The CATESOL Journal

The premise of this paper is that learner-centered classrooms characterized by cooperative learning, affective-humanistic instruction, cross-cultural instruction, and Freire’s problem-posing method promote successful language learning because they create peaceful oases in which people learn easily. They are microcosms of a just world order based on the global values of positive interdependence, social justice, and participation in decisionmaking processes. The paper discusses threats to the peaceful classroom— misunderstanding, prejudice, and destructive conflicts—and how they can be avoided or resolved. It concludes with a list of resources teachers can consult if they wish to create peaceful ESL classrooms.

More and more ESL writing teachers are trying peer response to give students a wider audience for their papers and to encourage revision. However, in many cases students to not respond effectively, and little revision takes place. This paper discusses some of the problems with peer response and suggest how a clear role, specific tasks, thorough training, and clear accountability procedures can help foster more effective peer response.

The lowest level ESL students in a college or university writing program usually represent a small, seldom-studied population. However, administrators and instructors concerned with retention and counseling need data on this group of high-risk students to improve their chances of succeeding academically. A significant percentage experience academic difficulty in English composition and other classes. A study of entrance exam essays and test scores of 70 low-level ESL university students was done to determine if students’ later success or failure in ESL and mainstream composition courses could be predicted. Twelve of 20 variables analyzed proved statistically significant in predicting success or failure. Language factors, sentence clarity, and identifiability of errors were significant. Factors related to essay organization and development and scores from campusdeveloped reading, grammar, and cloze tests also proved significant. The information from this study gives instructors and program administrators concrete, measurable warning signals for identifying potentially high-risk ESL writers.

This paper presents an overview and analysis of a three-year computer assisted instruction (CAI) project conducted at UCLA. The project, funded by UCLA’s Office of Instructional Development, had as its primary goal the development of material for individualized instruction within the ESL service courses. In the paper, we present a brief description of how the project was carried out (including an account of the development of one piece of software), and a discussion of some of the major issues which arose concerning our implementation of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) or computer assisted instruction (CAI) in a university ESL setting. We will be presenting this discussion not as CALL experts, but as ordinary ESL teachers and administrators exploring a new technology. Rather than a state-of-the-art report on CALL, then, we intend this to be a portrayal of one experience that will hopefully be of use to those who are considering the implementation of CALL in their own instructional settings. Our discussion will refer to several sources of qualitative data that were collected over the three-year life of the project. These were written documentation produced by the project teaching assistant (including memos and journal entries), other written documents produced across the life of the project, and interviews and questionnaire data collected from the ESL service course teachers after the official completion of the project.