A Critique on the Article

The article that Ive read was prepared by Eric W. Crane, Vanessa X. Barrat and Min Huang of Regional Educational Laboratory at WestEd which was prepared for Institute of Education Sciences. It talks about the relationship between English proficiency and content knowledge for English language learner. The study is somehow helpful for the Utahs State Office of Education because they will better understand the academic performance of their native students in relation to their English proficiency and in comparison with the academic performance of their non-English language learner peers. The purpose of the study is to assess the language proficiency of the English language learner students. To help them improve if they were assessed below the advanced level of proficiency. But of course there is also a disadvantage in it because you cannot measure a students ability in English proficiency and content knowledge by just having th em take up a particular examination. What if when they took the exam, some of them were not ready, or some of them have problems. There are a lot of factors to consider why a student was not able to pass an exam given to him/her. But with the help of these assessments, theyre able to measure English language proficiency in the four language acquisition modalities listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The good thing there is that if the child does not pass the English proficiency exam, their schools Alternative Language Services team meets to decide how to best assist the student in acquiring English proficiency. Parents are also notified so that the student begins to receive

language support services as soon as possible. In that manner, the student will be given more attention with regards to acquiring English proficiency for his/her school and parents work hand in hand to achieve a meaningful goal. Moreover, Ive agreed with the findings of the study because for me, they have used enough/sufficient details and information in determining the status of the English language learners in Utah. With the help of this study, there will be a better understanding of the connections between language proficiency and academic proficiency which is important in Utahs continuing effort to set the bar approp riately for redesignating English language learner students as fluent and removing them from programs and services supporting students who are not yet fluent.

Submitted by: DE LEON, Ross Ann G. MAET