Appropriate assessment of English language learnersLanguage acquisition has been a topic of great controversy for several decades. During this time, several approaches to English language acquisition were developed and implemented across the nation. School districts nationwide have implemented these approaches in their classrooms and trained their teachers in efforts to meet national, state, and local requirements established by educational reform such as No Child Left Behind (Abedi, 2004). A review of some of these approaches will certainly help us understand the strengths and weaknesses associated with each approach reviewed. A commonly used approach in structured language immersion is the total physical response or TPR approach. This approach uses spoken language that guides students through the use of modeling by providing oral instructions and guiding students. All ELL stakeholders participate as a group, thus reducing the margin for error in responding to the command. The controls are not complex but rather simple in nature. This process of inst...