Chapter 8: Teaching Teenagers Who are Still Learning English

Teach the language learning students more than just correcting their spelling mistakes. Teach the students by connecting to their own experiences; ask them “why?” and “how?”

Punishing language learners for many spelling and grammar mistakes is not fair to students who can’t fully grasp the English language yet. I think that it is better to have a rubric set up so that the students can only lose so many points from their grade. The biggest part of their grade will depend on if they answered the question or content. If they got 20 grammar errors, or 53 errors, they still would just lose 5 points, or how ever many assigned to that rubric, and no more. This way, a language learner can still get a good grade if they really messed up on the spelling. I feel that it is my responsibility to then work with those language errors to help improve the students, since I am the English teacher. If I taught science, then I wouldn’t worry about the errors at all, especially if the students were showing me they understood the concept and material being learned.