Helpful Resources for Teaching ESL

Teaching English as a second language comes with its own unique set of challenges. The following articles serve as a great resource, promoting journal writing, composition instruction, and a view into the cultural aspects of students for those teaching English as a second language.

A community within the classroom: dialogue journal writing of adult ESL learners by Jungkang Kim

This article focuses on the author's experience in working with adult ESL students on a community college level. The students are encouraged to write their concerns on any topic in their journals, such as their culture shock, job opportunities, families, etc. The author argues for the benefits of the dialogue journal writing, as it provides for open communication among teacher and students, creates sense of community in a classroom and improves the overall learning environment.

Tensions between validity and outcomes: teacher assessment of written work of recently arrived immigrant ESL students by Arkoudis, Sophie and O'Loughlin, Kieran

This article is an evaluation/a report of a study that focused on ESL teachers I an Australian English Language Center. This article focuses on results of the study of the teachers' use of Curriculum Standards Framework (CSF) for evaluating students' work. The struggle between administrators and educators is highlighted, and points to teachers' inabilities to improve their students' proficiency in English due to administration's focus on evaluation based on grammar correctness.

Understanding ESL writers: Second language writing by composition instructors by Sarah J. Shin

This article focuses on helping teachers provide useful feedback to their ESL students by examining the problems that occur in translation of another language to English. Shin discusses the importance on evaluating content first, grammar second, in evaluating students. To help teachers understand the difficulties of ESL students, they are asked to write in a second language; they are evaluated based on grammar. Teachers concluded that this provides for a very negative writing experience, supporting Shin's idea of evaluation based on content first.

What reading teachers should know about ESL learners byMary J. Drucker

This article focuses on the factors that influence the reading process of ESL students.

The author discusses ideas that teachers should be aware of with ESL students, such as their need for physical cues to understand meaning in conversational and academic discussions, differences between visual and phonetic spelling, difficulties with vocabulary, and understanding cultural differences. This article if of help to us as teachers as it provides various concepts/tasks that we can implement in our classrooms to allow ESL students to learn and participate (this includes one-on-one time with teachers, shared reading projects, incorporation of cultural texts, etc).

ESL Student transition to college: The 30-Hour Program, by Myra M. Goldschmidt, Norman Notzold, Christine Ziemba Miller

This article argues that a pre-college, 30-hour program can assist ESL students in succeeding in their first-year curriculum. The author focuses on learning strategies for math and English courses and completes a study of such a program where results indicate that activities implemented were in fact beneficial in increasing students' GPA on placement tests.

A critical 'checkbook' for culture teaching and learning by Michael Guest

This article discusses the difficulties teachers face as their classrooms become more and more culturally diverse. The author argues that it is necessary for teachers to learn about the various cultural domains, and presents opportunities on how teachers can do so. He warns against assumptions based on anthropological research, and dangers of viewing one individual's behavior as representative of the whole culture; he concludes that limiting focus on differences in the classroom will avoid unintentional misrepresentation of the culture and provide for a more open learning environment.