ESOL article

In doing research for the tic-tac-toe sheet, I ran across a facinating article on helping ELL's acquire English.

"First Language Use in Second Language Literacy Development"
Irene C Pompeiit-Szul, Ph.D. NYU
based on a study in the mid-90's - used in elementary (4th and 5th) and middle (6-8) schools - Use of first language to scaffold second acquisition.
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/

This was a wonderful article, very clearly written with no loose ends as to how they had run the test.  The one thing I had a problem with was that one of the kids was Polish, brought his story from home written in Polish, and luckily the husband of the researcher knew Polish and was able to translate so the experiment could move forward.  Right.  this isn't New York, so I have a sneaking suspicion we would have jsut a bit more trouble. 

But, anyway, please read the article because it does show how to help students move toward proficiency in English.
 In ruminating on the study, I've started to wonder if the techniques could also be applied to students who have reading / writing issues.  I really don't see why they couldn't.....