How the ELL brain learns

From the Back Cover: Teachers are more likely to succeed if they have a deeper understanding of the challenges students face in trying to learn English and course content simultaneously. How the ELL Brain Learns combines current research on how the brain learns language with strategies for teaching English language learners in K-12 classrooms. Award-winning author and brain research expert David A. Sousa describes the linguistic reorganization needed to acquire another language after the age of 5 years. He supplements this information with immediately applicable tools, including a self-assessment pretest for gauging your understanding of how the brain learns languages; ready-to-use brain-compatible strategies for teaching English learners across the curriculum; an entire chapter about how to detect English language learning problems, with sections on the social, cultural, and physical causes. Each chapter features teaching tips that translate the research into step-by-step classroom applications. Also included are intervention strategies to use with struggling ELLs, including methods for working with older students.

List of teaching tips -- About the author -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Who are English language learners? -- Academic achievement of ELLs -- About this book -- Questions this book will answer -- Chapter contents -- Other helpful tools -- What do you already know? -- Chapter 1: Learning The First Language(s) -- Spoken language comes naturally -- Processing spoken language -- Role of the mirror neuron system -- Gender differences in language processing -- Structure of language -- Learning phonemes -- Learning words and morphemes -- Syntax and semantics -- From words to sentences -- Components of speaking and understanding language -- Levels of language comprehension -- Explicit comprehension -- Inferred comprehension -- Learning two first languages -- Are monolingual and bilingual brain's different? -- Do the two languages use the same or different brain regions? -- How do the two languages interact during speech? -- Can learning the school language too soon delay the first language? -- What's coming -- Key points to ponder -- Chapter 2: Learning A New Language (English) Later -- Challenge of acquiring a new language later -- Impact of the first language on acquiring the se…