Strategies for teaching Mexican American English language learners in the USA: a literature review

Abstract

Educational leaders, policymakers, teachers, and parents have realised that the underachievement of Latino/a English language learner (ELL) students has escalated to become a national problem (Good et al., 2010). Their academic performance, nationwide, consistently descends far below that of other students (Good et al., 2010) and the barriers for academic achievement of Latino children remain largely unknown among general education teachers, especially with Mexican American ELL students (Becerra, 2012; Garza and Garza, 2010; Garza et al., 2011). Among all Latino groups, Mexican Americans remain the least educated (Becerra, 2012; Borgain and Padilla, 2009; Good et al., 2010; Haneda and Wells, 2012). The general problem is that children from Mexican immigrant families, representing one of the fastest-growing populations in the US educational system (deJong et al., 2013), are mostly taught by teachers who are unfamiliar with the home language and culture of Mexican immigrant families (Garza and Garza, 2010; Miller, 2011).