CTEL cheat sheet

Second-language acquisition proceeds through five stages in order: pre-production (silent period), early production, speech emergence, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency.

Cummins: BICS (context-embedded conversational proficiency) typically develops in 1-2 years; CALP (context-reduced academic proficiency) typically takes 5-7 years.

Krashen's input hypothesis holds that acquisition occurs with comprehensible input at i+1; the affective filter hypothesis holds that anxiety or low motivation blocks intake even when input is comprehensible.

Contrastive analysis predicts errors caused by first-language transfer; error analysis treats overgeneralizations such as "goed" and "foots" as developmental rule construction rather than L1 interference.

English phonemes frequently absent from learners' L1 inventories include /th/ as in think and this, the /r/-/l/ contrast, the /i/-/I/ vowel contrast, and final consonant clusters.

Spanish-influenced English often shows adjective-after-noun order ("car red"), omitted subjects ("Is raining"), and an added /e/ before initial s-clusters ("eschool").

Cognates support positive transfer (familia/family); false cognates mislead (embarazada = pregnant, not embarrassed; exito = success, not exit).

The five language subsystems are phonology (sounds), morphology (word formation), syntax (sentence structure), semantics (meaning), and pragmatics (use in context).

English declarative word order is subject-verb-object; questions and negation in simple present and past require do-support ("Do you...?", "She doesn't...").

Norm-referenced tests report a student's standing relative to a comparison group (percentile rank, stanine); criterion-referenced tests report mastery of specified standards or objectives.

Reliability is consistency of scores across occasions, forms, or raters; validity is whether the instrument measures what it claims. A test can be reliable but not valid for a given purpose.

The ELPAC, administered in California since 2018 in place of the CELDT, assesses listening, speaking, reading, and writing and reports an overall proficiency level of 1 through 4.

Reclassification from English learner to fluent English proficient typically requires ELPAC overall level 4, teacher evaluation, parent consultation, and performance comparable to English-proficient peers on basic skills.

SDAIE (sheltered instruction) supports access to grade-level content through visuals, realia, gestures, modeling, graphic organizers, and cooperative grouping without simplifying the content standard.

The SIOP model has eight components: lesson preparation, building background, comprehensible input, strategies, interaction, practice/application, lesson delivery, and review and assessment.

Scaffolding operates within Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and is faded as competence grows; examples include sentence frames, word banks, think-alouds, and modeled exemplars.

Permissible assessment accommodations include extended time, glossaries, and small-group administration; translating a reading test into the home language invalidates the construct being measured.

Performance-based measures such as portfolios, running records, oral interviews, and analytic rubrics capture productive language use better than selected-response items alone.

Culture is learned, shared, and dynamic; it is not equivalent to ethnicity, nationality, immigration status, or language proficiency.

Ethnocentrism judges other groups by one's own cultural standards; cultural relativism interprets a behavior within its own cultural context.

Berry's acculturation framework crosses two dimensions (maintaining the heritage culture and adopting the host culture) to yield integration, assimilation, separation, and marginalization.

Hofstede's individualism-collectivism and Hall's high-context/low-context dimensions describe communication norms; high-context cultures rely more on situation and nonverbal cues than on explicit wording.

Funds of knowledge (Moll) treats household skills, work knowledge, and social networks as instructional assets; deficit thinking misreads language difference as cognitive deficit.

Lau v. Nichols (1974) held that identical facilities and curriculum do not give limited-English-proficient students equal educational opportunity; meaningful access is required.

Castaneda v. Pickard (1981) set a three-part test: the program rests on sound educational theory, is implemented with adequate resources, and is evaluated and shown to produce results.

Plyler v. Doe (1982) bars states from denying K-12 public education based on immigration status; California Proposition 58 (2016) removed most English-only restrictions of Proposition 227.

Language difference is not disability: data must be gathered across settings and in both languages before special education referral, since English learners are both over- and under-identified.