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NYS TESOL Publication: Idiom
Idiom
Archive (Summer 2003):
Theme: Using Content to Promote Second Language Acquisition
Strategies
for Learning: Using Content to Promote Second Language Acquisition
in the ESL Intensive Program at Hostos Community College
by Lewis Levine and Teresa Justicia
Overview
The ESL Intensive program was first
established at Hostos Community College (CUNY) in 1982 as a way
to accelerate students’ progress in their acquisition of
English as a second language by combining three semesters of the
college’s regular ESL program into two semesters. Each level
of the ESL Intensive program provides fifteen hours of classroom
instruction per week: a six-hour reading and conversation course,
a six-hour writing course, and a three-hour language workshop.
While each course has a specific focus in terms of content and
skills development, they also seek to develop all language skills
(reading, writing, speaking, and listening) in an integrated fashion
using a content-based communicative approach. In the program’s
first level, students also take a three-credit course in computer
applications and a three-credit course in theater production,
while second-level students take a three-credit course in arts
and civilization or introduction to humanities and an appropriate-level
math course.
Class size is usually limited to twenty students.
To participate in the program, students must be recommended by
their ESL teacher, earn a final grade of at least a “B”
in their ESL course, and perform satisfactorily on a writing/usage
exam. Students in the program are expected to keep a weekly journal
in response to articles in The New York Times, which they receive
by special subscription (twice a week in the first level and every
weekday in the second level), to participate in field trips and
attend films at the college directly related to the content of
their ESL classes, do collaborative group projects and individual
research projects, and submit at the end of each semester an extensive
portfolio of written work done during the semester, including
multiple drafts of at least eight assignments.
Since the program’s inception, its students
have graduated at an overall rate of more than 50%, about five
times higher than students enrolled in the college’s regular
ESL program.
Creating a Content-Based Curriculum
Despite the program’s consistent
success over a considerable period of time, its faculty engaged
in a major revamping of the ESL curricula in 1995 to incorporate
a more content-rich approach to language instruction as a way
to better prepare ESL students for future academic course-work
and for various proficiency exams mandated by the City University
of New York (CUNY). The importance of this faculty initiative
has been supported by theory and research in the field.
The program’s faculty opted to create
a mini core curriculum approach to language teaching and learning.
Each ESL course focuses on several broad themes that draw on content
from different academic disciplines, such as the natural sciences,
religion and philosophy, literature, history, psychology, and
sociology. For example, the curriculum of the program’s
second-level reading and conversation ESL course deals with philosophies
of education and concepts of freedom from philosophical and historical
perspectives, while the same level’s writing course examines
human origins from scientific, mythological, and religious points
of view, explores concepts of illusion and reality from psychological,
literary, and philosophical aspects, and explores notions of good
and evil from multi-disciplinary perspectives as well.
Using Collaborative-Learning Tasks and Questions to Explore
and Guide Content
Throughout the program, ESL faculty
require students to work collaboratively to make meaning of the
course content and to formulate their own responses and interpretations.
This collaborative-learning approach has numerous potential benefits.
It affords students more opportunity to use the target language;
it permits students to address their own doubts and concerns and
to negotiate meaning; it allows students to generate and test
their own hypotheses; it provides a natural way for students to
practice and acquire the discourse of different academic disciplines;
it requires students to assume greater responsibility for their
own learning; it helps students to acknowledge and tolerate differing
points of view; it gives students the opportunity to take on different
roles and to employ a variety of discourse functions; it fulfills
a basic human need for community and self-determination, which
in turn results in students’ gaining a greater sense of
autonomy and empowerment.
Most of the collaborative tasks given to students
require them to achieve consensus on challenging and complex questions
that guide each unit of study and afford students the opportunity
to grapple with timeless issues that humanity has explored since
the beginning of conscious thought, questions such as “Where
do we come from?,” “What can we know?,” “Why
do we suffer?,” “When are we free?.” These questions
serve as the basis for all the reading, writing, and discussion
that go on in and out of class. Students first explore the questions
through informal written responses. This is formative and low-stakes
writing, where students themselves are the audience as they interact
with ideas, concepts, and vocabulary. These writing-to-learn activities
are the springboard to what will ultimately result in the understanding
of content.
In working collaboratively, consensus does not
mean uniformity of thought but instead the collective judgment
of a group as a result of a process of intellectual negotiation
in which group members have advanced and defended their own ideas.
Thus, collaborative tasks are carefully chosen to allow groups
of students to produce something that each member could not have
produced alone. The tasks also do not have a preconceived answer,
outcome or solution, so that students must establish a common
set of assumptions and procedures in order to complete the task
successfully. Two examples of collaborative tasks are given below.
-
After reading essays by four prominent educators
(Mortimer Adler, John Holt, E. D. Hirsch, Jr., and Howard Gardner),
groups prepare a chart on the educational philosophies in which
they present each educator’s views on the following topics:
the purpose of education, the ideal role of teachers in the
learning process and the ideal role of students in that process,
the relationship between skills and knowledge, and criticism
of the educational system. Students then have to identify what
they believe are the strengths and weaknesses of these philosophies
and then compare and contrast what they perceive as the most
important similarities and differences among them.
-
After reading and discussing three texts dealing
with the concept of human freedom (“Eveline” by
James Joyce, “Tosca” by Isabel Allende, and “The
Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus), groups are asked to
identify factors that limit and promote freedom and to interpret
what each writer’s concept of freedom appears to be.
Upon completion of these intensive
collaborative projects, students then write individual essays in
which they give their own “philosophy of education”
and articulate their own views on human freedom. Invariably, students
are astonished at how much they have learned about a subject in
such a short time; the challenge for them is no longer struggling
to say something about a topic, but rather to decide what information
and ideas to omit and how to best organize all the knowledge they
have acquired.
In summary, language acquisition in this program
is facilitated through reading, writing, and discussion in response
to provocative questions, collaborative-learning tasks, the building
of academic terminology, the development of critical thinking, and
students’ sense of empowerment, all of which emerge organically
from the exploration of content.
Further Reading
Brinton, D. M., Snow, M. A., & Wesche, M. B. (1989).
Content- based second language Iinstruction. Boston: Heinle &
Heinle.
Kasper, L. F. (1996). Using discipline-based texts to boost college
ESL reading instruction. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy,
39(4), 298-306.
Kasper, L. F. (1997). The impact of content-based instructional
programs on the academic progress of ESL students. English for Specific
Purposes, 16(4), 309-320.
Pally, M. (1997). Critical thinking in ESL: An argument for sustained
content. Journal of Second Lan- guage Writing, 6(3), 293-311.
Wesche, M. B. (1993). Discipline- based approaches to language study:
Research issues and outcomes. In Language and content: Disci- pline
and language-based ap- proaches to language study. Kreuger, M. &
Ryan, F (Eds.) Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Wiener, H. S. (1986). Collaborative learning in the classroom: A
guide to evaluation. College English,
48(1), 52-61.
Young, A., & Fulwiler, T. (Eds.) (1986). Writing across the
disciplines. Up- per Montclair, NJ: Boynton/Cook.
Lewis Levine is an assistant professor of language and cognition
at Hostos Community College (CUNY), where he has served as coordinator
of the ESL Intensive Program for the past 14 years. <LewLevine@aol.com>
Teresa Justicia is an assistant professor of English at Hostos.<terejusticia@hotmail.com>
updated
on
October 4, 2004
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