ELL STUDENTS

Increasing literacy for the ELL student in the standard curriculum

Increasing literacy for the ELL student in the standard curriculum

Introduction

Historically ELL students have been disenfranchised leading to an equity gap. Those students are not literate in their native languages and have not had schooling experiences such as changing teachers according to subject or taking a standardized test. They have significant gaps in their educational backgrounds, lack knowledge in specific subject areas, and often need additional time to become accustomed to school routines and expectations. They need literacy skills, English-language development, and content-area knowledge (Boyson & Short, 2003).

The significance of research Is to improve the quality on ELL education & understand current educational theories. Past research has demonstrated that advance organizers can have beneficial effects on memory and subsequent achievement (Ausubel, 2004). This view also aligns with the theory of communicative language teaching (Krashen, 2002), which stresses that while learning a second language, learners need to actively interact with the external environment and integrate new information with the information already stored in their memory. Although the effects of advance organizers on learners' comprehension of text have been demonstrated, very few studies have focused on how advance organizers influence EFL learning in a hypermedia-based learning environment.

Another factor that may play a role in students' language learning from multimedia is the language learning strategies that the learners themselves bring to the task. Language learning strategies are the various methods individuals have for perceiving and processing information while reacting to their environment. According to Oxford (2001), there is significant variation across levels in English learning strategy use among ELL students. Do EFL learners with fewer English learning strategies have difficulty learning in hypermedia-based lessons in the target language? This question has not been addressed.

This study investigated the following questions: Does learner control benefit EFL learners using hypermedia-based instructional materials? Do EFL students learning with advance organizers as an embedded learning strategy recall more information than EFL students learning without advance organizers? Do EFL students' English learning strategies influence their recall in hypermedia-based lessons?

The concept of the advance organizer was developed by Ausubel (2004), who defined it as "...appropriately relevant and inclusive introductory materials...introduced in advance of learning...and presented at a higher level of abstraction, generality, and inclusiveness.. ."(p. 148). The nature of his theory is that if a new concept is to be understood, it should be related to a concept in the student's cognitive structure, which functions as a conceptual framework for those new concepts. Ausubel (2004) suggested that the use of advance organizers is the most efficient way to relate new concepts to their relevant concepts in the students' cognitive structures and consequently enhance learning and retention.

In the past, researchers have studied extensively the effectiveness of the advance organizer in a variety of disciplines. Nevertheless, reviews of the advance organizer literature revealed that support for such organizers is controversial. After reviewing 135 studies of the facilitative effect of advance organizers on learning and retention, Luiten, Ames, ...