The Importance Of Modeled Talk

With the increase of diversity in American schools, teachers feel unprepared and find it difficult to teach students of different cultural background in the classroom who are not English proficient. In order for these students to succeed, teachers need to understand the students’ background knowledge and cultural experience. Teachers can build from what the students are familiar with and slowly introducing them to the unknown making it easier for them to comprehend and process the meaning of the English language. Teachers also need to learn and understand that every student learns differently. Not only do teachers need to pay attention to how students learn, but be well informed on the latest methods to help meet the social, academic, and emotional needs of English language …show more content…
One good example is folding paper, the teacher can model talk the instruction and the students will see and listen. ELL students will acquire knowledge of the English language through modeling the words and communicating with the teacher using model talk. “Modeled Talk” can be an effective strategy to aid in promoting language development for ELL students. This strategy is where teachers use visual and physical demonstration during their verbal explanation to help ELL students to understand the directions that are given by the teachers. By providing gestures and visuals, it would help ELL students to follow and lower their anxiety because they know exactly what to do after seeing the directions and content modeled in the classroom (Herrell & Jordon, 2012). Students will begin to use this strategy with their classmates; especially English native students will use it to explain directions and concepts to ELL students. This strategy will give the opportunity for ELL students to interact more with their fellow classmates and give them a sense of belonging in the