Transcript Teaching Adult ESL

Promoting Academic Listening
and Speaking Skills with Adult
ESL Learners
Betsy Parrish
Hamline University
NCTN Conference
November 2012
Objectives
• Explore the impact of integrating language and
content to challenge and engage students in
listening, speaking, and pronunciation instruction.
• Experience parts of lessons and classroom activities.
• Assess activities for their value in teaching academic
listening and speaking strategies.
• Reflect on their use in your own settings.
2
Benefits of integrating language and content
• Multiple options proposed (Snow et al., 1989;
updated 2003)
• Benefits of collaborative tasks in content-based
instruction (Swain, 2001)
• Gains in both accuracy and fluency (Burger &
Chrétien, 2001)
• Represents most closely what mainstream/content
courses demand (Early, 2001)
3
Challenges/Obstacles
• Many programs don’t have resources to teach
content-based courses.
• Many ESL programs are not co-located with contentbased courses.
• Students in ESL classes have very different
backgrounds, interested and experiences with
content areas.
4
Possible Solution
• Create content-based units.
• Choose content that would appeal to a variety of
learners.
• Integrate both content and language objectives.
• Include practice in skills and strategies needed for
academic success.
5
Some identified gaps between ABE/ESL
and Post-secondary instruction:



Language skills/strategies development
Note-taking
Higher-order thinking/Critical thinking
Others identified- see Johnson & Parrish (2010)
6
ABE/ESL transitions-level instructors

ABE teachers rated the frequency at which a particular skill was
included in classroom instruction
College instructors: developmental
education, Health care and technical/trades
• College faculty rated the
importance of particular skills
needed for students to be
successful in their classes
8
The disconnect between ABE/ESL
and post secondary instruction
9
Listening/Higher-order Thinking:
Ability to synthesize information from
lectures with other sources
 82.6% of ABE/ESL sometimes or rarely addressed.
 While 44.7% of college faculty report it is very or extremely
important.
10
Note Taking During Lectures
 82.6% of ABE/ESL sometimes or rarely addressed.
 While 44.7% of college faculty indicate it is very or
extremely important.
11
Group/collaborative work
Emphasis on group projects in college.
Limited use of group projects in ABE/ESL
Teaching Listening Skills
Purposes for Listening
Academic
•
•
•
Directions
Lectures
Interaction with classmates
Workplace
•
•
•
Directions
Meetings
Interaction with customers
Strategies that play an important role in listening
•Anticipating content
•Listening to confirm predictions
•Listening for gist
•Listening for specific information
•Listening for details-intensive listening
•Making inferences
Teaching Adult ESL pg. 93
15
Interactive top-down and bottom-up
processing
“In top-down processing, the listener’s background
knowledge (of the topic, general world knowledge,
and of how texts “work”) interacts with the
linguistic knowledge drawn upon in bottom-up
processing…”
(Graham and Macaro 2008, p. 748)
16
What we can do in class
• Make students aware of strategies they are using;
• model selected strategies;
• provide guided and structured practice of the new
strategies;
• include action planning, goal setting and evaluation.
(Graham and Macaro, 2008)
17
Teaching Oral Communication Skills
Purposes for Speaking
Academic
• Oral presentations
• Classroom participation
• Small group work e.g., team
projects
Workplace
•
•
•
•
Train new workers
Clarification questions
Work in teams
Social interaction
Nature of communicative
speaking tasks
Teaching Adult ESL pg. 101
20
Why do we need to integrate
pronunciation instruction?
• Meet the demands of jobs (Parrish, 2004)
• Face the reality of NS’ attitudes (Munro, M.J., and
Derwing, T.M.,1995).
• Learners perceived need to become intelligible
(Derwing, T.M., and Rossiter, M.J.,2002).
21
The Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission (EEOC 1995)Guidelines
• How frequently is English needed in the job?
• How complex is the language that is needed for the
job?
• Would miscommunication have grave results?
• Is communication done under high-stress conditions?
• Is communication with one-time listeners, or would a
listener have to time to become accustomed to the
speaker’s accent?
Ask yourself those questions for each of
the jobs below and see what you notice.
• Restaurant server
• Nursing assistant
• Manufacturing line
operator
• Supervisor in manufacturing
• Doctor
• Nurse
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Dental Hygienist
Dishwasher
Housekeeper
Teacher
Landscaper
Truck Driver
Receptionist
Teaching Adult ESL p. 109
A focus on suprasegmentals
(Field,2005; Hahn, 2004; Levis, 1999)
•
•
•
•
•
Question intonation
Word stress
Sentence stress-Emphatic and contrastive
Reduced speech
Thought groups
24
Who is Muhammad Yunus ?
The Nobel Peace Prize
• What is the Nobel Peace Prize?
• Why do you think the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded
to someone for an economic development project?
KWL Charts
Micro-financing
What do I
know?
What do I
want to
learn?
What did I
learn?
27
Research on empowerment of women
Professor Fahima Aziz at Hamline University has been
conducting research on the ways in which
membership in the Grameen Bank has affected the
lifestyles and well-being of women in rural
Bangladesh.
These are some of the hypotheses she
tested:
Participation by women in Grameen bank will
lead to:
• greater decision-making power
• more control over fertility decisions
• decision making for children’s marriages
Group A Fertility Decision: Number of Children
Husband
decides
Wife
Both
God
Don’t
decides decide decides know
Row
Total
Grameen Bank 1
Loan Recipients
19
57
79
Non-Grameen
members
6
33
28
2
11
78
Groups presentations
Create new groups of 4 (one member from
each of the original groups). Present your
findings and your graph to your
classmates.
Summarize the findings
Considering ALL of the information you have gathered
from your classmates…
1. In which area was there the greatest improvement in
the lives of women as a result of membership in the
Grameen Bank?
2. How do these results compare to your own
predictions?
3. Were there any developments that surprised you? If
so, what?
Something that surprised
you about another culture
Sentence stress
Table 4.3
Content Words
Function Words
These are the words that carry the most
meaning in the sentences. We stress these in
natural discourse
These are the small words that are the glue of
the sentences. We tend not to stress these
words.
Nouns
Articles
Verbs
Prepositions
Adjectives
Short conjunctions (and, but)
Adverbs
Auxiliary verbs
Conjunctions (however, therefore)
Pronouns
Teaching Adult ESL p. 113
Integrate note-taking
Ventures
Transitions
p. 3
Combine listening and critical thinking
Ventures 4, p. 97
Use listening grid activities
Group A
Nowrouz in Iran
History/origin of holiday
Special Food
Freeing of Bastille Prison
French Revolution 1789
Fresh fruit
White Fish
Activities
Marches
Military marches
Dances and music
Clothes
New clothes
Group B
Nowrouz in Iran
History/origin of holiday
Celebrates start of spring
Special Food
Activities
Clothes
Bastille Day in France
Bastille Day in France
Eating outside
Visiting Family
Going on picnics
Jumping over fire
Anything red, white and blue
Teaching Adult ESL pg. 96
Teaching Adult ESL Task 4.4
37
Mingles
Teaching Adult ESL pg. 105
38
Graphic Organizers





Give learners tools/templates for organizing information
Help learners recognize text types or genres
Act as precursor to formal note-taking
Promote deeper listening, thinking
Provide tools for building autonomy
Use them for





Pre-listening
While -listening tasks
Note taking while listening
Sorting and categorizing ideas, concepts, words
Preparing for speaking to organize ideas
(Parrish and Johnson; 2010)
39
• the impact of integrating language and content
to challenge and engage students in listening,
speaking, and pronunciation instruction.
40
REFLECT
• In what ways did the activities promote critical
thinking and prepare students academically?
• What did you hear about that you hadn’t tried
before?
• Which activities/topics would be appropriate for the
learners you serve?