WATESOL News
Winter/Spring 2016 Edition
WATESOL NEWS Connecting Teachers of ESOL in the Washington, DC Area
President’s Message
Membership News 2015-2016 WATESOL Board p. 2 Conference 2015 Reflections p. 3 Travel Grant Winners
p. 8
Meet-up in Baltimore
p. 16
Members presenting at TESOL 2016
p. 17
Articles Reflective Learning: The Unexpected Benefits of Learning Logs Kelli Rowedder & Anna Carroll p. 4 Financial Literacy for Adult ELLs DeAnna Coon & Miriam Burt. p. 7 How should kids learn English: through Old MacDonald’s farm or Ali Baba’s farm? Joan Kang Shin p. 9 Meeting the Unique Challenges of Saudi Learners in American IEPs Betsy Lindeman Wong p. 11 Teaching Writing using the ACCESS Rubric Darcy Scott
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First of all, a big thank you to all of you who attended the Fall Conference back in October. The 1.5 day conference was a new undertaking for us - one intended to replace the biennial spring conference - and overall we believe it was a success! We had a near record number of attendees, with almost 200 professionals from around the Washington, DC area coming to hear from our talented presenters. We also tried some new approaches with our exhibitors, as you might have noticed during the Elite Exhibitor presentations at mealtimes. After all these new pursuits and your feedback, we have plenty to reflect upon as we look ahead toward this year’s Fall Conference. We have more ideas up our sleeves that we’re excited to try out! One exciting development for 2016: we have partnered with TESOL to bring in an extra-special keynote speaker for our Fall Conference. Dr. Misty Adoniou is a Senior Lecturer in Language Literacy and Teaching English as a Second Language at the University of Canberra in Canberra, Australia. Her areas of expertise include multilingualism and multimodality, as well as writing skills and arts integration. We are very thankful to TESOL for helping us bring Dr. Adoniou all the way from Australia, and to Dr. Adoniou for making time in her busy schedule for WATESOL in October. Amid all of these new ideas and expansions, though, the core mission of WATESOL remains the same: providing professional development and community building to English language teachers and professionals in the Washington, DC area. With this in mind, I would like to encourage all of you to visit our website and re-familiarize yourself with the resources we offer. Your Special Interest Group (SIG) is also a great resource for professional development and community building - stay tuned for future SIG events in spring/summer of 2016. I look forward to this year of serving as WATESOL’s President. I am grateful to the Past-Presidents and other Board members who will support me over the next year. And of course, I am grateful to you, our members, who make WATESOL the fantastic organization that it is. Here’s to 2016! Sharla Branscombe de Rivera 2015-2016 WATESOL President
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From the Newsletter Editor Spring has arrived, and with it a new issue of WATESOL News! Our hope is that this newsletter may provide new inspiration for your classroom and beyond. In addition to a welcome message from new WATESOL President Sharla Branscombe de Rivera, this issue contains: • Highlights from the 2015 fall conferences, including an article from our plenary speaker, Dr. Shin • A reflection on the use of learning logs in a business language classroom • Lesson plans and resources on financial literacy for adult learners • A reflection on how to anticipate and meet challenges faced by Saudi students in the classroom • An example of the ACCESS rubric being used effectively in elementary ESOL We would like to extend our gratitude to all of this issue’s contributors. In addition, a very special thank you is extended to Heather Tatton-Harris for her incredible and tireless work as the outgoing Newsletter Editor. Thank you, Heather! Your Newsletter Editor, Stephanie Gallop
2015-2016 WATESOL Board PRESIDENT Sharla Branscombe de Rivera watesolpresident@gmail.com
SIG LIAISONS Lucy Ruiz watesolsigliaison@gmail.com
VICE PRESIDENT Heather Tatton-Harris and Heather Weger watesolvp@gmail.com
HIGHER EDUCATION SIG Michelle Chan and Kris Lowrey watesolhighered@gmail.com
PAST PRESIDENT Bryan Woerner watesolpastpresident@gmail.com
ADULT EDUCATION SIG Christyann Helm and Erin Ross watesoladulted@gmail.com
RECORDING SECRETARY Julie Lake watesolsecretary@gmail.com
K-12 SIG Jennifer Estenos and Evelyn Matus-Manzano watesol.k12.sig@gmail.com
MEMBERSHIP Masha Vassilieva watesolmembership@gmail.com
WEBMASTER & SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Joanna Duggen watesolsocialmedia@gmail.com
TREASURER Jennifer Lubkin Chávez watesoltreasurer@gmail.com
Thank You! We thank the following members for their completed service on the board.
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Rebecca Sachs and Emily Vandermade watesolpd@gmail.com
Jacquie Gardy (Past President) Steven Humphries (Treasurer) Irene So (PD Chair) Sarah Lane (PD Chair) Becky Shiring (SIG Chair) Rita Harding (Recording Secretary)
NEWSLETTER EDITOR Stephanie Gallop watesolnewslettereditor@gmail.com
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Reflections on the Fall 2015 WATESOL Conference Sharing at Sunday breakfast
Our 1.5 day conference Saturday presenter Christina Brady
was an incredible
Browsing the exhibitors' tables
success! Nearly 200 attendees came from all over the Washington, DC area to learn and share new ideas in the world of TESOL. Thank you to Saturday presenters Stephanie Gallop and Heather Gregg Zitlau
all involved in the making of this fantastic
Sunday presenter Andrew Screen
event!
Heather Weger, Sharla Rivera, and Rebecca Sachs
Singing along with the Color Vowel Chart
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Reflective Learning: The Unexpected Benefits of Learning Logs By Anna Carroll and Kelli Rowedder John Hopkins Carey Business School annacarroll@jhu.edu krowedder@jhu.edu
The following is a summary of the presentation Reflective Learning: The Unexpected Benefits of Learning Logs, given at the WATESOL conference on October 17, 2015.
1. What did I learn today? This gives students a chance to review class content. 2. How do I know I’ve learned this information? This questions focuses on HOW students learn. It can be a difficult question to answer, as many students aren’t always aware of how they learn.
Learning logs (structured, reflective journals) were initially implemented as a concluding task for each class to help students develop their own tool for measuring progress beyond scores and instructor feedback. Our hope was that by having students engage in reflective practices, their sense of intrinsic motivation to succeed would increase. Learning logs also allow us to track attendance in a nondisruptive way. Students fill out a learning log entry at the end of every class. If their learning log is filled out completely, they are given credit for having attended class. There is no need for us to stop what we are doing and note when a student arrives to class late. If the student is unable to indicate what was covered in class that day, they are given credit accordingly. We can simply check the learning logs to see which students were in class and which were not. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, learning logs give students an additional opportunity to ask questions that couldn’t be answered during class time, as well as an opportunity to ask questions that they may have been hesitant to ask in front of their classmates. Our teaching context is a business school with both undergraduate and graduate students. Students take our classes along with, not in preparation for, their regular academic courses. Most students in our classes are required to do so, though some students opt in on their own. We focus on email form and content, discussion norms, notetaking skills, pronunciation tips, interview strategies and networking approaches, among other themes. These are noncredit classes which meet once a week for three hours. Because the students have a full schedule, there is no homework assigned to them. The learning logs themselves are paper booklets that are stapled together. They are distributed at the end of each class, and students fill them out by hand. Each half page entry asks four questions:
3. How will I use this information? This connects class content with “the real world.” 4. What questions do I still have? The many answers to this question were the focus of our presentation. It is important to point out that grammar, spelling and vocabulary are never corrected (unless a word choice is likely to cause future embarrassment). The learning logs are a safe forum for students to share their thoughts. Depending on the nature of the Learning Log entry, the instructor’s response could range from :) or "check", to a longer, written response or even printed resources attached with a paper clip.
Building Relationships Learning logs give us a chance to get to know our students better, especially quiet students who are less inclined to speak up in class. Conversely, the more gregarious students also have a chance to ask thoughtful questions and not just pose reactive questions. Students often ask us for recommendations for TV shows to watch, restaurants to visit, or things to do on weekends. Below is a much abridged version of the examples shared during the presentation. ·
·
Student: I want to know is “Angela” a “good name”? Coz I remember in the first class you said some names are out of date or improper. Instructor: I like it! I just think Anqi is also great and easy for non-Chinese people to remember and pronounce.
Context: Many of our Chinese students choose an English name to go by during their time studying in the US. Sometimes the
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names they choose are more suited to someone much older (Gertrude) or are difficult to take seriously in a professional context (Chocolate). While we are happy to help students choose a new name, we also stress to them that there is nothing wrong with their Chinese names, provided they are ok with hearing an Anglicized version of those names. · · ·
word, and, we surmise, he did not feel as frustrated as he otherwise might have when he left class.
Great Questions
Student: Please ask me questions: Instructor: If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Student: That’s a great great great question because I have thought about it for a long time but still struggling with the answer! Currently, I want to have the power of thought reading! I want to know what others are thinking about!
Context: This came from a student who had been extremely quiet in class, rarely saying anything. However, she filled out her learning log thoroughly every week, and always took advantage of asking the instructor questions. This built up her comfort level with the instructor, and she began participating in class more often. It eventually reached the point in the above example where the student asked the instructor to ask her questions, and provided her very enthusiastic answer.
There are no limitations on learning log questions. Questions do not have to be related to that day’s class, and we therefore receive questions about all aspects of living and studying in America. Often, the question section turns into an “Ask an American” forum where students ask questions about their observations of Americans and American culture. It also gives students a chance to ask some burning questions about the language: • What is easypeasy? Like what kind of word is that? I know the meaning, is it like a slang? • Why luckily is luckily not luckly? Is it because it looks weird? • I want to master the English skill and don’t want to put much effort. Please tell me that is impossible so I could stop myself thinking that. • When somebody do you a favor and say: “You owe me a lunch.” He may be kidding. I’d like to answer him properly and politely. What should I say?
Feedback Learning logs can also serve as weekly course evaluations, with students letting us know what has been especially useful, and what they’d like to learn more about. That allows us to adjust our content as we go along, as opposed to waiting for the course evaluations at the end of the semester or making assumptions.
Challenges
• I like the short presentation activity, and I would like to have some of this kind of activities in the future class. • I would like to learn more techniques about writing cover letters. It’s not always evident what students like and don’t like in class, and this forum really helps us with that, as well as gives us an idea of what students feel they need to spend more time on. Of course, not all of the feedback we get from students is entirely positive. • I still think a thanks email after an interview should not be necessary. Context: This particular student had voiced this opinion in class while discussing elements of writing a thank you email after a job interview. While the instructor had stressed to the class that it was appropriate to write such an email, this student disagreed. Writing about it one more time in his learning log gave him the sense that he could have the last
Not all learning logs are equal, however. While the majority of our students put time and effort into their learning logs, there are still students who do not fill it out completely, as well as students who use it as a complaint form. We encourage participation by posing questions to students who habitually write less than others, by asking them about their favorite aspects of Baltimore/DC, what American TV shows they watch and what they do outside of class to improve their English proficiency, for example. Overall, students get out of it what they put into it. There is certainly a connection between student improvement and learning log engagement, though further research needs to be done to prove a correlation. It may just be that good students are good students, in every sense. Nonetheless, learning logs have proven to be a highly beneficial element of our classes, for both students and instructors.
Adaptations Since our classes meet once a week, it is not a challenge to respond to the learning logs before the next class. Going through them is a quick and easy process, and our favorite class prep activity. For other instructors who have multiple classes per day, however, this may not be possible. During our presentation, several
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adaptations were suggested. For frequent, shorter classes, instructors may want to implement learning logs at the end of each week or at the end of a unit as a great review activity. For basic levels, pictures or smiley/sad faces could also be used.
Stay Connected with WATESOL! Follow us on social media to spark conversation and share new ideas, find out about WATESOL events, view professional opportunities in our area, and much more!
About the Authors Anna Carroll is the Associate Director of the English Language Program at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Anna’s teaching interests include intercultural communication, writing and proofreading skills, vocabulary acquisition strategies, goal setting and reflective practices.
Washington Area TESOL Association
Kelli Rowedder is the Assistant Director of the English Language Program at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. Her teaching interests include using literature and other authentic materials as teaching tools, and academic reading and writing strategies.
@WATESOL
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Newsletter Submission Guidelines We welcome submissions to our newsletter! Contact watesolnewslettereditor@gmail.com for questions. Contributions can include: Connecting research to practice, current topics of interest to the membership, and/or teaching tips.
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Financial Literacy: Lesson Plans to Build Learners’ Language, Content, and Digital Skills By DeAnna Coon and Miriam Burt Center for Applied Linguistics dcoon@cal.org mburt@cal.org
The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) began working with the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Consumer Protection Bureau, in 2011, on a variety of accessible language projects. The FTC’s goal was to make financial literacy, fraud, identity theft, and scam information accessible to adults with low levels of literacy or a lack of web navigation skills. CAL worked closely with FTC staff to pare their messages down and to write in ways accessible to their target population. The first phase of the project resulted in two mirror image websites: Consumer.gov and Consumidor.gov for English and Spanish speakers, respectively. These sites are designed to facilitate the development of web navigation skills as well as provide important information to their target communities. All content contained on the English site is likewise contained on the Spanish site. The sites are broadly organized into three main categories: Managing your Money; Credit, Loans, and Debt; and Scams and Identity Theft. Each of these sections contains five to eight modules, or potential lessons on topics of concern that the FTC has identified via its complaint lines. Example modules include Making a Budget; Using Credit; and Identity Theft. All lesson background and texts are color coded according to which category they are classified into and follow the same pattern of organization of information on three pages: What It Is; What to Know; and What to Do. The pages may be printed, or ordered in bulk in advance via https://bulkorder.ftc.gov/publications. For emergent readers, an audio recording of each page of text is also available, or the text can be easily magnified. Most lessons also include a short subtitled video of one to two minutes. The nature of the text on the site—simple sentences, repetitive high frequency vocabulary, explanations of and bulleted lists of important information—lowers the cognitive load on emerging readers, making the information more accessible to them while also offering the benefit of recordings so that non-literate users can also access the information, or emerging readers can reinforce their reading of the text via a phonological
loop. The color coding is a quick and easy way to help users identify the site’s organization, and to begin to build critical thinking skills as they consider how modules and categories may be related; the colors give them the first clue. The videos reinforce the text by illustrating the concept as well as reading skills via the subtitles. Even the most hesitant learner will find Consumer.gov or Consumidor.gov to be accessible to his or her reading level or navigational skills. Likewise, second language learners whose first language is Spanish may find it useful to navigate between the sites to check their understanding of the language, thus scaffolding their English acquisition and ensuring that no important content is lost in translation. In 2014, the FTC requested that CAL create a series of lesson plans using the Consumer.gov and Consumidor.gov modules with adult basic education and English as a second language learners. The plans are intended to provide teachers with a manageable number of options; they can choose objectives from among content, language, and digital literacy, combine them, or recycle as they work from one set to the next during one or several class periods. CAL set out to make the plans as teacher friendly as possible with suggested vocabulary lists and materials for activities at both a basic or beginning level (ESL NRS levels 1-3) and low intermediate and above (ESL NRS levels 4 and above). College and Career Readiness Standards addressed in each lesson are also listed for the English plans. Each plan follows a set pattern according to principles of adult learning and language acquisition. The plans for Consumer.gov are written in English for the ABE or ESL classroom, and Consumidor.gov plans are written in Spanish for the Spanish literacy or Spanish language classroom. Teachers are provided lists of content, language, and digital literacy objectives to choose from, as well as an editable vocabulary list and materials for each activity in the lesson. The activities begin with a preview of vocabulary and elicit prior knowledge of the topic or build background knowledge. They move through a sequence of guided, controlled, and independent practices that follow the sequence of the site organization, from defining the topic to illustrating
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important points to understanding how to address it in real life or incorporate the information into decision making. Most lessons also highlight a grammar point that is drawn from the module text and offer some practice with it. Suggestions for using the activities with beginners or more advanced learners (low intermediate and higher) are provided. For example, using the grammar point, teachers may choose to have low intermediate and higher level learners practice writing questions or statements while beginners focus on developing oral proficiency with the structure. Every lesson includes an extension or expansion activity that encourages learners to use their new knowledge and apply it outside the classroom or to create a new product with it. For example, they may be directed to search for further information on the web or write their own role play, if appropriate for their skill levels. Finally, each lesson concludes with a low-stakes assessment that allows students to express what they’ve learned and
what else they’d still like to know about the module topic. The teacher may choose to research and address those questions in a future class, use them as an introduction or warm-up to the next class, or as a prelude to a related lesson on the site. The Consumer.gov and Consumidor.gov lesson plans are in layout and production with the FTC as of November 2015 and are expected to be available in early 2016 by following the “Help for You” link: http:// www.consumer.gov/content/help-you. More information is available on the CAL site at: http://www.cal.org/ resource-center/publications/consumer-protectionwebsites, including a set of curricular materials and guidance for using the sites and plans. We hope that you will find the sites and resources useful in teaching your students about these very important topics for financial literacy and living in the U.S., and reach out to us with any feedback or questions you may have about the plans or their use.
About the Authors
2016 Travel Grant Winners! WATESOL presents yearly grants to
help cover the costs of traveling to conferences related to the field. The following members are the recipients for 2016: Betsy Wong (NOVA) Silvia Hildesheim (Carlos Rosario)
Congratulations!
DeAnna Coon is the Project Manager for Adult Literacy and Language Education at the Center for Applied Linguistics. She has worked in adult education and ESL programs around the Washington, DC area and abroad for the last ten years.
Miriam Burt is Senior Content Specialist for Adult Literacy and Language Education at the Center for Applied Linguistics. She has worked in and provided technical assistance to adult education and ESL programs around the U.S. and abroad for over 35 years.
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How Should Kids Learn English: Through Old MacDonald’s Farm or Ali Baba’s Farm? By Joan Kang Shin University of Maryland, Baltimore County jshin2@umbc.edu The following article and author biography has been republished, with permission by the author, from The Conversation US, an independent news source that compiles interest and research pieces from the academic community.
Children love to sing songs. Think about the time when you were a child. What was your favorite song? What songs did you learn at home and at school? Traditional children’s songs introduce children to the world around them. They do this in a fun and developmentally appropriate way. In the US, preschool age kids learn about farm animals like cows, ducks and sheep as well as their sounds, like moo moo, quack quack, and baa baa through the popular, traditional song Old MacDonald Had a Farm. Without realizing it, children learn language and content simultaneously. Songs build skills that help children distinguish the sounds of a language, and connect sound to script and assist with vocabulary building. It is no surprise, then, that English language programs for young children frequently use songs to enhance language and literacy instruction. Even when teaching children English in other countries, teachers typically use traditional songs from the US and the UK. However, English is the world’s lingua franca, a global language shared by many cultures. It is not solely connected to American and British cultures. So, do kids around the world always have to sing about Old MacDonald to learn about farm animals in English? Or is there another way?
repetitive, catchy and easy to remember. They played with the sounds of the language through rhyme and rhythm and often had corresponding body movements. They also had common topics interesting to kids, like animals, nature, toys and family. All the songs shared certain qualities that made them attractive to children. This led me to consider the possibility of using these songs as an interesting and compelling source of cultural material for the classroom.
International children’s song approach The approach I developed is simple. It combines my research in using songs to teach children with my search for appropriate cultural materials for teaching English as a global language. It is called the “international children’s song approach” and uses songs from around the world to teach English to kids. Children can learn a version of the song their peers are learning around the world. Examples can be found in the English language program I Teaching kids through songs from the world. Murat Yilmaz, CC BY coauthored, Welcome to Our World. Instead of singing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” to learn about farm animals, children can sing a song in English that originally comes from another country or culture. For example, children in Turkey learn a song about farm animals through a similar song in Turkish, called Ali Babanın Çiftliği or Ali Baba Has a Farm. Ali Babanın bir çiftliği var (Ali Baba has a big farm.) Çiftliğinde inekleri var
(On his farm, there are cows.)
Global perspective on songs
Mö, möö diye bağırır
(Moo moo, they go.)
Since 2004, I have been providing professional development to thousands of English teachers in over 100 countries through online courses and inperson workshops. This experience, primarily with teachers of young learners, has given me a global perspective on English language teaching around the world. It also inspired me to search for a new approach for teaching English through songs. Based on my own passion for using songs to teach children language and my interest in other cultures, I began collecting children’s songs in different languages through my global network of teachers. Although distinctive in their language and melodies, the songs I collected from over 50 countries had much in common. The songs were all short,
Çiftliğinde Ali Babanın
(On Ali Baba’s big farm.)
The melody for Ali Baba Has a Farm is completely different from Old MacDonald; but similar to its American counterpart, the Turkish song has a catchy, rhythmic tune that is repeated with other animals and their corresponding sounds. Using the international children’s song approach, teachers from around the world can use an English adaptation of Ali Baba Has a Farm in their English language curriculum. Of course, they continue to learn English through the typical children’s songs from American and British culture, but
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they also learn through English adaptations of their own as well as other international songs.
English is a global language English is the most commonly taught foreign language worldwide. Statistics show that there is a “wave of English” building up in this century. This is hardly surprising considering English is the language of science, technology, commerce, diplomacy, tourism and the internet. An estimated two billion people are learning English — that is, almost a third of the world’s population. In many countries where English is not widely spoken, there are government mandates to teach English as a foreign language in primary schools. In countries such as South Korea, Turkey and Brazil, many children begin learning English in addition to their native language as early as three years of age. Welcome to Our World. This series for three- to five-year-old learners of English includes 24 songs that originated from 18 countries, such as I Have a Ball from Tunisia, Three Bears from Korea, and Tiny Little Boat from Spain, to name a few. Whether children are learning English as a second language, or even a third or fourth language, they are being exposed to it at earlier and earlier ages worldwide. Using international children’s songs from around the world is an effective approach for teaching English as a global language to kids. Language is a carrier of culture, and English is uniquely positioned to communicate across cultures around the world. Materials to teach it should embrace all cultures. Why only sing about Old MacDonald and his farm? Why not sing about Ali Baba and his farm too?
About the Author Joan Kang Shin, Ph.D. is a Professor of Practice and the Director of TESOL Professional Training Programs in the Education Department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In this position she administers numerous online professional development programs for English teachers in over 100 countries, including her own courses Teaching English to Young Learners and Teaching English to Teens.
Dr. Shin is a series editor for a groundbreaking 6-level primary English series for National Geographic Learning called Our World, which won the 2014 HRH Duke of Edinburgh English Language Book Awards for Winner of Best Entry for Learners. She is also a series editor and author of the new 3-level preprimary series Welcome to Our World as well as author and host of the Our World Professional Development Video Program. Her textbook Teaching Young Learners English, co-authored with Jodi Crandall, received the prestigious Ben Warren International House Trust Prize in 2013.
Dr. Shin in Action! At the 2015 WATESOL Fall Conference, Dr. Shin commanded the room as our plenary speaker. Pictured right is the session at the conference in which Dr. Shin discussed her approach in the classroom and the use of international songs to teach English to children.
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Meeting the Unique Challenges of Saudi Learners in American IEPs By Betsy Lindeman Wong Northern Virginia Community College blwong@nvcc.edu Picture this scenario: You are a student in my IEP reading and writing class. I ask you to read a short paragraph about problems with the first cars in America. Then I ask you to close the book and explain in your own words what the main idea of the paragraph is. Pretty straightforward, right? Imagine a second scenario: I ask you to read the paragraph, close the book, and recite the sentences word by word. How would you feel?
representing the most frequent places of origin among testtakers in 2013, only four countries had mean scores on the academic reading test that were lower than five points on a nine-point scale – and all four were in the Arabian Gulf, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar tying for second to last (4.8 points). This score is significantly lower than the minimum IELTS academic band score required to enter many undergraduate or graduate programs (6.5 or 7). In addition to challenges with reading, several of my Saudi students have difficulty formulating and justifying an opinion in writing. Their paragraphs often reflect a tendency to repeat ideas instead of supporting them. I tried many different approaches to help my learners with writing and reading before realizing that my efforts were futile if I did not understand their educational system and culture.
If the words “perplexed” or “overwhelmed” come to mind, consider that this is exactly how many of our Saudi Arabian learners feel with the first scenario, which goes against how they have experienced reading until now.
Significant Challenges Academic reading in higher education represents a significant challenge for many Saudi students who come to the United States each year in hopes of beginning a degree program. In 2013-14, more than 100,000 Saudis were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities, constituting the fourth largest contingent of international students in the country (Taylor & Albasri, 2014). For Saudis, mastering English can be a daunting task, as they must learn to read and write in an entirely different alphabet and process phonemes that do not exist in Arabic. Although native-language interference can cause challenges for Saudis learning English – as it can for speakers of any language seeking to learn another – it is not the only difficulty that they face. Indeed, Saudis may encounter a mismatch between their educational background and culture and the expectations for academic reading and writing in U.S. higher education. This mismatch can perplex instructors, cause Saudis to remain in noncredit ESL classes for longer than anticipated, and ultimately hinder success in content-area classes.
Educational Differences There is a consensus among researchers that Saudi pedagogy is characterized by rote learning and memorization, with teachercentered methods such as dictation and translation that do not require significant initiative or interaction among learners. Saudi reading and writing instruction prepares students to memorize passages from government-issued textbooks and reproduce them, verbatim, on national exams that call for students to write from memory several textbook passages with perfect accuracy. Middle and high school English language instructors in Saudi Arabia do not provide examples from the real world when explaining a text, nor do they encourage students to participate in discussions or provide their own ideas (Moraya, 2012). This contrasts sharply with U.S. college assignments and discussions that tend to integrate students’ personal knowledge and real-life experiences.
Cultural Differences There are also significant cultural differences between Saudi Arabia and the United States. Saudi society emphasizes collectivist social values reflecting close adherence to strict rules and traditions, which is at odds with individualistic American higher education expectations of personal initiative and self-expression. Likewise, the Saudi absolutist view of knowledge contrasts with the constructivist view of knowledge espoused in Western higher education. Knowledge in Saudi Arabia is viewed as a static concept, as opposed a dynamic one shaped by evolving contexts and interpretations (Hamdan, 2014). This conception is diametrically opposed to the interactive processes needed to critically read texts.
I have personally seen this mismatch in the 10 semesters that I have taught the same high-beginner IEP reading and writing class at Northern Virginia Community College. Each semester, many of my Saudi learners have very strong oral skills yet have difficulty grasping relationships between ideas in print and do not comprehend much of what they read. They expect to simply memorize the words or sentences constituting the “right” answer to a question about a text and are surprised and frustrated with exercises involving understanding and interpretation as opposed to recall. What’s more, my Saudi learners frequently express exasperation with their low scores on the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam, particularly with the reading questions. Indeed, according to the IELTS web site, of the 40 countries
Moreover, Saudis come from a rich oral tradition that deemphasizes written communication. The rhetorical style favors
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the repetition of key messages and their socio-affective, as opposed to informational, aspects (Zaharna, 1995). The Koran, the holy book of the Islamic religion, is an oral work put into writing; it serves as the model of written expression in the Arabic language. Indeed, reading for non-religious purposes is not commonly practiced in the Gulf (Nezami, 2012). Because extensive reading of a variety of materials helps learners to focus on meaning as they read, the absence of this practice may make it harder for Saudis to meet the academic reading demands of U.S. higher education.
Practical Approaches Given the potential obstacles that these educational and cultural differences represent, how can we help Saudi learners to overcome them and transition to degree programs? Studies of Saudi learners in American IEPs have recommended teaching critical-thinking skills to help learners develop academic reading and writing proficiency. Research has also shown that critical-thinking skills are needed to help adult ELLs transition to higher education (Parrish & Johnson, 2010). Many critical-thinking skills are inherent in the processes that fluent readers use to create meaning, so reading seems an ideal way to teach higher-order thinking. With this in mind, I recommend these research-based classroom strategies: ·
Teach “while-reading” strategies such as “think-alouds” to help learners transition from reading for memorization to reading for meaning.
·
Use graphic organizers to organize and analyze textual information and show the relationships between events or ideas (Parrish & Johnson, 2010).
Groups: Complete a timeline of key events from the story.
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Writing: Use your timeline to write a paragraph about how cars developed and changed the American way of life.
Nezami, S. R. A. (2012). A critical study of comprehension strategies and general problems in reading faced by Arab EFL learners with special reference to Najran University in Saudi Arabia. International Journal of Social Sciences and Education, 2(3), 306-317. Parrish, B., & Johnson, K. (2010, April). Promoting learner transitions to postsecondary education and work: Developing academic readiness from the beginning. CAELA Network Briefs. Retrieved June 1, 2015 from http:// www.cal.org/caelanetwork/resources/transitions.html Taylor, C.,& Albasri, W. (2014). The impact of Saudi Arabia King Abdullah’s scholarship program in the U.S. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 2, 109-118. Zaharna, R. S. (1995). Understanding cultural preferences of Arab communication patterns. Public Relations Review, 21(3), 241-255.
About the Author
Do a “close reading” of one or more paragraphs, using these think-aloud symbols to mark your thoughts in the text as you read:
: ( = Don’t like it
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Moraya, A. A. (2012). The influence of culture and cultural background knowledge on Saudi Students’ English language learning. Retrieved from ProQuest/UMI Digital Dissertations. (UMI 1541973)
While-Reading Activities · Read the story once, without a dictionary or translator; close the book and discuss what it was about.
: ) = Know it or like it
Pairs: Pretend you’re a journalist. Write four questions you’d like to ask Henry Ford. Imagine how he would answer. Act out the interview.
Hamdan, A. (2014, January). The road to culturally relevant pedagogy: Expatriate teachers’ pedagogical practices in the cultural context of Saudi Arabian higher education. McGill Journal of Education, 49(1), 201-226.
Pre-Reading Activities · Discuss: Look at the pictures next to the story. What do you think it will say? · Think-pair-share: What do you know about cars in America? What do you want to know? · Create a group T-chart to elicit advantages and disadvantages of cars.
! = Surprises me
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References
Here is an example of how to apply these strategies with a reading lesson using a short text about the history of cars in America.
? = Don’t understand
Post-Reading Activities
Learning more about my Saudi learners’ background has made me appreciate how difficult it must be for them to approach reading in a whole new way. I am grateful that I’ve found promising approaches to help them and feel that my teaching practice has greatly benefited as a result.
What This Looks Like in a Lesson
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Groups: Discuss what you marked for your assigned paragraphs(s) and then present your paragraph(s) to the class.
Final Thoughts
Tap into Saudi learners’ strengths by using oral activities – including discussion, retelling, interviews, and role plays – as a bridge to reading and writing.Emphasize problemsolving in reading and writing activities.
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Betsy Lindeman Wong developed a critical-thinking curricular resource guide to teach reading skills to Saudi IEP learners for her ESL master’s thesis for Hamline University. She has co-authored a textbook and teacher’s guide for Pearson Longman and teaches a variety of classes in Nova’s Intensive English and TESOL certificate programs.
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Teaching Writing Using the ACCESS Rubric By Darcy Scott Prince George’s County Public Schools darcy.scott@pgcps.org In the spring of 2012, when ACCESS was still new in Maryland, I was in the middle of a writing lesson with a group of second grade ELLs. They were at an intermediate proficiency level and would not be ready to exit for another year or two. So what they worked together to write that day blew me away. I knew then that the way I was teaching writing that year was working, and I would never go back.
“Next the baby sea turtle goes into the water,” I heard a student say. I had just started recording the sentence when another student called out, “No! The baby sea turtle crawls into the water!” Before I had finished, another student cried, “No! The baby sea turtle crawls into the ocean!” I hadn’t said another word.
My students were looking at the diagram of a life cycle of a sea turtle in their science books, preparing to write a model paragraph together before they would write about the life cycle of a frog independently. “Okay,” I began, “who can tell us what happens first?”
When the students were finished narrating their paragraph, they worked together to fix all the mistakes I had made for them to find. In the end, this is what my intermediate second grade ELLs had written: “The first step of the life cycle is when the mother turtle lays an egg in the sand. Next the baby turtle crawls into the ocean. It grows and changes then the turtle becomes an adult. Finally the mother turtle lays eggs and the life cycle begins again.”
“There is an egg.” “Okay, that’s true,” I replied. “But remember, good writers write interesting sentences, use excellent words, and check their work. And last month you guys already did a good job on your writing, so if you want to increase your scores, you’re going to have to write interesting sentences this time!” A different student added that the sea turtle begins life as an egg. “Okay, that’s a little more interesting,” I answered. “But I don’t hear any excellent words yet. You’re going to need excellent words to improve your scores.” “Life cycle!” “Yes! That’s progress!” I cried. I went to the board and managed to coax the following sentence from the group, each student contributing to or improving it: “The first step of the life cycle is when the mother turtle lays an egg in the sand.” “Wow, that’s great! So what happens next?” I asked.
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The Elements of My Writing Instruction The rest of the week, I ran around the building bragging to all my colleagues how well our second grade ELLs had written collaboratively. I knew, though, that it had taken three quarters worth of instruction for them to catch the writing bug. I also knew that none of them could have ever written something so advanced on their own, which brings me to the first part of my writing instructional sequence:
#1: Collaborative Writing When students are writing collaboratively, it is by definition what they can do with help, their Zone of Proximal Development. For my beginning level students, what they were able to write together was much simpler, but it still was a level beyond what they could do independently, which is where they need to be working. Collaborative writing also allows a high level of engagement.
#2: Motivation and Growth My county requires data walls in classrooms, and I use mine to track writing scores, measured by a studentfriendly version of the ACCESS rubric I’ve created. I tell them all that matters is writing better than last time. “If your score increased then I know you’re working hard, right?” I say. “And that deserves a token!” The tokens are cumulative, so by the end of the year they could earn up to eight tokens if their
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Winter/Spring 2016 Edition
score is better than all eight previous months. (Sticker charts are another option.)
A Three Lesson Plan Sequence
#3: Student-Friendly ACCESS Rubric According to the WIDA rubric for ACCESS, students are scored in linguistic complexity, vocabulary usage, and language control. To bring those terms down to the level of the third graders I am teaching now, I have developed a mantra: “Good writers write interesting sentences, use excellent words, and check their work.” In my student-friendly version of the WIDA writing rubric, I use “excellent words” in place of “technical vocabulary,” “good words” instead of “specific vocabulary,” and “basic words” for “general vocabulary,” for example. WIDA Writing Rubric
Good writers...
Linguistic Complexity
Write interesting sentences
Vocabulary Usage
Use excellent words
Language Control
Check their work
The following three lesson plans are for my November writing lesson comparing two animals, but they can be easily adapted to fit any writing prompt. Day 1 involves modeling the brainstorming, writing, and editing process using collaborative writing, then students brainstorm “excellent words” they will use to write their own paragraph. On day 2 I begin with a brief collaborative editing activity about the model topic, then have the students write their own paragraphs about a similar writing prompt. After scoring and correcting their paragraphs, I can continue on day 3 by having students rewrite their own paragraphs correctly, then discover how much they improved from the previous month and receive the tokens they have earned!
Day 1: Pre-Writing ·
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#4: Feedback The goal of feedback should be to empower and motivate students to check their own work. First, I make my own mistakes for students to correct, because it’s much more exciting for students to fix their teacher’s mistakes before fixing their own. Second, I give them a writing checklist similar to the one on the ACCESS writing test, tailored to the feedback I plan to give. After they have used the checklist themselves, I use the writing checklist as feedback. A star means “Good job on this!” and an underline means “This is how you can make progress next time!” (My quick and easy stars and underlines bring more smiles and pondering looks than my timeconsuming hand-written notes ever did!) To edit, I use three correction marks: ^ means “add,” X means “subtract,” and a circle means fix. Throughout the year, I circle more and more mistakes as they learn to fix them on their own. In September I begin by circling capital letters, in October I start circling words they could have found on the word wall, and by June I can circle homophone mistakes and boring words they could improve.
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Objective: Students will prepare to write to compare two animals by listing excellent words on a graphic organizer. I Do/We Do: Teacher leads class in a collaborative brainstorm comparing frogs and turtles, recording excellent (technical) words on a Venn diagram. Next, teacher leads class in collaborative writing about frogs and turtles, making intentional mistakes along the way, then has students explain how to edit their paragraph. You Do: Students brainstorm excellent words comparing whales and penguins. Closure: “Tell me an excellent word you will use next time.”
Day 2: Writing ·
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Objective: Students will write to compare two animals by using excellent words from their graphic organizer. I Do/We Do: Teach leads class in correcting two interesting (complex) sentences, such as, “The forg can leap, but teh turtle has a thing on its Back. they both live a pond place, but onlY sea Turtls can live in ocean.” Students could transform “but” into “however” or “although,” “thing” into “shell,” and “place” into “environment,” and fix mechanical and grammatical mistakes. You Do: Students write to compare whales and penguins. Closure: “Tell me an excellent word you used today.”
Day 3: Post-Writing ·
!
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Objective: Students will edit their paragraphs comparing two animals by checking correction marks. I Do: Post a model of a short corrected paragraph and work with students to begin recopying it
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correctly using correction marks. Show how in addition to circles around upper/lowercase mistakes and misspelled words, they will now see a circle around phrases with agreement errors such as “a penguins are” or “whales lives.” We Do: Students continue fixing sample corrections on dry erase boards. You Do: Students recopy their own writing from day 2 while applying feedback. As students finish, celebrate by receiving tokens for growth. Closure: Tell me a mistake you fixed.
Teaching writing well takes time, consistency, and many pep talks, but I have found that faithfully using this lesson sequence every month has been an effective way to increase my students’ writing scores on both
ACCESS and my annual SLO test. What’s more, it has increased my students’ motivation to “write interesting sentences, use excellent words, and check their work.”
About the Author Darcy Scott has been teaching elementary ESOL in Prince George’s County Public Schools for 8 years. She loves teaching 2nd and 3rd grade ELLs, but she started in the field by teaching adult newcomers, and still enjoys teaching beginning ESOL for Prince George’s Community College.
Gather with WATESOL in Baltimore! Are you heading to Baltimore for TESOL 2016? Join us for an informal gathering over coffee and breakfast before the close of the conference on Friday, April 8. See below for more details!
When: Friday, April 8 @ 7:00 am Where: Miss Shirley's Cafe 750 E Pratt St Baltimore, MD 21202 (Just blocks from the convention in Inner Harbor!)
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WATESOL goes to Baltimore: TESOL 2016! Many WATESOL members are presenting this year in Baltimore at TESOL 2016, April 5-8. Thank you for contributing to the field and representing the Washington Area TESOL affiliate. Below is the list of those who submitted their name and presentation title to be recognized in this edition of the newsletter. Tuesday, April 5 Jona Colson
Does Literature Have a Role in Teaching Academic Writing?
8:30am – 9:15am
Shirley Thompson, Robin Barr, and Karen Taylor
Phonological Awareness for ESL/EFL Educators: Sound Practices
9:00am – 4:00pm
Heidi Vellenga
Effective planning for managing change in postsecondary 1:00pm – 5:00pm English language programs Wednesday, April 6
Kelly Hill Zirker
VoiceThread: Improving student interaction through digital conversations
8:30am – 9:20am
Nancy Overman
Post-secondary writing: Reflecting future writing expectations
9:30am – 11:15am
Heather Tatton-Harris and Karen Rivas
Accelerating Access to Healthcare Careers for Adult ELLs
11:30pm – 12:15pm
Kinana Qaddour
Engaging and Supporting Syrian Refugees in the Classroom
12:30pm – 1:45pm
Jon Malone
Exposure Frequency and Audiovisual Effects on Incidental Word Learning
1:00pm – 1:45pm
Samantha Parkes with Mariah Schuemann and Matt Kaeiser
Video killed the ESL teacher: Is screencasting feedback worth it?
1:00pm – 1:45pm
Sigrun BiesenbachLucas and Deanna Wormuth
Hiring and getting hired in the TESOL field
1:00pm – 2:45pm
Heather Tatton-Harris
AEIS Academic Panel: Career Pathways & WIOA for Adult ELLs: Vision to Implementation
1:00pm – 2:45pm
Heather Gregg Zitlau and Stephanie Gallop with Ian Nichols and Austin Kaufmann
Instructor-Guided Peer Review: Maximizing Benefits and Moving beyond Writing
1:00pm - 2:45pm
Polina Vinogradova, Katherine Howard, and Tamara Warhol
Digital Literacies and Multimodality in Second Language 3:00pm - 4:45pm Writing
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Thursday, April 7 Ruth Ticktin
Integrated Language Skills in Student Oral Presentation Projects
9:30am – 10:15am
Bennett Lindauer and Heather Weger
A 5-Step Method for Bridging the Gap to Academic Vocabulary
10:30am – 11:15am
Polina Vinogradova and Heather Linville
Translating Postmethod Pedagogy into Student and Teacher Empowerment
11:30am – 12:15pm
Heidi Vellenga
PAIS/IEPIS InterSection Panel: Developing and Maintaining Standards in High-pressure IEP Environments
1:00pm – 2:45pm
Heather Weger, Polina Vinogradova, Heather Ritchie, and Heather Zitlau with Jennifer Uhler
Fostering Reflective Practitioners: Effective Professional Development in Multiple Teaching Contexts
3:00pm – 4:45pm
Sigrun BiesenbachLucas and Donette Brantner-Artenie
The formula essay: A ‘‘baseline“ approach that works.
4:00-pm-4:45pm
Friday, April 8 Sigrun BiesenbachLucas and Donette Brantner-Artenie
Effective academic writing: From avoiding plagiarism to developing intertextuality
9:30am – 10:15am
Becky Miskell
Establishing Inter-Rater Reliability of Scoring Rubrics for CAEP Accreditation
9:30am – 11:15am
Monica Mulholland
Blending ESL and The Visual Arts Through Voice Thread
11:00am – 11:50am
Andrew Screen
Vidback: Providing Corrective Feedback through Video
11:00am – 11:50am
Sigrun BiesenbachLucas
Seeing results with effective blended solutions
1:00pm – 1:45pm
Heather Tatton-Harris
AEIS, RCIS, and SLWIS InterSection Panel: Teaching Writing to Adult Low Literacy Students: Research to Practice
1:00pm – 2:45pm
Shirley Thompson and Megan Calvert
Pronunciation and the Adult Learner: It's never too late
2:00pm – 3:45pm
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