English instruction needs to reach all students
RE "BOSTON students struggle with English-only rule" (Page A1, April 7): We learn that the dropout rate of immigrant children in Boston nearly doubled in three years because they must now attend content classes exclusively in English, and because their parents are not able to sign them up for additional English-language classes.
Research shows that, as with learning to read, the brains of a small percent of students permit learning a new language with ease; they can succeed in a content classroom with no instruction in the new language. Another sizable number will acquire the new language under a broad range of English-teaching methods. And a not-insignificant number, perhaps 5 to 10 percent, will, despite normal IQ, require multisensory, systematic, explicit teaching of the new language to be able to learn it.
It is in everyone's interest to give this last group the English language skills they need to succeed in our society.
In the extreme, if psychiatric problems and an economic downturn compound their difficulties, they might take a gun and turn on others, as Jiverly Wong did in Binghamton this month, upset with his low abilities in English and his joblessness.
Loraine K. Obler
New York
The writer is a distinguished professor in the speech-language-hearing sciences program at City University of New York Graduate Center. 