Promoting Academic Listening and Speaking Skills with Adult ESL Learners

1. Promoting Academic Listening and Speaking Skills with Adult ESL Learners Betsy Parrish Hamline University NCTN Conference November 2012

2. Objectives OBJECTIVESToday we explore… • Explore the impact of integrating language and content to challenge and engage students in listening, speaking, and pronunciation instruction. • Experience parts of lessons and classroom activities. • Assess activities for their value in teaching academic listening and speaking strategies. • Reflect on their use in your own settings.

3. Benefits of integrating language and content • Multiple options proposed (Snow et al., 1989; updated 2003) • Benefits of collaborative tasks in content-based instruction (Swain, 2001) • Gains in both accuracy and fluency (Burger & Chrétien, 2001) • Represents most closely what mainstream/content courses demand (Early, 2001)

4. Challenges/Obstacles • Many programs don’t have resources to teach content-based courses. • Many ESL programs are not co-located with content-based courses. • Students in ESL classes have very different backgrounds, interested and experiences with content areas.

5. Possible Solution • Create content-based units. • Choose content that would appeal to a variety of learners. • Integrate both content and language objectives. • Include practice in skills and strategies needed for academic success.

6. Some identified gaps between ABE/ESL and Post-secondary instruction: • Language skills/strategies development • Note-taking • Higher-order thinking/Critical thinking Others identified- see Johnson & Parrish (2010)

7. ABE/ESL transitions-level instructors • ABE teachers rated the frequencyat which a particular skill was included in classroom instruction

8. College instructors: developmental education, Health care and technical/trades • College faculty rated the importanceof particular skills needed for students to be successful in their classes

9. The disconnect between ABE/ESL and post secondary instruction

10. Listening/Higher-order Thinking: Ability to synthesize information from lectures with other sources • 82.6% of ABE/ESL sometimes or rarely addressed. • While 44.7% of college faculty report it is very or extremely important.

11. Note Taking During Lectures • 82.6% of ABE/ESL sometimes or rarely addressed. • While 44.7% of college faculty indicate it is very or extremely important.

12. Group/collaborative work • Emphasis on group projects in college. • Limited use of group projects in ABE/ESL

13. Teaching Listening Skills

14. Academic Directions Lectures Interaction with classmates Purposes for Listening Workplace • Directions • Meetings • Interaction with customers

15. Strategies that play an important role in listening • Anticipating content • Listening to confirm predictions • Listening for gist • Listening for specific information • Listening for details-intensive listening • Making inferences Teaching Adult ESL pg. 93

16. “In top-down processing, the listener’s background knowledge (of the topic, general world knowledge, and of how texts “work”) interacts with the linguistic knowledge drawn upon in bottom-up processing…” (Graham and Macaro 2008, p. 748) Interactive top-down and bottom-up processing

17. What we can do in class • Make students aware of strategies they are using; • model selected strategies; • provide guided and structured practice of the new strategies; • include action planning, goal setting and evaluation. (Graham and Macaro, 2008)

18. Teaching Oral Communication Skills

19. Academic Oral presentations Classroom participation Small group work e.g., team projects Workplace Train new workers Clarification questions Work in teams Social interaction Purposes for Speaking

20. Nature of communicative speaking tasks Teaching Adult ESL pg. 101

21. Why do we need to integrate pronunciation instruction? • Meet the demands of jobs (Parrish, 2004) • Face the reality of NS’ attitudes (Munro, M.J., and Derwing, T.M.,1995). • Learners perceived need to become intelligible (Derwing, T.M., and Rossiter, M.J.,2002).

22. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC 1995)Guidelines • How frequently is English needed in the job? • How complex is the language that is needed for the job? • Would miscommunication have grave results? • Is communication done under high-stress conditions? • Is communication with one-time listeners, or would a listener have to time to become accustomed to the speaker’s accent?

23. Ask yourself those questions for each of the jobs below and see what you notice. Dental Hygienist Dishwasher Housekeeper Teacher Landscaper Truck Driver Receptionist Teaching Adult ESL p. 109 • Restaurant server • Nursing assistant • Manufacturing line operator • Supervisor in manufacturing • Doctor • Nurse

24. A focus on suprasegmentals(Field,2005; Hahn, 2004; Levis, 1999) • Question intonation • Word stress • Sentence stress-Emphatic and contrastive • Reduced speech • Thought groups

25. Who is Muhammad Yunus?

26. The Nobel Peace Prize • What is the Nobel Peace Prize? • Why do you think the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to someone for an economic development project?

27. What do I want to learn? What do I know? What did I learn? KWL ChartsMicro-financing

28. Research on empowerment of women Professor Fahima Aziz at Hamline University has been conducting research on the ways in which membership in the Grameen Bank has affected the lifestyles and well-being of women in rural Bangladesh.

29. These are some of the hypotheses she tested: Participation by women in Grameen bank will lead to: • greater decision-making power • more control over fertility decisions • decision making for children’s marriages

30. Group A Fertility Decision: Number of Children

31. Groups presentations Create new groups of 4 (one member from each of the original groups). Present your findings and your graph to your classmates.

32. Summarize the findings Considering ALL of the information you have gathered from your classmates… • In which area was there the greatest improvement in the lives of women as a result of membership in the Grameen Bank? • How do these results compare to your own predictions? • Were there any developments that surprised you? If so, what?

33. Something that surprised you about another culture

34. Sentence stress Table 4.3 Teaching Adult ESL p. 113

35. Integrate note-taking Ventures Transitions p. 3

36. Combine listening and critical thinking Ventures 4, p. 97

37. Use listening grid activities Teaching Adult ESL pg. 96 Teaching Adult ESL Task 4.4

38. Mingles Teaching Adult ESL pg. 105

39. Graphic Organizers • Give learners tools/templates for organizing information • Help learners recognize text types or genres • Act as precursor to formal note-taking • Promote deeper listening, thinking • Provide tools for building autonomy Use them for • Pre-listening • While -listening tasks • Note taking while listening • Sorting and categorizing ideas, concepts, words • Preparing for speaking to organize ideas (Parrish and Johnson; 2010)

40. OBJECTIVESToday we explored… • the impact of integrating language and content to challenge and engage students in listening, speaking, and pronunciation instruction.

41. REFLECT • In what ways did the activities promote critical thinking and prepare students academically? • What did you hear about that you hadn’t tried before? • Which activities/topics would be appropriate for the learners you serve?