Building Literacy with Multilingual Learners

“In the third edition, Lems, Soro, and Charles present important current advances in language education. Of note are fast-developing technologies and their uses, not only as teaching and learning tools and modalities, but also as topics for content lessons. The third edition is well organized and accessible, and masterfully connects linguistic concepts to strategies that educators can immediately implement in their classrooms. This is an excellent text for teacher preparation courses related to second-language acquisition and bilingual education. I have used the book in my biliteracy methods courses, as well as for professional development, and loved it. The content can serve as a basis for writing assignments, in-class discussion and analysis, presentations, and demonstrations of the sample teaching strategies.”

—Sonia W. Soltero, PhD, Professor and Chair, Department of Leadership, Language and Curriculum, DePaul University


“Lems, Soro, and Charles provide a clear, accessible roadmap to literacy instruction for English language learners, based on solid research in linguistics, reading and writing development, and ESL teaching methods. I’ve used this text multiple times in my graduate class on ELL literacy, with great success. My students, many of whom are inservice teachers, find the book to be not only enlightening, but also really practical, due to the many instructional techniques and activities it includes. A real highlight of the third edition is the added emphasis throughout on supporting students’ multilingualism and making their L1s an integral part of English literacy instruction through practices like translanguaging.”

—Karen L. Ford, PhD, Department of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education, University of Virginia


“In its third edition, this book has gotten even better. It continues to do a superb job of combining theory with application. As the authors introduce linguistic concepts, they share their own personal experiences and those of other professionals in the field. The authors have added more practical activities that teachers can start using right away to help multilingual learners master a new language. I really appreciated the discussions of topics like the pros and cons of using artificial intelligence in the classroom.”

—Margaret Gigous, MA, EL Resource Teacher, Villa Park School District 45, Illinois