Moving Students from Language Acquisition to Language Learning through Reading and Writing

Students who use English as their second language go through stages of acquiring language. "Language acquisition" is the way students first learn to use language as a means of communication. Students don't learn rules and study language when they are toddlers, however, the way they can pick up on language through everyday life with their families is termed "language acquisition" (Hill, 2013, p.11). Students really learn a language when they learn the rules of grammar, appropriate sentence structure, and how to communicate clearly. This is taught in school. Teachers have the ability to help students move from acquiring a language to learning the language through reading and writing. And this does not mean necessarily diagramming sentences and doing a multiple choice test (Foppoli, N.D.). Because reading and writing are connected by thought processes (who who reads must decipher words and think about what they mean and one who writes must determine which words are appropriate while using the correct meaning). Our lessons in reading should include the natural connections to writing. We can teach students to read like a writer and write like a reader. This means we are pointing out word choice in our read alouds to our students, we are helping them discover the way the author wrote the book, looking more into the craft and style authors use in writing books. In writing, we are constantly asking students to read their writing out loud and asking them the question, "Does this sound right? How can we make it better?". Because students who struggle with writing often, "Show less awareness of what constitutes good writing and how to produce it," Teachers can use text read together to determine how to write. This provides a clear model for students. 

Below is a chart of several elementary writing mentor texts I created previously.

Title	Author	Description	Writing Quality Highlighted
Boot and Shoe	Marla Frazee	Boot and Shoe are best dog-friends. They do everything together until one day, they lose eachother.  This is an adorable story that kids love to read over and over and can be used to teach many reading and writing skills.	Theme: Friendship To show the importance of the characters’ friendship, the author uses repetition in the phrase “together”, and so by repeating the same sentence for each character but changing the name. This can show students how to show friendship through words. If the students is writing with illustrations also, this book is excellent to show the symbolism of illustrations and how they are important for the text. Until the characters lose eachother, the page is almost blank, except for the picture of the dogs together. When they are lost, the illustrations “zoom out” to show what’s going on with the both of them. The author even portrays the characters together, together, together, until they lose eachother . When they are lost, the author separates the dogs by putting them on separate pages.
Where the Wild Things Are	Maurice Sendak	Max is sent to his room to think about his wild behavior. He soon imagines a world where the wild things (like him) live.	Text sequencing and organization This book shows a linear plot line which can help students when writing narratives. Students are able to clearly see a beginning, middle, and end in the story. Teachers can use this to show the importance of proper sequencing in a story.
Tornaodes!	Gail Gibbons	This book is non-fiction. It clearly shows many text features that are often found in nonfiction text. This book also has excellent adjective use to help nonfiction writing draw more interest and visualizing from the reader.	Organization and Features of Nonfiction Writing When students are expected to produce nonfiction writing from research on a topic, students can use this mentor text to teach students how to integrate text features into their writing. Also, this book (along with other Gail Gibbons books) show a clear explanation of facts about a topic. She uses descriptive language and easy to understand sentences for multiple grades and abilities.
Make Way for Ducklings	Robert McCloskey	This is a Caldecott Medal book from another generation. This story has been reproduced in other forms throughout the years. It is still a favorite with kids and the story is very easy to follow.	Alliteration, Repetitive Speech, Onomatopoeia, and Dialogue This book has many characters (all the ducklings) and they all have the same rime in their names. This draws familiarity and also a little bit of fun for the reader. This book also uses simple dialogue and onomatopoeia. It can encourage writes to add those kinds of words to their writing.
The Relatives Came	Cynthia Rylant	Cynthia Rylant, the author of the Henry and Mudge series, brings readers and writes does to a small moment in time where the narrator recalls a special time when the relatives came.	“Slice of Life” Writing Sometimes students want to keep writing, writing, and writing. However, they can easily get onto a different trail that isn’t a part of a story. In writing personal narratives (a story about themselves), this book can be used to help them narrow down their life’s events into little seed stories. Their personal narratives must have a beginning, middle, and end and also have clear events. This book can help with narrowing down all of their thoughts in order to write a small slice of their life for a personal narrative.

References

Access Center. (N.D.) Teaching writing to diverse student populations. ColorinColorado. Accessed through http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/teaching-writing-diverse-student-populations 

Foppoli, J. Language acquisition vs. language learning. ESL Base. Accessed through http://www.eslbase.com/teaching/language-acquisition-vs-language-learning 

Hill, J. D. (2013). Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners, 2nd Edition, 2nd Edition. [BryteWave]. Retrieved from https://shelf.brytewave.com/#/books/114004E4/