TEFL blog » ESL in North America

How’s this for an approach? The YWCA’s recently finished summer camp helped students to learn English while swimming, counting pennies and liquefying ingredients in a blender.

The idea was to integrate language skills with skills for survival in the USA for the children from Ethiopia, Laos, Lebanon, Mexico, South Korea and Vietnam attending the camp.

Swimming pool lessons included things which the children and their families really need to know, like how to tell which is the deep end and which is the shallow end, and what swimming costumes are appropriate for public pools.

Read more about the camp at the Chicago Courier News.

Carpentersville, a suburb of Chicago with 37,000 residents, voted this week to make English the only official language, despite the fact that 40% of the residents are Latino.

According to Trustee Judy Sigwalt, quoted in the Chicago Tribune, multiple languages are responsible for tearing her community – and country – apart.

Village President Bill Sarto, however, thinks that the measure will only succeed in painting Carpentersville as an unwelcoming community.

So who’s right? Should multilingual communities be encouraged or suppressed? Do they help to unite or divide? Have a look at the article and decide for yourself…

That’s the view of the Simplified Spelling Society, who protested outside the National Spelling Bee in Washington D.C. This month.

The aim of the Society is to replace what they consider the nonsensical system of English spelling, which they see as being responsible for illiteracy and problems for kids at school, with a logical, phonetic system.

Steve Shives, however, disagrees with the idea, pointing to differences in pronunciation in different places. Who is to decide, he argues, the correct phonetic spelling of his home state, Maryland, which he has variously heard pronounced MARE-a-lund, MARE-lund and MARY-land. Is a British or an American pronunciation of “drawing”, or neither for that matter, the “correct” pronunciation. He also points to the embodiment of language and cultural history in the spelling of many words.

The solution, Steve suggests, is not to simplify spelling and “rob the language of its historical and cultural heritage”, despite the Simplified Spelling Society’s argument that this could free educators from spending large amounts of class time teaching spelling (and, incidentally, make competitions such as the National Spelling Bee redundant).

Steve instead sees a solution in spending more time on the essential skills of reading, writing and spelling: “Children…should be taught [these skills] …not as a chore, not as work, but as necessary and wonderful skills that will serve them the rest of their lives.”

What do you think?

Idaho has become the 29th US state to adopt English as its official language. 13 more states have legislation pending to do the same.

But isn’t English the official language everywhere in the US, I hear you ask? Have a look at this post to find out.

In this post in January we debated whether there is a place in writing today for abbreviated English of the type found in emails, text messages and chat rooms, or whether this is just a menace to ESL students and teachers.

Well, according to the Jamaica Observer, this type of English is becoming a problem in Jamaican schools, as it creeps into students’ essay writing. One teacher, quoted in the article, blames the problem on a lack of reading: “If you ask students to read a novel, the first thing they ask is ‘how many pages, Miss? Is it long?’ Everything is about instant gratification.”

What do you think? Would students use less chat room slang at school if they read more and watched less TV? Have a look at the article and post a comment below…

Here’s a little lighthearted ESL relief courtesy of a Super Bowl commercial and YouTube…

ESL students in Sevierville, Tennessee are using their new English language skills to do good deeds in the community, according to this article. After reading about Martin Luther King, the class has started a project called “100 Acts of Kindness” to fulfil his vision of harmony among people and races.

Each student keeps track of his or her good deeds and then reports back to the class. In this way they connect their English learning with their real lives and do some good at the same time.

What do you think about this project? Post a comment below…

If you were asked what the official language of the United States is, what would you say? I suspect that most non-Americans would say English. Well, you may be surprised to know that the US has no official language at national level.

And this, according to a recent poll, is not good enough for the majority of American people. 60% of Americans polled think that the government is not doing enough to protect English as the “common, unifying language of the United States.”

This has prompted a bill to be introduced in Congress to make English the official language. Newt Gingrich, a supporter of the bill, said that “the civilization will decay and the culture will collapse” without a common language, and 92% of those polled said that a common language was important to “maintain unity as a nation”.

Gingrich says that the proposal is pro-immigrant, and 78% of those polled think that the government should be doing more to help immigrants with English.

What do you think? Is a multi-lingual society a good or a bad thing? Does it hinder communication or promote multi-cultural values? Read the full story and post a comment below…

In a post at the end of last year, we looked at immigrant-advocacy groups across the US who are bringing the ESL classroom to the streets, for immigrant workers who cannot attend lessons in the classroom for financial or transportation reasons.

Well, the School on Wheels literacy program in Chicago is doing something similar, offering free ESL tutoring on a bus. The bus, which has been revamped into a classroom, visits different suburbs with immigrant populations each week on a rotating basis.

The program’s 325 participants receive one-on-one tuition from 280 volunteers, who themselves undergo two days of training.

The program was started in 1993 by a former elementary teacher, Sister Marybeth McDermott. She said that they simply “went into the neighborhoods and rang the doorbells and asked if they wanted English classes”.

Have a look at this article for the full story…

Adult ESL students at the Aiken County School District in South Carolina have been participating in a Christmas card writing scheme for American military personnel in Iraq. The project was started to help students with their writing skills, learn something about the culture and increase troops’ morale, according to the article.

What do you think about this project? Post a comment below…

Last week we posted that the British government spends £110 million a year on translation services for immigrants, money that many would argue would be better spent on English classes.

Perhaps the government should follow the example of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Teaneck, NJ, USA. The church has recently started offering ESL classes to immigrant day labourers on the road. The church has offered classes on their premises for some time, but recognise that not all immigrants can attend, for transportation or financial reasons. So instead of the immigrants coming to them, they’ve taken the classes to the immigrants, teaching them while they’re waiting for work.

The classes focus on language useful to the immigrants in their work, such as the names of tools, explaining what the matter is if they get sick, and asking when they will get paid.

The feedback from the participants in the article is positive. One immigrant, who is also co-director of an immigrant resource centre, says the classes “provide visible evidence that immigrants are eager to assimilate into society” and that “we really want to adjust but we don’t always have the opportunity”.

The church, according to the article, is not the first organisation to bring the ESL classroom to the streets, with immigrant-advocacy groups nationwide doing the same thing.

So it would seem that given the opportunity, immigrants are keen to learn English and integrate into American society. Should the British government learn from this example and change its funding priorities? What do you think? Have a look at the article and post a comment below…

A group of parents in Texas has taken the state to court over the quality of their kids’ ESL classes. They say that when their children have to repeat a grade, it’s because of poor quality ESL instruction, not because they are not capable. Their claim would appear to be backed up by statistics, which show 16% of “Low English Proficiency” students dropping out of school, compared to 4% of other students. The court will decide whether the Texas Education Agency needs to do more to monitor ESL classes…

The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (JET) is 20 years old this year. More than 46,000 people from 55 countries have participated in the program in that time, many working as Assistant Language Teachers.

Meanwhile, though, according to this article, English fluency in Japan is embarrassingly low, and a government proposal to teach English at elementary school has met with resistance. Opponents say that Japanese children should spend time concentrating on the complexities of the Japanese language instead, and one Japanese author has said that Japanese should be proud that TOEFL scores in the country are among the lowest in Asia…

What do you think? Should Japan follow its neighbours’ lead and introduce an English language program in elementary schools? Have you taught in Japan? Do you agree with the author of this article? Post a comment below…

…Meanwhile in the US, a group of middle school ESL students learn English through art, and an ESL teacher in Arkansas is recognised with a $15,000 award for Arkansas Teacher of the Year.

“English as a Second Language week” was held this month in Toronto, aiming to highlight the growing significance of ESL in Ontario. One of the key isssues was that of ESL and social integration, with growing numbers of immigrants coming to Ontario each year.

In this article in the Epoch Times, Sharon Rajabi, President of TESL Ontario says that immigrants need cultural as well as English language training, so that they know how to work in a new culture and what the conventions are”.

According to Rajabi, Torontonians are sensitive to immigrants’ needs. But is this true everywhere? Do all cities embrace the influx of immigrants in need of ESL training as Toronto does? Should we be doing more to implement ESL programs in the workplace and in the community, to ease social integration?

And what about the other way around? Thousands of ESL teachers every year go to live and work in non-English speaking countries. Many make an effort to embrace the culture and learn the language. But others choose to make little or no effort to integrate socially or linguistically. What do you think? Do expatriate ESL teachers have an obligation to integrate, to learn cultural conventions, to learn the language - not least so that we can understand some of the linguistic problems our students are having? Post a comment below…

We recently received an email from a visitor to our website, who asked that we post her request for advice on our blog…

“I am an Indian national with a Bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering, and I would like to work and study for a higher degree in Canada. I have relatives in Canada and would like advice about applying for a visa and to Canadian universities.”

If you have any advice or experience that you’d like to share, please post a comment. Thanks!