The Importance Of Teaching An English Language Development

A few years ago I was asked by my department chair to teach an English Language Development (ELD) class. As I had only been teaching for a year, I was unfamiliar with the full requirements of the class and nervous to take on what I felt was a BIG responsibility. Once I accepted our dean of curriculum asked me to be the ELD advisor. I took two days to decide that with my family background, my grandfather picked fruit for a living and my mom picked and packed growing up, I could make the students understand that working hard in school and continuing their education post high school could help them get more out of life than merely staying at a menial job. My first year was difficult. I soon realized the material provided by the district was redundant as witnessed not just personally but by the students’ loud sighs as we started the third unit. I asked them to explain the significance of the sighs and they said they had done very similar lessons the previous year. Other English literature classes …show more content…
I went to my dean of curriculum to discuss the possibility of developing my own curriculum for my ELD class. He informed me I could do whatever I felt was necessary and to help my students. I changed the way I approached teaching them the following week. Instead of running the class like a typical ELD class with continual grammar, vocabulary, and writing, I decided to change it to a literature based curriculum incorporating the vocabulary, grammar, and writing into the lessons. My thought was the more the students read, were exposed to the English language, and asked questions for verification of word and phrase meanings, as well as participated in class discussions, thus using their English more frequently, the more exposure they’d have to new English words as well as using and perfecting their