respond to discussion 2AM

1. The role of the teacher as communicator is very important to establishing a relationship between the teacher and the students and the teachers and the parents. An effective educator will clearly communicate expectations, lessons, strategies, methods, and techniques to guide and scaffold instruction in support of their students. In addition, teachers need to evaluate the learners within the class and differentiate instruction to meet each individual learner's needs. For example, ESOL/ELL students will need targeted instruction to meet the goals and objectives of their peers (Whitsett & Hubbard, 2009). Also, teachers need to effectively communicate with parents to develop a partnership so that students can feel supported both inside and outside the classroom. Frequent check-ins or emails with parents, and documented in the communication file will be helpful in sharing information and data about their students.  

 2. There are four language systems: phonological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. The phonological system focuses on sound. There are 44 speech sounds and 26 letters in the English language (Tompkins, 2018, pp. 7-8). As students learn to talk, they learn to pronounce these speech sounds. As students learn to read and write, they begin to associate the sounds with letters (Tompkins, 2018, pp. 7-8). Sounds differ from one language to another making it hard to learn the English language sounds. One example is the Spanish language does not have the /th/ sound and Spanish speakers often substitute the /th/ sound in English for /d/ because it sounds like their native language (Tompkins, 2018, pp. 7-8). The syntactic system focuses on structure. This relates to grammar and the logical sequential order of words that make up a sentence (Tompkins, 2018, pp. 7-8). For example, it is difficult for ELLs to learn the syntactic system of the English language because it is so different from their native language. For instance, the sentence: She wore a blue coat will often be sequentially out of order for a native Spanish speaker. Spanish language students may write that sentence as: She wore a coat blue due to the variations in grammar in the Spanish language. The semantic system focuses on meaning, specifically vocabulary. By the time students enter school, they have 5,000 vocabulary words and they add approximately 3,000 words per year learning 7-10 words per day (Tompkins, 2018, p. 9). Lastly, the pragmatic system focuses on the social and cultural role. Due to different geographic regions, there are often different dialects. For example, in inner cities communities of speakers may speak nonstandard English. In regions like Kentucky and West Virginia there can be various dialects as well (Tompkins, 2018, p. 9). In addition, there are two types of English proficiencies: BICS, basic interpersonal communication skills, and CALP, cognitive academic language proficiency (Tompkins, 2018, p. 11). CALP is associated with academic language and ELL can take up to 5-7 years to become proficient in academic language. BICS is a more accessible language to acquire because it is more informal and based on social interactions making it easier for ELLs to communicate with their peers.