Profiles of International and Immigrant English Language Learners

1. Profiles of International and Immigrant English Language Learners Santa Monica Community College May 6, 2011 Lia D. Kamhi-Stein (lkamhis@calstatela.edu) Professor, MA in TESOL Program California State University, Los Angeles

2. This Presentation Will…. • Describe the profiles of international students, late-arriving and early-arriving resident students; • describe three students that reflect the experiences of the three groups; • identify a variety of academic literacy strategies (focusing on reading) designed to help the three groups improve their content knowledge and reading skills.

3. Who is Who? Defining Terms

4. Group Characteristics (I)

5. Group Characteristics (II)

6. Academic Language and Literacy Development

7. Case I: Amira (The International Student) • Originally from Turkey; high middle class • Began EFL studies in high school, at the age of 15; came to the U.S. to study at SMC, transferred to UCLA • Was an eye learner; • Had strong self-perceptions that were challenged by peers • Strengths: • Had strong literacy skills in Turkish • Had explicit knowledge of English grammar and metalinguistic awareness • Was a strategic learner • Challenges: • Had limited background knowledge (about content and culture) to complete reading assignments • Experienced a high cognitive reading load; had trouble keeping up with the readings and the amount of vocabulary to learn (more details later) • Had not done much writing in English (academic or other) in Turkey • Used or knew only one register: “book” English • Had limited understanding of the culture of the U.S. classroom

8. Case II: Patty (The Late Arriving Resident Student) • Originally from Mexico; working class • Arrived in the U.S. at the age of 11, did not know any English • Was a model student in Mexico and below grade level in the U.S. • Was not accepted by peers in her own ethnic group ; was frustrated by the pronunciation of words in English, her peers laughed at her • Hated the “ESL label,” wanted to be a “regular student;” decided to enroll in the “ESL track” • ESL classes did not integrate language and content, she did not feel challenged since all she did was worksheets • Transferred to mainstream classes as a senior; was challenged and supported by her English teacher • Graduated from high school with honors, but “did not know how to read, write or speak “proper” English; she memorized but did not understand materials • Did not give up, attributes her success in learning how to read to a commercial reading program • Enrolled in a community college, where she took courses for 4 years, until she transferred to the CSU system.

9. Case III: Juan (The Early Arriving Resident Student) • Born in Southern California in a Mexican, working class family • Spoke Spanish at home; English at school • Was an ear learner • Interacted with Mexican American students • Felt his teachers did not care about teaching him or his peers; he perceived them as having low expectations (Why am I going to teach you if you are not going to go to college?) • Was admitted to CSU school, where he completed a BA in French • Found himself to be lost in academia (voiceless in the classroom) • Struggled with academic register: wrote as he spoke • Was a fluent reader, but was not used to reading academic texts • Was determined to succeed

10. Self-Perceived Reading Challenges and Early- and Late-Arriving Students (Applicable to International Students)

11. General Challenges of Underprepared L2 Readers

12. Instructional Implications (I): Extensive, Timed and Paced Reading • Help students develop reading confidence and improve their concentration: a. Extensive reading (focusing on teacher- and student-selected resources) b. Timed reading (students read at a comfortable pace) and paced reading (the teacher imposes the rate for reading—increased every week by 25 WPM) Timed Reading Step 1: Preview: A. Read the title. B. Read the first sentence. C. Read the last sentence. D. Scan the article (names, dates, numbers, facts, etc.) Step 2: Read for meaning: Build concentration. B. Reading in chunks, thought groups. C. Question the writer. Step 3: Grasp paragraph sense. A. Find the topic sentence. B. Understand the paragraph structure. Step 4: Organize facts. A. Discover the author’s plan. B. Relate as you read. Students complete multiple choice questions and record results on a reading chart Spargo, E. (1998). Timed reading plus: 25 two-part lessons with questions for guiding reading speed and comprehension (book one). Lincolnwood, IL: Glencoe McGraw-Hill.

13. Instructional Implications (II): Vocabulary 2. Teach vocabulary: a. Be selective about the words you target. Consider word frequency, salience, students’ goals, the word’s learning burden (Zimmerman, 2009) b. Focus on the Academic Word List (AWL) (Coxhead, 2000) (See attached handout) http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~alzsh3/acvocab/wordlists.htm

14. Instructional Implications (II): Vocabulary c. Have students think strategically about the vocabulary [vocabulary cards, rating vocabulary knowledge (Coxhead, 2000), collocations, word parts, vocabulary use, etc.] • Zimmerman, C. B. (2009). Word knowledge: A vocabulary teacher's handbook. New York: Oxford University Press. Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213-38. Pritchard, R. (2004). Strategic reading for English learners: Principles and practices. CATESOL Journal, 16(1), 29-42.

15. Instructional Implications (III): Vocabulary • Use tools like The compleat lexical tutor, http://www.lextutor.ca/, to analyze the vocabulary in a text that you want to use Go to Vocabulary Profiler and click on Classic View to analyze the text.

16. Instructional Implications (IV): Summarization Instruction 3. Integrate instruction in the most common reading-to-write skill students will need to survive in academia: summarization Two approaches: a) cognitive

17. Instructional Implications (IV): Summarization Instruction b) text-structure

18. Instructional Implications (V): From Knowledge Telling to Knowledge Transforming 4. Engage students in activities that go from knowledge-telling (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987) to knowledge transforming (writing a critique) Dobson & Feak’s (2001) cognitive modeling approach: 1. Understanding and discussion: Students read on a single topic (including competing rejected ideas); form simple opinions on the topic. 2. Evaluation: Students are given a set of questions that model the cognitive operations that are used to evaluate a text. Who is the audience? What is the issue? What are the author’s conclusions? What evidence is presented and how good is the evidence? How good is the study, if one is presented? Is the author’s position based on the evidence? What assumptions does the author make? 3. Constructing the Critique: Students write a critique that is not based on personal opinion.

19. But… What Conditions Are Necessary for Instruction to Work? Regardless of the content or skills we teach, students benefit from instruction that: 1. is systematic; 2. recycles vocabulary, tasks and materials in different contexts; 3. engages students in discovery or awareness activities, and activities that allow them to practice and extend their knowledge; and 4. provides them with models and opportunities for analysis (in terms of discourse features, language, audience expectations, text structure, genres, etc.)