
How can educators ensure that emerging bilingual students are well served in their schools, and how can we as educators foster linguistic diversity as an asset rather than as a problem?
Who Are Emergent Bilinguals?
As of fall 2018, 10.2% of public school students in the US were identified as English language learners (ELLs), double the number recorded in 2003.1 At 75%, the majority of ELLs have Spanish as their home language, followed by Arabic and Chinese, which make up 2.7% and 2% of total ELL students respectively. Other languages commonly spoken by ELLs are Vietnamese, Somali, Russian, Portuguese, Haitian, Haitian Creole, and Hmong (out of the over 400 languages spoken by students in the US). By 2025, 25% of K–12 students are projected to have a first language other than English.
I use the term emergent bilingual to refer to students typically categorized as “ELLs” to acknowledge that they