TIPS: A Guidebook for Teaching Excellence in ESL

By Dan Manolescu

TIPS - A Guidebook for Teaching Excellence in ESL - is a necessary tool for teaching and learning English as a Second Language. The book is a sampler containing useful information regarding the history of the English language, the correlation between language and culture, and provides a solid framework with which to create meaningful contexts in the teaching and learning of correct grammar, vocabulary, reading, writing, and literature at various levels of English proficiency.
The major sections of the book start with TIPS and practical information addressed to the ESL teachers (and students), and the main purpose is to help instructors deliver interesting, productive, and effective content in the classroom. The author reveals the need for teachers to elevate the students’ motivation by positioning the learning as a discovery process. They become more and more eager to find out about the how’s and why’s of the development of the language. The book collects practical information on a variety of topics and the research behind them in an easy-to-use format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Jun 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781642374032

Book preview

Acknowledgements

MY HEARTFELT THANKS go to all my students, especially those who attended my classes in various places in New Jersey (LIFE Program in Rutherford, Berlitz on Campus in Madison and Teaneck, New Jersey City University in Jersey City) and in New York City (Summer Programs at The Juilliard School and ELS at Adelphi University).

First and foremost, the educator who left an indelible imprint in my early apprenticeship was Valeria Magda, who left us long ago but will remain in my affectionate memory for many years to come. Ms. Magda, with her encyclopedic knowledge, was the one who convinced me that teaching is the best and the most rewarding profession in the world.

I spent the most productive—and most intense—10 years of my teaching career at our LIFE Program in Rutherford, New Jersey, between 1984 and 1994, before our language center moved to Madison, New Jersey. During those 10 years, my fellow teachers and good friends made me feel like I was part of a family. After all these years, I consider myself lucky and blessed to have worked side by side with John Coyman, Madgid Hannoucene, Ward Morrow, Ted Stazeski, Peggy Street, and Darinka Zaharieff, to name a few. A member of the extended family indeed I was, and I took this concept with me when I became the Academic Director at ELS Manhattan, where I did my best to re-create the same atmosphere in the classroom and in the office between 1997 and 2017. This was possible mainly because we all had Mr. Mark W. Harris at the helm, our CEO, knowledgeable educator and efficient businessman par excellence, who welcomed and empowered the dedicated teacher as well as the motivated student.

The supervisor who spent time with me in her office and listened to all my questions, good, bad or otherwise, was Rosemary Rowlands. In 1991, before we opened our summer program at The Juilliard School in New York City, where I taught and worked in the office as well, Rosemary shared with me the secrets of the administrative side of ESL. She also checked the first baby steps of this project and offered excellent advice as well as much needed encouragement. After all these years, Rosemary remains for me the quintessential Academic Coordinator, and I am lastingly indebted.

My collective gratitude goes to all my friends and colleagues who shared with me, with a daily dose of good humor, their passion, their ideas, as well as their concerns regarding the process of teaching ESL. I am grateful to have worked with people like John Artise, who helped me with valuable suggestions when I started this project. I must also add Danielle DeKoker and Melissa Kaufman, who worked with me in the Academic Office, as well as Laura Lee Lafortezza, who was the heart and soul of the teaching staff at ELS Manhattan during our years at Adelphi University in New York City.

I am also deeply grateful for the 25 years I taught, among other things, EC I and EC II (English Composition 101 and 102) on Saturdays at New Jersey City University (formerly known as Jersey City State College), where I was surrounded by professionals and worked with some of the best ESL educators: Dr. Clyde Coreil, Professor Emeritus, and Dr. Anne Mabry, who provided their unflinching support and were always available to discuss with me the challenges and intricacies of the ESL Program at New Jersey City University.

I am particularly grateful to Sarah Spencer at Gatekeeper Press for her understanding and patience with my manuscript in its various stages before printing and publication.

Last but not least, I wish to express my devoted thanks to the friendly folks at Clarence Dillon Public Library in Bedminster, New Jersey, where I researched and compiled most of the material in this sampler.

The English language is the sea which receives tributaries from every region under heaven.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Foreword

HOW CAN YOU describe ESL (English as a Second Language)? It’s very hard to put it in words, but you can feel it because it is all MAGIC. How can you discover its MYSTERIES? Well, you will have to go into the classroom and meet your students.

This book is the result of decades of ESL teaching experience in both public and private schools. As a teacher, you will need at least two very important skills: one is the ability to read ESL sources and continue doing research, and the other one is the ability to translate your information into knowledge presented to your students.

Reading and researching ESL material can be done during the break, before class, after class, over the weekend, but these are necessary tools that will keep you afloat among your peers. That is why most chapters in this guidebook contain information for teachers to absorb and digest. However, that is not enough. For every topic, you will have to devise lesson plans and find a way to make students aware that they must make a mental effort if they want to learn the language. ESL teachers can resort to specialized materials, journals, and online resources. That is part of what each section of this book presents. Separately, students and teachers also have textbooks covering the basic academic skills with graphs, rules, and exercises to address those skills. This book has collected various concepts into one solid source of information and practical exercises to match.

Why put everything in one book? Teachers do not have time to prepare for the classroom. They have to be familiar with a curriculum per level of study, they have to compile quizzes and tests, grade papers, and at the same time, make sure their students also do their part. We read on the bus, on the train, waiting in line at the stores, we read everywhere we find the right place and the right moment. You can open the book and you will find something interesting to read. Certain chapters have longer explanations, others have shorter presentations, but they should all appeal to the ESL teachers’ taste and provide the motivation to know how to discover new things all the time. And that is not for teachers alone, because whatever we accumulate and discover, our students are the ultimate goal. THEY should be able to benefit. STUDENTS should learn from us to do the same: read and learn and practice.

In a nutshell, this book is a combination of extensive ESL research and practical information for the ESL teachers and students.

Both concepts are very IMPORTANT, especially HOW we approach our students.

Open the long closed doors and let your mind wander freely. Feast your eyes and let knowledge grow from more to more. Information is at your fingertips.

Adapted from Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

What This Guidebook

Is All About

Rationale - ESL is tinged with magic and rich in mysteries. You need to discover them. Four strategies for success in ESL classes will help teachers deliver high quality instruction:

The English Language - Quick overview of how English developed over the centuries

The English Alphabet – English letters and their history

Language and Culture - Language grows out of culture and represents that culture.

Methodology – General overview of students’ needs, followed by various strategies and methods:

The Grammar-Translation Method

The Direct Method

Audiolingual Methodology

The Communicative Language Teaching Approach

Vocabulary - This section includes theoretical and practical knowledge about teaching vocabulary in context, dealing with homonyms, similar sounding words, silent letters, onomatopoeic words, eponyms, and oxymora. A successful approach to vocabulary also relates to how words are formed, and how students can enrich their own vocabulary by looking at context, analyzing words, working with synonyms, and using dictionaries.

Denotation, Connotation, and Inference

From denotation to connotation

Why connotation is so important

Research and examples of inference

Figurative Meaning Euphemisms, Metaphors, Similes

Mnemonics – Memory training techniques from Greek and Roman orators to present-day ESL

Reading – The history of reading

Why we should develop the reading skill

Writing – Why writing is a form of magic

What is a sentence, a paragraph, a topic sentence, a thesis statement, an essay, a research paper, a book report, a book review

Scanning, skimming, paraphrasing, summarizing, quoting

Grammar – Glamour and grammar were once one and the same word. Students need to understand the English grammar by integrating all skills into one. Teachers need to guide them by looking at morphology and syntax, by analyzing examples, and by empowering students to teach each other what they discover. Once a structure is acquired, practice will consolidate and cement it in our knowledge reservoir. Practical exercises in every grammar section

Speaking – Public speaking in social contexts - Conversation styles

Literature – Values in literature are the same as values in life.

Examples of short stories with specific tasks and assignments

Appendix – Extra information for in-depth knowledge

To have another language is to possess another soul.

Charlemagne

Rationale

ENGLISH AS A Second Language (ESL) is a special breed. In the United States, it started in Dade County, Florida in 1963 as a government-supported bilingual program, but it soon attracted the attention of educators who wanted to see the example set by the original program. In 1966, the first national organization was founded: TESOL – Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages – and in time, it grew into an international professional organization.

There is something special about teaching ESL, and you can detect it as soon as you walk into a classroom and meet your students. This kind of special is called MAGIC. It is difficult to describe it, but you can feel it, you can sense it, and you can experience it alone or together. ESL is tinged with magic and rich in mysteries. The magic of the classroom activities and the style of each academic skill create an aura of magic with consequences behind the walls of the building and after the class hours. Schools and educators create curricula and syllabi to stream the huge volume of information and resources, but the ultimate goal is to teach each other and to learn from each other. Very few disciplines include the reciprocal rapport and the bridge between the classroom and the community. ESL does it 24/7, and it competes with industries and world economies with a speed that does not show any signs of stopping.

The present-day teacher of English is a far cry from the old-time schoolmaster who taught by parsing and diagramming sentences on the board and by reading to the class pieces of abstruse poetry that the class could not understand and appreciate. He (or she) is today a very practical-minded person, who is fully aware of the pitfalls of the language and the latest scientific and educational devices for circumventing them. He seldom tries to teach English in a vacuum, but relates the subject to all of life’s manifold activities, as well as to the other subjects of the curriculum. Above all, he is no longer a stuffy grammarian of the prescriptive school, but a broadminded person who realizes that language is perpetually changing, and allowances must be made for this fact. (Mario Pei, The Story of the English Language, J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia and New York, 1967, p. 373)

Dealing with ESL students means dealing with students from various cultures. Teachers should be aware of the differences and nuances of the language character and make sure they approach their students with respect and understanding. The etiquette of communication can easily be acquired by accepting that each student is a separate entity and that they all come from different backgrounds. Here are some generalities to keep in mind from Sundem, Krieger & Pickiewicz (2008):

1. "Many cultures see eye contact as aggressive or intimate (especially between the genders).

2. Spanish-speaking, Arabic-speaking, and Asian students may be comfortable with less personal space and more physical contact than students (and teachers) experienced with American culture. [...]

3. Korean families may place extreme importance on education and can become upset by the appearance of their child’s underachievement.

4. Parents of Asian students relate to teachers more formally than do their American counterparts.

5. Spanish-speaking students might offer immediate respect for females in authority roles while withholding respect form female peers.

6. Arabic-speaking students may have difficulties with female making decisions and exercising authority.

7. Nodding and saying ‘yes’ in Asian cultures demonstrates hearing but not necessarily agreement.

8. Spanish-speaking students may prioritize family obligations over education.

9. Copying schoolwork may be acceptable to students from former Eastern-bloc countries.

Students from Asian countries might excel in memorization but have difficulties with reading comprehension." (introduction, p. XX)

In other words, ESL instructors should be able to walk the fine line between cultures. Before we look a little deeper into the unique characteristics and facets of ESL, let us admire this marvelous invention called language.

Of all mankind’s manifold creations, language must take pride of place. Other inventions – the wheel, agriculture, sliced bread – may have transformed our material existence, but the advent of language is what made us human. Compared to language, all other inventions pale in significance, since everything we have ever achieved depends on language and originates from it. Without language, we could never have embarked on our ascent to unparalleled power over all other animals, and even over nature itself. (Guy Deutscher, The Unfolding of Language, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2005, p. 2)

Let us remember that language is a miracle itself, and one of its most important assets is the fact that language allows us to put sounds together into an infinite variety of subtle senses. The same author says, The wheels of language run so smoothly that one rarely bothers to stop and think about the resourcefulness and expertise that must have gone into making it tick. (2)

What is the magic of ESL? What is so attractive and appealing is the wide scope of learning ESL and the vision of being able to speak, read, and write like a native. And if, in some cases, students still keep a part of their own culture and vocabulary, so much the better. This is what each mystery reveals when approached properly, with respect and mutual understanding. Each new reading passage or listening exercise is a mystery in itself, and nobody knows better than those involved in the teaching process day in and day out. The rewards are endless when teachers and students discover together the minutiae of a lesson objective, or when after weeks, months, or even years of learning, we go back and reflect. The accomplishments are great, and words cannot express the gratitude of those who open the door and let English enter their lives. It’s not only the language; it entails basic beliefs, assumptions and values, body language, face expressions – they are all ingrained in the native speakers and ESL students should be made aware of that.

After studying English as a Second Language and teaching it for decades, I would like to share some of my best classroom experiences so other teachers do not have to re-invent the wheel. Teachers do not have enough time to keep in touch with new developments or to stay updated. There is so much information and so many resources but very little time. I have collected so much and learned so much over the years, but now I think it is the time to share.

There are no secrets, but there are lots of small details that come into action when we start looking at the whole ESL concept. Let’s start with four basic principles that education in general and ESL in particular would recommend.

Interesting

The first and most important unwritten rule, I think, is to find the teaching material that presents itself as attractive and very, very interesting. No matter if we delve into vocabulary, grammar, reading techniques, listening exercises, or writing assignments, students should be somehow attracted not only by the main focus but also by the inherent and interesting quality of what they face for the first time. The subject matter and the way we present the information in the classroom should lure the students into the classroom instruction. ESL students are learning English for various reasons, but when they sit in a classroom, they expect to learn new things and the visual aspect, the combination of several classroom activities, (in other words, everything) should entertain and provide food for thought.

Informative

Knowledge comes in many facets, and the impact of the new material in the classroom should delight but also inform the learner. The teacher is the guide who organizes and empowers the students to make the instruction process meaningful. On a daily basis, we acquire information about the weather, politics, travel, sports, business, family matters, or entertainment. By the same token, every day in school is a day students learn to perform a certain task, practice new vocabulary, listen to dialogues, mini speeches or conversations, and in doing so improve their skills. At the end of each class period, students should be able to say, "I learned something today. My classroom experience was worth my effort, and I left empowered with something new, more interesting and more informative than I expected." Our goal is to exceed the student’s expectations – which seems quite challenging for any educator, but which makes teaching a rewarding experience. If the feedback we provide is clear and positive, students will build on what they already know. A college professor once said that, the human mind, once expanded by knowledge, can never go back to its original shape.

Communicative

With so much to learn, absorb, and process, students should be able to take their recently acquired knowledge and apply it right away, be it in a casual conversation, or in another class with a different or similar focus. The need to exchange information should be instilled in the learner’s mind so they can find a useful application but also test the depth and width of the previously learned experience. Practice is the most obvious segue to the next step, which is always inter-human communication.

Good instruction teaches students to do something. This is the main idea behind Teaching for Competence by Howard Sullivan and Norman Higgins (1983). The act of teaching does not consist of simply presenting information; we teach our students to do something with that knowledge. (2)

How do we go about communicating with our students? In some cases, this is an art, and it takes some time to communicate the learning objectives to the students, but at the same time find a motivator. The best way to achieve this would be to inform the students of the value of what they will be learning. We should explain why the knowledge or skill is important in its own right and/or as a necessity for learning other knowledge or skills. It is helpful to relate the usefulness of the new learning to life outside the school, as well as the previous or future school work. Whenever possible, you should also emphasize the importance of the objective for students’ immediate needs or interests, rather than for more remote, long-range matters. (53)

In other words, your (teacher’s) role is to provide conditions that help all students learn as well as possible, rather than one in which you simply make information and resources available for students to learn according to their abilities. If you present the information for performing a task but do not provide appropriate practice, the top students may still perform quite well because of their better ability to interpret and apply the information. Less able students, however, are unlikely to be able to perform the task without an opportunity to practice it. Good instruction will include practice of the exact task stated in the objective because such practice helps students learn. (41-42)

Motivating

When we decide what skills we teach, we have handbooks, manuals, textbooks, websites, our own experience as teachers, and sometimes the students’ previous classroom experience. We also have curricula, and we can develop our own objective sheets for each separate skill. What we do NOT have is the student’s motivation. This is something we need to think about very seriously and find ways to make the ESL students aware that learning also involves their own motivation. A quick walk through Motivating Learning by Jill Hadfield and Zoltan Dornyei (2011) will give you a chance to see the multiple ways we can resort to when it comes to motivation. According to the authors, teachers must create a vision for the ESL students. The goals are not good enough and instead they must be replaced by a clear vision. The example they give is that young people can set the goal of becoming a doctor, but the vision will make them aware of what they will feel during their first day in the professional life of doctors. Extrapolating this idea, we might say that the ESL students’ goal is to learn English, but the vision would involve them in conversations with native speakers at the airport, the bank, or the department store, and would make them feel comfortable in the new culture using English as a Second Language. The vision would give them a feeling of accomplishment. The skills they learn in the classroom would enable them to do certain things in English.

"Doing describes what a person does to express himself in action of some kind. [...] Americans insist on identifying an agent who can take purposeful and sequential action. The concepts of motive and motivation provide the link between action on one hand and the agent (and his purposes) on the other hand. Motives are attributes of the individual which arouse him to action. The concept of motivation reveals the connection and direction in a sequence of actions and, in everyday life, provides a convenient explanation for performance. It is appropriate to say someone succeeds or excels because he is well motivated." (Stewart, 1997, p. 60)

Darwin believed that language was half art, half instinct, and he made the case that using sound to express thoughts and be understood by others was not an activity unique to humans.

Christine Kenneally, The First Word, 2007, p. 21

The English Language

ACCORDING TO CHARLES Berlitz, there were 2,796 languages in the world in 2005. In his Native Tongues, he mentions that the world’s languages are divided into 12 important languages families and 50 lesser ones. The Indo-European language family, to which English belongs, is one of the 12 most important – and among languages importance is measured by the number of speakers around the world.(2) Sam Leith (2018), on the other hand, says There are about seven thousand languages spoken worldwide. Less attention is paid to the fact that when we talk about ‘English,’ we are not talking about a single thing either; we’re talking about a huge, messily overlapping mass of dialects and accents and professional jargons and slangs - some spoken, some written – that have their own vocabularies and grammatical peculiarities and resources of tone and register. (7)

After talking about the existence of dialects, Berlitz goes on to say:

English, in its earliest form, Anglo-Saxon, was the dialect of powerful Wessex; modern English, which developed after the Normans conquered England in 1066, grew out of the dialect of London, the capital city. (2)

The rise of the English language is considered by many linguists a mystery, while others rate it as a success story. When the Romans conquered Britain, English did not exist. In time, the language grew out of its original territory and slowly but surely became international.

Certain historical events, like the Hundred Years War with France (1337-1454), the outbreak of the plague called the Black Death, which in itself made labor scarce, accelerated the rise of the English language. After the plague, schools started to teach English grammar, not French or Latin. In 1325, William of Nassyngton (a village in Northamptonshire in England) made the following statement, which rendered into contemporary English would be like this:

In the English tongue I shall tell you,

If you with me so long will dwell,

No Latin will I speak nor waste,

But English, that men use most,

That is able each man to understand,

That is born in England;

For that language is most displayed,

As much among the learned as unread.

Latin, as I believe, know none

Except those who have it in school done.

And some know French and not Latin,

Who have used it at court and there remain.

And some know of Latin partly

Who know of French but feebly.

And some understand well English

Who know neither Latin nor French.

Both learned and unread, old and young,

All understand the English tongue.

(Quoted by David Crystal in The Stories of English, 2004, p. 131)

In the companion to the PBS TV series, The Story of English, R. McCrum, W. Cran, and R. MacNeil (1986) continue the story after William of Nassyngton, the chronicler whose statement was read before senior staff at Cambridge University in 1384.

English now appears at every level of society. In 1356, the mayor and aldermen of London ordered the court proceedings there be heard in English; in 1362, the Chancellor opened Parliament in English. During Wat Tyler’s rebellion in 1381, Richard II spoke to the peasants in English. In the last year of the century the proceedings for the deposition of Richard II (together with the document by which he renounced the throne) were in English. Henry IV speeches claiming the throne and later accepting it were also in English. (78)

Spoken English was different from county to county, and the five main speech areas – Northern, West Midlands, East Midlands, Southern and Kentish – are similar to contemporary English speech areas.

The same authors also mentioned that, towards the end of his life, Walt Whitman defined language as something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity and having its basis broad and low, close to the ground. (351)

In his highly entertaining and informative book, The Stories of English, David Crystal opened his exploration of English with two stories, the standard and the real story. Let’s see what he said about the former:

"The standard history of the English language usually goes something like this:

• In the year 449 Germanic tribes arrived in Britain from the European mainland, and displaced the native British (Celtic) population, eventually establishing a single language which was Anglo-Saxon in character.

• Most writings of the period are shown to be preserved in the West Saxon dialect, the language of King Alfred, spoken in the politically and culturally dominant region of southern England around Winchester. Descriptions of the language, known as Anglo-Saxon or Old English, therefore reflect the dominance.

• Fundamental changes began to affect Old English grammar during the later Anglo-Saxon period, and these, along with changes in pronunciation, innovative spelling conventions, and a huge influx of new words after the Norman Conquest, led to the language evolving a fresh character, known as Middle English.

• During the Middle English period, the literary language began to evolve, culminating in the compositions of Chaucer, and we see the first signs of a Standard English emerging in the work of the Chancery scribes of London.

• The introduction of printing by Caxton in 1476 brought an enormous expansion in the written resources of the language, and was the major influence of the development of s standardized writing system. Spelling began to stabilize, and thus became less of a guide to pronunciation, which continued to change.

• Further changes in pronunciation and grammar, and another enormous increase in vocabulary stimulated by the Renaissance, led to the emergence of an Early Modern English. Its character was much influenced by Elizabethan literature, notably by Shakespeare, and by the texts of many Bibles, especially those of Tyndale (1525) and King James (1611).

• The unprecedented increase in the language’s range and creativity brought a reaction, in the form of a climate of concern about the unwelcome pace and character of language change. This led to the writing of the first English dictionaries, grammars, and manuals of pronunciation, in an attempt to bring the language under some measure of control.

• As a result, there emerged a sharpened sense or correctness in relation to a standard form of English, and this came to be encountered worldwide, as speakers of educated British English gained global influence throughout the British Empire. At the same time, the question of standards became more complex, with the arrival of American English as an alternative global presence.

• By the end of the eighteenth century, the standard language had become so close to that of the present day, at least in grammar, pronunciation, and spelling, that it is safely described as Modern English. But there continued to be massive increases in vocabulary, chiefly as a consequence of the industrial and scientific revolutions, and of the ongoing globalization of the language – a process which would continue throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first." (3-4)

Besides the standard story, David Crystal also takes into consideration what he calls the real story. It is not what the orthodox histories include which is the problem; it is what they omit, or marginalize.

‘The’ story of English, as it has been presented in the mainstream tradition, is the story of a single variety of the language, Standard English, its special status usually symbolized through capitalization. But this variety is only a small part of the kaleidoscopic diversity of dialects and styles which make up ‘the English language.’(5)

At a certain point, David Crystal is ready to get into conversational English, although he says its story is ‘patchy.’

This is a casual style, with its half-formed thoughts, loosely constructed sentences, unfinished utterances, interruptions, changes of subject, vagueness, repetitiveness, and a general ‘play it by ear’ attitude to interaction, is somewhat intrinsically inferior to a style where everything is carefully thought out, sentences are tightly organized and complete, the progression of meaning is logical and coherent, and conscious effort is made to be relevant, clear, and precise. This is a message which prescriptive grammarians and purist commentators have been drumming into us for the past 250 years. It may take another 250 to forget it, though the signs are that it will take much less. (10)

From our perspective as language instructors, we need to look at both aspects. What needs to be done is a concerted effort to unite the standard English with the spoken language of today. No matter how much we read and write and teach these skills together or separately, the spoken aspect is an integral part of the teaching process. I would venture to say that even grammar, vocabulary, or listening, for that matter, should be done as a conversation activity. Whatever is taught as new material should be practiced and reviewed so students can get a feeling of what a new grammar point, for example, sounds like in a real life situation.

As far as the written form is concerned, after the grand master of the Elizabethan era left us the legacy of Shakespearean drama and poetry, English moved slowly but gradually towards other parts of the known and little explored world. When the Mayflower left Plymouth in 1620, the written form that was recorded in those days gave us one of the finest and earliest examples of prose written in America. (McCrum, Cran and McNeill, 1986)

William Bradford, the Mayflower’s historian and the first Governor of the Massachusetts Colony, described the whole situation in this short passage:

"Being thus passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles...they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weather-beaten bodyes, no houses or much less townes to repair to...it was muttered by some that if they got not a place in time they would turn them and their goods ashore [and return]...But may not and ought not the children of these fathers