At the beginning of a course, students can be given a questionnaire or Likert scale predicated on the information in Promising Futures as a pretest of their beliefs about language and language learning. The changes in students' beliefs over time will be highlighted, and a discussion of these changes can be an excellent way to summarize the content of the course. The vignettes and discussions. The vignettes in the ESL standards document are based on classroom scenes for specific grade and student proficiency levels, language issues, and content areas. These stories can be used in preservice and in-service programs to highlight effective instructional delivery techniques, such as ways in which the teachers help make mathematics accessible to ESOL students.
Participants can suggest other activities for teaching similar content, too.
The ESL Standards and Assessment Project will further refine these ideas for using the ESL standards in preservice and in-service teacher education programs and include them in an upcoming companion document on the use of the ESL Standards in teacher education programs that is being written by Marguerite Ann Snow of California State University in Los Angeles. Back to the ESL Standards page. Back to the Association News page.