Quotes from James Crawford

SIOP is teacher-centric, a classic transmission model. Sadly, this approach is all too common in the education of low-income and minority students and of English learners in particular: Learning is conceived not as something a learner does, but as something that is done to a learner.52

Scaffolding is applied in this context, not to engage students through authentic and meaningful activities, but to transmit a designated set of skills and knowledge. It becomes simply another way to exert control over a lesson, to prevent any deviation from language and content objectives. A more accurate term would be "straitjacketing.

Yet SIOP, without advancing any explanation, puts "language objectives" on a par with "content objectives" and teaches both explicitly.

it's hard to imagine a more tedious approach, practically guaranteed to deaden the enthusiasm of 12-year-olds.

the federal Institute of Education Sciences reviewed these studies and found all of them lacking—that is, none could "establish that the comparison group was comparable to the intervention group prior to the start of the intervention.

Krashen's insistence that a sheltered classroom consists of second language learners only.

sheltered classes are for intermediate [language learners], not beginners." The reason should be obvious: "It is extremely difficult to teach subject matter to those who have acquired none or little of the language. Beginners should be in regular ESL, where they are assured of comprehensible input."63 Unrealistic language demands create, in effect, a sink-or-swim situation, in which academic learning is minimal.

the Comprehension Hypothesis,12 elaborated by Stephen Krashen in the early 1980s. It holds that one factor above all is responsible for second language acquisition: comprehensible input in that language.

The more children focused on messages with a real-life purpose, rather than on, say, repetitive grammar drills or artificial dialogues, the more French they understood.

SIOP Feature 21 requires activities that integrate all language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking)—that is, forced output in English for all students, beginning at the earliest stages of acquiring the language.

Immersion teachers adjusted their use of French to make it accessible to students. They did this through careful choice of vocabulary, syntax, pacing, and intonation, and by avoiding needless complexity, making points directly rather than elliptically, and adding redundancy. Other techniques included contextual cues such as gestures, facial expressions, and body language.

Teachers needed to emphasize the message, not the medium. Ideally, the curriculum should be so engaging that students would forget which language the teacher was using!

It is unnecessary, he added, to pressure students to produce speech or writing in the second language before they are ready, because "output" contributes nothing. It is the result of second language acquisition, not the cause. In fact, putting pressure on children to speak or write can be counterproductive, increasing stress and raising the affective filter.

not focusing on language turns out to be an effective way to teach language in sheltered classrooms, especially the kind of academic language that students need for school.

skill-building" approaches, which feature explicit instruction in the formal aspects of language, have a poor record of success. Hence the dismal results of most foreign language programs.

All it really seems to prove is that if you assemble a number of like-minded people, who share a certain view of sheltering and how it should be done, a test will confirm that they agree with each other most of the time about what sheltering means.

conscious learning remains the method and goal of skill-building models. To the extent that students acquire any language at all in such classes, Krashen argues, comprehensible input—provided haphazardly rather than purposefully—is responsible.

we are unaware of any convincing evidence that languages are acquired through "practice." On the other hand, studies have shown that students can reach high levels of proficiency through input alone—that is, with little or no production of the language through speech or writing.

Noam Chomsky pointed out, the number of possible sentences is infinite in any language; there is no limit to the grammatical combination of words. Behaviorism cannot explain how, after relatively limited exposure to a mother tongue, young children acquire complex syntactic structures and begin to produce "correct" utterances never heard before, by themselves or by others. What's more, they accomplish these amazing intellectual feats without being explicitly taught.

Although it permits the use of students' native language "to clarify key concepts," this weak form of bilingual instruction has no support in educational research.

A highly structured, prescriptive model of sheltering and scaffolding is not necessary for effectively educating English learners. In fact, mandating any approach that allows for little deviation is likely to be counterproductive. Just as explicit instruction encourages passive learning, tightly scripted lessons encourage passive teaching.

educators of English learners should be well-versed in theories of second language acquisition and in methodologies such as sheltering and scaffolding. Their work should be informed by professional development and coaching from experienced colleagues on effective techniques in the classroom. But is there no room for diversity in teaching styles and techniques? Is there really just one way to shelter instruction?

SIOP's authors never explain the benefits of standardization; yet standardization was clearly their intent. They say they first conceived of SIOP "as a research and supervisory tool to determine if observed teachers incorporated key sheltered techniques consistently in their lessons.

One would think that researchers concerned with program quality would have begun by conducting studies of various sheltering techniques and program designs to determine which were most promising in which contexts with which students.