Teaching ESL Students, Essay Example

Teaching ESL students requires that instructors face many challenges, but some of these challenges can be alleviated by modifying classroom structure in a manner that is conducive to learning. This includes providing the students with clear expectations in the syllabus in addition to including the use of technology in a manner that will help them develop language and content area skills. According to the PowerPoint presentation, academia considers the syllabus to act as a binding contract if the students are asked to sign the last page. Thus, to set clear rules and classroom expectations, it is beneficial for the instructor to spend time with the class reviewing these expectations as they are laid out on the syllabus and to sign the syllabus in class as a mark of the binding contract.

“The effects of authentic audience on English as a second language (ESL) writers: a task-based, computer-mediated approach” shows that student motivation is largely defined by their tendency to believe whether certain sentence structure and vocabulary lessons are important to them. By conducting these lessons on the Internet, there is more room for student choice in this process, which is beneficial because it motivates the student to learn what he or she finds to be the most useful in the personal and academic setting. To emphasize the importance of technology use, “Evaluating the Integration of Technology and Second Language Learning” shows that students that are taught with the same instructor and textbook will perform better if their education is coupled with the use of technology. In the modern setting, technology use is becoming more common, so it would be beneficial to build its use into the structure of lessons to help students acquire skills more efficiently both inside the classroom and out.

When ESL students are presented with technological equipment, they are being provided with the power necessary to be more accountable for their learning. This is especially true of older students, who are more likely to research information that they have questions about independently. Thus, while it is challenging for instructors to design a syllabus for ESL students that is understandable and effective, as explained in “Challenges of Language Syllabus Design inEFL/ESL Contexts”, doing so will help the learning process significantly. The design of course materials must be in a way that meets the learning needs of ESL students, and providing these individuals with knowledge of structure of the class is beneficial. However, since the language learning needs of each individual tends to be different, it is valuable for the syllabus to contain many diverse activities that can appeal to these varying needs. Based on the literature, it appears that the use of technology is one meaningful way to differentiate learning in the ESL classroom, especially when these initiatives occur through student choice. When a lesson is structured adequately and proper rules are given, it is likely that the students themselves can become more aware of what they need to learn than the instructor. Thus, individualized technology use is meaningful in this setting because it allows all of the students to make productive use of their learning time.

In conclusion, it is beneficial to incorporate effective syllabus building and technology use into the ESL classroom. Setting expectations and diversifying activities is conducive to language learning. The use of technology helps further individualize these practices, making it a useful tool in the ESL classroom.