Teaching ESL students in mainstream classrooms:

Language in Learning Across the CurriculumAims are to:

• develop teachers’ awareness of the need to take into account the cultural and linguistic diversity and experiences of ESL students and ways in which this can be done.

• develop teachers’ understandings of the central role that language plays in learning and develop teaching practice which can be used across the curriculum to address the language related needs of ESL students in an explicit manner.

• provide a positive context for teachers to reflect critically and openly on their teaching and to trial suggested strategies.

• develop collaborative working relationships between all teachers by having a shared understanding of how to support ESL students.

• promote whole-school approaches to addressing the learning needs of ESL students.

Module 2: Language and learning and the role of scaffoldingTo ensure that students have access to the curriculum and develop as confident and successful English language users, ESL students need teachers to include a focus on language in their programming, teaching and assessment.

Presented by : Kelami Dedezade – Middlesex University

Video: Factors and Strategies (11.25 minutes) [Mod 1]

Language, text and context

Whenever we interact with someone, whether through spoken or written language, we have

certain expectations about what we will hear or read. This is because the context in which

language is used helps us to predict the text which will result. Similarly, we can make

predictions about the context from the text.

We could define text as ‘any stretch of meaningful language’. A text, therefore, could be a

spoken monologue, an interaction, a demonstration, a note, a letter or an essay. Because

texts can also incorporate visuals, sounds and animations we can say that an

advertisement, webpage or a video clip can be texts.

Video: Who are ESL students? (6.28 minutes) [Mod 1]

ACTIVITY Producing texts for given contexts

Group work (15 minutes)Each group will be given a specific context from which they are to produce a text. Some of the contents will require a written text and others a spoken text.

• Groups of 5 (+ or -) will be given a piece of paper which will explain the context for which you are to produce the text.• Groups to choose one person to read the text to the rest of the group.• Each group will provided with flipchart paper and a marker pen.• Groups to choose one person to be the scribe.• If the context given to the group is a spoken interaction, simply indicate speakers as A and B in the dialogue.

ACTIVITY Finding the context in the text

• Each group (one by one) to display their text written on the flipchart paper, read it out.• Rest of the groups try to guess the context given to the group presenting their text.

Let us look at a model of language which takes account of the relationships between the language choices in a text and the context in which it occurs.

Michael Halliday’s functional model of language represents language as placed inside two broad contexts. The language choices that we make in any given context are directly related to these two levels of contexts.

Context of cultureLanguage is seen as always occurring within a given situation and that situation is occurring within a cultural context. [Here, genre is defined as the predictable ways in which members of a culture use language to achieve a particular social purpose. Culture here does not simply refer to country or ethnicity, it refers to a group or groups of people who share particular practices and have a common way of getting things done.]

Genre: Why? – What is the purpose of the communication?When we consider the purpose or the structure of the text, we are considering the notion of genre.

Context of situationAt the level of the situational context there are three variables which influence our language choices. Together they are called the register. The three variables in any given situation are:

Field: What? – What is the content matter of the communication?

Tenor: Who? – Who are the people involved in the communication?

Mode: How? – How is the message being communicated? Is it spoken or written and which media used?

FieldRefers to the subject matter or “the what” being talked or written about.

Field continuum

everyday fields specialised fields highly technical fieldseveryday combination of specific and non-specific, typically generalisationstypically concrete and specific technical and non-technical and abstractions

Shared by nearly all members of Not shared by all members of the culture shared by few members of thethe culture (e.g., shopping, using (e.g., gardening, surfing, cooking, culture and often take manypublic transport, eating) ICTs [information and communication years to develop, typically in technologies]) senior secondary or tertiary institutions

Adapted from Department of Education and Children’s Services (2003) ESL Scope and Scales: 15, South Australia

One of the key things we do at school is to move students from everyday fields to specialised and highly technical fields.

This is a challenge to all students but an added challenge to ESL students who simultaneously need to develop the English vocabulary of the everyday fields.

This everyday language is often used to explain the technical language and to help students make links to what they already know. ESL students may miss out on much of the meanings in these explanations through a limited English resource.

ESL students also often have difficulty with the field as their limited language resource does not allow them to use words which will make the finer meanings they wish to make.

TenorRefers to “the who” or the roles and relationships of the speaker/listener or writer and reader.

Tenor continuum

informal increasing formality formalfamiliar; greatest contact decreasing contact unfamiliar; least contactstatus differences are least relevant neutral status status differences are most relevantgreatest subjectivity greatest objectivityuninformed, novice semi-expert informed, expert

Child to adult, sibling to sibling or Student reporting to student or adult positioned aspersonal contact with familiar familiar or unfamiliar audiences expert, institutional relationshipindividuals

Adapted from Department of Education and Children’s Services (2003) ESL Scope and Scales: 15, South Australia

Across the years of schooling we also move the students from the informal, familiar contexts to increasingly formal contexts.

Tenor extends the notion of audience to include aspects of power, level of expertise, familiarity and attitudes of the speaker/writer both to their audience and to the subject matter.

ESL students often have the added challenge of needing to understand and develop English structures for expressing, for example, appropriate levels of politeness, familiarity and feelings and opinions.

ModeRefers to “the how”: that is, how language is being channelled, whether it is spoken or written and which form of technology may be involved as a medium. For example, we will use language differently if we are having a face-to-face conversation as compared to one by telephone, email or online.

Mode continuum

most spoken-like spoken texts written down and most written-like written texts spoken aloud

language accompanying action language as recounting and reporting language as reflectionclose, ‘here and now’, shared distant, not shared

Face-to-face, dialogic, spontaneous; Unshared experiences, recounting, Monologic and reflectiveconcrete and specific to the context generalising, debating, formal oral precise, planned, edited, organisedshared by the speakers presentations and coherent

Adapted from Department of Education and Children’s Services (2003) ESL Scope and Scales: 15. South Australia

During their schooling we aim to extend the range of texts students are able to successfully use and produce across the mode continuum.

Written language is not inherently of more value than spoken language. The aim is that students have full repertoire of language choices and are able to move back and forth across the continuum as appropriate to the context. However, without focused attention to the features and development of this more-written language, many students’ language repertoire remains to the left hand of the mode continuum.

Video: Patterns of ESL Development (4.10 minutes) [ Module 2]