ESOL Case Study Interview

Emelia Mendoza
Emelia is born in October 9th 1993. She is 13 years old and arrived here in the U.S. from Mexico about a year and a half ago at 11 ½ years of age. Her parents are José and Elizabeth, she has an older sister, Carmen that is 20 years old and does not live with the family. Her brother, Christian, is older that she is, he is 14 years old and does live with the family. No one in the family spoke English when they arrived here in the U.S. Her mother is learning English and both Christian and Emelia are learning English in school. Spanish is the language spoken at home.
Emelia’s mothers, 37 years old, has an 8th grade education and her father, 38 years old, has a 9th grade education. Both Emelia and her brother Christian are in the 8th grade at Country Middle School (a middle class school). Her parents can not help her much with her homework because they do not speak English. Her mother is the ESOL representative for Country Middle School and goes to as many meetings as she can. In school there is an instructional assistant that helps out the pod (this is the group of students in the 8th grade that go to their different classes and are in close proximity to each other). The instructional assistant (Sara, she is bilingual, Spanish) helps out different groups of students at different times. Sara thinks that Emelia is doing a great job with her classes and says that she puts forth a lot of effort to learn. I am told by the ESOL instructor that all of her teachers say that Emelia works hard in their classes and makes good grades; they believe that she is progressing well. There is no ESOL pullout at this school. There are ESOL strategies that they use in class and they have the instructional assistant help out with the ESOL students.
Emelia’s reading level in her L1 is 7th grade. Her reading level in English is 4th grade. She tends to pronounce the English words with a Spanish pronunciation. For my reading sample I had her read a 4th grade level reading book called Lucky last Luke by Margaret Clark. She read very haltingly but did not stop; she did not pronounce the past tense very well in English and did not always say the whole word. She would often run the words together with out a stop between the words and I noticed that she did not pronounce the teachers name in the story correctly. Emelia does not understand everything she reads but she does get the gist of some of the story through the pictures. In writing about the book she read she writes, for the most part, what she saw in the pictures. I believe that Emelia would benefit from lessons in pronunciation in English, and lessons in pronouncing and understanding the past tenses. If she could get more lessons in reading and shown how to slow down and read for information, not just to read, she may understand more of what she reads. I would say that she is in the speech emergence stage progressing to the intermediate stage.
Emelias parents work hard as gardeners. They left Mexico to come to the U.S. so that both their children could get a better education. They do not want their children to work in lower level jobs like they do. Emelias aspirations are to be either a doctor or an architect.
Emelia likes school and makes good grades. She does have the supplies she need for school. Her favorite classes are science and history and she is also good in math. Socially she can communicate with her classmates. If she continues to study hard and practice her English she will get steadily better, she does not have any learning disabilities. She says that she needs to work on her letters more. At home she helps her mother with the house work. On her free time she likes to play basketball, swim, and jumps rope. More than likely she lives in a lower middle class neighborhood.