Adapting Homework to the Stages of Language Acquisition
In general, stage-appropriate questioning strategies and the Word-MES formula will be your best guides to determining appropriate homework and feedback for your ELLs. Let’s look at how this works when commenting on homework—an area where the Word MES formula is particularly appropriate.
Preproduction
Students will benefit from a peer helping them with word selection (i.e., vocabulary) on their homework assignment. Homework for students at this level may be different than everyone else’s because it could focus on vocabulary. This is fine, as students need to learn the vocabulary of a topic before they can make sense of the content.
Early Production
Students can make gains in English proficiency if classmates model correct grammar for them. One way to do this is to allow ELL students to examine homework completed by English-dominant students.
Speech Emergence
Students can also benefit from explanations given by English-dominant students on how to expand or combine sentences on a homework assignment.
Intermediate and Advanced Fluency
Students can share their ideas with English-dominant students, which will help to broaden their knowledge base and improve homework assignments as they use academic English and begin to “sound like a book.”
