Assistance for English as a Second Language (ESL) Students
The number of English Language Learners in U.S. schools increases every day. Scientific Learning products accelerate the learning process, allowing ELL students to become successful learners in the classroom.
Teaching ESL? We Can Help.
The Fast ForWord® Program
The Fast ForWord program can have a tremendous impact on the acquisition of the English language for ELL students and the schools that teach them.
Fast ForWord exercises improve brain processing efficiency so that individual phonemes within words can be more easily differentiated. This greatly speeds up the process of learning and comprehending both spoken and written English, building fluency, vocabulary, syntax, grammar, and other language skills.
By strengthening both processing efficiency and English language skills, our software is helping these students make significant academic gains in 8 to12 weeks.
Scientific Learning Reading Assistant™ software
Reading Assistant software acts as a patient, non-judgmental listener for struggling, often self-conscious English Language Learners. Privately, English Language Learners can practice reading aloud developing oral language skills.
Using research-validated speech recognition technology, Reading Assistant software “listens” as a student reads out loud. When the student is challenged by a word, the software simply provides an example of correct pronunciation.
Reading Assistant provides extra support to ELL students in the form of pre-recorded passages read fluently by a professional narrator and interactive, multimedia vocabulary support. Emphasis is placed on sound prosodic elements.
Audio files of each student’s reading are easily captured and archived, providing teachers and students with individualized before and after comparisons of a student’s reading. These archives clearly document a student’s gains in reading fluency over an instructional period, providing both motivation and reward for the student’s hard work, as well as evidence of progress.
The Reading Assistant has in-depth audio support. Students can click on any word to hear it pronounced. Advanced speech recognition technology provides just in time coaching to students pronouncing the word when students are struggling.
In addition to these features, Reading Assistant Expanded Edition allows the teacher to enable Spanish language support for a student. When this feature is activated, the glossary will contain an Español button which displays the glossary term in Spanish and plays a Spanish audio file. The student will also receive all program instructions in Spanish.
Strong visuals throughout the Reading Assistant support mental model development.
Reading Assistant is focused on academic vocabulary development with over 10,000 terms defined in depth. Reading Assistant Expanded Edition contains the Did You Know? feature which includes many instructional resources proven to be helpful in supporting vocabulary development in English Language Learners including:
- Greek and Latin roots
- Other meanings and usage for the word
- Fun facts about the word
- Cognate transfers from Spanish
The Reading Assistant content is structured to build knowledge through repeated exposure to vocabulary. Each grade band topic builds knowledge and depth of understanding of vocabulary.
The Reading Assistant content is filled with US cultural content (Internet, skateboarding, US Constitution.) For students new to English, Reading Assistant introduces vocabulary words. For more advanced students, Reading Assistant provides reading passages covering areas tested in key American tests like the TABE, the NAEP and the SAT. The program builds essential academic vocabulary that will help English Language Learners develop lasting proficiency.
Listen to before-and-after examples of students reading
“While the student may not remember how they sounded three months ago, the system will – and hearing the difference will motivate ELL students all over again."
ELL students have the challenge of learning language while simultaneously developing content knowledge. Scientific Learning products provide teachers with additional support in the classroom to help their ELL students become successful learners.
Learn more:
- School-based reports on results with English Language Learners
- The Fast ForWord program
- Reading Assistant software
Reading Assistant™ Progress Demo
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Student reading a passage for the first time. |
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Student reading the same passage 45 minutes later. |
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