Many classroom teachers will tell you that immersing English language learners in a student-centred English medium classroom, with its everyday richness and opportunities for collaboration, develops their conversational fluency within a year. Although this outcome is gratifying, conversational fluency can mask the lack of academic language proficiency that is vital to future achievement and academic success. SOLO Taxonomy and English Language Learners centres directly on that all-important task of developing students’ academic language skills in both their first language and English.
