Melvin Gowah's enthusiasm would make most teachers beam.

During a recent language arts lesson, the seventh-grader jumped up to write an answer on the classroom's whiteboard. But teacher Jennifer Frueh stopped him.

";Do you think that would be fair?"; she asked, pointing out he was the first student to do a previous activity. ";You need to take turns.";

Melvin, who came from Liberia a year ago, handed the dry-erase marker to another student in his group but wiggled impatiently in his seat while he waited.

Frueh teaches English Language Learners at Cheney Middle School in West Fargo. The district is second only to Fargo for the largest ELL student population in North Dakota.

It's about to get bigger.

Last year the district served 140 students whose native languages weren't English. This year West Fargo has 194 ELL students registered - nearly a 40 percent increase from last spring - and more are expected.

Most of the new students are coming directly from refugee camps in Africa and have had little exposure to English, said Kerri Whipple, the district's ELL liaison. Many had little or no formal education.

";Today I registered a ninth-grader who has had one year of schooling,"; Whipple said. ";She had trouble spelling her last name, yet it was important to her family that she go to school here.";

Neighboring Fargo School District has 43 new ELL students registered, said Verlene Dvoracek, the program's coordinator. Sixteen are refugees from Africa. Forty-three isn't a big surge for the district, which has 700 ELL students.

Available housing plays the biggest role in determining which district will get refugee students, Dvoracek said. Last year, Fargo had a big bump in ELL students from Liberian families who resettled in Fargo. Few registered in West Fargo schools.

The roles are reversed this year.

Services for ELL students vary depending on the child's age and proficiency in English. For example, even a kindergartner who has no English skills will spend most of his or her time in a regular classroom with peers.

";In kindergarten, everyone's learning the alphabet and how to read,"; Whipple said. ";The child won't be that far behind.";

But the gaps at the middle school and high school levels are wider, educators said.

New students whose native language isn't English are tested and then placed in one of five language categories ranging from no English to advanced English skills.

Level four is considered fluent.

Students for whom English is impossible or ";extremely difficult"; attend core academic classes taught by ELL teachers. They also interact with peers by going to classes like physical education, family and consumer science, art and keyboarding.

";We try to find classes that are low language, but high activity,"; Whipple said. ";These are classes where they can succeed with little English proficiency.";

Teaching students with no exposure to English is like teaching a toddler, said Michelle Bloom, who works with ELL students at West Fargo's Eastwood Elementary.

";You start with the basics - colors and shapes,"; she said.

The biggest challenge is teaching older students the vocabulary without treating them like toddlers. But until students know the vocabulary, it's difficult to teach even the simplest concepts.

In a recent ELL science class at Cheney Middle School, teacher Holly Erickson walked students through a lesson on the different states of matter. The example of solid matter given by the textbook was ";brick.";

Students seemed to understand the concept. They listed properties of solids, liquids, gases and plasma. They drew an example of each.

At the end of the class, one girl raised her hand: ";What's a brick?"; she asked.

The goal is to get ELL students in mainstream classes as soon as possible. They may start by attending a regular math class and then transition into the other subjects. However, all can receive special accommodations, such as having more time to complete a test, until their language skills are considered fluent.

It takes one to three years for students to learn social language, which is necessary for everyday life. It can take up to 10 years for them to perfect academic language.

But the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires ELL students to test at grade level after one year in school. This is a source of frustration for ELL teachers.

There's no doubt in Whipple's mind her middle school students made progress last year. She had them start a journal in January. For the first entry, most students just copied the questions: ";What is your name?"; and ";What is your age?";

By May, her students could write a page about their families.

Still, they likely won't test at grade level.

";You can read 'photosynthesis' a hundred times for them,"; Frueh said. ";But they're lacking the prior knowledge needed to understand the process.";

Plus, academics aren't the only thing teachers need to stress. While not all ELL students are refugees, the vast majority left their native countries because of war and unsafe conditions.

Skills refugee children learned to stay alive, such as pushing to be first, are the opposite of what teachers want to see in the classroom. Thus, the recent lesson Melvin learned about taking turns.

ELL educators also coach students on things American children take for granted, such as standing in line, staying to the right side of the hallway and wearing shorts to gym class.

They assure students they are now in a safe place and try to teach them that police are friendly and fire drills are not life-threatening.

Sometimes it backfires. Last year a bomb threat forced the middle school into a lockdown. After the threat was found to be a hoax, one of Frueh's students came up to her. The boy had scars on his legs, reminders of the war in Bosnia. He accused her of lying about being safe.

";They're here for an education. They know English is their lifeline,"; Frueh said. ";We also want them to be successful at life here.";

Readers can reach Forum reporter Erin Hemme Froslie at (701) 241-5534.