Classes for language-minority students at Socorro High School are taught in English. But when teachers divide their class into groups for collaborative projects or interactive learning, students often talk among themselves in Spanish.

Magda Maureira, ESL department head, encourages students to converse in their native tongue. Here's why:

"The more you can get kids to talk to each other, the more opportunities they have to sound off to each other, to filter through stuff, the better," she says. "It's real important for a kid to sit next to someone else and say, 'Did I understand? The teacher said da-da-da-da-da.' Sometimes, that's when they're clarifying.

"We have this heterogeneity of kids, and among them are tha language brokers who have more (English) than the others. You just have to bank that those kids are out there and that they're going to share and clarify. For the language broker, understanding may happened from teacher to ear, but that won't happen across the board.