ABSTRACT
This chapter is informed by CDA as a critical tool to analyze the ways in which ELLs are viewed in the curriculum. In this essay, I substitute the term “ELLs” that is commonly used and only refers to students’ English proficiency, with “Ofelia,” García’s (2009) term of emergent bilinguals that instead gives validity to the linguistic skills of bilingual speakers. Emergent bilinguals are students who are becoming bilingual, acquiring English in school but also maintaining their home language (García, 2009). Throughout the chapter, I refer to a selection of readings analyzed with a critical perspective to extend my conceptualization of bilingualism, biliteracy, and emergent bilinguals.
