From One Student to 200+: How I Scaled Free Language Acquisition Access Across an Entire ELD Program
- Cesar Manzano
- Apr 27
- 12 min read
Updated: May 2
By Julio César Manzano, MBA Fulbright Scholar | ESOL Teacher & PLC Lead | Founder, Camino Academy LLC
How It Started
In late September 2025, I submitted an Educational Management Team (EMT) request for a Grade 11 newcomer at a large public high school in a major suburban Maryland school district — one of the most diverse in the nation, serving over 40,000 English Language Learners. This student was struggling with reading and writing, and he had zero access to a dedicated language acquisition tool.
But here's the question that kept me up: if this student didn't have access, how many others were in the same situation?
So I pulled the data — WIDA ACCESS screener results, WIDA proficiency scores, MAP-R lexile levels — and all of it pointed to the same gap. There was no dedicated language acquisition curriculum at our school, only a couple of textbooks in our bookroom, and definitely no self-paced tool that could meet them where they actually were. The need existed in one building, and the solution existed in another, and nobody had connected them yet.
What I Did About It
I started sending emails asking my colleagues and our Media Center Specialist a pretty simple question: "Do we have anything for struggling language learners?"
Turns out, the county's public library system offers free Rosetta Stone access to any resident with a library card. No cost to the school, no cost to students, no budget request — just a library card, and I didn’t know!
That one conversation set a couple of things in motion:
Our Media Center Specialist connected the project to his own professional development goal and the school's improvement plan, to directly support EML students
He coordinated with our Resource Teacher to expand eligibility beyond my one student to the full ELD population, 117 students with limited language proficiency receiving ELD services.
In early October 2025, he reached out to the county library system to formalize the partnership.
Together, we eliminated barriers to access at every step. Instead of asking students to find their way to a public library — which for newcomer ELD students with transportation challenges and limited English, is a huge ask — we brought the library to them. A representative from the county library system came to the school and only needed a student ID to issue a card on the spot.
Total cost to the school: $0.
What is rosetta stone?
For anyone unfamiliar with the platform — Rosetta Stone is a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) tool built on a structured immersion method. Lessons are scaffolded across all four language domains: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students learn through real-world images and audio from native speakers rather than translations or memorization, and the platform’s speech recognition engine (TruAccent) gives immediate pronunciation feedback by comparing each learner’s speech to native speaker models (Rosetta Stone, n.d.). The curriculum is adaptive and self-paced, which means students at different proficiency levels can work simultaneously without requiring separate lesson plans from the teacher, and what I love about it the most is that students choose their individual goals including traveling and working -- this one's particularly popular with my juniors who work after school and weekends.
The research on Rosetta Stone’s effectiveness is still developing, but recent studies are promising. A 2025 quasi-experimental study out of Morocco found that university students who supplemented traditional instruction with Rosetta Stone showed measurable gains in English proficiency compared to a control group receiving traditional instruction alone — and critically, students in the experimental group reported increased engagement and confidence in using English (Bouziane & Akhiate, 2025). That finding — confidence alongside proficiency — is directly relevant to what I was trying to build for my WIDA 1 newcomers, students for whom language anxiety is one of the biggest barriers to participation.
Why This Matters for Adolescent Newcomers Specifically
Working with adolescent language learners adds a layer that most ed-tech discussions miss entirely. Krashen’s (1982) Affective Filter Hypothesis argues that when anxiety is high and self-confidence is low, a mental block forms that prevents comprehensible input from being processed — no matter how good the material is. For adolescents, this filter runs especially hot. Research on adolescent language learners shows that middle and high school is the developmental period where peer judgment has the most influence on self-esteem and willingness to participate in class (O’Donnell, 2006; Laursen, 2010, as cited in Moyer, 2021). A newcomer who arrived this year, who’s still building basic literacy in English, is not going to volunteer to speak in front of peers who’ve been in the country for three years. The risk feels too high.
This is where Rosetta Stone’s design aligns with what the research says adolescent newcomers actually need. Krashen’s Comprehensible Input Hypothesis (i+1) holds that language acquisition happens when learners are exposed to input just slightly beyond their current proficiency level (Krashen, 1982). Rosetta Stone’s adaptive engine does this automatically — it meets each student at their assessed level and builds incrementally. But just as important, it does this in a private, low-stakes environment where a student can attempt the speaking exercise, get it wrong, hear the correction, and try again without anyone watching. For an adolescent newcomer carrying the weight of language anxiety, interrupted schooling, and the social pressure of a new country — that privacy is a design feature, not a convenience.
Peregoy and Boyle (2016) reinforce this from the instructional side, arguing that effective language instruction for English learners has to scaffold across all four domains simultaneously while drawing on the learner’s existing linguistic knowledge. Rosetta Stone covers all four domains in every unit, and the structured immersion method means students are building connections between what they hear, read, speak, and write within the same lesson — which mirrors the overlapping, non-linear way language acquisition actually happens in adolescent learners.
The combination of adaptive difficulty (i+1), low affective filter (private practice or a small class size), multi-domain scaffolding (all four skills per lesson), and immediate corrective feedback (TruAccent) makes this tool particularly well-suited for the population I teach — not as a replacement for direct instruction, but as a structured complement to it.
When It Scaled
When I learned that our county provides Rosetta Stone for free, I didn't think about it twice! With the help of my school's media center specialist, we coordinated a visit from the county library system. On February 26, 2026 over 100 ELD students across proficiency levels walked out with library cards and active Rosetta Stone accounts. Students were onboarded on the spot, logging in for the first time during the visit itself.
We also scheduled a follow-up session for students who missed the first round, because if you work with ELD populations, you already know — chronic absenteeism isn't a side issue. National data backs that up: chronic absenteeism among English learners surged from 13% in 2017 to 28% in 2022 and has stayed elevated since (Santibañez et al., 2024). One analysis found that ELLs went from accounting for about 10% of chronic absenteeism pre-pandemic to roughly 40% post-pandemic (MASFEC, 2025). So any program designed for this population that doesn't build around absenteeism is going to leave students behind.
The numbers:
Metric | Result |
Students identified in original EMT request | 1 |
Students on initial eligibility list | 117 |
Students who received library cards and access | 200+ |
Cost to school | $0 |
Cost to students | $0 |
Timeline from EMT request to distribution | ~5 months (Sept 2025 → Feb 2026) |
Current status (Spring 2026) | Active classroom implementation with structured instructional model |
The Instructional Model
Here's what I learned fast — handing students a login and telling them "go learn" doesn't work. You need a structure around the tool, or it's just another app they open once and forget about.
Now in its first year of full implementation (2025–2026), I've built a three-day weekly rotation in my ELD classroom that wraps Rosetta Stone into a broader literacy framework. For context — I teach a sheltered Seminar class for WIDA level 1 students that supplements their English 11 class. These are the earliest-stage English learners in the building. Some are in their first year in the country. Others have had interrupted formal education in their home countries, meaning they're not just learning English — they're building academic literacy skills that were never fully developed in their first language. That's who this model is designed for.
Day 1 — Full Rosetta Stone Session Students work through lessons at their own pace, targeting their individual proficiency level and personal goals. The platform's adaptive engine handles the differentiation — each student is working at the right difficulty without me needing to prep 10 separate lesson plans.
Day 2 — Direct Phonics Instruction + Independent Practice This is the day that makes everything else work. I deliver a mini-lesson grounded in the Science of Reading — direct phonics instruction informed by the developmental word study framework in Bear, Invernizzi, Templeton, and Johnston's Word Study for Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary Instruction (7th ed.). The idea is that phonics isn't rote memorization — you assess where each learner is developmentally and build from there. I also draw on Peregoy and Boyle's Reading, Writing, and Learning in ESL (7th ed.), which makes the case that literacy instruction for English learners has to integrate phonological skills with real, scaffolded reading and writing — you can't just drill sounds in isolation and expect transfer.
After the mini-lesson, students move back to independent practice on Rosetta Stone, and here's what I've noticed: the explicit phonics instruction gives them confidence to actually attempt the speaking exercises. They have a framework now — sound patterns, word recognition, connections to their L1 — so the speaking component feels doable instead of terrifying. That connection between explicit teaching and self-paced practice is what drives the whole model.
Day 3 — Individual Progress Conferences I sit with each student one-on-one to go over their Rosetta Stone progress, talk through challenges, set goals, and give feedback. This is how I catch students who are stuck before they disengage, and how I make sure the wins get noticed.
Target frequency: At least three sessions per week.
What the Data Shows
Engagement
Out of 7 enrolled students in my classroom, 5 are actively and consistently using the platform — a 71% engagement rate. When you consider that national chronic absenteeism among English learners sits around 28% (Santibañez et al., 2024), and that these are newcomer ELD students dealing with technology barriers and language anxiety on top of attendance challenges, 71% consistent participation is meaningful.
Barriers I Ran Into — and How I Handled Them
Technology: Some students couldn't do the speaking exercises because of microphone or device issues. So I became the IT department — troubleshooting hardware, fixing browser settings, and finding workarounds. The technology was never going to be the reason a student couldn't participate.
Absenteeism: Two students were absent on library card distribution day. One was a Pashto-speaking student who needed to pick up his card on his own, since he also missed the makeup day. I used Google Translate to write him instructions in Pashto, pulled up a map to the nearest library branch, and walked him through where to go and what to say when he got there. He picked up his card.
The other student — a girl with chronic attendance issues — still doesn't have hers. I can't control who shows up. But for the students who do show up, I can make sure nothing stands between them and the resource.
The Student Who Changed Everything
One student — I'll call him Marco — was a challenge before this program started. Phone out, off-task, pushing every boundary he could find. After we started this model, something shifted. And — I really didn't see this coming — he started helping me troubleshoot and teach other students how to use the platform. The kid I was spending energy redirecting became the kid other students were learning from. I don't think that was Rosetta Stone alone. I think it was the combination of having something that actually met him at his level, giving him real autonomy over his learning, and making his progress visible enough that he could feel it happening.
What My Colleagues Are Seeing
My Resource Teacher — a 20+ year ESOL veteran who's currently working on her doctoral thesis — shares the same students I do. She's acknowledged and validated the impact of this initiative, and coming from someone with that depth of experience and that level of academic rigor, that carries some weight.
What the Students Say
From a recent classroom reflection assessment, one student wrote:
"My teacher always supports me when I make some mistakes, or I don't know the answers."
If you teach English learners, you know why that matters. These students won't take risks with language — won't try the speaking exercise, won't raise their hand, won't write the email — unless they trust that making mistakes is part of the process and that they’re safe to do so.
The Bigger Insight
What I've learned from this goes beyond Rosetta Stone. The real question is: what actually makes self-paced language tools produce results? Here's what I'm seeing — students who receive direct phonics instruction are noticeably more confident when they go into the speaking exercises on the platform. The explicit teaching gives them a framework that makes the speaking feel achievable instead of overwhelming.
Research supports this: the National Reading Panel (2000) found that systematic phonics instruction produces significant benefits for students in K–6, and more recent studies confirm that phonological-based instruction is consistently effective for English learners on foundational reading skills like phonemic awareness and word-level reading (Shi, 2017). The National Committee for Effective Literacy takes it further — instruction for emergent bilingual students has to go beyond phonics and integrate all components of skilled literacy while building on students' home language to make cross-language connections (NCEL, as cited in Lexia Learning, 2025).
In practice, self-paced platforms amplify instruction — they don't replace it. Explicit teaching (Science of Reading) plus adaptive practice (Rosetta Stone) plus individual feedback (progress conferences) creates a loop where each piece strengthens the others. Bear et al.(2024) describe this as the developmental principle — instruction works best when it matches the learner's current stage in all domains. Peregoy and Boyle (2016) make the same argument for English learners specifically — literacy development has to be scaffolded across reading, writing, listening, and speaking, and language acquisition doesn’t come chronologically but rather as integrated processes.
If you're an organization thinking about deploying language acquisition technology, three things I'd flag based on what I've seen: pair the tool with direct instruction, build a structure around it with clear frequency and accountability and feedback loops, and treat barriers like absenteeism and technology gaps as design constraints you plan around — not problems you react to after the fact.
What Organizations Can Take From This
If you're a school district, nonprofit, or company serving multilingual populations, here's what I'd tell you.
Look at what's already available in your community before you write a grant or request a budget line. The solution to your language acquisition gap might already exist in your community or at your public library — someone just has to make the connection. Libraries, community centers, and workforce development agencies often have free tools that schools don't even know about.
Make sure specific people own specific parts of the initiative. This worked because a teacher, a media specialist, and a resource teacher each took responsibility for their piece. When nobody owns it, it stalls.
Design for the students you actually have. ELD students deal with chronic absenteeism, technology gaps, and language anxiety as a baseline — not as exceptions. If your program isn't built around those realities from day one, it's going to underserve the students who need it most.
And measure what actually tells you something. Engagement rate, behavioral change, what students say in their own words, what colleagues observe across settings — those are going to tell you more than login counts ever will.
The Metric that Counts
Here's what that looks like in my classroom right now: at least twice a week, I run dictations tied directly to the phonics rules we're studying. This semester so far, we're on dictation #15 and nearly through all 12 rules of phonics. Students listen, write, and then — here's the part that matters — they're randomly selected to come to the front and teach the dictation to the class. Their classmates give each other feedback and catch each other's mistakes.
Think about what's happening in that one activity. The dictations give me formative assessment data across 15 data points this semester — that's consistent, structured progress monitoring tied to explicit instruction. The student-led teaching is evidence of mastery at the highest level — if a student can stand up and deliver the content, they haven't just memorized it, they've internalized it enough to transfer it. And the peer feedback means students are developing metacognitive skills — they're not just learning phonics, they're learning to monitor phonics in themselves and in each other.
That's an instructional feedback loop: explicit instruction, formative assessment, student-led teaching, and peer correction — all running inside the same system that includes Rosetta Stone and individual progress conferences. No app produces that on its own. It takes a model where the app is one piece of a much larger design.
About the Author
Julio César Manzano, MBA is a Fulbright Scholar, certified ESOL teacher (Maryland & Texas),
and PLC Lead in one of the largest and most diverse school districts in the United States, serving over 40,000 English Language Learners.
He holds an MBA with a 4.0 GPA from Abilene Christian University and has delivered instruction and professional development across the United States, Spain, and Italy. His MBA capstone validated a bilingual education coaching model through 37 customer discovery interviews and competitive analysis.
César is the founder of Camino Academy LLC, a bilingual English coaching practice helping Spanish-speaking professionals communicate with confidence at work — in meetings, in emails, in interviews, and in life.
Connect: caminoacademy.net | cesar@caminoacademy.net | IG @caminowithcesar | tiktok @spanglishcesar
References
Bear, D. R., Invernizzi, M., Templeton, S., & Johnston, F. (2024). Word Study for Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary Instruction (7th ed.). Pearson.
Bouziane, K., & Akhiate, Y. (2025). Investigating the impact of Rosetta Stone (a computer-assisted language learning software) on students’ proficiency in English language: A quasi-experimental study. IAFOR Research Archive. https://papers.iafor.org/submission92781/
Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon Press. https://sdkrashen.com/content/books/principles_and_practice.pdf
MASFEC. (2025, September 14). Chronic absenteeism and English language learners. Massachusetts Families and Children. https://masfec.org/chronic-absenteeism-and-ell/
Moyer, A. (2021). The adolescent language learner: Setting the scene. In Teaching languages to adolescent learners. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108552516
National Reading Panel (U.S.) & National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). Report of the National Reading Panel: Teaching children to read. U.S. Government Printing Office.
Peregoy, S. F., & Boyle, O. F. (2016). Reading, Writing, and Learning in ESL: A Resource Book for Teaching K–12 English Learners (7th ed.). Pearson.
Santibañez, L., Gottfried, M. A., & Freeman, J. A. (2024). English-learner-classified students and absenteeism: A within-group analysis of missing school. Educational Researcher, 53(7). https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X241258770
Shi, B. (2017). The effectiveness of phonological-based instruction in English as a foreign language students at primary school level: A research synthesis. Frontiers in Education, 2(15). https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2017.00015
This case study documents a self-initiated program at a public high school in a large suburban Maryland school district. Student names have been changed to protect privacy. All data reflects the author's direct classroom experience during the 2025–2026 school year.