English As Foreign Language Classes

Is it really necessary to have English as the official language? U.S has been trying to find the answer for this question for a long time. And they still didn’t come up with an answer. Presently, there are 23 states that actually wanted to have English as the official language. And it’s still not enough. I agree that there are some benefits for having an official language but we should also consider the disadvantages that are more than advantages.

Most college-bound students in the United States require a foreign language study for a minimum of two years during high school in order to satisfy the A-G requirements which colleges glances over in college application so they can verify that the student’s subjects are academically challenging [6]. I ask, why does college require students a foreign language class to begin with, if once students arrive to college, university drop the foreign language studies rendering study as an elective class. I argue that there must be a compelling reason for colleges to require students to take such classes before entering university. At the moment University of California, Santa Cruz requires

This paper attempts to better educate general education classroom teachers about working with Chinese-speaking English Language Learner (ELL) students. The audience for this paper is teachers who do not have knowledge of Chinese language and culture or a history of working with Chinese ELLs. Through a discussion of Chinese educational culture, a comparison of Chinese and English languages, and a list of suggested teaching strategies, this author hopes to provide valuable information for classroom teachers to improve their work with Chinese ELLs. Similarities and differences between Chinese and English will be highlighted so that teachers can gain a better understanding of what will be completely new to Chinese ELL students in a United States school, and what previous knowledge these students have that they can transfer to their study of English.

“Every college-bound student had studied a foreign language in high school (98%)” (Price and Gascoigne 2005), since students are required to satisfy the A-G requirements so colleges can verify that the student’s subjects are academically challenging. Colleges recommend three years of the same foreign language, but a minimum of two years is sufficient. I argue that there must be a compelling reason for high schools to require students to take such classes. Why doesn’t the “Language other than English” requirement apply in colleges’ academic curriculum as well? At the moment University of California, Santa Cruz requires college students, regardless what major students declare to

Vocabulary plays a significant role in English as second language learning process. For the majority of English as Second Language(ESL) learners, the ultimate goal of learning the language is to understand (read and listen) and communicate (write and speak) with little difficulty and the lack of sufficient vocabulary may be the constraint of such goal (Folse, 2004). As the bedrock of English and as well as language, vocabulary also facilitates the development of other language skills: lexical richness leads to the progress in the use of language, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing skills (Nation, 1994). Reversely, The improvement in such skills may enhance learners vocabulary size as the exposure to more learning materials improves the capacity to acquire new vocabulary. (The importance of learning vocabulary/ why vocabulary?)

“The term motivation is derived from the Latin verb movere, which means to move. In other words, motivational theories attempt to answer questions about what gets individuals moving (energization) and toward what activities or tasks.” Pintrich and Schunk (2002, as cited by Pintrich, 2003). Despite its complexity and its multi-faceted nature, language learners’ motivation can be easily identified by teachers. In other words, if we ask teachers to select their highly motivated students, they can easily do so through observing students’ behaviors. For instance, how much time and effort students invest on doing class activities and their assignments; how much attention they pay to their teachers and classmates; how willingly they use the target language in class. These different types of behaviors are usually collectively referred to as motivation. Those students who manifest these various motivational behaviors are considered to be highly motivated students. Thu, the field of L2 motivation research is focused on identifying and examining a range of different motivational variables that get L2 learners to show these types of behaviors.

Despite the use of primary language support to facilitate the understanding of instructions/tasks in English, the ways students engage in-class discussions and activities and interact with peers during pair and group works are important aspects to look at. Students’ engagement and performance in learning English may certainly depend on how highly motivated students are toward their learning goals. Thus, motivation is one of the most important components in the learning process. Students love to learn, when they are highly motivated to learn. Bruning et al. (2011) stated that “motivation is the neglected heart of instruction”. In other words, while planning a lesson, the motivational factors should be taken in consideration since they play a huge role in students’ performance, attitudes, behaviors, and even creativity (Ryan & Deci, 2000). Indeed, every teacher uses several different strategies to keep their students’ engaged and committed to the tasks by promoting more individual or class participations. The two types of motivation, such as intrinsic and extrinsic, are really important to figure out their impact on students’ learning performance, especially in English.

Language learners’ motivation plays a significant role in learning a second language since persistence and determination are necessary to deal with the stress of a difficult language. “Motivation has been widely accepted by both teachers and researchers as one of the key factors that influence the rate and success of second language learning” (Dörnyei, 2014, p. 1). Motivation answers the fundamental question of why people act in a certain way, generating the energy, effort, and persistence necessary to achieve a design goal at the beginning (Trotsky; Zebra as cited in Dörnyei, 2014, p. 519; Bernard, 2010, p. 4). Extrinsic and intrinsic motivation are two different types of motivation which have influenced and shaped the foundation of human behavior. In reference to second language learning, extrinsic motivation is related to external gain which is outside of the passions and personal self-esteem that those people need to obtain and acquire to increase motivation. Extrinsic motivation in usually driven by the wish to increase future occupation or business opportunities, while another incentive is to gain more prestige or more power. In contrast, intrinsic is coming from a personal interest that truly motivates people internally as the more powerful factor in achieving the goal language. (Giani & O’Fuinn, 2010, p. 2). Those who set out to learn without such motivation find it much more difficult to succeed. If they are lacking in motivation, even individuals with the most

When teaching adult learners English in Taiwan (the EFL setting), I taught vocabulary, grammar, reading skills, and structures of essays through utilizing readings deriving from the news, articles in magazines, short fiction and non-fiction, and models of essays. When teaching writing, I adopted graphic organizers, drawings, and guiding questions to introduce components of an essay and to develop students’ writing competence. Moreover, I designed courses to allow students to choose topics that they were interested in or relevant to their daily lives for their assignments. Furthermore, I gave mini-lessons on grammar, especially when most students made similar grammatical mistakes. Additionally, I employed Communicative Approach and selected popular topics (e.g., news, hobbies, travel, and favorite local and exotic food) to instruct students in English speaking. For listening, I utilized popular English songs, news videos, and excerpts from TV shows and audiobooks to enhance their listening competence. Since I incorporated various instructional materials and adopted different teaching methods and techniques, my students expressed that they enjoyed learning, and their academic performance showed great achievement. Those students who were afraid to speak English in the first class were willing to express their opinions and involved in class discussions in English

ESL students are students that speak English as a second language. Presently, there is many different system to characterize this type of students (qtd in Shi, Steen 63). For example, they can be seen as “English Language Learners (ELL), English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English Language Development (ELD), English Language Service (ELS), and

The diverse materials and techniques used in this textbook facilitate an effective and attractive learning; form a positive view about second language acquisition in students mind.

In addition to teaching students through a variety of methods, teachers should also provide students with the tools necessary for them to be autonomous learners. According to Celce-Murcia’s Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, “one of the greatest challenges” facing both educators and learners is building ELL’s academic vocabularies (Celce-Murcia et al., 2013, p. 164). According to Larson (2013), active engagement encourages students to know definitions of words, “make connections between and among words and concepts,” and acquire strategies to become autonomous (Larson, 2013, p. 17). In order to do so, word walls are one type of strategy Larson proposed. Word walls allow students a visual aid. Students can place words according to three tiers: basic, general academic words, and content-specific words. For example, ‘dirt’ is a basic word, ‘soil’ is a general academic word, and ‘sediment’ is a content-specific word. Words could also be organized alphabetically, by theme, or by unit. Another strategy Larson encourages is matching activities (Larson et al, 2013). This allows students to focus on the morphology of words. For example, if students are given a word and have to locate their peers with the same Latin root or prefix, they learn how to determine meanings based on parts of a word. If one student had the word, ‘unknown,’ and another student had the word, ‘unlucky,’ they would be morphological partners because both words contain the prefix, ‘un.’

Due to the distinctions lie in cultural and linguistics aspects, writing in English is always quite challenging for most learners of English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL). These leaners tend to apply the knowledge from their native culture and language structures to produce certain intended responses in second language (L2), so as to produce semantically appropriate essay writing, which is more formally seen as language transfer (Bhela, 1999). This essay attempts to examine the issue of language transfer in ESL/EFL writing by relating and providing a general overview of the literature concerning the issue,

The participants were chosen from Miyaneh Islamic Azad University, Iran. They were 100 university students (50 females and 50 males) studying different fields of studies. Their ages varied from 19 to 34 years old (M = 23.21, SD = 2.61); 13 learners did not specify their age. They were senior college students who were studying English as a general course at Islamic Azad universities of Miyaneh, Iran.

The researchers of this paper debate that” authentic learning experience could help improving the students’ English abilities that can apply in daily life”. This study focuses on how to improve English skills of low-level students by using what they learn into the class in real life. The purposes of this study include: to investigate the effect of English course based on authentic learning, to compare English competencies of students before and after the completion of course, and to explore the details of satisfaction of students.