English Language Learners

Philosophy of the Program

The purpose of Brunswick City Schools' English Language Learners (ELL) program is to help ELL students overcome linguistic, cultural and language difficulties and to assure that they receive an equal educational opportunity.

Goals of the ELL Program

ELL students have two major goals in their development of English proficiency:

• To use English in their academic achievement in all content areas, and
• To use English to participate effectively in society

In order to achieve these goals, ELL students need to develop English proficiency in the four communication domains of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students also need to comprehend what they hear and what they read. Therefore, comprehension of both spoken and written English is an underlying competency that limited English proficient students need to develop in order to achieve the above goals.

(from Ohio English Language Proficiency Standards, April 2006)

Limited English Proficient (LEP) is defined as a student who:

(a) meets one or more of the following conditions: the student was born outside of the United States or whose native language is not English OR the student comes from an environment where a language other than English is dominant OR the student in American Latin or American Native and comes from an environment where a language other than English has had a significant impact on his/her level of English proficiency;

AND

(b) has sufficient difficulty speaking, reading, writing or understanding the English language to deny him/her the opportunity to learn successfully in an English-only classroom.