childhood of a young immigrant girl during the early 1980’s. The movie also sheds light on the entrance of ESL programs into the public education system , which have recently faced opposition. However, ESL programs, which include two-language transition programs to English, are extremely important and give many benefits to children especially those from immigrant backgrounds. …show more content…

Many instructors were offset by this because many of their foreign students were behind their English speaking students. This issue led to the invention of two-language ESL (English as a Second Language) programs. ESL had been designed to assist students in learning English alongside their native tongue in school ,with hopes of greater academic achievement. However, there are still people who would prefer the use of English Immersion instead of utilizing ESL programs. ESL is typically used with students who do not speak English in their home environment, including the growing number of United States citizens who do not have or do not speak English within their homes. The amount of people who speak more than one language at home (excluding English) “has soared by 140 percent” (Myers). In addition, “the school-aged population has grown… 10 percent” (Myers).With this increase of young students and multilingualism in homes, the need for ESL programs has become an increasingly significant issue if America wants to progress globally with an ever growing diverse population. If this issue is ignored, leaving the children without English assistance, the academic performance of these multilingual students will suffer as …show more content…

Sean Reardon, a Stanford scholar who worked along with SFUSD found,” growth [in test scores] by fifth grade…[surpassed] those in English only” (Myers). This is not to say that this development happened instantly, instead it took place over a few years. A non-native speaker whose only exposure to English is in an approximately forty minute session five times a week,should not be expected to reach fluency within a year. Despite this, the results of this study should not be ignored. From the training these children receive, they will be more vastly wanted in the job market. How so? It is widely known that being bilingual , the chance of getting a job will be higher opposed to a monolingual

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