MTEL- ESL (54) Practice Test

MTEL- ESL (54) Practice Test Which of the following examples provides the strongest support for the nativist notion that all children are born with an innate sense of universal language principles that can be applied to the acquisition of any language? - ANS-A child can produce structurally complex novel utterances at a very young age. An ESL teacher is designing a listening lesson for 6th grade intermediate-level English language learners. Which of the following guidelines should the teacher follow in order to align the lesson with the comprehensible input hypothesis? - ANS-Choose an aural selection that is slightly above the students' comprehension level. Which of the following situations best illustrates James Cummin's theory of Common Underlying Proficiency (CUP)? - ANS-An English language learner who has knowledge of an academic concept in the 1st language quickly introduced in English. Which of the following types of instructional activities would be most appropriate for ELLs at advanced stages of English language development? - ANS-Frequent opportunities for the student to use English in challenging, authentic situations. Which of the following utterances would be most typical of an ELL who is in the early production stage of language acquisition? - ANS-Want crayon. Which of the following vocabulary-learning activities most clearly involves metacognition? - ANS-Identifying unfamiliar words in a reading passage. Student: (pointing to word in a book) What does it mean invisible? Teacher: Look at the parts of the word. Student: I know in- means "not" and vis is like "visual," something you see with the eyes. I remember -ible is like -able, right? Teacher: Right. Now look at the sentence. Student: (reading) "The creature was practically invisible, hidden in the dense foliage." "Hidden" is like to hide. I guess if it is invisible, it means you're not able to see it because it is hiding. This student's performance most clearly demonstrates which of the following cognitive processes involved in language acquisition? - ANS-Elaboration and inference An ELL overgenerates the regular past tense -ed to irregular verbs, such as holded or held. This student is most likely demonstrating: - ANS-The process of internalizing a grammatical rule. An ELL is extroverted and enjoys interacting with others. He is not afraid to try to communicate even when he is uncertain of the accuracy of his speech. These personality traits are likely to affect this student's English language acquisition in which of the following ways? - ANS-Facilitating language acquisition by promoting his willingness to take risks and his motivation to integrate into the new culture. Which of the following factors is likely to have the most significant impact on the degree to which an ELL is able to acquire native-like pronunciation in English? - ANS-The age at which the student begins learning English. An ESL teacher asks an ELL, "Where is your pencil?" The student replies, "He is on my desk." Which of the following best explains this error in the student's use of the personal pronoun he to refer to an object? - ANS-The student speaks a 1st language in which inanimate objects are marked for gender. An ELL is at an advanced stage of English language acquisition. However, the student continues to make certain consistent syntactic errors despite a general level of proficiency. This phenomenon can best be explained as: - ANS-Fossilization of interlanguage structures. Which of the following English words is most commonly pronounced with the vowel sound /e(upside-down)/ (i.e., schwa)? - ANS-What An ELL has difficulty distinguishing between the sounds /b/ and /v/ in English words (e.g., bet/vet, boat/vote) because in the student's first language the sounds /b/ and /v/ are spoken interchangeably in words. Which of the following provides the most accurate explanation of this linguistic phenomenon? - ANS-The sounds /b/ and /v/ are distinct phonemes in English, while they are allophones of the same phoneme in the student's 1st language. "This remarkable species of lichen makes its home in the inhospitable terrain of the Atacama Desert." (remarkable/inhospitable) Knowing the usage of the suffix -able in the words remarkable and inhospitable would best help a student identify: - ANS-The grammatical function of the words. Which of the following words consists of a root word and inflectional suffix? - ANSHopping. (-ing, -s, -ed, -en, -est, -n't) Which of the following sentences contains errors in syntax? - ANS-Every day my brother older eats at home lunch. (simple) "As soon as they got to school," the students fed the fish in the classroom's aquarium. The underlined portion of the sentence is an example of: - ANS-An adverbial clause. A person walks into a room with an open window, shivers, and says to others in the room, "Wow! It's really cold in here!" In this context, this utterance is most likely intended to function pragmatically as: - ANS-A request for someone to close the window. Familiarity with the pragmatics of a language would best help a language learner understand which of the following aspects of the language? - ANS-The role of intentional silence in interpersonal interactions in the language. Results of William Labov's research on standard and nonstandard varieties of spoken English have served primarily to: - ANS-Reduce the stigma attached to speaking a nonstandard dialect of English. Joshua Fishman's sociolinguistic research on the language use of Yiddish speakers contributed most to an understanding of: - ANS-The connections among language, nationality, and personal identity. While conducting research on a controversial issue for a class assignment, a high school student who is a proficient English speaker finds a legal brief that addresses his research topic. Although he reads above grade level in English, he has significant difficulty comprehending the language of the legal brief. This example best illustrates which of the following sociolinguistic concepts? - ANS-Register Variation. An ELL observes that some native English speakers drop the third person singular inflection -s from present tense verbs and asks an ESL teacher for an explanation. The teacher could best address the student's inquiry in the context of a discussion about: - ANS-Dialect diversity in English. Which of the following statements best describes the stance most researches of sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) have taken toward the use of students' primary language in the SEI classroom? - ANS-Students can benefit from minimal use of their primary language to clarify communication and to enhance motivation and selfesteem. Sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) program models in the United States have been based on research on successful French immersion programs in Canada. In the application of this research, it is most important to take into consideration which of the following distinctions between Canadian French immersion and SEI? - ANS-In Canadian French immersion, majority-language students learn a minority-language, while, in SEI, minority-language students learn a majority language. Which of the following recommendations would researches of sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) be most likely to make regarding the design of an effective SEI program? - ANS-Explore the strategies for keeping SEI class sizes small and for maximizing and/or extending instructional time for ELLs. Principles of sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) are primary based on learners learn best when: - ANS-Instruction is adjusted to accommodate students' level of language proficiency. The main goal of sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) instruction is to develop ELLs': - ANS-Academic language proficiency in English in order to achieve grade-level academic learning standards. Which of the following questions should be an ESL teacher's most important consideration when developing language objectives for a sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) math lesson? - ANS-Which language structures and functions support the math content of the lesson? An ESL teacher teaches early-intermediate-level English language learners in a sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) program. At the beginning of each SEI lesson, the teacher creates a graphic organizer, such as a semantic map, on the board to review concepts from previous lessons. The teacher then refers to content from the graphic organizer when introducing important concepts from the current lesson. This practice best illustrates which of the following key components of SEI? - ANS-Schema building. The Natural Approach to second-language instruction is primarily based on the theory that: - ANS-Language acquisition is a subconscious process that occurs when a language is used for natural, meaningful interaction. Which of the following methods of second-language instruction would be most appropriate to use with middle school ELLs who are at the transitioning level of English language acquisition? - ANS-Sheltered content teaching. An ESL teacher who is planning to implement the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA) with early-intermidiate- and intermediate-level ELLs decides to begin with the lessons that address science content. Which of the following best describes the primary rationale for this decision? - ANS-Science concepts tend to be more concrete than those of other content areas and therefore lend themselves to contextualized, hands-on discovery learning. A high school ESL teacher regularly conducts instructional conversations with transitioning-level English language learners in a sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) class. During each instructional conversation, the teacher leads a small group of students in a guided discussion of a content-area topic. The practice of conducting instructional conversations in the SEI classroom supports the goals of SEI primarily because instructional conversations provide English language learners with opportunities to: - ANS-Use academic English interactively in meaningful ways. A high school ESL teacher regularly conducts instructional conversations with transitioning-level English language learners in a sheltered/structured English immersion (SEI) class. During each instructional conversation, the teacher leads a small group of students in a guided discussion of a content-area topic. Which of the following guidelines should the teacher follow in implementing instructional conversations in the SEI setting? - ANS-Ensure that the amount of student talk in instructional conversations is greater than the amount of teacher talk. An ESL teacher works with a multilevel class of ELLs. Which of the following instructional practices would likely best promote the oral language development of all students in the class? - ANS-Utilizing a range of question types from those that prompt a nonverbal response to those that prompt an elaborate verbal response. He was a hard, stubborn old man. A smile rarely broke through the hard features of his face. He had worked hard all his life, but life had been hard on him. It never gave him a break. He struggled to break the hard ground year after year. He asked the earth to give a little back, but it repeatedly broke his heart. He took it hard. This passage best illustrates which of the following concepts related to English vocabulary that can pose challenges for English language learners' comprehension and development of communicative language competence? - ANS-High-frequency English words often have multiple meanings. Middle school English language learners watch an episode of a popular television program without sound and work in small groups to create scripts of what they think the characters in the episode are saying. Then, students make audio recordings of their scripts to be played along with the video. This activity promotes the students' communicative language competence primarily by: - ANS-Encouraging their oral language production in a meaningful context. 1. A teacher pronounces pairs of words (e.g., thorn/torn, mother/ mother, boat/both). 2. Students identify whether the words are the same or different. 3. The teacher presents written sentences that contain a missing word (e.g., "The ______ man needed a new heart"). 4. The teacher reads each sentence, inserting a given word (e.g., "tin") for the missing word. 5. Students select from a choice of two words (e.g., tin/thin) which word the teacher inserted in the sentence. This type of assessment primarily provides information about English language learners': - ANS-Phoneme discrimination. Which of the following informal listening comprehension assessment tasks would be most appropriate to use with a beginning level ELL? - Continues...