1.) HELPING MAINSTREAM TEACHERS LEARN HOW TO TEACH ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS A Capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English as a Second Language.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION (in brief)

The Scenario
Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why,
you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable
without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.
How many times do our students feel this same way as Maniac Magee, a character created by author Jerry Spinelli? There are only five vowel symbols in the
English language, yet these five vowels alone, or with another vowel, can create over a dozen different sounds. To an English Language Learner (ELL), these vowels can create confusion when learning how to perceive and produce vowel sounds. Which sound should they choose? There are rules to follow to help a speaker know what vowel sound to pronounce, but these rules can sometimes be confusing even to native English speakers. To further complicate things, some of these students are just being introduced to the idea of learning to read!
Any mainstream teacher who has ever taught reading knows how students experience frustration over learning the English vowels and their numerous sounds, but
what about the ELLs who are in science class and not only have to weed through science vocabulary and concepts but also have to read and understand the concepts in a language which they still do not completely understand. Or, the math classroom where the teacher explains a concept orally, using content specific words to explain a technically difficult content based problem. Words such as however, compare and contrast, likewise, until, furthermore are used in all disciplines but not taught by all teachers. ............