Connecting the ESOL Framework to Actual Practice

Roseann Ritter
North Andover, MA

Rosann was part of a statewide curriculum frameworks project in Massachusetts. Funded by the Department of Education and facilitated by the School for International Training in Vermont, this project involved connecting the Massachusetts Adult ESOL frameworks to practice. This is the account of Roseann's experience as part of that project. This article is adapted from the draft document "Engaging Learners and Practitioners with the Adult ESOL Frameworks." June 1999. Roseann worked at the Lawrence Adult Learning Center during this project.

There were about 35 students in my two ESOL classes. We met five days
a week for two hours each morning. My students represented a cross-section of learners ranging in age from 22 to 64 with diverse educational backgrounds. The majority of students were Hispanic with 2 Russian students, two Haitian students, one Chinese student, one Cambodian student and one Korean student. The classes were somewhat homogeneously grouped as a high beginner-low intermediate level. They were all highly motivated to learn the language, however, as adults trying to juggle family, work, school, and the many pressures involved in being immigrants. They had many obstacles to overcome.

The environment of our class was participatory, with the primary emphasis on oral communication and navigating systems. Some daily focus was also on reading and written communication. Oral communication was encouraged and fostered by guiding students into peer conversations and guided dialogues. There was a special emphasis on problem solving. My students responded particularly well when the dialogues had special meaning and relevancy to their lives. Because of the participatory nature of my classes, the learner-input project was very enjoyable and worthwhile.

The primary purpose of the learner input project was to investigate ways in which teachers could develop instructional materials and comprehensive units of study that would be relevant, meaningful and responsive to students'needs. The ultimate goal was to tailor our program to better provide our students with the language and survival skills necessary to function effectively and meet the challenges of everyday life in this country. As part of the DOE Learner Input Project, my specific purpose was to see if the expressed needs and goals of my students matched with those expressed in the Massachusetts ESOL Curriculum Frameworks.
My project involved eliciting student's feelings and ideas regarding what is important to them and what kinds of knowledge and skills they hope to gain from our program/my classroom. We did this in the form of a student-generated needs assessment.

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Our project evolved into several stages. The initial stage involved the learners identifying situations in their everyday lives that presented the greatest problems and challenges to them in trying to communicate in English. The process began as a class discussion where students shared their experiences, their concerns, and problems that they had encountered. Several students willingly shared stories where their inability to communicate in English presented problems that left them frustrated and embarrassed. As they shared their stories, a common bond was established as they realized that they all had similar feelings of frustration and despair. As the students talked about the contexts where they had the most difficulty communicating, I wrote the situations on an easel pad.

After coming up with nine areas of concern, I passed out index cards numbered one to four and asked them to prioritize them by listing the most difficult situation first, the next second and so on. The results were:
1. Doctors and Illness
2. Communicating at Work
3. Police and Court
4. Talking on the Telephone
5. Credit
6. Children's School
7. Computers
8. Shopping
9. Banking

The following day the class separated into focus groups according to the context category that they had listed as their first priority. Those that felt they had problems with "Doctors and Illness" made up one group; "Police and Court" made up another, "Talking on the Telephone" and "Communicating at Work" another. Their task was to come up with specific problems that they had encountered in each category. These were examples from each context: "I can't explain my health problem to the doctor," "I have trouble when I have to go for a job interview," "I can't explain my problems to a lawyer," "When my boss explains my job responsibilities, sometimes I don't understand him and then I get into trouble."

Each team appointed a secretary to write down the group's ideas. As I circulated among the groups, I assisted where necessary to help clarify ideas. It was stressed that at this particular time the main goal was to elicit ideas; grammar and spelling were not issues to worry about. Students were allowed to express and write their ideas in their native language if that was the way they could express them most succinctly and if all members of the group shared a common native language. Other members of the group helped to translate so the secretary could write it in English. The grammar skill that we were learning in class at that particular time was ‘superlatives'. Students were able to apply the skills that they had learned e.g., most difficult, hardest, most confusing, most embarrassing, worst etc. in a contextual way. Integrating grammar into these discussions was important because it gave them practice using grammar structures we covered in class together by practicing oral language. Many students needed to know that they were getting the "grammar" for which they always craved.

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The groups were very engaged in the task. At the onset of the project, I explained to them that they were playing an important role in assisting teachers to plan lessons and identify content areas that were important and meaningful to students across the state and that there were other adult students engaged in the same process. They took complete ownership of the project and expressed several times that they felt it was a very important endeavor.

When the groups completed their lists of "can't do"s, they dictated them to me and I wrote them on sheets of easel paper. I then asked, "Does everyone have difficulty with all of these things?" From that discussion we came up with varying degrees of difficulty. "That's easy for me, sometimes I can do that, it's a big problem," etc.

The next phase was to convert those "can't do"s to "can do"s. This was a difficult but necessary step to facilitate dealing with the students'varying degrees of difficulty with the items they came up with. It was also putting their thoughts in a "positive" rather than "negative" context, emphasizing not only what they "don't know" and "can't do" but also what they "do know and "can do". Statements like, "When my boss gives me new job responsibilities, I don't understand what he is saying and I sometimes get into trouble," were changed to, "I understand what I need to do when my boss gives me a new job responsibility."

The students again worked in their focus groups to convert their can't do's. Each group came up with a new list of can do statements that they dictated to me and I wrote them on the easel pad. Their enthusiasm was truly exciting and their productivity was amazing! They were totally engaged in every step of the process. After our lists were compiled, we were then ready to transfer our work to produce a needs assessment chart (see pages???)

Part of our program was to integrate technology into what we were teaching in class. This was a perfect opportunity to do this. Since learning computer skills was very important to most students, they took this on with enthusiasm.

This was the last step in finalizing our needs assessment tool. Using the computer in my classroom I taught students how to produce a table using Microsoft Word and how to insert symbols into a document. Students were eager to go to the computer lab the following week to produce their tables. Every student in both classes produced a table, inserted their "can do" list, and very ingeniously selected symbols to insert in their charts. Four needs assessment surveys were developed based on what students felt were the four highest priority areas: going to the doctor, police and court, talking on the telephone, and workplace issues.

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We ran off copies of each of the four completed surveys to be administered to most of the day and some of the night ESOL students in our center. Two of my students expressed willingness to administer the survey to the lowest levels where some translation would be necessary. They accompanied me when I administered the survey and translated the items from English to Spanish. One of my Russian students translated from English to Russian. Another student took the results home and tallied every item to produce final figures for the survey. We surveyed about 100 students in all four categories.

Students shared many interesting stories that helped to give me further insight into the needs of my language learners. Although many of the needs they expressed are the usual concerns that students have, there were some new ideas that surfaced through discussion. One of the areas that generated the most lengthy and interesting discussions was the area of law enforcement and our legal system. Students'concerns about these systems really got me thinking about what my role is, or should be in assisting them to navigate the legal system. It became apparent to me that if this issue concerns my students to the degree that they expressed in our discussion groups, it is an area that needs to be further explored. Is it our responsibility to educate our adult students about the basic laws of this country? Should we teach strategies that will assist our students in advocating for themselves within the law enforcement system? Where do you draw the line in encouraging students to take risks and advocate for themselves?

This Learner Input Project was a valuable experience for my students and me. It enabled me to take a closer look at my teaching, and my role as a teacher and to formulate some new ideas for future planning.

As a result of this project, I am currently facilitating a team of teachers working on developing comprehensive units based on the results of the survey's findings. Using the needs expressed in the student-generated survey we will develop units of study that will be closely tied to the Curriculum Frameworks and will address the expressed needs of our students. We have developed several lesson plans on "Doctors and Illness." We will then begin a second unit on ‘Police and Courts." Hopefully, this will continue to be an ongoing process where increasing numbers of learners and practitioners will participate in planning meaningful and relevant curriculum for our center.

Related charts/figures

Originally published in Adventures in Assessment,
Volume 12 (Winter 2000),
SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 2000.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.