As ELLs continue to acquire English, they begin to produce one or two word phrases, and then move to sentences. As students are acquiring English, they will often struggle with grammar and pronunciation, but our emphasis should be on conveying meaning, not grammatical perfection. The State of Washington has determined English language proficiency levels that describe English learners as they acquire English.

More on Language Acquisition.

There are two district dimensions of language proficiency that students need to succeed in the classroom: conversational fluency and academic language. Jim Cummins, University of Toronto, spearheaded a large body of research in this area. One of the major findings of this research is that learners acquire conversational fluency typically in about one to two years. That means that a student can "speak English" fairly well at the end of that time period.

More on Proficiency levels and English
Language Development Standards for ELLs.

More on Cummins' research.

What is deceptive is that these students speak conversational English and can communicate in social settings rather effectively, but have likely not yet acquired the academic English necessary to perform at grade level.

More about the dimensions
of language proficiency.