DESE English Language Learner Programs 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the key distinction between an ELL student who is 'opt-out' and one who is 'waivered' in Massachusetts?
- Opt-out students receive no services; waivered students receive bilingual instruction
- Opt-out students are identified but parents declined services; waivered students receive an alternative program model (Correct answer)
- Waivered students are exempt from ELP testing; opt-out students are not
- There is no legal distinction between the two terms
Correct answer: Opt-out students are identified but parents declined services; waivered students receive an alternative program model
In Massachusetts, a waiver allows parents to request an alternative instructional model, while opt-out means parents decline ELL services entirely after being informed of their rights.
Question 2: Which of the following best describes the Structured English Immersion (SEI) endorsement required for Massachusetts teachers serving ELLs?
- A standalone bilingual teaching license
- A professional development credential demonstrating competency in sheltering content for ELLs (Correct answer)
- A certificate allowing teachers to provide native language instruction
- An optional endorsement for ESL specialists only
Correct answer: A professional development credential demonstrating competency in sheltering content for ELLs
The SEI endorsement in Massachusetts is a required credential for core academic teachers demonstrating skills to shelter content-area instruction for ELL students.
Question 3: Which instructional technique involves intentionally slowing speech, using visual aids, and simplifying syntax to make academic content comprehensible to ELLs?
- Translanguaging
- Comprehensible input (Correct answer)
- Code-switching
- Contrastive analysis
Correct answer: Comprehensible input
Comprehensible input, rooted in Krashen's theory, refers to making language and content understandable to learners slightly above their current proficiency level.
Question 4: A parent of a newly enrolled ELL student requests all school communications in Spanish. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the district must:
- Provide translations only if the district has a Spanish-speaking staff member available
- Provide meaningful access to information in Spanish at no cost to the family (Correct answer)
- Ask the parent to arrange their own translation services
- Provide translations only for IEP documents
Correct answer: Provide meaningful access to information in Spanish at no cost to the family
Title VI and its implementing regulations require districts to provide language access services, including translation of key documents, at no cost to Limited English Proficient families.
Question 5: Which of the following scenarios would most likely indicate a need to refer an ELL student for a special education evaluation rather than attributing difficulties solely to language acquisition?
- The student struggles with English vocabulary after two weeks of enrollment
- The student shows similar academic and language difficulties in their native language as well (Correct answer)
- The student is a newcomer who rarely speaks in class
- The student needs additional time on English reading assessments
Correct answer: The student shows similar academic and language difficulties in their native language as well
Difficulties that persist across both English and the home language suggest an underlying learning disability rather than a language acquisition issue alone.
Question 6: The WIDA English Language Development (ELD) Standards are organized around language use in which three contexts?
- Social, academic, and professional
- Interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational
- Social and instructional language and the language of language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies (Correct answer)
- Listening, speaking, and literacy
Correct answer: Social and instructional language and the language of language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies
WIDA ELD Standards address social and instructional language and the academic language of four content areas: language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies.
Question 7: A teacher uses sentence frames such as 'In my opinion, ___ because ___' during a class discussion. This strategy primarily supports ELLs by:
- Reducing the need for students to think critically
- Providing linguistic scaffolding for academic language production (Correct answer)
- Replacing the need for vocabulary instruction
- Assessing listening comprehension
Correct answer: Providing linguistic scaffolding for academic language production
Sentence frames scaffold academic language production by giving ELLs a syntactic structure to express content knowledge while building English discourse patterns.
DESE English Language Learner Programs 4
What is the key distinction between an ELL student who is 'opt-out' and one who is 'waivered' in Massachusetts?