Proceedings of the International Conference on Social science, Humanities and Education
Year: 2018
DOI: https://www.doi.org/10.33422/icshe.2018.12.63
Comprehensible Input and Differentiated ESL Instruction
Lee Gunderson , Reginald Arthur D’Silva
ABSTRACT:
One consequence of migration and transnational institutional enrollment is that classrooms and schools have become significantly more diverse culturally, socioeconomically, educationally, and linguistically. Classrooms in jurisdictions where the medium of instruction is English require differentiated instruction to account for students’ diversity of knowledge and abilities. A teacher’s instructional focus must be the provision of comprehensible input. The difficulty is that comprehensibility is related to a myriad of variables that are unique to an individual rather than to a group; comprehensible input is relative to differences in knowledge of semantics, syntax, pragmatics, orthography, individual development, motivation, educational background, and culture. Differentiated instruction, designed to scaffold the learning of individual students, is complex related to ESL students. This session describes the variables that predict comprehensibility for individual students. These variables are used to produce instructional matrices that outline differentiated ESL instruction. These matrices will be shown, described, and discussed. Their use in K-16 classrooms will be reviewed.