International students, particularly international English as a Second Language (ESL) students who come to the United States with relatively lower levels of English oral language proficiency, are often reluctant to participate in academic discussions. In a graduate-level TESOL program with a majority of international ESL students, a video…

According to the vision of the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS), science and engineering are language intensive and offer both opportunities and challenges for all students, especially English learners (ELs), who are developing language and disciplinary knowledge and practices simultaneously. To support ELs of varying levels of…

Reading comprehension refers to elementary children's levels of understandings of written text. Building on Bloom's Taxonomy (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956), children can understand text at various levels including the literal, inferential, application, and evaluation. When teachers build on the levels of reading…

Research shows that English learners are too often denied access to complex tasks that address grade-level standards. Teachers have expressed that they believe lack of English proficiency makes complex work impossible or that they fear frustrating students into withdrawal. This article presents how teachers can incorporate students' native…

Because talking about their mathematical ideas is difficult for emergent bilinguals if they do not have experience with the language used to represent those ideas, constructing math lessons wherein the materials and tasks support the development of fruitful talk is an important task for the teacher. Waiting until emergent bilinguals are fully…

This paper reports an application of multimedia in a blended learning environment in which students engaged in multimodal presentations and peer group discussion. Students' presentation files were commented upon by their peers on the discussion board and scored by the researcher, based on questions developed by Levy and Kimber (2009) to apply…

The author describes her two-year experience of living in China and how this molded her attitudes about English language learners in Texas. Examples drawn from the Nanjing International School show how one school worked to meet the needs of a diverse group of students, with more than 70% learning English as a second language. The practical…

This article describes the adaptation of the Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) to the Rarotongan dialect of Cook Islands Maori, a Polynesian language spoken in the Cook Islands and expatriate communities. A brief linguistic sketch of Rarotongan is presented. As Rarotongan is characterised by a complex pronominal system, "a" versus "o" possession and…

Argues that English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) teaching should begin with meaning through immersion in literature and incorporate language study. Describes offering an inclusive sampling of North American literature. Notes specific picture book, drama, short story, novel, and poetry titles. Discusses ways to meaningfully engage ESL students in…

Teachers discovered that the mathematics classroom is an ideal setting for the development of a more precise use of language that leads to better communication. It is found that students are enthusiastically engaged in lively discussions during every phase of the activity, striving to outsmart their partners, by continually correcting each other,…

When faced with having to assign a grade to a student's oral proficiency in a small group discussion, how can teachers consistently evaluate each student? Because a student's adeptness at a foreign language can vary from one ability to another, it is unfair to evaluate his or her performance solely by grammatical and lexical accuracy or by any…

Studies in language learning have addressed the necessity of classroom interaction or students' oral participation in class. However, getting students to respond in a language classroom--especially a foreign language class--is a problem that most language teachers face. This article suggests remedies to language learners' reticence, using…

Based on the assumption that the acquisition of language habits is in itself insufficient for the true mastery of language, small group discussion techniques have been used in conversation workshops for students in English as a second language (ESL) courses at New York's Bronx Community College. In the groups, students are induced to communicate…

An experimental course in English for non-English speaking post graduate research students is described here. The course was intended to enable the students to use English efficiently in exchanges related to their profession. The selection process, teaching methods, and the "exit test" are described and a discussion of the adequate and inadequate…