The CATESOL Journal

According to the American Immigration Council, there were 28.4 million immigrant workers in the United States in 2018, comprising 17 percent of the labor force. As a result, English as a second language (ESL) programs have been developed by educators and policy makers to help them acquire English language proficiency. Some immigrants, especially older immigrants, have a pressing need to improve their quality of life by improving on their competence. Unfortunately, their immediate learning needs were not taken into consideration in the ESL program where I, as an ESL instructor, was affiliated. This article describes how I implemented theories of adult education in an eight-week ESL class, which aimed to help older adult immigrants develop career and life competence by using authentic and adapted learning materials. This article provides reflections on my instruction and recommendations for future implementations.

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the ways in which experts in foreign affairs project their scholarly identities on panel presentations. While previous research has focused on the ways in which researchers in various disciplines assert their scholarly identities in written discourse and in conference presentations, no study has focused on how experts in foreign affairs build credibility when speaking on panel presentations. From a qualitative analysis of 30 panel presentations held at the Brookings Institution, the findings reveal the extensive array of rhetorical strategies panelists in foreign affairs use which appear to build credibility. The study also draws attention to the syntactic, lexical, and register choices the panelists make. Based on these findings, the study offers pedagogical recommendations to help learners make the identity shift from a student to a scholar and become competent members of their discourse communities.

The effects of collaborative learning have been well studied in the context of students' developing reading proficiency. However, only a handful of scholars have examined the impact of collaborative learning on students' development of higher order thinking skills (Chapman, Ramondt, and Smiley, 2005; Lehtinen et al., 1999; Ma 2009). This article reports a case study that explored how collaborative learning supports English as a Second Language (ESL) learners' development of higher order thinking skills in a traditional ESL grammar class. To collect data, the researcher employed interviews, audio recordings, and class observations. It is hoped that through understanding this relationship not only will ESL learners develop their higher order thinking skills while acquiring a second language, but also school directors and instructors will be inspired to create effective collaborative learning activities.

This article offers a critical interpretation of the current trends in instructional models for English language learners in California. We review key instructional models and analyze them from traditional (teacher-centered), progressive (student-centered), and critical orientations (society- and power-centered). These instructional models share many common effective principles and strategies for bilingual instruction that support and often accelerate language and content learning. While these instructional models exemplify many of the best traditional and progressive approaches to multilingual instruction, they do not encompass critical orientation to language teaching and learning. In this article we argue that none of the current models synthesize high-leverage practices from all orientations and thus offer a critical framework grounded in the sociocultural and raciolinguistic contexts of multilingual instruction to best serve all K-12 Emergent Bilinguals (EBs) in California.

Competency in written and oral communication is viewed as important for graduate students to be competitive in academic and non-academic careers; however, writing and speaking support provided by graduate institutions is often limited. International graduate students (IGSs) in particular face challenges in disciplinary communication and research collaboration. To investigate the challenges IGSs face and inform pedagogical changes, a needs assessment was conducted at a large U.S. public institution. An anonymous online survey designed to measure IGSs' perceptions of their current written and oral communication abilities, needs, and behaviors revealed that activities involving partnership with faculty or peers, such as grant writing, were particularly challenging to IGSs. We argue that collaboration with other graduate students and faculty plays a key role in advancing the skill sets of IGSs, and we provide several suggestions to graduate instructors and program coordinators on how to encourage IGSs' participation in such activities.

The role of grammar instruction within second-language writing instruction has been a subject of debate for several decades. Researchers have debated the necessity of grammar instruction, different methodologies of grammar instruction, and grammar instruction’s effectiveness for second-language writing development. Despite research indicating the benefit of grammar instruction for second-language learning and writing development, practical applications of grammar instruction to second-language writing instruction remain sparse within the discourses of second-language learning. Drawing upon theory, research, and practice from within the fields of Second Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics, this article articulates three practical form-focused collaborative writing tasks that facilitate explicit focus on grammar and language form within the context of L2 writing.

This article examines the Spanish proverb, quien habla dos idiomas vale por dos, which literally translates to mean he who speaks two languages is worth two people and applies its meaning to immigrant children who are language brokers for their families. Historically, the United States has not promoted multilingualism and even frowned up language brokering because it is viewed as an adult task taken on by a child. However, recent research shows that language brokering is actually a benefit that aids the family in the acculturation process and assists the child in the journey of becoming bilingual. There is much research already on the benefit of being bilingual. This project set out to show that connecting child language brokers to educational programs could ultimately nurture their bilingual skills and support them to be successful academically. The goals of this project were to link language brokers with (a) current research on benefits of bilingualism, (b) to find any pioneers in the United States leading the way in promoting bilingualism or multilingualism, and (c) to offer next steps.

This paper argues that home visits can play a critical role in identifying gifts and talents of bilingual students through students' funds of knowledge. Underrepresentation of students who are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), particularly bilingual children, in gifted programs has been a long-term concern in education. One problem of underrepresentation of bilingual students in gifted education is rooted in teacher under referrals of bilingual children for screening. Bilingual students exhibit gifted characteristics in differing ways than their peers from non-diverse backgrounds (Esquierdo & Arreguin-Anderson, 2012). Students' funds of knowledge frame their patterns of learning, knowing, and doing around their unique cultural and linguistic experiences and can serve as a valuable resource in the gifted and talented screening process. The purpose of the paper is to promote the use of home visits as an alternative talent screening approach to assist teachers in the identification of bilingual students' potential characteristics of giftedness through students' funds of knowledge.

ELLs need to engage with topics and situations in the classroom that equip them with the social, professional and civic cultural skills to address real-life interactions for their present realities, as well as their future realities (American, 2009, Garett, 2005; Perez & Morrison, 2016). Teachers face the challenge of balancing conventional textbooks and curriculum, which are fixed and often limited to customary topics, not fully addressing the dynamic and changing realities of ELLs. This article describes how a post-methods teaching approach (Kumaravadivelu, 1994; Masouleh, 2012), which represents a self-designed flexible and pragmatic alternative to strict adherence to a singular method, can be tailored to ELLs’ needs and commonly-encountered relevant contexts to connect learning to real-life experiences. The discussion highlights the value of a multi-method approach, falling under the umbrella of Situated Learning, to provide real-life scenarios within which students can complete tasks, engage in projects, and/or study and learn from relevant content-based material. In doing so, ELLs’ language proficiency, as well as their world-readiness, are effectively developed.

The emergence and development of online M.A./M.Ed. in TESOL programs has created new possibilities for language teachers around the world to become part of a learning community that may not have been previously available to them. Online education means anywhere/anytime learning, continued employment and continued residence. Yet, online learning has brought challenges as much as celebrations; one being fear of disconnect between theory and practice. In this paper, through qualitative study, the authors address this concern by sharing the experiences and reflections of 22 teachers who completed a fully online TESOL master's degree program at a university in the South Central United States. Their voices specifically reflect the connect or disconnect of theory and practice in their online courses in one particular M.Ed. TESOL program. Overall, the voices of the students reaffirm that a strong connection of theory and practice is in fact possible in a virtual learning environment.

Communities of practice have taken a firm foothold in the second language teaching profession due to their promise of enabling participants to self determine their professional development needs and, through peer mentoring, achieve their goals. This article provides a rationale as to why the model is particularly well suited to teacher professional development along with guidelines for establishing and sustaining the community. This process is illustrated via several examples: (1) a large-scale, multinational community of practice established in the Lower Mekong region of Southeast Asia and funded by the U.S. Department of State's Office of English Language Programs and (2) two teacher-created local outgrowths of this community established in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

As teacher educators (TEs), we have a unique and remarkable opportunity to mentor the next generation of teachers. Over the years, our teacher candidates (TCs) have reported a sense of cognitive and affective dissonance while engaging in their culminating master's research requirement as part of a research seminar course. Cognitively, this research study requires knowledge-generation quite different from research they engaged in throughout the program, where they would synthesize and analyze published work in response to a prompt. This knowledge-generation process would often result in challenging previously held assumptions regarding the topic of inquiry through an analysis of authentic data gathered in the field. Many also experience affective dissonance when beliefs about their sense of self as emerging practitioner-researchers are questioned. Some research has examined ways in which to provide deliberate feedback thatattunes not only to the TCs' cognitive and affective dimensions but also to where they can be moved in terms of the outer limits of their learning potential. This study examines how the lenses of socio-cultural and constructive-developmental theories can complement TEs in supporting their TCs in navigating the complex task of teacher research and proposes a framework for feedback practice grounded in a person-centered approach that accounts for TC developmental potentialities.

Immigrant adults in the United States often have limited opportunities to learn English. To address this issue and to strengthen the preparation of future English language teachers, a practicum course offered in a Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MA TESOL) program in California was modified to engage student teachers in the design and implementation of a community-based ESL program. This article describes how a teacher educator and three student teachers collaborated to design and implement the program; identifies the program's teaching philosophy, centered around the communicative approach; and discusses the program's learning outcomes, ranging from introducing oneself to participating in the Individualized Educational Plan meeting. As explained in the article, breaking down the walls that existed between the MA TESOL program and the community of students about whom the program theorized not only helped the ESL students the community-based program served, but it also strengthened the MA TESOL program as a whole.

Nevada has recently taken considerable steps to reform English learner (EL) education across the state with teacher development as a primary focus. Educational reform agendas necessitate that teachers not only rethink their practices but teach in novel ways. It has been argued that teacher development through graduate education and other professional development (PD) avenues are ineffective in shifting instructional practices, highlighting a theory-to-practice gap. Further, it has been postulated that without teachers’ participation and leadership in reform, such efforts will fail. This article details a graduate PD model designed specifically to prepare teachers as teacher leaders and address the theory-to-practice gap. Our university enhanced our graduate educator preparation program in English Language Learning (ELL) to build statewide collaborative cohorts of urban and rural teacher leaders prepared to implement and facilitate educational improvements for ELs within their varied educational contexts.

Pronunciation is challenging for many international students, but particularly important for those going onto college and university level studies where they need to do professional presentations. According to the Institute of International Education [IIE] (2020), California hosted 160,592 students in 2019/2020, and is one of the top destinations for internationals seeking education in the U.S. (IIE, 2020). Given the large number of international students entering California universities each year, viable methods of teaching pronunciation are essential. The authors of this paper undertook a pilot study focused on improving the comprehensibility of English learner pronunciation via raising awareness of underlying prosodic nuances of English. Seven international student participants took part in the study. The authors relied on a noticing-reformulation technique to raise the participants' awareness to prosodic features (Smith & Beckman, 2005). Audacity 2.1.2 (Audacity Team, 2020) and WASP 1.54 (Huckvale, 2013) were also utilized for audiovisual feedback. To collect data, the authors used a pretest-treatment-posttest methodology. Two non-expert raters conducted a blind analysis of the pretest and posttest impromptu speeches. Additional data was collected from the observations of the classroom teacher. The student participants also provided data by responding to a questionnaire and then elaborating on their responses in a subsequent focus group. The results of the study showed some notable results related to intonation. Furthermore, the participants themselves greatly valued the training on thought groups because it gave them an understanding of how to use slight pausing and intonation to chunk thoughts at natural "phrasal breaks" (Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010). This process helped them to regulate the speed and flow of their speech. The positive reactions of the participants encouraged the classroom teacher to continue using the approach for subsequent classes.

Increased trade, commerce and business transactions at the international level are placing a substantial demand upon working professionals and college students who must learn English, the lingua franca of international business, in order to thrive in a competitive global workplace. Learning English as a second language (L2) can be a daunting task for many reasons. For instance, how does a student or teacher really know which words or phrases are the most practical to focus upon when learning or teaching? With expanding technology and tech tools (e.g., computer software, apps, etc.) widely available, more modern approaches to learning authentic discourse can increasingly be developed. Lexical chunks, or bundles, i.e., the building blocks of oral discourse, may be analyzed via corpus concordance software and serve as a useful pedagogical tool for teachers and a practical learning tool for students in the L2 classroom. Anyone today can access online corpora, making it an easy resource for L2 teachers and learners to utilize. Teachers may draw content that is suitable for the unique needs of their class, and students can form novel and autonomous linguistic conclusions instead of being spoon fed fixed textbook content. Geared towards L2 educators, this paper more specifically illustrates how corpus-based tools can be utilized to augment second language learning, helping L2 college students achieve communicative competence in their academic and professional lives.