A Conference Report (depite the Fires)

This past weekend was a fun one (until the fires broke out, of course). Part of the fun was due to San Diego Regional CATESOL Conference that took place on a beautiful day and on the gorgeous campus of Southwestern College. In addition to running into old friends and making new ones, I really enjoyed the company of like-minded educators. I managed to make it to a few presentations and am excited to report the ideas I learned or relearned.

Keynote: Learning IN English: Content-Based Instruction

The plenary speaker was Professor Frank Noji of Kapiolani Community College in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he spearheaded a content-based ESL curriculum revolving around a different theme for each semester, not unlike themes for Palomar College’s Campus Exploration. The innovation was born out of a need ten years ago to save the ESL Dept. because it would have been wiped out along with a forced disappearance of other college remedial courses. Frank argued that “ESL ≠ remedial” and created the content-based program to prove it. Over the years, Frank and his colleagues have been successful in shifting their model from “learning to read” to “reading to learn.” The purpose of their syllabi is now aligned with those of mainstream courses, aiming for a rooted relevance. That is, they link the skills learned in the ESL classroom to the college courses the students will soon take. Instead of “finding the topic sentence” and other easy-to-assess comprehension questions, they now utilize writings, seminars, and poster sessions to gauge the comprehension of a topic at hand. Instead of spending much time explaining why a main idea is a main idea, they now require getting information from a text and using that to complete a task. The thematic input now drives the instruction of grammar and vocabulary, both of which are in turn practiced in writing tasks. Frank reported that the purposefulness in such integrated content-based instruction has enabled the students to converge on similar cultural literacy, reduce the noise in reading texts, and navigate reading more easily. Even though I wonder if the students won’t become bored by an extended theme throughout a long semester (for example, the historical perspective of food, the psychological perspective of food, the nutritional perspective of food, the culinary perspective of food, the cultural perspective of food, etc., etc.), I am nonetheless very impressed by Frank’s approach to the overriding goal of having ESL students become savvy language learners.

A few interesting facts in Frank’s ESL Dept.:

• about 700 students, 50% of whom are international students, 30% Gen 1.5 students, and 20% immigrants
• each faculty member takes 3 to 5 Gen 1.5 students under his/her wing to advise them
• reading as the central part of the ESL classroom

Learning English through WebQuest

Although I was familiar with WebQuest, I had not created one for my students. So I decided to check out this workshop provided by graduate student Yi-Chia Lin of Alliant International University. Sure enough, she reviewed the usual five basic sections of a WebQuest:

1. introduction
2. task
3. process
4. evaluation
5. conclusion

I learned about four websites one can go to create WebQuests:

1. QuestGarden (http://questgarden.com/, fee-based with 30-day free trial)
2. InstantWebQuestV2 (http://www.zunal.com/, free)
3. TeacherWeb (http://teacherweb.com/wq_home.html, free)
4. PHPWebQuest (http://eduforge.org/projects/phpwebquest/, free)

Writing Peer Evaluation with Google Documents

Also facilitated by Ms. Yi-Chia Lin, this workshop introduced the Google Documents online that can be used by writing teachers who don’t want to spend much time doing peer review in class. Here are the major steps:

1. open a free Google account at http://www.gmail.com/
2. go to “Documents” from within the Google account
3. click to upload students’ writing
4. click to share students’ writing
5. type students’ email addresses
6. type a message to students

Students will then receive the email from you with a link. As a peer reviewer, the student will click “Indent more” and type his or her answers in the box. You as the teacher can click “Insert” and choose “Comment” to comment on the peer reviewer’s comment.

Based on my limited hands-on experience during this workshop, I would suggest not assigning a group of larger than 5 members to review one paper, especially not having them access the paper at the same time. The way Google Documents handled the roomful of participants, it still looked like a Beta version.

TELL-IG

During lunch, I sat on the table that was supposed to the meeting place for the Technology Enhanced Language Learning Interest Group (TELL-IG) Rap Session. The prepared agenda was abandoned due to the noise level in the large dining hall. However, I did learn that TELI-IG now has a new website at http://www.tellig.org/, along with its listserv at http://lists.catesol.org/read/?forum=tell-ig and its discussion group at http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/tell-ig.

Take Action! 20 Minute Problem Solving

Too often, we complain without taking any action. Four ESL teachers gave a poster presentation about a useful solution called “NAB IT,” an acronym of the following steps:

Name (put a name to the problem)
Analyze the problem (causes, effects)
Brainstorm solutions (no judging)
Identify two solutions to try &
Think them through (set a date to report back)

Once a week for 20 minutes, groups of five students can form problem-solving circles, where each member plays a distinct role: a problem poser, a leader, a timekeeper, a facilitator, and a record keeper.

Simple Strategies for Effective and Authentic Writing Assessments

Jan Forstrom of Continuing Education of San Diego CCD presented ways to give effective and authentic writing assessments to her adult ed students. To be effective, a writing task cannot be on just any topic and must be appropriate to the student level. To be authentic means that the writing task can be replicated outside of the classroom, not just one that asks to describe something in the classroom, for example. Effective writing assessments also need to be fair. For example, “Christmas around the World” is not free of bias, so it is not fair. In short, writing assessments need to be meaningful to the students so that they want to communicate. In addition, clear, exact directions must be given either orally or in writing. The most important step in creating writing assessments, however, is choosing measurable objectives to develop a rubric to determine how all of our students are to be graded. The rubric is what enables our ESL students to receive meaningful feedback. A rubric covers form, content, and language. For example, for form/mechanics, we can have—

For content, we might have the following:

• 90% correctly completed as instructed =12 points
• 80% 10 points
• 70% 8 points
• 60% 6 points
• 50% 4 points
• Less than 50% 0 points

For language, we may use something like this: Once we have a specific rubric developed to assess the form, content, and language for a particular paper, even the students can grade each other’s papers, knowing what circling a certain point means. Here is an example of a grading form for a two-paragraph essay:

There is always an amount of subjectivity associated with grading a written piece. But Jan suggested that when in doubt, teachers give the student the point; that way, we can help to build their confidence in writing.