English language learners face a challenge that most of their peers don’t: learning academic subjects and a new language at the same time. What’s more, the subjects they’re learning are taught in English, making the challenge even greater. For teachers, lessening that challenge calls for intentional, research-informed strategies that extend beyond moving more slowly.
Today, (ELLs). They represent one of the in the country, and they are a part of every type of classroom, not only ESL pull-out programs. That means supporting ELLs is a responsibility that falls to all teachers, regardless of subject or grade level.
For teachers who work with English language learners, this guide is an essential read. It covers everything from practical, classroom-ready strategies for helping students succeed to lesson planning guidance, an overview of some of the most widely used ESL teaching methods, and more.
An ELL is a student who is developing proficiency in English while simultaneously learning grade-level academic content in English. ELLs aren’t a monolithic group. Some are recent immigrants with strong literacy in their native language; others were born in the U.S. but grew up in households where English is not the primary language. Proficiency levels range from complete beginners (sometimes called “newcomers”) to students who are nearly fluent but still developing their academic vocabulary.
You may have encountered some related terms: ESL (English as a second language) typically refers to a specific instructional program or modifies a specialist role. TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) are professional certifications and fields of study. ELL is the broader classroom term used to describe the students themselves.
It’s worth distinguishing between ELL instructional strategies and ESL/TEFL teaching methods, because the two terms are often used interchangeably. However, they describe two different principles.
Each plays an important part in an ELL’s educational experience, and good teaching draws on both. To help you fully understand the distinction, see the chart below:
The following strategies are grounded in research on language acquisition and have been shown to support ELL students across grade levels and subject areas. Many also benefit non-ELL students in the same classroom, which makes them especially practical in mixed classrooms where differentiation would otherwise single out individual students.
As a teacher, getting to know each student helps you understand who they are, where they come from and, perhaps, gain some insight into what teaching techniques and learning methods are most effective for them.
For the students, knowing that your teacher cares enough to get to know you as a person can have a motivating effect. It contributes to an atmosphere in which each student feels known and appreciated, and is therefore more likely to fully open themselves to the learning process rather than succumb to feelings of reticence or shyness that can often accompany a lack of language skills.
When ELL students feel seen, respected, and safe, they are more willing to attempt an answer, ask for clarification, or speak up in a group. Fear of embarrassment is one of the top barriers to language production, and providing a safe space for students to learn can help alleviate it.
Familiarizing yourself with students’ backgrounds, cultural practices, and home languages gives you information that can improve your instruction. For example, knowing that a student comes from a cultural tradition where direct contact with an authority figure is considered disrespectful helps you interpret classroom behavior accurately rather than misread it as disengagement.
At the very least, engaging in discussions about students’ different cultural backgrounds helps everyone in the classroom get to know each other and reinforces the idea that different cultures include many similarities and differences — an important concept when some students are in the process of acquiring a new culture and language. To fully embrace culturally responsive teaching, try incorporating diverse texts and examples into your curriculum, inviting students to share language or cultural knowledge with the class, or simply making time for low-stakes one-on-one conversation at the start or end of a lesson.
Scaffolding refers to the temporary support structures a teacher provides to help students access content they couldn’t handle independently. The goal is always to build toward independence, while the scaffold comes down as proficiency increases.
Effective scaffolding for ELLs includes:
Vocabulary is one of the most significant for ELL students, and it’s one of the areas where well-intentioned teachers underdeliver. Assuming students will “pick up” content-specific vocabulary through exposure alone is rarely sufficient, especially for words that don’t appear in everyday conversation.
Effective vocabulary instruction for ELLs involves:
In a science classroom, this might look like spending five minutes before a lab introducing three key terms with diagrams and a brief sentence frame: “Osmosis is the process by which ______.” In a history class, it might mean connecting the word “revolution” to a student’s home language cognate before discussing the concept.
Also referred to as “comprehensible input,” this practice ensures that the language you use is understandable to students who haven’t fully acquired it by providing non-linguistic context. Visual and physical supports reduce the cognitive load of processing a new language while still allowing students to engage with grade-level content.
Practical tools include:
Another way to support comprehension is to make your verbal instruction visible wherever possible. If you’re explaining a process orally, draw it out on the board as you go. If you’re introducing a concept, show a photo or illustration before you define it.
Speaking is typically the language skill ELL students develop most slowly. The reason is less often because students aren’t learning. Instead, it’s more frequently because the social stakes of speaking feel high. Structured talk routines can help lower those stakes by giving students a predictable format and something to say.
Talking with a classmate in a low-pressure setting offers more practice opportunities than whole-class discussion, where an ELL student might speak for less than a minute over the course of an hour.
Useful structured talk strategies include:
Group and partner work are most effective when the task is clearly structured and language support (such as sentence frames) is built in. It can be easier for ELL students to disengage rather than practice during unstructured group time.
Not all ELL students need the same amount of support, and treating them as a single group is a common mistake that teachers make. Students at different proficiency levels — beginning, emerging, developing, and bridging — have different scaffolding needs, require varying types of language support, and distinct output expectations.
Here’s a framework you can use:
In a mixed-proficiency classroom, this means designing tasks with multiple entry points rather than separate assignments. A writing task might ask beginning students to label a diagram, emerging students to write three sentences using a frame, and developing students to write a paragraph independently. The topic is the same for all students, but the language demand is calibrated.
Reading, writing, listening, and speaking are often treated as separate skills, but suggests that they reinforce each other. A lesson that incorporates all four modalities gives ELL students more opportunities to process and produce language, and gives teachers more windows into what students actually understand.
In practice, this doesn’t mean teachers need to plan four separate activities. A single lesson might include:
Prioritizing “productive” skills (speaking and writing) is worth special attention for teachers of ELL students. Students often develop receptive skills (listening and reading comprehension) . A student who clearly understands what’s happening in class may still struggle to produce fluent written or spoken English, which can be misread as a lack of understanding rather than a normal developmental stage.
This might sound simple, but it takes conscious effort. Teachers under pressure to cover material tend to speak quickly, move through questions rapidly, and call on whoever responds first. All three of these habits put ELL students at a disadvantage.
Here’s how you can change that:
Traditional assessments, such as timed tests, written essays, and in-class presentations, can underrepresent what ELL students really know, because they measure language proficiency as much as content knowledge. Informal formative checks give teachers a more accurate and frequent picture of student understanding.
Try using:
Formative checks also help teachers adjust instruction in real-time, which is especially important in mixed-proficiency classrooms where pacing decisions affect all students.
If your school has an ESL specialist or ELL coordinator, that relationship is an excellent resource. ESL specialists can offer insights into individual students’ proficiency levels, language backgrounds, and learning profiles that don’t always make it into a student file.
Cross-curricular coordination can also work the other way. Sharing your upcoming vocabulary and content topics with an ESL teacher enables them to preview academic language in their instruction, reinforcing what students encounter in your class.
Intentional planning for language support, before you get in the classroom, is what separates sporadic accommodation from consistent, effective teaching. If you aren’t sure how to begin, the following tips are a good starting point:
Most teachers plan around what students should know or do by the end of a lesson (the content objective). For ELL students, it’s also important to name what they should be able to say, read, write, or listen to in English (the language objective). For example:
Language objectives keep vocabulary instruction, sentence frames, and modality choices connected to a clear purpose rather than feeling like add-ons.
Identify the 3–5 key terms students need to engage with the lesson before class, and plan how you’ll introduce them. This could include using visuals, examples, and a brief practice activity in addition to writing a definition on the board.
For any task that involves reading or writing, plan alternative modes of participation for different proficiency levels. For beginning students, this could look like drawing, labeling, circling answers, or verbal response. Don’t think of it as lowering the bar. Instead, meeting your ELL students where they are in their language learning journey ensures that every student can engage with lesson content.
Think through where in the lesson students are most likely to get lost linguistically. A dense text passage, mutli-step set of directions, or a written prompt with abstract vocabulary are all likely spots. Plan your scaffold for each one in advance.
While the strategies above cover the day-to-day of ELL instruction, understanding the broader teaching methods that underpin English language education can help you make more intentional choices about how you structure your approach overall. While these methods are most relevant for ESL specialists, TESOL/TEFL educators, and teachers who design their own ELL curriculum, mainstream classroom teachers stand to benefit from an understanding of the frameworks.
The emphasizes teaching entirely in the target language (in this case, English), with no use of the student’s native language. It conveys meaning through exposure, demonstration, visuals, and context rather than translation and prioritizes speaking and listening over grammar instruction — similar to how children learn their first languages.
Best suited for: Immersive language programs, adult learners, or contexts where students share multiple home languages.
is one of the most widely used frameworks in contemporary ESL and TEFL instruction. It prioritizes the act of communication over grammatical accuracy, with a goal of using functional language in real-world settings. Pair and group activities, along with tasks that require students to exchange information or solve problems using English, are staples of a CLT classroom.
Best suited for: Most K–12 and adult ELL contexts; pairs well with the structured talk strategies described previously.
Developed by psychologist James Asher in the 1960s, links language learning to physical movement. Teachers give commands (“Stand up,” “Point to the window,” “Pick up the red card”) and students respond physically before being asked to produce language themselves. TPR is grounded in the idea that language acquisition mirrors first-language development, where children understand and respond before they speak.
Best suited for: Beginning-level learners, young children, newcomers, or any context where reducing the pressure to produce language early is a priority.
develop language skills through investigation, where students explore questions, gather information, and present their findings. This method integrates language and content learning naturally, since students need to read, discuss, and write in English in order to participate in exercises.
Best suited for: Content-area classrooms (e.g., humanities or social studies) where language development can be embedded in subject-area learning rather than treated separately.
In practice, most experienced ELL teachers don’t rely on a single method. Principled eclecticism means drawing strategically from multiple approaches based on the specific needs of a student, lesson, or context. For example, using TPR with a newcomer in the morning and CLT-style communicative tasks with a developing-level group in the afternoon. The methods chosen should be deliberate and grounded in what you know about language acquisition.
Even well-intentioned teachers can fall into patterns that inadvertently underserve ELL students. A few of the most common include:
Teaching English language learners well doesn’t always require an ESL certification. Intention, a handful of consistently applied strategies, and a willingness to see language development as part of your job regardless of the subject you teach all play an equally important part.
If you’re looking to take a step beyond trying out the strategies in this guide, the ŃÇÖŢĚěĚøŁŔű’s Professional and Continuing Education program offers an online course: . It is intended for K–12 teachers working with English language learners, and covers research-based differentiation strategies, assessment approaches for linguistically diverse classrooms, and ways to integrate language acquisition with academic content.
To learn more about the curriculum, expected learner outcomes and cost, contact us today or review the .
What is the most effective strategy for teaching English language learners?
There isn’t a single “best” strategy for teaching English language learners. Effectiveness depends on a student’s proficiency level, age, home language background, and the subject. That said, research consistently highlights explicit vocabulary instruction, scaffolded output (sentence frames, modeling), and structured peer interaction as high-impact practices across most ELL contexts.
What is the difference between ESL and ELL?
The difference between ESL and ELL is that while ELL (English language learner) describes the student, ESL describes an instructional program or specialist role. A student who is an ELL may receive ESL services, but not always, and all teachers in that student’s school share responsibility for supporting their language development.
How do you differentiate instruction for ELL students?
To differentiate instruction for ELL students, start by knowing your students’ proficiency levels. From there, differentiation usually means adjusting the language demand of a task (not the content) by providing sentence frames for lower-proficiency students, offering visual alternatives to text-heavy materials, and building in multiple ways for students to demonstrate understanding. The goal is multiple entry points to the same content.
How can I support ELL students if I’m not an ESL specialist?
If you aren’t an ESL specialist, you can support ELL students by focusing on the basics: slowing down, using visuals, pre-teaching key vocabulary, building in partner talk, and using sentence frames for writing and discussion. These strategies don’t require specialist training and benefit all students in the class. Coordinate with your school’s ESL specialist when possible as they can offer student-specific guidance.
What does scaffolding look like in an ELL classroom?
In an ELL classroom, scaffolding can be as simple as providing a sentence frame for a writing task or as structured as breaking a complex text into chunks with comprehension questions between sections. The common thread is temporary support. Provide enough structure to make a task achievable now, before gradually removing it as students build independence.
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