What terms do you use to describe the population of multilingual learners and language development instruction?
Aug 08, 2025
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- Multilingual learner/English language learner/English learner: To describe the student learning academic English who brings additional language and cultural assets from home, EL Education opts for the increasingly prevalent term “multilingual learner,” which is an asset-based reference to the diverse linguistic repertoire these students possess. Our primary rationale for the use of this term is to use terminology that helps us emphasize the assets we value as part of our equity-focused mission. We preference “multilingual learner” over the widely-used “English Language Learner” (ELL) and “English Learner,” (EL) or even “Emergent Bilingual,” which emphasize the learning of English only.
- Academic English: We use “academic English” to refer to the variety of English that our curriculum and schools in the U.S. expect students to use in academic contexts in preparation for college and career: everything from speaking and listening protocols to written narratives to public speaking and informative writing. Though the college- and career-ready standards refer to “standard English,” we avoid this term, since we (along with many linguists) believe that there is not one standard English. Each district, school, or classroom will have its own linguistic style, norms, and conventions that students are supported to understand and expected to master, because those are aligned to what’s adaptive in college, career, and community. We also avoid using the phrases “formal English” and “informal English,” since these may carry value judgments and may be inaccurate as well. (However, we provide instruction for formal and informal language when the standards require it.) We encourage schools and districts to set standards, in collaboration with students, for how students use language in academic contexts.
- English Language Development (ELD): This term focuses on the instruction of language skills rather than the student population. ELD is the systematic process of learning English by children who may need support with proficiency in English, perhaps because they speak an additional language at home or speak a different native language. We use the term ELD to refer to learning processes and instructional programs that support the acquisition of English, which some schools or districts refer to English as a Second Language (ESL) processes and programs.
- Home Language: “Home language” refers to additional languages such as Spanish, Tagalog, Hmong, Arabic, and Somali that students may use with their families and communities. Home language usage may include code-switching (alternating between two or more languages or varieties of language when communicating) or translanguaging (using a combination of two or more languages to process meaning internally and to communicate).
- Long-Term English Learners (LTELs): These students have been enrolled in U.S. schools for six years or longer, and have not been reclassified as fluent English proficient due to gaps and deficiencies in the rigor of their education (Olsen, 2010).
