Acquiring a Second Language for School.

Abstract

During the past two decades, rapidly increasing language minority demographics have had a major impact on U.S. schools. Yet even with all the varied instructional approaches that U.S. educators have undertaken to address the concern for providing a meaningful for language minority students (Lau v. Nichols, 1974), we are still struggling to identify the most effective education practices. When newcomers arrive, a school district's first response is usually to provide additional staff development training. To provide current information, trainers work hard to keep up with the latest research, but the issues are complex and difficult to present in a short training session. Given the misinformation that persists about second language acquisition among both educators and the public, this short publication is written to guide the reader through the substantial research knowledge base that our field has developed over the past 25 years.