Traditional approaches that prepare students for research writing oft en focus on the mastery of skills such as paraphrasing, citing sources, and creating outlines. While these skills are important, they are oft en practiced at the expense of involving students in a meaningful examination of content. Project work is off ered as an alternative approach that is uniquely suited to the diff erent needs of English as a second language (ESL) students. It allows for a cross-curricular approach in which students can demonstrate what they have learned through art, drama, and music without being encumbered by their still-developing reading and writing skills. A 10-week project on plant life, conducted with 12 ESL students at Northeast Middle School in Kansas City, Missouri, is given as an example of how project work can prepare ESL students with the skills needed to begin research writing.

The purpose of this article is to identify some of the social, instructional, and administrative processes that both marginalize and enhance collaboration between ESL teachers and mainstream instructors and administrators. The article documents the verbal and written interactions between one ESL teacher and twelve mainstream instructors and administrators within an elementary school “pullout” ESL program. Its findings reveal that the ESL teacher operates as a “marginal” member of many of the social, instructional, and administrative events within the school. The implications for practice suggest opening new dialogues between ESL and mainstream teachers that include and dignify the expertise of the ESL teacher in faculty, department, and committee meetings

In spite of the increasing emphasis on the role that racial, social class, and gender issues play in second language acquisition and ESL instructional research, little has been written on how to identify or analyze such issues in current ESL texts. This article answers that call in the literature. Drawing on examples from two popular ESL texts, this article presents a method organized around the concept of critical language awareness (CLA) for conducting a critical discourse analysis of ESL texts. Implications for practice reveal how completing a critical discourse analysis of a text can offer teachers valuable information on how to deepen instruction on issues around race, class, and gender.