Running head: ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN

Issues in Adult Survival ESL Course Design Stephen McClure & Naum Neskoski LING 583 Curriculum and Materials Design for TESOL Prof. Xuehua Xiang

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN Introduction

For immigrants to English-speaking countries, learning to communicate effectively in English is often crucial to their success and acceptance in their new communities. Everyday contacts with neighbors and vendors, as well as important interactions with landlords, employers, customers, government agencies, physicians, etc. are all greatly facilitated by a basic competence in English which has been termed "survival" English (Auerbach & Burgess, 1985). When tasked with developing a course to provide these skills to adult learners, course designers must first carefully assess the overall context in which the course will be taught. Understanding the context of a course is as crucial to curriculum designers as understanding the features of a building site is to the architects of a house. A thorough consideration of a variety of contextual issues will provide the "givens" (the knowledge of both constraints and resources) to make informed decisions about course objectives, structure, and content (Graves, 2000, ch. 2). In this paper, we will explore these contextual issues from a broad perspective to a gradually more narrow one. Then we will discuss the implications these particular constraints pose for the design of a survival English course, and how we might go about addressing them. We begin with the broadest viewpoint: the sociopolitical context.

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN Sociopolitical Context The course will be taught at a Chicago community-based organization (CBO). The organization is not-for-profit, locally administered, and serves an ethnically diverse urban neighborhood, providing programs in child and youth development, adult education, and community development. Its

funding derives primarily from federal and state agencies, and secondarily from corporate and private donations. Given its funding sources, its adult education curriculum must follow federal, state, and national teaching association standards (Rodriguez et al., 2009). If a CBO cannot document adherence to these standards, it risks losing its primary sources of funding. A useful survey of the relevant standards is given in Young & Smith (2006). The actual standards documents applicable in this context are Foster et al. (2007) and TESOL (2003). These standards contain considerable specific guidelines regarding goals and objectives, instructional levels, content, materials, and instructional practices. CBOs are notoriously short of funding, and their directors and administrators are acutely aware of the need to satisfy the requirements of their funders. Being well versed in the above standards is essential when discussing designing a new course with administrators and other stakeholders of the institution as a whole.

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN Institutional Context A community-based organization is exactly that: based in a community. As such, its stakeholders are multifarious. In addition to the funding entities mentioned above, a CBO is usually overseen by a board of directors consisting of prominent community leaders, donors, and political figures.

Day-to-day administration is typically accomplished by a small staff under an executive director. The adult education program will probably employ a director, a small number of full-time teachers, several part-time teachers, and numerous volunteer tutors. The community members served by a CBO will represent diverse ethnic groups, native languages and cultures, and will range in age from infants to octogenarians. It will often be the case that several family members are simultaneously served, requiring scheduling coordination between, say, child services (e.g., day care) and adult education. Adults in the ESL program will often face scheduling problems due to work conflicts and family responsibilities. For information on a typical CBO, see the website of the Albany Park Community Center (APCC, 2012). Resource Constraints of a Typical CBO Due to limited budgets, the resources available in a CBO setting are often rather limited. Classes may not be held in actual classrooms. There may or may not be black- or

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN whiteboards, flip charts or similar equipment. There may or may not be overhead projection or audio-visual technology available. Teachers may need to provide materials without access to clerical support. For the purposes of this discussion, we will assume an average CBO adult education program having classrooms with movable individual desks and chairs, blackboards, and the ability to project images, show video and play audio recordings, but little or no clerical

support. Adult education courses are typically offered free of charge to community members, with perhaps only a nominal fee for a textbook (often less than the cost to the institution). In this context, the most important resources are the students themselves and their teachers. Pedagogical Context: Students and Teachers According to Crandall & Sheppard (2004, p. 2), "there is no typical adult ESL student." This is certainly the case in a CBO context. Students may range in age from young adults to the elderly. Older individuals may have impaired vision or hearing, which will require adequate lighting of the classroom, loud and clear presentation of audiovisual materials, and possibly materials in large print. The one assumption we are making is that most, if not all, students in this course will be at the Beginning ESL Literacy level of proficiency (Foster et al., 2007, p. 6). In addition, students

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN may have widely varying levels of L1 literacy. The National Center for Family Literacy and The National Center for ESL Literacy Education (hereafter "Practitioner Toolkit") (2004, p. II-57) identifies six categories of first language literacy: nonliterate, preliterate (native language is not written), semiliterate, non-alphabet literate (Chinese, Japanese), non-Roman-alphabet literate (Greek, Ethiopian, Arabic, Thai, Russian), and Roman-alphabet literate (Polish, Turkish, Vietnamese). Furthermore, students will come from diverse cultures, and may be very recent arrivals. Some may have suffered through political persecution, war, or other severe trauma. Horsman (1998, p.2) notes that survivors of trauma may be absent frequently, and may have a hard time paying attention and participating. They may feel uneasy with group work and be uncomfortable with ambiguity. Finally, some students will undoubtedly come from traditionalist societies. It is important to respect their beliefs whenever possible, permitting, for example, conservative Muslim women to work exclusively with women, and scheduling around traditional prayer times.

These considerations indicate that the CBO environment is a challenging one for ESL teachers. They must be prepared through their training to expect their students to be as different as their many places of origin, and to look for ways

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN to respect and honor this diversity, and incorporate it into instructional activities in positive ways. Other valuable knowledge for teachers in this context has to do with immigration and citizenship issues. In conducting workshops with young ESL teachers in a CBO context, Ullman (1999, pp. 523-524) found that some teachers expressed anxiety regarding not knowing enough about the bureaucratic challenges their students faced with respect to work or student visas, immigration, and citizenship issues. We will assume that experienced teachers in this environment are well informed in these areas, and can focus on teaching the course. Pedagogical Context: Course and Materials

No course exists in a vacuum. The survival English course will become part of the larger curriculum of the CBO, and we must thus consider its relationship to other courses being taught or planned. Our assumption is that survival English would be the first, lowest level course learners would take, and would thus need to "feed into" any subsequent courses. Any new course should fit into the overall curriculum in terms of established proficiency levels and course content (which will largely be dictated by the standards documents cited above), to ensure that as learners progress, there is structure and continuity to support them in smoothly increasing their competence.

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN Course materials will consist primarily of a textbook, chosen for its compatibility with the standards, supplemented by additional materials developed by the teachers. Materials should be based on a consideration of both standards and an

ongoing needs assessment of the students. We will address this issue below under "Materials-Design Implications." With respect to assessment, primarily informal assessment tools such as materials-based or teacher-written tests will be used, as this type of course is free and not graded. However, states are required to evaluate and report local programs' performance according to standards established under the National Reporting System. The state of Illinois employs the CELSA (Combined English Language Skills Assessment) test from ACTT (the Association of Classroom Teacher Testers), a generally respected test that places students into one of 7 levels of proficiency (ACCT, 2012). We will plan to administer this test at the end of the course for reporting and placement of students into higher levels. Regarding the course schedule as a whole, we must accommodate the needs of working adults, many with families. This calls for an open enrollment approach. The course will last 16 weeks, with four one-hour classes scheduled per week, two during the day and two on evenings and Saturdays. Students would be expected to attend two classes per week.

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN Summary of Context We have outlined a variety of contextual features and constraints, including the overall sociopolitical and institutional setting of community-based organizations, the unique and varied nature of the learner population, and the physical and pedagogical constraints imposed by budgetary considerations and standards bodies. Given this general context, we now go on to discuss the implications for course

design from various points of view: methodology, the learners, cross-cultural issues, and materials design. Methodological Implications The overall nature of this context, in which newcomers to the U.S. must learn basic language skills to conduct their everyday lives, points clearly to a methodological approach that is firmly grounded in interactionist and communicative language teaching theory. To help students develop a range of interactional abilities and to help them get their message delivered most effectively, it seems wise to employ a range of methodological practices. Many of them are indicative of the communicative language teaching approach. Johnson (1981) and Morrow (1981) observe that if all participants in a conversation possess all of the information that is used in that conversation prior to communicating, communication has not technically taken place. Ideational communication can only

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN take place if one individual shares new and unfamiliar

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information with the other. Hence, one of the reasons students need to be exposed to constant communication is to bridge that information gap. Another approach is closely related to the role of the instructor, in that the more control over the choice of language there is, the more limited the students' learning possibilities are going to be. Real communication should allow learners to choose not only what they will say, but what linguistic forms they will use to express themselves. To facilitate such learning, we should refrain from using scripted dialogues, and as Taylor (1983, p. 73) suggests, "provide learners with the opportunity to engage in unrehearsed communication and thereby experience doubt and uncertainty, and learn to make appropriate content and linguistic choices accordingly." To achieve such communication, learners will be guided into a goal-driven interaction, one in which they will have a vested interest and will genuinely want to draw new information from the other speaker. One of our goals should be to help students learn to participate in extended discourse above the few-word or the sentence level. If students perceive communication in this class as something they wish to do, as they would in real life, in situations such as complaining, inviting, reassuring, negotiating, etc., they will drift away from the reality that

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they are in fact completing a pedagogical task (Morrow, 1981). For an ambiance to be achieved where such conduct would thrive, we must carefully consider the affective characteristics of the learners. Learner-Driven Implications Given the nature of the student population in our context, we can expect each class to have learners with a wide variety of age ranges, vastly different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, varying levels of literacy in their L1, and perhaps a history of trauma or other affective issues. This means that even before we have the roster of students and before we conduct any needs analysis, we must be prepared to address this diversity. It will be important to select materials that will be relevant to everyone, and to pace the dynamics of instruction accordingly. We will need to look for ways to decrease the learners anxiety by building supportive relationships between classmates (Allender, 1998, cited in Practitioner Toolkit, 2004, p. IV-66). With respect to disparities in L1 literacy, we have chosen a book that pays attention to learning the English alphabet (Fuchs et al., 2010). Depending on the specific needs of learners, we may consider dedicating significantly more one-on-one attention to those who need help with learning the alphabet than to those who need help in their phonological

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN processing, the former being more essential as a survival skill. We will nurture an atmosphere in class in which group

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work and peer-to-peer collaboration will provide the basis for learning. For students with difficulties with this atmosphere (induced by trauma or otherwise), we must be prepared to provide a "quiet corner" (Practitioner Toolkit, 2004, p. IV-68) for the times when these students may need their space. Further facilitation will be provided in terms of materials and activities (see below in Materials-Design Implications). Cross-Cultural Implications We have taken it upon ourselves to consider the cultural norms and values of students from different backgrounds. This is why it is important to conduct a thorough needs assessment once the student roster is available. Needless to say, it is important to familiarize our students with the essentials of American culture and to do this regularly through as many activities as possible. Brown (2007, p. 74) states "Whenever you teach a language, you also teach a complex system of cultural customs, values and ways of thinking, feeling and acting." He goes on to provide some classroom applications for the language-culture connection, and points out that it should often be emphasized that "no culture is better than another." Although this ideology may be controversial for teaching in an

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN EFL setting, it is quite fitting for an ESL classroom in the United States. Brown suggests including materials and activities that illustrate a connection between language and culture, but also, screening the material that may be

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offensive to a culture. In order to make students more open to accepting the new culture, they will need to understand that their language acquisition success is dependent on it. After grasping the sociolinguistic aspect of language learning, students will be ready for learning the cultural connotations and language that involves idioms, figurative speech, etc. (Brown, 2007, pp. 73-75). Materials-Design Implications The bulk of the material covered in the typical Survival English ESL course tends to come from one textbook. This is beneficial for several reasons. Most importantly, examples, instructions, tasks, as well as the rest of the content, are demonstrated similarly in every unit, and students get accustomed to that structure. A good instructor should, however, understand the needs of his students and incorporate additional materials accordingly. Teacher resource books and additional student textbooks need to be scanned often. They can provide a good resource for replacing material that lacks quality, material that is too complex for the given group or, material that may offend the cultural norms of certain

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students. If students find themselves struggling with certain grammatical forms, books like these may provide a good source for additional material. Auerbach and Burgess (1985) call on the instructor to determine to what extent the materials relate to the situational and communicative realities of students. They point out the mistake that many textbooks make in their effort to maintain structural simplicity, that eventually cause them to end up being misleading. To illustrate, they provide examples of doctor-patient dialogues from Survival-English textbooks that involve calling the doctor, setting up an appointment, conveying to the doctor what the health issue may be and receiving suggestions for treatment. Such ESL textbooks often take no notice of the fact that newcomers are often uninsured and cannot see a doctor at a moments notice. They are more likely to go to an emergency room or a community health clinic (where they may face long waits) rather than to see a private physician. Negligence of such factors may promote the view that certain problems are abnormal or, worse, the result of the students' own inadequacies (Auerbach and Burgess, 1985, pp. 477-480). When instructors encounter such oversights they need to inform students, possibly through explanation or, through supplementary handouts from other literature that will be developed into goal-oriented

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN activities. To add to this idea, the National Center for Family Literacy and Center for Applied Linguistics, in their Practitioner Toolkit (2008, p. IV-67) urges instructors to

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find out about community resources available for students. If appropriate, classroom activities "(e.g., role playing activities in which they use the communication skills necessary to call a hotline to ask for assistance)" should be created to help students access such services. At the low-beginner level it may be hard for students to fathom certain abstract concepts and ideas. This is why a teacher should consider implementing various realia, as well as paper-based and commercially available visual aids. According to Brown (2007, pp. 193-194), objects such as food items, cosmetics, household gadgets, tools, in addition to slides, posters, photographs and illustrations, are effective in helping students connect language to reality. Conclusion Designing a Survival ESL course for an adult education program at an urban community-based organization is a challenging task. As we have attempted to show, many factors must be considered before this design task is even begun. Federal and state funding parameters, educational standards, and reporting requirements must be considered. The leadership and staff of the organization and the people of the

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN neighborhood in which it is located must be consulted. The

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great diversity of the eventual students must be acknowledged and incorporated into the course planning process. Based on a thorough understanding of the detailed course context, some design guidelines regarding methodology, socio-cultural matters, learners, and course materials can be established. With this information in hand, course design can proceed with some degree of confidence that the outcome will be a course that meets the needs of all concerned stakeholders.

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN References Albany Park Community Center (APCC) (2012, February 15). General format. Retrieved from http://www.apcc-chgo.org Association of Classroom Teacher Testers (ACTT) (2012, February 15). General format. Retrieved from http:/ /www.assessment-testing.com/celsa.htm Auerbach, E. R., & Burgess, D. (1985). The hidden curriculum of survival ESL. TESOL Quarterly, 19(3), pp. 475-495. Brown, H. D. (2007). Teaching by principles: An interactive approach to language pedagogy (3rd Ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman. Crandall, J., & Sheppard, K. (2004). Adult ESL and the community college. CAAL Working Paper 7. New York, NY: Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy. Foster, J. K., DeHesus, P., & Obrzut, G. S. (2007). Illinois ESL Content Standards. Springfield, IL: Illinois Community College Board. Fuchs, M., Johnson, L., Lynn, S., & Schoenberg, I. (2010).

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Future: English for results 1. White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman. Graves, K. (2000). Designing language courses: A guide for teachers. Boston, MA: Heinle. Horsman, J. (1998). "But Im not a therapist" The challenge of creating effective literacy learning for survivors of

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN trauma. In S. Shore, (Ed.). Proceedings from Australian council for adult literacy 21st national conference: Literacy on the line. Adelaide: University of South Australia. Johnson, K. (1981). Introduction: Some background, some key terms and some definitions. In K. Johnson & K. Morrow (Eds.), Communication in the classroom. Essex, England: Longman, pp. 1-12. Morrow, K. (1981). Introduction: Principles of communicative methodology. In K. Johnson & K. Morrow (Eds.),

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Communication in the classroom. Essex, England: Longman, pp. 59-66. National Center for Family Literacy, & National Center for ESL Literacy Education (2004). Practitioner toolkit: Working with adult English language learners. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Rodriguez, A. G., Burt, M., Peyton, J. K., & Ueland, M. (2009). Managing programs for adults learning English. CAELA Network Brief, September 2009. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Taylor, B. (1983). Teaching ESL: Incorporating a communicative, student-centered component. TESOL Quarterly, 17(1), pp. 69-88. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

ISSUES IN ADULT SURVIVAL ESL COURSE DESIGN (2003). Standards for adult education ESL programs. Alexandria, VA: Author. Ullman, C. (1999). Between discourse and practice: Immigrant rights, curriculum development, and ESL teacher education. TESOL Quarterly, 33(3), pp. 513-528.

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Young, S., & Smith, C. (2006). Understanding adult ESL content standards. CAELA Network Brief, September 2006-04. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.