The article presents a comparative analysis of the effectiveness of reading instruction programs for ESOL students in U.S. schools, using the standard approach represented by the Benchmark Advance program and an integrated phonics-grammar model. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the persistent crisis in reading achievement among bilingual learners in American schools, exacerbated by the growing proportion of ESOL learners and by the limitations of programs that separate decoding, grammar, and text comprehension into distinct methodological domains. The aim of the article is to identify the cognitive and pedagogical efficacy of the compared models and to substantiate the advantages of integrating phonics, morphosyntax, and meaning construction in reading instruction. The scientific novelty of the work lies in its interpretation of ESOL students’ reading as a neurolinguistically holistic process and in the theoretical substantiation of an authorial model that minimizes dual cognitive load. It is concluded that standard programs exhibit fragmentation and limited adaptability, whereas the integrated model provides more meaningful decoding, accelerates the transition to academic reading, and enhances the quality of language acquisition. The article will be useful to researchers in bilingual education, methodologists, ESOL instructors, and school administrators
Olga Sokolova (Wed,) studied this question.