ELL

There are few assistive technologies specifically for English language learners. Many hardware or software titles helpful for students with print or written language disabilities are also helpful to English language learners.

**ESL Resources** Challenges for ELLs in Content Area Learning by Judie Haynes. This is an extremely helpful article that lists problems English language learners may encounter in specific content areas. For example, in math an ELL student may be confused by the use of commas and decimal points as that varies from culture to culture. The target audience for this page is not ELL teachers but other content area teachers the ELL student may have. The lists are comprehensive and the related links at the bottom of the page lead to other helpful information.

 Center on Instruction: English Language Learning This page is an annotated list of articles and books that are useful resources for teaching English Language Learners. There are links right on the page for downloading many of the articles as PDFs and supplementary material at PowerPoint presentations.  TESOLacademic.org This is a TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) site that offers many resources for ELL teachers, linking theory with practice. The postings are peer-reviewed.

The Internet TSL Journal This site contains links to teaching techniques, lessons, and article for teachers of English as a second language.

**Assistive Technology **

ECTACO - Electronic Translators - These are handheld devices that include talking dictionaries and an audio phrase book. These devices are expensive but may be useful for an English language learner.

[|BrightEye Technology] - This company makes Scan-a-Page and Scan-a-Word for scanning print text and reading it aloud to the student in a natural-sounding voice. This is similar to Kurzweil but cheaper. Having the text read can help ELL students who struggling with reading because they may not be literate in their first language.

Co:writer by Don Johnston is word prediction software that works in conjunction with your word processing software as an aid to writing. This can be helpful to ELL students who often struggle with written language.