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How Long Does it Take Students to Learn English?
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Judie Haynes
Judie Haynes, an ESL teacher from New Jersey, USA, has more than 28 years of teaching experience. In addition to her classroom work, she has authored and co-authored five books on ESL, co-written a chapter for TESOL’s Integrating Standards into Classroom Practice and am contributing a column for Essential Teacher magazine. She is also the author of EverythingESL and presents workshops to classroom teachers all over the U.S.
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by Judie Haynes | TheApple.com
The most frequently asked question of ESL professionals by mainstream teachers, administrators, and even politicians concerns how long it should take English language learners to acquire English.
The Research
How long does it take to learn English? How long should students receive support in language? These are the most frequently asked questions by administrators, school board members and classroom teachers. The most comprehensive work done in this field is the research conducted by Wayne Thomas & Virginia Collier. Thomas&Collier studied the language acquisition of 700,000 English language learners in a longitudinal study from 1982 to 1996. They wanted to find out how long it took students with no background in English to reach native speaker performance (50th percentile) on norm-referenced tests. In addition, they looked at variables such as socioeconomic status, first language, programs used to learn English, and number of years of primary language schooling. In their study, Thomas&Collier found that the most significant variable in how long it takes to learn English is the amount of formal schooling students have received in their first language.
In one study, Thomas & Collier researched a group of Asian and Hispanic students from an affluent suburban school district receiving 1-3 hours second language support per day in a well-regarded ESL program . These students were generally exited from ESL in the first two years. All of the students researched were at or above grade level in native language literacy. Here are the results for students in this study.
Those students who were between 8-11 years old and had 2-3 years of native language education took 5-7 years to test at grade level in English. These were the lucky ones.
Students with little or no formal schooling who arrived before the age of eight, took 7-10 years to reach grade level norms in English language literacy.
Students who were below grade level in native language literacy also took 7-10 years to reach the 50th percentile. Many of these students never reached grade level norms.
This data holds true regardless of the home language, country of origin, and socioeconomic status. (Thomas & Collier, 1997).
How do ELLs in ESL Programs Compare?
English language learners receiving ESL services do not make more rapid progress in English than students in other types of programs.
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judyjacob
2 months ago
20 comments
I think children who are not home speakers of English will always have problems as they tend to translate int heir minds back to their native tongue prior to answering any question. Their minds tend to think in the native language as compared to English. This I feel is a huge hurdle to overcome in becoming fluent in any language.
BSimpson
2 months ago
22 comments
I think more parents need to be aware of this research. The parents of the Egyptian children I worked with put so much pressure on their children, even the youngest ones. It's important for them to know that it takes time to reach academic fluency in a second language.
jeanmr
2 months ago
10 comments
Sadly the people asking these questions have not learned another language.7 years is about average for academic skills.
Cerdeira
2 months ago
4 comments
This is so true! I've been through this and the findings are accurate. There are many people out there that do not realize that language acquisition takes time; especially academic language.
bohemiotx
3 months ago
24 comments
Great article. Academic language takes much longer to learn than conversational language.
LRodvien
4 months ago
20 comments
Thanks for publishing this article and bringing attention to this important issue!
johnslat
5 months ago
2076 comments
Yup, it's a "no-brainer" - except for the fact that there are a lot of people in positions to affect ELL and ESL who have even less than "no brains."
jkalember
5 months ago
6 comments
This is a no brainer! Maybe soon we can strip away "English only" from the political dialog and begin to recognize the reality of the situation. Anyone who goes beyond the headlines will discover that students who are literate in their native language acquire proficiency much sooner in English or any other language. We need to work both sides of the problem--I hope Arne realizes this.
Jim Kalember
Reno, NV