Imagine going to school alone, every day. You are alienated from the rest of the children because you cannot express yourself or your thoughts to them. They think you are weird, but you don’t feel weird. Imagine still, that you are seated in class, but cannot understand what the teacher is saying.

This is the reality of many children who have speech-language disorders, but it is also an experience shared with children of foreign languages.

Children learning English as a second language (ESL) are often misplaced in the U.S. educational system as suffering from a cognitive or language disability that requires special education, when in reality the child may simply have poor or limited training in English.

English language learners (ELLs) may display some of the symptoms of language disorders, such as delayed reading, language arrest, limited vocabulary, and comprehension difficulty, but their situation does not reflect a developmental impairment and therefore requires different interventions.

Problems with teachers and parental education about the difference between a language-based difficulty versus a speech-language disorder remain at the heart of the problem, along with under-identification of these children by teachers, and even some speech-language pathologists (SLPs). Matters are made worse by poor funding, inconsistent state standards, and social attitudes toward non-English speakers.

Therapy Times sits down with Deborah Chitester, MS, CCC, SLP, to discuss ESL children, the misdiagnoses of their problems, and solutions to current obstacles. Chitester treats monolingual and bilingual clients of all ages and disabilities at her Pennington, N.J.-based practice Second Language, Literacy and Learning Connection. She has also authored three books, the latest of which is entitled Bilingual Speech-Language and Educational Evaluations.

Therapy Times: Why are so many children with language-based difficulties being labeled as special education students?

Deborah Chitester: These kids are often placed in special education needlessly because we don’t have as many schools and we really haven’t developed the type of programs they do need. ESL isn’t sufficient.

What’s also happening is that a child comes into school at age 4 or 5 with no English. It will be some time before high-level English expectations are reflected in the curricular content, rendering the child at a disadvantage, which is often due to a lack of professional development training in this area. This type of situation can be miscoded for a problem.

In an ideal program, you would have a 3-year-old that speaks only Spanish or mainly Spanish, but will get enough English language content to be able to benefit from the curriculum, while still keeping his Spanish. He’ll have enough practice before he is forced to use English, and he is misjudged or inappropriately judged or thought to be delayed, because that’s happening and then these kids aren’t serviced right.

These children are thought to be delayed, and then they sit for years in special education. No Child Left Behind has done little or nothing to address this, because it still puts requirements on school districts that are unrealistic given the gravity of the demographic shift and all that comes with it.

What is also happening is that these kids are being compared to Anglo children. That’s just not appropriate, and that’s what standardized testing does to them. It doesn’t compare them “like with like” to get accurate results, and it’s all these lack of tools that factor into this.


TT: What are some of the problems that SLPs have when dealing with ESL children?

Chitester: We don’t have enough training. We usually de-emphasize the importance of the first language as a function [because] we don’t know the first language, but that’s no longer an excuse.

I created this system called the “Linguistic Features Approach.” For example, I don’t know Swahili, but if I know the features, what the language is like from a phonological standpoint, from a morphological standpoint, from a narrative standpoint, what it looks like sound-wise, what it looks like in ending – I can consider a referral or a concern academically, differently.

So when this teacher says, “Hey, this kid isn’t reading up to par,” I know that the reason is that Swahili and English are so different orally, that the phonemic awareness necessary for reading in English is something that is still far away from this kid and has to be specifically addressed.

This is especially true when the parent says the child had absolute, perfect Spanish skills or other first language prior to school. You have enough training to know that’s likely not a disorder.

Then, you have to use your skill set to create, not just speech therapy paradigms for those who are truly disordered, but what I call “language augmentation paradigms” for those who are not disordered, but who are struggling due to some aspect of second language learning that is incomplete.


TT: If a second language learner is inappropriately placed in special education, then what are the potential implications for the child?

Chitester: The implications are great – the ones I have seen are long-term academic delays, language loss, and language arrest. Special education is designed to treat an organic anomaly. A language difference is not an organic anomaly.

Not only are you serving a child in too restrictive an environment and not giving them the opportunity in a less restrictive environment to do well, but you also view the child as deficient and treat the child deficiently when you have missed “difference.” Then, they receive special education when they didn’t need it and their first language deteriorates. Losing the first language has detrimental effects.

Language loss is the rapid deterioration of the first language because of an exclusive focus of the second language, typically represented in an all-English speech therapy or special education paradigm that is designed to merge and increase vocabulary, when it’s not a vocabulary deficit, but a vocabulary difference that must be recognized. The core thing that ELLs have to learn is vocabulary.

You’ve always got to consider the first language; otherwise, even after five years of English speech therapy, the kid will walk around like a machine: “hot dog, stove, kitchen.” Can he connect it? Does he know what it means? Is it enough for academic learning? What happened to his first language?


TT: What would you like to see changed to better the situation and development of ELLs?

Chitester: We have a failure right now in educating parents and arming them with the information that their first language is an asset and arming them with the kind of information they need to understand their own children’s development. We need to give the parents the tools to provide the child the opportunity, measure their ability to integrate, and then discern that this kid has language literacy potential.

Parent literacy programs are also important resources. We need offer a service, or a program, where we train your school district – your special education teams in early childhood ESL – to train the parents in language and literacy development.

As a nation, we’ve yet to devise educational programs that honor the first language – keep its differences and distinctions set with sanctity and educate them. That is the failure of the system as a whole.

We are far behind in reaching our professionals in terms of training, to understand and reflect cultural linguistic diversity in the curriculum and understanding within specialists when and how to test children.

As far as professional education and state guidelines for SLPs working with children, it’s just social chaos everywhere else. You have federal laws that don’t require standardized tests, but you have professionals who do not feel they have the training to do anything but –  that’s an issue.

What’s going on in Seattle may be very different from what’s going on in Philadelphia, and that needs to change. New York is a state that’s more advanced in this area; it’s the only state you have to be licensed in. What makes it different is it has, in place, specific standards that have to be met: course work in second language acquisition and target language proficiency in the language that you’re purporting to want to serve in. Recognizing language-based difficulties in ELLs, identifying them, addressing them, and lessening the load on special education is crucial.

Special education is now the place where a lot of ELLs are educated. That has to stop, and the only way it’s going to stop is by addressing parents, addressing the professional community, and eventually having this information – the pedagogy guide practice – be reflected in policy.


TT:  What advice would you give speech language pathologists who are working with ESL students?

Chitester:  Recognize that if you feel overwhelmed and if you’re questioning at some level, “Wait a minute, this doesn’t seem right,” it probably isn’t right.

Get into a group and advocate to your director that you need training and that you need something to help finding those answers, so you can, with confidence, go to your ESL colleagues and say, “Let’s collaborate. Let me tell you what I know about phonemic awareness and let you interject it into your ESL program so this child does become the better reader, and so I’m not treating like he’s delayed as a reader, but as someone with a language-based reading problem.” 

Recognize that their role [as an ESL teacher] can be to use what you know as an SLP, but in a less restrictive way. They need the training on how that works. This is an overwhelming issue, and there is no easy answer, but there is a lot of knowledge that we were not trained on.  We are not adequately prepared to deal with this. We need more training. We need to stand up to those who could technically put you in an ethically compromising situation, and say, “We need help here.”

— Kelly Olsen-Stanko is a staff writer for Therapy Times. Questions and comments can be directed to editorial@therapytimes.com.