ESL: The Regular Classroom Teacher's Perspective

Abstract

who had LEP students in their classrooms but who had had no training in ESL. A content analysis of the responses revealed five broad categories of concern: programmatic setting and instruction, training needs, LEP students and their parents, peer interaction, and the role of the ESL teacher. The responses indicate the difficulties which regular classroom teachers encounter in integrating LEP students socially and academically into the regular setting. Accordingly, it is recommended that ESL teachers and teacher training programs devote greater attention to preparing the regular classroom teacher for dealing more adequately with the educational needs of LEP students. Despite the increase in the number of trained ESL specialists over the past 10 years or so, it is no secret that vast numbers of limited English proficient (LEP) students still spend either all or large portions of their academic life with regular or content classroom teachers. (The term regular teacher is used here instead of mainstream teacher to avoid a connotation that many find offensive and misleading. The regular classroom refers to a setting in which subject matter and literacy skills are taught entirely in English and the majority of the students are native speakers of English.) In most cases, these teachers have no training in how to deal with LEP students. The 1980-81 Teachers Language Skills Survey of public school teachers in the United States revealed that although half of all public school teachers had current or previous experience with