ESL+Learner+-+Marina

==Marina is a Polish student from a middle class background. She arrived in the United States three weeks prior to enrolling in the middle school. Marina had formal schooling in their native country and has developed strong literacy skills in their first language, Polish. She also has very strong mathematics skills. For example, Marina knows how to do formal geometric proofs such as proving that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to 180 degrees.== ==In addition, Marina has taken English two hours a week for about a year before coming to the U.S, a requirement of that all Polish students in the educational system. Her mother helped Marina practice the English language a few weeks before her arrival in the U.S. Even with her background Marina feels that she has a limited understanding of English. She is also anxious about enrolling in a new school and about adapting to a new environment. Marina also wonders if teachers and students at the new school will welcome her.==

Adapted from Celedón-Pattichis, S.(2004, Winter). Rethinking Policies and Procedures for Placing English Language Learners in Mathematics. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 1 (2) (PDF). Retreived June 21, 2008 from http://njrp.tamu.edu/2004/PDFs/Celedon.pdf