English as a Second Language to the Learners - Essay Example

Written Responses to reading The New South Wales Department of education and Training offers a comprehensive guideline for schools in teaching English as a Second Language to the learners. The article defines ESL learning; identifies ESL students; elaborates the aims of ESL teaching; deals with the various strategies in implementing ESL at schools; pinpoints the various roles of the ESL teachers in identifying, assessing the English language competence of ESL learners and prioritizing their need for English learning support, and finally gives directives for the enrolment of ESL learners at schools. Two specific programs on ESL are arranged at schools namely ‘ESL targeted support program’, and ‘ESL new arrivals program’ through three phases and students at the end of the third phase are expected to ‘have extended their English language and literary skills’ (NSW Department of Education and Training, 2004, p. 10). The program uses three modes -Direct, Collaborative, and Resource. The article helps one to use ESL scales in the assessment of the programs, and undertaking necessary remedial measures. Further, the article helps the students and schools in the enrolment process of ESL programs. To sum up, this article is a pole star for students, teachers, and schools in Australia and New South Wales in ESL programs. Dr. Tina Sharpe (2004) elaborates on the specialties of ESL teachers and the article establishes a number of distinctions between a mainstream teacher and an ESL teacher. According to her, ESL teachers differ from other teachers in many ways as they have ‘the knowledge about the process of acquiring a second language’ (Sharpe, 2004, p.1). ESL teachers are aware of the learning environment of the students and they implement the target language with its cultural significance. ESL teachers provide opportunities to use language in a variety of purposes and work. Only a specialist teacher can employ the expertise regarding the process of acquiring a new language. An ESL teacher is different from a main stream teacher, in the decisions about the topic content, resources, sequence of activities, modification of learning activities, identification of assessment opportunities and finally in evaluation and planning. To conclude, this article helps one to realize the significance of specialized ESL teachers in transacting the language. Cummins (1996) deals with the language proficiency both in communicative skills and in academic situation. Two misconceptions handicap students who seek to study ESL- first, the fear of incapability for logical thinking and second, the conversational skills are interpreted as overall proficiency. Similarly, ESL students acquire contextualized and decontextualized languages which the author describes as basic interpersonal communicative skills (BICS) and cognitive academic proficiency (CALP). A student must be able to make complex meanings explicit in either oral or written modalities by means of language itself rather than by means of contextual or paralinguistic cues. Many task based activities are used; even so academic language proficiency will take a longer period as interpersonal cues are lacking in it. To sum up, this article helps readers face Cognitive challenges which is essential for academic language proficiency growth. Mary Macken-Horarik provides both theoretical coherence and practical usefulness to the notion of register-building on the model of language in context. The term ‘register’ refers here as the language variation, in contexts. The first part of the article details the theoretical issues and then gives examples in some case study materials. The writer tells how, field (topic), tenor (as audience), and mode (as spoken or written) work in cultural domains where learning occurs everyday in specialized and reflexive fields. Towards the end of the article, the author focuses on various pedagogic practices and locates some of the implications of the contextual model for education. To conclude, the article helps a language teacher to “…consider a learning context from more than one point of view and to build into it not just the pedagocentric view of the teacher and what is to be taught, but also that of the learner and how this relates to what is already learnt”( Macken-Horarik, p.277). N S W State Literacy Plan 2006-2008 envisages equitable literacy for students. Literacy basics means students’ ability to read, view, write, speak, listen and think critically to understand written, visual, and technology based information. Though the ten year plan bettered the aboriginals and kids in large centers, still there are backward areas. Focal area includes all levels of schooling and whole school planning, throughout the state pointing at middle years and the responsibility to ensure two way partnerships between school, home and community falls on trained teachers, school authorities, parents and department. The plan aims at a reduction of 10% in the number of low performing students. State Directorate regulates schools and regions and each section contributes in the implementation. Student achievement indicators and implementation indicators help in effective monitoring. The well knit system of well wishers and magnificent plan aiming at week performers strengthens ESL learning. Robert Veel elaborates on how Write It Project (WIR) carries out industrial literacy growth at NSW. The article focuses on the ‘literacy demands within and across industrial sectors and relates these findings to literacy in the secondary school key learning areas’ (Veel, 2006, p. 67). The recent growth of technology and service industry have linked workplace and learning so firm. It became a challenge for Australia to equip students for the expanding literacy demands of the post –industrial work place. So the students are equipped to have ‘specific skills’ in dealing with various discourses that are used in industrial literacy. These genres are very important vehicles for assessment and deserve thorough investigation. Students’ learning of language content is enhanced through genre based activities and get immediate acceptance in industrial literacy. Through the article one may be able to understand the fundamental role played by language in constructing knowledge, developing content through deconstruction, joint construction and independent construction of genres that is leading to critical orientation of texts. Rose, Lui-Chivizhe, McKnight & Smith (2004) provide a detailed description of a new scaffolding methodology for improving academic literacy implemented by the staff of the Koori centre, university of Sydney. As the word scaffolding suggests it is a support by the teacher to the learner to mould their own strategies at a higher level in the language acquisition process. This scaffolding methodology enables the graduates to teach in high schools with special teaching strategies and it helps many of the adults who dropped their education in half way to resume their studies. The scaffolding process involves both reading and writing. The various steps included in these processes are preparing for reading, detailed reading, elaborating meanings, drawing attention to text patterns, and making notes and writing. The scaffolding process equips the learner to practice the literary skills in different ways through recognizing, comprehending and using meaning and the whole article stresses that scaffolding stands at the centre of ESL programs. Rose & Acevedo (2006) offer some fresh insights into the literacy learning of the learner in the Middle Years whereby the learners who are at risk are provided special training outside their normal class room programs with a view to enable them to achieve high level skills in reading and writing. It reduces the gap between successful and risk students. Catholic Education Office Melbourn (CEOM) with its innovative program ‘Learning to Read: Reading to Learn’(LRRL) involves off site professional learning programs, local area professional clusters and school based professional action learning teams in order to bring about high level skills in reading and writing. The program uses such steps as preparation before reading, detailed reading, preparing for writing, joint writing, individual rewriting, and finally independent writing. LRRL program gives the best practice to teacher professionals in action research and literacy output. To conclude, this article enables a person to implement the LRRL program very effectively for the learners in the middle years. Claire Acevedo and David Rose state that middle years of schooling are a critical phase in students’ lives and that it is a striving period of identity creation when they are forced to give up the demands of the school. The Reading to Learn program is to scaffold student literacy using quality, age appropriate, mainstream curriculum texts for all learners (Rose & Acevedo, 2007, p. 1). The approach is highly useful in mainstream or withdrawal contexts, with whole classes or small groups and it is capable of extending the learning of the most competent students in the class or group. Combining teaching of explicit reading with teaching the curriculum at all levels, teaching same levels of skills and designing the activities to attain the same high levels, the method is learner friendly, fosters higher self esteem among learners and offers them equal opportunities. Hammond & Gibbons (2005) argue that scaffolding has got greater significance in the process of teaching especially in language teaching. The article by the authors provides a panoramic view of how scaffolding contributes to the process of ESL education. It also provides different research reports on the nature of English as a second language education. Scaffolding is closely linked with Vygotsky"s socio-cultural theories of learning. Vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development makes it clear that there is difference in learning aided by an experienced peer or an adult and unaided learning. Scaffolding provides the learner the aid one needs and helps one to be independent. The importance of scaffolding is depicted when the authors purport that “effective scaffolding should also result in ‘handover’, with students being able to transfer understandings and skills to new tasks in new learning contexts, thereby becoming increasingly independent learners" (Hammond & Gibbons, 2005, p. 3). \ References Cummins, J. (1996). Negotiating Identities: Education of Empowerment in a Diverse Society. Ontario, CA: California Association of Bilingual Education. Hammond, J & Gibbons, P (April 2005). ‘Putting scaffolding to work: The contribution of scaffolding in articulating ESL education’ in Prospect. An Australian Journal of TESOL, 2005 20 (1), ed. Lynda Yates, AMEP Research Centre. Macken-Horarik, Mary. “Literacy and learning across the curriculum: towards a model of register for secondary school teachers”. In Literacy in Society. Hasan, R. and Williams, G (eds). Addison Wesley Longman Ltd, Essex, England. NSW Department of Education and Training, Multicultural programs Unit (2004) English as a Second Language Guidelines for Schools, NSW Department of Education and Training State Literacy Strategy policies and support materials. NSW Department of Education and Training: State Literacy Plan 2006-2008 (August 2006). New South Wales Department of Education and Training. Rose, D. & Acevedo, C. (2006). Closing the gap and accelerating learning in the Middle Years of Schooling. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 14 (2). Rose, D. & Acevedo, C. (2007). Reading (and writing) to learn in the middle years of schooling. Pen 157. Sydney: Primary English Teaching Association, 1-8. Rose, D., Lui-Chivizhe, L., McKnight, A. & Smith, A. (2004). Scaffolding Academic Reading and Writing at the Koori Centre. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 30th Anniversary Edition, 41-9. Sharpe, T. (July, 2004). So what is ‘special’ about an ESL teacher? In ATESOL Newsletter, 3(2). Veel, R. 2006, The Write it Right Project - Linguistic modelling of secondary school and the workplace, in Language and Literacy. R. Whittaker, M. ODonnell & A. McCabe (eds). Continuum: London. Read More