Writing across Culture and Language: Inclusive Strategies for Working with ELL Writers in the ELA Classroom

Imagine being asked to write an essay in a language you don’t know well or at all, to have to express yourself—your knowledge and analysis—grammatically and clearly in, say, three to five pages. How is your Spanish, your Urdu, your Hmong?

This is what teachers ask their ELL and multilingual students to do every day in middle and high school, especially in English classes, leading to expectations both too great and too small. Teachers often resort to worksheets and grammar drills that don’t ...