Special Issue on ESL, Edited by Ann Johns

In the Fall 2001, I gave to my graduate students in “ESL Reading and Writing” (Ling. 653) a number of assignments representing different professional and personal genres:  a personal literacy essay, a critique of a textbook, journal article, or teacher volume in ESL or bilingual education, and/or a critical review of the literature.  Because they are graduate students, many of whom are already practicing teachers, they selected genres and topics that were of particular interest to them in their work.  However, the topics chosen are, for the most part, central to discussions in ESL and other journals that focus upon composition.

Some of the written assignments were submitted to (and accepted by) journals such as TESOL Quarterly, CATESOL Journal, or the CATESOL Newsletter. or CATESOL News.  Other submissions appear here under “Reviews and Review Essays.”  Though these graduate students were particularly interested in our linguistically-diverse population, we hope that these commentaries will be of interest to all who are concerned with student writing.

In the review of Beyond Silence, Hammett discusses the important issues of teaching democracy, with language, in the K-12 classroom.  She finds that the author, Cynthia McDermott, makes excellent suggestions for ESL and bilingual instructors. Waszak teaches a group of immigrant parents, funded by a state parent-student initiative (CBET)  In her classes, the parents study English and prepare to read to their bilingual children.  Here, she reviews a handbook that assists teachers and their parent-students in using the popular Oxford Picture Dictionaries.  “Looking Back on Literacy” is the only personal literacy essay submitted by my students to Lore.  In this first class assignment, they were to discuss one remembered event or experience that greatly affected their literacy lives.  Bogage provides an excellent example of this exercise, an important one for future teachers. 

Trudell offers a review essay on the issue of writing portfolios, still very popular in both the public schools and among composition classes in universities.  For example, SDSU uses a portfolio for its second semester (RW 92B) developmental writing classes because it permits the linguistically-diverse students to demonstrate their abilities in a number of genres.  In this review essay, Trudell concentrates principally on the thorny problem of portfolio assessment, discussed at length in the literature.

Because she is an international student, Chang is particularly interested in error correction in writing, again a much discussed issue in the literature.  Here, she reviews a review essay on research in this area.  Simon also pursues his interest: vocational ESL classes offered in the private sector, a important English for Specific Purposes initiative in ESL.

Feyen provides another review essay on a central issue in ESL and all writing classes: methods for teacher conferencing and feedback and the effects of these approaches on second language students. She draws from a number of journals, from the United States and elsewhere, in her critique.

So far, the texts presented have focused principally upon writing.  However, the last two entries are reading-related.  Kang reviews a landmark article on reading in which it is argued that the structure of texts is fully as important as content in ESL student comprehension.  McIntyre reviews a reading textbook for low-level students and finds, not surprisingly, that stories are the focus of this, and many, beginning volumes.

One of our aims as instructors, of undergraduate as well as graduate students, is to encourage our students to publish.  We would like to thank Chris Werry, the editor of Lore, for giving us this publishing opportunity.