Bridging The ESL Divide

Like many international schools in Asia the classroom’s in my school seem to be swarming with English language learners.  We have an ESL department that works hard to bring students up to mainstream requirements, yet I find myself constantly battling a divide in my classes between strong English speakers and English language learners…

By the way, what’s the deal with all the different terminology, ESL, ELL TEFL, LEP, etc.  It seems like every school has their own phraseology for this population.  Maybe I should create my own new term and see if anyone can tell the difference.  How about IPLLSP for In-Progress-Language-Learning-Student-Population?  Sounds good to me.

Here are list of strategies I recommend to improve your IPLLSPs?

1. Divide and Conquer–Avoid placing similar level IPLLSPs in the same grouping.  Hopefully they’ll be challenged to work with others who can raise their language ability.
2. Keep Talking–Too often we allow these students to fall back on their written ability.  We need to ask questions and expect responses.
3. Discussion-Based Teaching–This year I’ve started a discussion-based model in many of my classes from Philips Exeter Academy in the US.  Known as the Harkness Method it emphasizes community-learning and the Socratic Method.  Everyone is expected to speak and if done correctly it creates an environment were all levels of IPLLSPs can participate.  Philips Exeter does a training seminar over the summer for teachers who are interested in learning more.
4. Translation–Allow for monitored translation time in discussions so everyone can catch up and reset.
5. Slow Down–I know this sound a little contradictory to the idea that the students should be mainstream.  But sometimes we speak too quickly as teachers and administrators and it’s not fair to expect our students to keep up.  After all it takes years to master a language at full speed.

So those are just a few ideas, I could keep going, but I’ll see if anyone else wants to add their insight.  Leave a comment with your strategies below.