6 Strategies To Increase Emergent Bilingual Students' Language Acquisition

Emergent Bilinguals, also known as English Learners, are one of the fastest-growing student segments in schools, accounting for roughly 10% of all U.S. students. Effective teachers are crucial to Emergent Bilinguals’ ability to master English and meet academic standards. Educators prepared with bilingual teaching strategies can accommodate these learners. They can effectively adapt instruction and create a positive, equitable learning environment that bridges literacy gaps and fosters the growth of all students. 

Students whose first language isn’t English have unique needs because they do double duty in school: They are simultaneously learning a new language and their lesson content. They are well equipped to do so, but they still need and deserve to be met with the understanding and appreciation it takes to do this extra work. By honoring this hard work and dedication, we can encourage positive identity formation and avoid labeling these hard workers as an “intervention group.”

Of course, teachers want to support these students in their English acquisition journey. However, not all teachers understand how to best instruct Emergent Bilinguals’ or multilingual learners. Culturally responsive and sustaining instruction centered on the strengths, needs, and perspectives of all students is an excellent way to celebrate and support a diverse student population.

Here are six strategies to help Emergent Bilinguals’ work toward English proficiency.

1. Embrace the heritage language

To address these students’ needs, teachers must be knowledgeable about their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. This includes a basic understanding of each student’s first language. Understanding the language can be as basic as being able to correctly pronounce a student’s name. While this may seem like a small matter, taking the time to learn the correct pronunciation signals to Emergent Bilingual students they are accepted and important. As a result, they feel less anxiety in the classroom environment, which frees more of their emotional and cognitive bandwidth for learning.

Research has also found Emergent Bilingual students are able to transfer many skills from their first language to facilitate their acquisition of reading skills in the second language. A student’s heritage language provides background knowledge, such as grammar, teachers can leverage to help students learn a new language. When teachers have a more sophisticated understanding of the grammar and syntax of a student’s heritage language, they can reference specific elements to aid Emergent Bilinguals’ learning.

Teachers can take advantage of the language mechanisms and skills the student already knows and understands, and position learning English as an opportunity for growth.

By taking an asset-minded approach, educators can honor learners and what they already know and place value on their prior knowledge and lived experiences.

2. Combine spoken words with visual aids to enhance listening comprehension

Emergent Bilinguals often have difficulty mentally translating oral explanations or instructions at the same speed as their teachers are speaking. Bilingual strategies to help Emergent Bilinguals better understand spoken instructions include modeling the actions with gestures when giving explanations.

Teachers can also provide students with written or digital visuals for further support. Providing written aids can be as simple as writing key pieces of information, such as academic terms, on the board while speaking. 

In addition, teachers can help Emergent Bilinguals’ learn academic language by creating vocabulary posters. The purposeful inclusion of diagrams or graphics alongside concept explanations can help Emergent Bilinguals (and all other students) grasp lesson content more quickly.

3. Provide explicit instruction

Explicit instruction involves providing clear, direct explanations for every part of a lesson to enhance students’ understanding. In addition to defining lesson components like the learning objective and the lesson’s integral concepts, teachers model the tasks to be performed and share samples of what the completed work could look like.

To provide those ongoing explanations, teachers break each lesson into smaller steps. The “step-by-step” nature of explicit instruction provides students with a logical sequence, which along with the explanations, makes it easier for Emergent Bilinguals to understand what’s being taught.

4. Offer resources to support speaking up during class

Since Emergent Bilinguals are learning to read and speak English simultaneously, they need explicit, evidence-based instructional methods that incorporate speaking practice. 

Providing scaffolding techniques will help students practice and think through how to share their ideas and insights in their new language. An added benefit of the scaffolding is that Emergent Bilinguals are developing their comprehension of the new language at the same time they are focusing on lesson content.

Scaffolding techniques include sentence frames or language frames such as, “The ___ is on the ____.” Repeated use of the frames’ fill-in-the-blank formats familiarizes students with the grammatical structure and syntax of a complete sentence and enables them to create their own sentences quickly and easily as they answer questions during a lesson.

By teaching students how to have an academic conversation, they learn both how to ask and answer questions. Provide scaffolding for students, such as sentence starters, to guide conversations between students. 

For those who require more guidance in asking and answering questions, consider sentence frames or language frames for constructing meaningful sentences and phrases.

5. Encourage class discussions and embrace accents

The more students can experience genuine interactions with English-speaking students, the more they learn. You can create situations where all students discuss an event or story or visit places all students enjoy. Encourage discussions about the items that allow Emergent Bilinguals to experience authentic language with real-world context. If it is a story, provide it in their native language and in English so Emergent Bilinguals can better contribute to class discussions.

Accents connect students to places, history, and culture. Appreciating accents prepares all students for an increasingly globalized world and can actually lead to better comprehension for those learning English (White, 2016). 

Use tools that counter accent bias and are culturally familiar and relevant to all students. For instance, Lexia English Language Development™ is a K–6 Adaptive Blended program that exposes students to a variety of accents and reflects the English accent variation found not only across the U.S. but around the world.

6. Leverage technology to support differentiation and feedback

Effective artificial intelligence (AI) can provide useful real-time data, give feedback about student speech, and create differentiated learning paths automatically based on performance. With pinpointed data, a teacher can know exactly where a student is struggling and is able to group students with similar needs, saving time for everyone involved.

This level of timely and individualized performance data is key to identifying where Emergent Bilinguals are in language proficiency and to help teachers develop action plans to prioritize daily instruction. For instance, in Lexia English, reports are designed to help answer questions about students’ program use, instructional next steps, and progress, such as:

• At what level of content are my students working?

• How much time are my students spending on the program each week?

• What instructional resources would students benefit from?

• How should I prioritize my instructional time with students?

• Which students should I pair or group together for conversational practice?

Helping Emergent Bilinguals Acquire Higher English Proficiency

Support for Teachers Instructing Emergent Bilingual Students

Lexia English helps reduce the time and effort required for teachers to provide Emergent Bilingual students with speaking and listening practice. The Adaptive Blended Learning program also builds grammar skills and uses interactive academic conversations to help students in grades K–6 grow their confidence and linguistic proficiency.

Students practice their speaking and listening skills in a safe, nonjudgmental, and culturally responsive environment. At the same time, they hone their subject knowledge from content areas such as math, science, social studies, general knowledge, and biographies.

Proven Gains in Oral Language & Literacy

Research has shown students who use Lexia English make significant gains in oral language (speaking), consistent with the program’s focus on speaking and supporting English language development through academic conversations. In fact, one in three moved up a proficiency band in their respective language standard in the program. 

Students demonstrated what they learned across an average of 25 Presentations of Knowledge. Additionally, students using the program acquire English language literacy skills, which highlights the connections between oral language and broader literacy development.

Empowering Educators With Evidence-Based Tools

Confident, well-equipped educators are key to student success. Teachers who have access to bilingual teaching strategies and science of reading resources are better prepared to create content-rich, culturally responsive instruction for all learners.

Discover how you can join thousands of educators nationwide in accelerating language learning and building student confidence with Lexia English.