Differentiated Support for Multilingual Learners

Effective support for multilingual learners ensures academic success while respecting their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

MARIA LUISA GARCIA UNDERWOOD
Lead Professional Development Advisor

DR. ROBERTA LENGER KANG
Executive Director
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​Differentiating instruction is not easy, but when done well, it promotes higher levels of learning and opportunities for multilingual learners to acquire a new language, feel like they belong, and achieve in our classes. It also allows us to demonstrate our superpower as educators — our ability to reach all students.

It’s also easier said than done. As classroom teachers, we receive a list of students and their labels: SWD (Student with a Disability) or ENL/MLL (English Language Learner/Multilingual Learner) — but labels tell us nothing about what our students know and can do. And not knowing can be our kryptonite. To meet the needs of all students, we need to push past the labels and invest in their potential. To do this, we must be able to recognize the stages of language development and how they correspond with students’ language fluency levels.

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Stages of language development

​No one learns a language overnight. In the chart below, we’ve illustrated the five stages of language development for multilingual learners and how these stages correspond with the New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test, aka the NYSESLAT. Based on their performance on the NYSESLAT, students are categorized into levels from entering to commanding, as seen in this chart. Students’ levels are determined by their composite performance on all four subtests of this assessment (listening, speaking, reading, and writing).

Fluency Level: Pre-production

Approx. time in level: 10 hrs - 6 mos
NYSESLAT Level: Entering

What students can do: 
This stage is sometimes referred to as the Silent Period. During this time, students are primarily internalizing the new language. Students in this stage can generally:

• Point to an item, picture, or person when prompted
• Gesture and nod
• Say yes or no
• Follow basic classroom routines
• Respond to visual aids and environmental print (photos, images, etc.)
• Use physical movement (Total Physical Response or TPR)
• Show understanding through facial expressions

Fluency Level: Early production

Approx. time in level: 6 mos - 1 year
NYSESLAT Level: Emerging

What students can do: 
Students are beginning to verbalize while still internalizing the new language. Students in this stage can generally:

• Answer questions with one word
• Answer yes or no questions
• Participate using familiar words and phrases
• Respond to routine questions with memorized single words
• Label everyday classroom objects, people, and basic vocabulary
• Use social language frequently heard in school
• Answer multiple-choice questions by selecting a simple, one-word option
• Participate in predictable classroom routines
• express basic needs using key vocabulary

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Fluency Level: Speech Emergence

Approx. time in level: 1 - 3 years
NYSESLAT Level: Transitioning

What students can do: 
Students at this stage have good comprehension. Students are beginning to verbalize while still internalizing the new language. Students in this stage can generally:

• Use full, simple sentences
• Put words and phrases together to create unique sentences and questions
• Construct basic subject-verb-object sentences to express themselves
• Create original questions
• Combine familiar phrases with new vocabulary
• Begin to experiment with time markers, prepositions, and descriptive words
• Express preferences and opinions with supporting details
• Participate in academic discussions using content vocabulary
• Engage in social conversations with peers using learned language patterns

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Fluency Level: Intermediate

Approx. time in level: 3 - 5 years
NYSESLAT Level: Expanding

What students can do: 
Students at this stage have excellent comprehension and make few grammatical errors. Students in this stage can generally:

• Use complex statements
• Defend viewpoints
• Participate in academic debates
• Ask for clarification
• Share original thoughts
• Synthesize information from multiple sources
• Navigate hypothetical scenarios with complex language
• Express nuanced emotions and social awareness

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Fluency Level: Advanced

Approx. time in level: 5 - 7 years
NYSESLAT Level: Commanding
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What students can do: 
Sometimes called Continued Language Development or former ENL stage, students at this stage can communicate fluently in most contexts. Students at this stage are comfortable and fluent, though they may sometimes incorrectly use idiomatic expressions. Students can:

• Access academic language across content areas with strategic support such as discipline-specific vocabulary (Tier 2 and 3 words) 
• Recognize gaps in cultural or background knowledge and actively seek clarification
• Transfer academic skills across languages
• Navigate subtle cultural nuances in social situations
• Engage in metacognitive discussions about their learning
• Utilize academic language to analyze complex topics, like discussing an author's use of metaphors
• Engage in higher-order thinking while sometimes needing support with advanced academic vocabulary
• Self-advocate for academic needs
• Participate in collaborative projects
• Code-switch appropriately between academic and social language with the ability to appropriately adjust based on audience

​​Students at each stage need a different level of support when learning a new language. This is because students learning a new language are also facing a host of other complex social, emotional, linguistic, and cognitive challenges. Especially in middle and high school, where a sense of belonging is critical to identity formation, multilingual learners face an unfamiliar language, along with significant shifts in culture and community. This can feel destabilizing, increasing a sense of distance, difference, and isolation.

It’s not all bad news, though. When learning a new language, the sounds and symbols used sometimes connect to the primary language, initially resulting in faster connections and learning. Students can also make strong language and literacy connections between their home language and the new language when they process new content knowledge.

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Maximizing language development

​So, how do we differentiate for our multilingual learners? How can we help them build on their home language and expedite the language acquisition process in English? First, acknowledge all the rich language experiences they bring into our classrooms. They arrive in our schools not as empty slates but with rich language experiences that we want to build on, especially where commonalities may exist in language structures such as vocabulary.

Then, we want to maximize their time in school and their exposure to the English language. We need to contextualize language to build language proficiency in the context of communicating while using the academic language of school. Contextualization happens when we make language clear and understandable using visuals, real objects, demonstrations, hands-on tools, infographics, and other media. Instructional scaffolding can happen with approaches such as reader's theater and total physical response (or the academic version of Simon Says) to tailor instruction to meet the diverse needs of multilingual learners with varied activities.

Finally, we want to ensure that we’re collecting some data to understand students’ developing English language and literacy skills using a reading diagnostic assessment, a language level assessment, and our own classroom data from formative assessments. Connecting the evidence and what students can do will help us identify how they level up.

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Scaffolding for success

​One way to start planning instructional scaffolding is to consider areas where differentiation may occur. We often differentiate instruction via process (how students think about what they’re learning), content (what focused topics students are learning), and product (how students represent their learning). But how do we differentiate for language without simplifying the depth of critical thinking or complex content concepts?

Here are a few ways to get started: 

Differentiate by: Process

Materials and resources can provide scaffolding as follows:

• Graphic organizers with dual-language capabilities that allow students to process information in both languages, including thinking concept maps, Venn diagrams, and KWL charts that incorporate translation spaces
• Sentence frames, sentence stems, and paragraph frames to scaffold writing in the new language
• Multimodal vocabulary instruction using visual aids, realia, manipulatives, and technology-based tools that connect concepts across languages
• Interactive vocabulary journals that encourage personal connections and cross-linguistic analysis
• Digital and physical multilingual word banks or word walls organized by content area, language function, and cross-linguistic connections
• Audio recordings of texts in multiple languages to support listening comprehension
• Video content with closed captions in multiple languages
• English and/or bilingual glossaries
• English and/or bilingual dictionaries

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Differentiate by: Content

Scaffolding can occur through our instruction by using:

• Pre-identified or pre-taught vocabulary
• Use of multilingual anchor charts and reference materials
• Concise instruction of background knowledge
• Culturally responsive examples and materials that connect to students' background knowledge
• Strategic preview-review technique where content is previewed in the home language before English instruction
• Explicit instruction in academic language functions across content areas
• Content-specific language objectives aligned with content objectives
• Multiple entry points for engaging with content based on language proficiency
• Content-specific language frames for different discourse functions (accountable talk)
• Use repetition, paraphrasing, and modeling to reduce the linguistic load

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Differentiate by: Product

Finally, strategic student grouping in our classes can assist with scaffolding for our multilingual students. What is expected in the form of final projects or summative assessments can also be differentiated to allow our language learners to demonstrate learning and their genius via linguistically scaffolded tools, including: 

• Structured pair work (think-pair-share activities with language supports)
• Structured small group work
• Interest-based groups that motivate engagement
• Teacher-led small group instruction (skills-based groups for targeted language development)
• Flexible grouping based on language proficiency and content knowledge
• Mixed-language groups for peer support and translation
• Cross-proficiency level partnerships that benefit both language learners
• Home-language groups for initial content processing
• Reciprocal teaching groups where students take on different roles
• Multiple ways to demonstrate understanding (oral, written, visual, digital)
• Choice boards that allow students to select appropriate challenge level
• Jigsaw activities with modified text complexity for different groups
• Literature circles with role cards in multiple languages
• Project-based learning teams with differentiated roles based on language abilities

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Strategies by language fluency level

​For some additional ways to think about scaffolding for multilingual learners but doing so based on their language fluency levels, download the resource below: 

DOWNLOAD RESOURCE

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​Supporting multilingual learners necessitates a comprehensive understanding of language development phases and strategic differentiation that leverages students' prior language experiences. By employing tailored scaffolding in process, content, and student grouping, we can establish inclusive learning environments that respect students' native languages while promoting language development in their new language. Importantly, teachers can help multilingual students do well in school while still retaining their cultural and linguistic identity when they look past labels to see each student's unique potential and provide the right level of support for their current language development stage.