We have an ESL to ABE Transition class for those exact learners.  High ESL learners were often not ready for an ABE or GED class so we developed the Transition Class. Most students are in the ESL to ABE Transition class for one or two semesters.  We developed a set syllabus, but certainly exercise some flexibility.
 
Elizabeth B. Sinnes
Adult Education Programs Coordinator
Charles County Maryland Public Schools
301-753-1774
 

________________________________

From: assessment-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:assessment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Barbara Jacala
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 9:16 PM
To: 'The Assessment Discussion List'
Subject: [Assessment 1567] Re: Transitions Discussion begins today!



We have advanced ESOL students who keep coming back because they want to improve. However, their CASAS score is too high that we are not seeing any more gains and they are therefore showing up in our reports as failures, i.e. continued in the same level or left the program before completion. I am thinking that we should try to move them over to the postsecondary developmental English courses. We are also considering offering an academic ESL course to transition such students to postsecondary. What are your thoughts?

 

Barbara Jacala

Guam Community College

 

________________________________

From: assessment-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:assessment-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Wendy Quinones
Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 2:07 AM
To: The Assessment Discussion List
Subject: [Assessment 1559] Re: Transitions Discussion begins today!

 

Hello and welcome everyone,

I'm Wendy Quiñones, an ABE teacher at a community-based learning center, the Community Learning Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  I also taught for two years in our college transition program while Cynthia Zafft, whom you'll also meet in the course of the discussion – was head of NCTN.  Recently – this past Saturday, in fact – I also began teaching a high-level ESOL communication class at a private tw-year college in Boston, Urban College.  This class consists of women who are family day care providers working toward a certificate; they have had all their content courses in Spanish and are now trying an academic English course for the first time.

 

Marie asked me to talk about the "process" at my learning center for transitioning students from ESOL into ABE.  I can name it in a word:  none.  Our ABE program aims to move students toward a GED; many of our ESOL students have no need of or desire for one.  We are also fortunate to receive a number of scholarships to the ESOL program at Harvard University's extension school, so our advanced students who want to work hard at improving their English often go there.  We tried a specific transition class one year, but it was the only time we had a large enough cohort of students who were "stalled" in high-intermediate ESOL but wanted a GED.

 

However, when students do move into the ABE program from our ESOL classes, or they enter the ABE program with skills that are too high for ESOL but low by ABE standards, they generall go into a low-intermediate reading and writing class which I taught for two years.  Higher-level students who already have a high school credential (and sometimes college as well) in their home countries often entered our transition to college program.  

 

As we all know, these students are very different from native speakers in the same classes.  In his research on low-intermediate adult learners, John Strucker noted the following distinction between native speakers and ELLs: 

**       Native speakers tended to have relatively stronger "meaning-based skills" [like comprehension and vocabulary] as compared to "print-based skills," [for example, word recognition] while non-native speakers exhibited the opposite pattern. Chall (1991) reported similar findings. 

**       Many second-language speakers in ABE classes had surprisingly low levels of oral vocabulary in English (GE 2 to GE 4), despite their fluent levels of conversational English. Similarly low levels of oral vocabulary occurred among some inner-city young adults who were native speakers.  Strucker, John.  "What Silent Reading Tests Alone Can't Tell You: Two Case Studies in Adult Reading Differences," Focus on Basics, May 1997.  http://www.ncsall.net/?id=456 

So the question is, how do we cope with these learners with different needs?  At my center, teachers are mostly left to our own devices.  In the lower-level classes, where student need is universal for vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension instruction, concentrating on those is easy.  At higher levels, it gets more complicated.  In my GED class, using "The Lord is my shepherd" to demonstrate methaphor, my ELL students didn't know the word "shepherd"; in my college class, my Spanish-speaking students didn't know the word "rhyme."  

 

One year in the transitions class, I tried to differentiate the instruction, having the lower-level ELLs work with an ESOL teacher for an hour of the 3-hour class.  They learned the same vocabulary words but in contexts they could understand, and their writing assignments and grammar instruction paid attention to more specific ESOL issues in which to this day I have not been trained.  We learned that while we could expect these ELLs to learn the words, we couldn't use the same tests; their tests needed to be much more similar to the examples they used in class.  Native speakers and higher-level ELLs could be expected to know the words in different contexts.  I also gave some readings at different levels – either different materials or in many cases short stories for which I provided both an adapted version and the original, like O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi."  Except for the fact that all the students were exposed to great American short stories, I can't say that any of these techniques worked particularly well.

 

So I'm still hunting for a "process" that will help ELLs to transition into ABE and college classes.  I imagine many of you have much better ideas than I do.  I'm looking forward to hearing about them!

 

Regards,

Wendy

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