Teaching ESL Students in the Mainstream

by Dorit Sasson

Over the past year I’ve received dozens of emails from instructors asking me for advice on teaching ESL students in their college reading courses. When I tell them that it is possible to give them opportunities to engage in the mainstream classroom they say, “But they aren’t “getting it.” Plus, they’re too silent.” Some of these teachers invariably show me the level of their students’ work to confirm their placement in the class, and some end up referring these students to the learning center.

Not all academic cases of ESL students need to be referred to the learning center. In fact, many of these students I have taught who initially appeared to be silent and not up to the academic level, thrived when given further opportunities to engage in an academic dialogue. Their cultural and social adjustment provides further opportunities for instructors to diversify instruction in an academic learning context. Reading for example, is one area of our instruction that instructors can diversify to meet the diverse learning needs since it work across the curriculum.

As culture these days becomes more global, instructors need a plethora of diversified strategies for teaching ESL students. However, while some community colleges build biannual study days specifically for instructors of ESL students, others don’t have the resources and academic agenda to give new instructors support on how to cater to this diverse group of learners. With the increasing number of ESL students in mainstream college courses across the US, instructors need to be able to support these learners in a time efficient way. By addressing some of the more critical areas of instruction, teachers can engage ESL students in specific areas of reading comprehension. Here are a few questions that I’ve been asked during my workshop presentations.

Question: How can I make sure ESL students understand what they are reading?

Rather than viewing the cultural and linguistic abilities as challenges, instructors can just perceive them as an expectation. Here are some of the practices that seem to work.

• Provide Adjusted Questions – Some ESL students will be challenged by the knowledge and comprehension levels, while others will be challenged by questions that require analysis and interpretation. A strategy here is to use student readiness as the basis of the kinds of questions you ask. Once you determine the readiness level, develop sets of questions of activities, class discussions, and homework at the varying levels of challenge and difficulty. Adjusting questions provide opportunities for success and motivates students to do more.

Examples of Levels of Difficulty

1. Knowledge – Identification and recall of information

Example: Who, what, when, where, how?

2. Comprehension – Organization and selection of facts and ideas

Example: What is the main idea?

3. Application – use of facts, rules, principles

Example: How is _________ related to ____________?

4. Analysis – Separation of the whole into components

Example: Outline/diagram/web

5. Synthesis – Combination of ideas to form a new whole

Example: What would you predict/infer from ________________?

6. Evaluation – Development of opinions, judgments, or decision

Example: Do you agree with ________________?

Question: How can I support those ESL students who barely make an effort to talk during speaking activities?

More and more instructors are turning to flexible groupings as a way to cater to this phenomenon. Flexible groupings provide opportunities for ESL to learn content, processes and skills.

• Provide flexible groupings especially with the learning of abstract concepts. In the poetry unit of my English composition class for example, I had a few ESL students who struggled understanding this particular genre at first. I then divided the class into groups of four and gave each member of the group one line of a six line poem. Students reassembled the poem and discussed the meaning of the poem. Even though my ESL learners were silent, I knew they were absorbing the language and the dialogue from the small group interaction.

Other types of groupings include: whole class, ability and readiness groups, student selected groups, topic interest groups and students working independently. Groupings such as these should be for short period of time to meet specific instruction needs.

Bilingual students whose first language interferes with second language learning (a concept known as mother tongue interference) should not be forced to produce but only to listen to the language. It has been found that this act of listening greatly enhances the speed and quality of learning. Therefore, the language environment, whether it is formal or natural, plays a crucial role during the silent period in terms of second language acquisition.

Often many of our ESL students experience a silent period, which is a conscious and active period where simply listening to the target language is associated with the notion of a one-way communication. This can extend for many months at a time without producing the language.

Since writing and speaking are productive academic skills, ESL are often intimidated by their lack of knowledge as they often compare their writing and speaking abilities with their native English speaking peers. By pairing a strong student with a less confident (average ability) learner, learners are also able to learn from each other.

Question: The text I’ve been using is too difficult and abstract for my ESL students? How can I support them?

ESL students need to have reading materials on their instructional level whether they are learning in an ESL support group or mainstream class. Leveled reading materials work best with fiction, non-fiction, pages from a text, poem, or instructions.

Procedure:

1. Divide students into two groups based on reading readiness: on-instruction level and below instruction level.
2. Later, create different leveled groups.

In order to help these students strengthen their fluency, use texts on a variety of motivating topics. You may need to reword some ambiguous sentences by offering simpler word choices and sentences.

Conclusion

Rather than perceiving our instruction as a “one-size fits all,” instructors can diversify instruction to respond to all needs of students in the classroom with special emphasis on ESL learners.

Diversifying instruction to meet the language learning needs of ESL students can help make our teaching maximally effective. Diversifying instruction helps instructors arouse and maintain interest, keep learning active and open-ended and help respond to heterogeneity.