As you may recall, TESOL held the convening in February 2013 and brought together ESL teachers, administrators, researchers, thought leaders, and policymakers to discuss three topics framed in the form of guiding questions:

• What are ESL teachers’ current roles in implementing the CCSS for ELs?
• What should ESL teachers’ most effective roles be so that ELs achieve with the CCSS?
• What are the most promising strategies to support ESL teachers as they teach the CCSS?

ESL Expertise and Training

Overall, convening participants described a sense that ESL teachers’ expertise is often not fully understood or recognized, at times leading to a perceived lower status of the ESL teacher when compared to content area or general education teachers.  Participants described the many different program models in which ESL teachers currently work, including pull out, push-in, co-teaching, and itinerant. Each of these program models for ELLs requires different skill sets, and administrators might not always be aware of the ways in which ESL teachers provide instruction.

In addition, participants noted a wide variance in terms of the degree to which ESL teachers and content teachers are prepared to teach ELLs at the pre-service level, with some states requiring intensive coursework on how to instruct ELLs and others requiring a minimal or nonexistent level. Coupled with this continuum of training for teachers of ELLs, the Highly Qualified Teacher (HQT) definitions from the No Child Left Behind Act may also affect the status of ESL teachers. Since ESL is not recognized as a core academic content area under NCLB, it is not included among the HQT definitions. As a result, the HQT requirements for the TESOL field have been left up to the states to interpret, resulting in a broad spectrum of definitions. Due to this variation of definitions, coupled with the lack of a definition in some states, the status of the ESL teacher may be diminished.

ESL Teachers and CCSS Implementation:  Strengths and Challenges

Participants also discussed the degree to which ESL teachers and administrators saw themselves as being involved in implementing the CCSS for ELLs in their contexts. Their experiences varied widely, with individual teachers explaining they were not always invited to take part in CCSS policy decisions or were questioned when attending CCSS training events at their school.

On the other hand, Dr. Karen C. Woodson, Director of the Division of ESOL/Bilingual Programs in Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools, shared the ways in which she explicitly included ESL teachers in CCSS planning to leverage these teachers’ expertise and asked the group to think about ways to help administrators understand the skills that ESL teachers bring to the table.

While several challenges in terms of the current role of the ESL teacher in implementing the CCSS were discussed, many strengths also emerged. One topic brought up several times was the importance the CCSS places on academic language for all students, including ELLs. To that end, convening participants described how ESL teachers bring a deep, often untapped level of expertise in teaching academic language that could be leveraged across their schools and districts. Participants also described how ESL teachers tend to be highly adept at advocating for their ELLs in multiple ways, even if they do not see themselves as advocates. Participants noted that if school administrators recognize ESL teachers as experts and set an expectation that ELLs are “everybody’s kids,” they have the opportunity to create a school culture in which the entire staff shares responsibility for ELLs’ success with the CCSS.

A Vision for ESL Teachers’ Most Effective Roles to Foster ELLs’ Achievement with the CCSS

When it comes to channeling all ESL teachers’ skills within the CCSS context, participants fleshed out several areas in which ESL teachers’ roles could shift along with the major shifts in the CCSS.

First and foremost, participants overwhelmingly described a need to redefine ESL teachers’ role during this changing educational landscape so that ELLs can best work with the demands of the new standards and also in order for ELLs’ content teachers to utilize effective strategies to support ELLs. In short, the time has come for ESL teachers to be recognized as “experts, consultants, and trainers well versed in teaching rigorous academic content” to ELLs. For example, the convening’s findings report offered that ESL teachers can consult with content teachers by helping them analyze the academic language demands of their content areas and offering them support designing lessons that teach academic language and rigorous content simultaneously.

Going beyond their expertise in lesson planning for ELLs, ESL teachers are often the teachers who are best positioned to help colleagues daw upon ELLs’ first languages and cultures in CCSS-based instruction. In order for this more collaborative, consultative model to succeed, participants felt that ESL teachers would need to not only demonstrate empathy with content teachers’ complex situations but also attend more content-area meetings and engage more with content teachers at the school, district, and state level.

In that spirit, participants underscored the importance of administrators advocating for ESL teachers by making targeted changes at the school level that will elevate ESL teachers’ status. Such changes include making teacher evaluation systems more inclusive of ELLs and ESL teachers and visibly embracing the school’s linguistic and cultural diversity. Perhaps most importantly, convening participants stressed that administrators must fully support ESL teachers in their new, necessary role as experts and consultants as the CCSS are implemented.

Promising Strategies to Support ESL Teachers as They Work with the CCSS

Finally, the report details ways in which participants felt ESL teachers will need to be supported in order to move into their roles as advocates, experts, and consultants.

Attendees first expressed an urgency for ESL educators to participate fully in policy discussions at the school, district, and state levels when it comes to teaching the CCSS to ELLs. However, instead of waiting to be invited, the group discussed ways in which ESL teachers can practice developing (and believing in) their own leadership voices to ensure that they are heard and consulted on decisions that affect them and their students. ESL teachers may require leadership training so that they can be better prepared to advocate for their place at the table and their students in policy decisions.

To mitigate the effects of the lack of teacher expertise related to teaching ELLs the CCSS, participants felt that all teacher education programs for content and ESL teachers need to evolve to prepare all teachers to work with the complexities of the CCSS with a heterogeneous population of ELLs. Hand in hand with pre-service training, participants shared a vision for professional development (PD) in which in-service teachers receive PD that is “functional, practical, quick to use,” suggesting that PD be ongoing as well as job-embedded. Some topics suggested for PD included collaboration to support ELLs in the CCSS, effective instruction, and teacher evaluation.

Lastly, participants outlined a framework for CCSS instruction of ELLs, citing ESL teachers’ dire need for new instructional strategies adapted to the rigor of the CCSS. They called for revamped ESL curricula based on the language needs of the CCSS and English language development standards. Unique populations of ELLs must also be included in this new framework, including young dual language learners at the preschool level, ELLs at the beginning level of English language proficiency, and long-term ELLs. As part of this framework, participants wanted to have “numerous, authentic model lessons grounded in the CCSS” to use with ELLs at different levels of English language proficiency. Finally, participants shared teachers’ and administrators’ need to have a better idea of what successful teaching of the CCSS to ELLs actually looks like in practice.

Final Takeaways

As I was writing this blog post, it struck me that I was able to link back to so many past blog posts I’ve written on implementing the CCSS for ELLs. To me, that means the topics I’m blogging about on Colorín Colorado are relevant and are resonating with stakeholders in multiple roles when it comes to thoughtfully including ELLs and their teachers in the implementation of the CCSS. That’s a good feeling. It also strikes me that TESOL called upon ESL teachers and administrators to vocalize their distinct needs implementing the CCSS for ELLs “on the ground.” Just like the convening’s participants, I’d also like to see more practical information and instructional materials emerge for all teachers of ELLs to use in their classrooms. I look forward to sharing any of these developments as they present themselves.

To end with, I’d love to hear from you, as always. How would you describe your role in implementing the CCSS for ELLs? To what degree is your expertise with ELLs recognized and leveraged? What best practices are you seeing that can be scaled up in other contexts?

English is part of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family of languages. By year 1000, the English language consisted of approximately 40 000 words. Nowadays, the number has grown to more than 500 000. If we calculate the average of words created per century, this comes to 46 000. A great number of words found in the English vocabulary was borrowed from Latin, French, Low German, and the Scandinavian languages. We also know that some periods were more fertile than others: invasions, contact with other cultures, inventions, technological progress, music, fashion are some of the factors which have helped to enrich the language.

     British colonialism in the 19th century and American capitalism and technological progress in the 20th century were undoubtely the main causes for the spread of English throughout the world.

     From around 1750 to 1950 the British Empire covered about a quarter of the globe. It was one of the most powerful empires the world has ever known. The colonies gradually freed themselves but about fifty countries chose to keep a connection with Britain by belonging to the The British Commonwealth. English is spoken all over the Commonwealth either as a native or an official language, and the British monarch is the symbolic head of the association.

     The USA has played a leading role in most domains for the last hundred years. At the end of the 19th century and first quarter of the 20th, it welcomed millions of European immigrants who had fled their countries ravaged by war, poverty or famine. This labour force strenghtened American industries and development. The Hollywood film industry also attracted many foreign artists in quest of fame and fortune and the number of American films produced every year soon flooded the market. Before the Treaty of Versailles(1919), which ended the First World War between Germany and the Allies, diplomacy was conducted in French. However, President Wilson succeeded in having the treaty in English as well. Since then, English started being used in diplomacy and gradually in economic relations and the media. During the II World War, America intervened both militarily and economically to save Europe from chaos. From then onwards, the United States have consolidated their cultural, economical and technological power: inventions, rock and roll, the first man on the moon, the revolution of the Internet, the country’s growing prosperity and commercial aggressiveness have contributed to the further expansion and importance of English in the world today.

I’ve read an interesting article about how the Iraq war led to the appearance in English of a range of words, expressions and Three Letter Acronyms (TLAs) that previously couldn’t be found in dictionaries or were never heard on the news or read in newspapers. It’s not that these words never existed before, it’s more a case that the prominence of what was happening in Iraq expanded the circle of people who were now in contact with these lexical sets. Using evidence from the words that users of the online (US) Merriam-Webster dictionary were looking up between 2003 and 2006, lexicographers have put together an interesting picture not only of which new words were being added to the dictionary, but also which words people were looking up in order to make sense of the events that were unfolding.

Although some of these words are familiar to me – the infamous and clearly very hard to find WMDs for example – there are other TLAs that emerged such as the RPG (Rocket Propelled Grenade), IED (Improvised Exploding Device) and UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). People were also curious to understand the difference between a hijab and a niqab, as well as looking up other commonly used words during the war such as regime, coalition, and brigade – perhaps if only to check the spelling. At the height of the conflict, the most commonly searched word was insurgent followed by collateral damage – democracy was in the top 20 most commonly searched words during the whole period.

Ten years on and the words most commonly searched for, and those that are being newly entered into the dictionary, have nothing to do with the traumatic events of a conflict. It would seem that our minds are now more concerned with the language of new technologies and perhaps the need to understand how they rapidly develop and unfold in our lives.

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A teacher in Moscow writes:
“It’s a great honour to use such marvellous book as Smart English A2. I can prove that it is really Smart. … I’ve never met anything like that: a wise combination of different “actions”: the lessons become very fast, we have time to do a lot not being bored any second. I feel myself a successful teacher working with Smart English. The children do love it.”

Review from EL Gazette, November 2012 by Pete Sharma
Smart English is a new course for general English. It has several interesting features. First, the CLIL strand is superb, covering areas such as genetics, ecotourism, phobias and gravity. Second, an accompanying DVD takes students on an interesting journey around the world. Third, the book includes three slightly longer texts to encourage extensive reading. I like the foldable cardboard flaps, which form part of the cover; they present ‘language banks’ of useful phrases. Topics such as circuses and street art should appeal to the target audience of young adults. The twelve units are well designed; includes some lovely illustrations. Worth investigation.

Brief Guide to the TOEIC Test
TOEIC® stands for Test of English for International Communication. The TOEIC test is a standardized test that aims to assess a student’s ability to understand English in a business context. It is designed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Over six million people take the TOEIC test every year. It is an increasingly popular way to assess English proficiency in the world of work. More than 10,000 corporations and institutions in 120 countries throughout the world use the TOEIC test. The test is especially popular in Japan, but is widely-used throughout Asia and is becoming increasingly well-known worldwide (e.g., Greece, Italy and especially France).
The language and situations covered in the TOEIC test are useful across a wide range of business, travel, and work scenarios. The test measures your listening and reading skills across daily work situations and activities, such as General business (sales, marketing, presentations, negotiations, etc.), Office (meetings, telephone, work procedures, etc.), Eating out (restaurants, making reservations, etc.), Health (hospitals, visiting doctors, etc.), Travel (schedules, transport, announcements, etc.), Entertainment (music, art, museums, etc.) and many more.

TOEIC Test Format
The test is divided into two main sections: Listening Comprehension and Reading. There are 100 items in each section. All items are multiple choice. The test takes about two hours to complete.

Listening Comprehension

Part 1: Photographs  10 questions  45m
Part 2: Question-Response 30 questions
Part 3: Short Conversations 30 questions
Part 4: Short Talks  30 questions
Total 100

Reading 

Part 5: Sentence completion 40 questions  75m
Part 6: Text completion  12 questions
Part 7: Reading comprehension 48 questions
Total  100

You mark your answers on a special Answer Sheet using a pencil. The test is in American English, although the Listening Comprehension section features ‘standard’ American, British, Australian and Canadian accents in equal proportion.

Your TOEIC Score
You cannot fail the TOEIC test. It measures your ability, and you are given a score of between 5 and 495 per section. Your “raw” scores from each section are converted into an test score, giving a total TOEIC score of between 10 and 990. Your TOEIC score is valid for two years.

There is also a TOEIC Speaking and Writing test, which is a separate and optional test is available via the internet.

Benefits of the TOEIC Test
The TOEIC test can help you to:

-  Communicate at work
The language covers real-life work situations, useful for people working in international business, trade, commerce, hotels, banks, restaurants, convention centres, hospitals, sporting events, airlines, the travel industry, and government organizations. If you are preparing to enter the workplace, or already in work, then the TOEIC test can help you communicate more effectively in English when the need arises.

- Develop your career
Many governments, large companies, and international organizations ask their employees to take the TOEIC test as a mark of their English language ability. Do well, and you might open up the chance of overseas trips and assignments, and even promotion.

- Graduate from college
Many academic institutions also use the test for placement, assessment, and accreditation purposes. In some cases, you may have to achieve a minimum TOEIC score in order to graduate.

- Improve your résumé
Many individuals take the TOEIC test to improve their job prospects. Employers use your score on the test to determine what responsibilities and tasks you are capable of. A good TOEIC score could get you the job you want.

- Assess your English level
Many individuals take the test to check their English ability. You can set goals and use the test as a measure of your progress.

Pass the TOEIC Test    More information on the TOEIC Test

BEBC invited Stephen Slater of One Sided Paper to say a few words about his popular IELTS on Track series.

As ELT publishing houses get larger in size yet smaller in number, it’s worth sparing a thought for those niche publishers who valiantly compete and innovate whilst trying not to get forced off the rails by the juggernauts.

The IELTS on Track series from the Centre for English Language in the University of South Australia, published by One Sided Paper of Adelaide has been mixing it with these heavyweights for some years now, with surprising success.

The two books in the series – IELTS on Track Test Practice Academic, and IELTS on Track Test Practice General Training punch above their weight, basically because they are easy to use and occupy a niche that many other IELTS books have not attempted – the hybrid. Part textbook in style and part test practice book, IELTS on Track gives the aspiring IELTS test candidate the best of both worlds. The hunger for plentiful IELTS test practice is satisfied in the form of 6 Reading and Writing tests, 4 Listening tests, and 2 Recorded sample interviews with tracking exercises.
At the same time, there are sections which use many, short language exercises based on sample Writing task answers to explore the grammar and vocabulary which can help to lift the scores achieved in IELTS Writing.

On top of that there are plentiful hints on test strategy and a popular section called ‘Quick Guide to a Higher IELTS Score’. Among other things, this section explores the all-important aspect of the psychological relationship between test candidate and test assessor. Put simply, it is asserted that, even though it is the assessment criteria that officially govern the scores assigned by live assessors for the Writing and Speaking parts of the IELTS test, candidates need to consider the ways in which they can best impress the assessor, or best make the assessor gain a favourable impression of their performance. This is in part an issue of cross-cultural awareness.

Thanks to ELT Specialists like BEBC – Bournemouth English Book Centre, who put their confidence in such titles and champion the smaller, niche publishers, the IELTS on Track series is still firmly on the rails. It has stood the test of time. Regularly revised and updated, and without the benefit of a marketing or advertising budget of any size, it is its many customers and users in many countries who bear testimony to its worth. As the old saying goes, ‘The customer is always right’.

Further details on the titles can be found on BEBC’s Website or by clicking here (sample pages and “free” mini-tests with answers and feedback available).  Of course, when you buy IELTS on Track you can also dream of the sun-soaked, pristine, sandy beaches, the elegant hills, the apple and citrus orchards, almonds, olive oil, and the beautiful vineyards of Adelaide, and of South Australia. But…. that’s another story!

John Walsh, Founder and Managing Director of  BEBC, raises some issues and concerns about ELT Publishers’ relentless drive to produce everything “digital”.

Do you buy and do you use online resources contained in ELT coursebooks and grammar books? Over the last two years, ELT publishers have been working under the impression that students and teachers have been crying out for extra materials (practice tests, placement tests, supplementary exercises, etc) all to be available online. This “demand” has led management at the top of the publishing houses to instruct commissioning editors to include digital content wherever possible to meet the demand.

Several facts cloud this debate and I raise these for discussion.

• Are teacher’s aware that when they purchase a book with an attached Access Code they are often only buying a licence for online use which will expire a number of months after the Code is activated? This period varies from 12 months to 21 months currently and online support ceases at the end of the stipulated period. This applies to material from Pearson, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Macmillan. It does not apply to online material from National Geographic Learning (Cengage) where there is no expiry date for support.

• There has been a very low uptake on these titles (compared with editions which are either stand-alone books or are perhaps accompanied by CDs or CD-Roms) and sales do not appear to reflect the supposed demand.

• Of those titles that have been bought, publishers concede that there is currently a very low level of conversions (c. 10%) where the Access Code has been activated by the students or institutions making the purchase. They put this down to “early days”

• Publishers are increasingly making the “Book only” or “Book with CD/CD-Rom” editions unavailable and re-issuing the books with a mark up in price anywhere between £2.00 and £9.50 (Pearson’s FIRST CERTIFICATE EXPERT Book + CDRom and OUP’s IELTS MASTERCLASS respectively). Here again, National Geographic Learning is exempt from these price increases (OUTCOMES and SPOTLIGHT ON FCE are provided with online access codes yet Cengage prices are at the lower end of the price range for this material).

 It is important that teachers and students know when they are only buying licences for this online access and equally important that publishers are made aware of the real demand (or lack of it) for this material. Publishers, too, need to examine critically the amount of sales and conversions. Publishers need feedback, and I feel sure teachers will have views, on the present demand and the price they are prepared to pay for this added functionality. No doubt, in time, the world will go wildly and, perhaps, completely, digital, but until that time comes, I believe teachers, students and publishers need a free and fair exchange of both information and opinions.

John H Walsh

Managing Director

Task-based learning (TBL) is a teaching method that is particularly suited to learners of Business English. As the name suggests, it is based around the completion of tasks. The language that is studied is determined by how students perform in the tasks. Any pre-teaching of language is kept to a minimum, and focus on form comes after the task rather than before.

A typical task-based language class starts with the teacher priming students for what they need to do. The students then carry out the task while the teacher observes and records. The outcome of the task is then discussed and the teacher gives language feedback.

From the student’s perspective, the aim of each task is to achieve a result, not to practise language for its own sake. From the teacher’s perspective, the task provides the linguistic testing ground for identifying errors and gaps in language that need to be addressed. The tasks also serve as a practice arena in which students recycle and consolidate newly acquired language. The diagram below shows a version of the TBL cycle. The TBL cycle starts with input, such as a framework to elicit language that will be useful for the task to follow. For example, if the task is to be a meeting about cutting the workforce, the initial discussion could be sparked by a quick brainstorming session on: ‘What motivates people to work?’ This would elicit plenty of language relevant to a human resources topic, and the teacher can note down the key words on the board in the form of a mind map:The language that emerges can be left up on the board as the students prepare for the task, in this case a meeting. (Equally, the language could also be used to prepare for a task such as a telephone call to make an arrangement, or a job interview.) As additional support during the task a ‘phrases for meetings’ handout can be given to students. Whatever task is undertaken, it should have a tangible outcome with a clear purpose. Many of the tasks involve students working in pairs or groups, but there may also be tasks that students do on their own, such as writing a job application letter.

This new book is available to purchase from BEBC for £19.60. Click here to order.

What is your experience with ‘language chunks’?