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Tiina Hukari
Conference Report
May 8, 2008
On April 10-13, I attended the statewide California Teachers of English to Speaker of Other Languages (CATESOL) Conference in Sacramento, CA. During three days of conferencing, I went to seven different presentations, visited the publisher exhibits, and had lunch with friends from graduate school and colleagues from Las Positas College. I had a blast! After getting my name tag and bright yellow conference tote full of goodies, I was ready to tackle all the interesting presentations I had chosen prior to arriving Sacramento. The following is a summary of each presentation I went to.
Interactive Student Generated Speaking and Listening Activities by Sarah Young, Center for Applied Linguistics
Although this presentation was geared toward adult school audience, I left the presentation with full of great ideas. The presenter showed how she had used her own classroom with students from variety of English abilities to create speaking and listening activities in the classroom. She called this activity a “hot seat.” Each student got a turn in front of a classroom to sit in a “hot seat.” While student was sitting in the “hot seat,” other students were asking questions. The teacher sometimes guided the students by giving them a grammar point to focus their questions on, but most often that was just to get the questioning started. Sarah Young mentioned that she sat in the back of the room and did not get involved unless someone did not understand a question or an answer. She wrote down all the students’ questions during the activity. This is how she has created an amazing list of different types of questions students themselves created. Yes, the teacher corrected the students’ grammar when she typed the questions, but she did not in any other way alter the questions. The presenter noted that many times the questions were related to age, native country, and favorite school subject, but the questions got as creative as “How much did you pay for your last haircut?”, “Do you like pupusas?”, and “When you speak good English, will you change your job? Why?”
After 10-15 minutes of questioning and answering, the teacher stopped the activity and did the following few things. She would quickly ask a few questions from the list to see if the class was listening to answers that the student in the “hot seat” was giving. The teacher would ask, for example, “What did Maria say about liking pupusas?” Teacher would spend a few minutes doing that. When the teacher went home, she typed all the questions and distributed them during next class. In class during next time, she went over the questions with the students and made sure everyone knew the vocabulary. The class would then do another activity with the questions. This time the class would divide into two lines for “line dialogue.” The students would have the typed questions from previous time with them, and they would take turns asking and answering questions from the list. This is how not only did one person answer all the questions, but all the students also had a chance to answer the questions. The teacher mentioned that this “hot seat” activity did not work well with class that met twice a week. It was ideal for classes that met 4 times a week. I am sure there would be a way to modify the activity so that it would work with a class that meets twice a week.
Narrative to Expository: Revision Techniques for Multilingual Writer by Duane Leonard, UC Davis
Duane Leonard is a good friend from graduate school. Our first conference experience presenting is together at a Northern CATESOL Conference in San Jose and during the same year in the state conference in Long Beach. When I saw Duane’s name in the conference program, I knew I had to go and support him. Duane talked about using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) tools of theme and rheme to teach students how to write expository essays that is a required skill for them to be successful in a university setting. The students are used to writing many narratives in high school, and with examples from students’ own writing, the presenter showed how using SFL helped students to move from narrative writing to expository writing.
Going to Duane’s presentation was also rewarding because I got to meet many of the people from UC Davis that I had gotten to know while I was there. I was able to connect with people who I had lost contact with. It was really nice to see everyone and hear how they are doing now.
Eliciting Analytical Responses in Timed Writing Exams by Darlene Jantz, Rebecca Mitchell, Robby Ching, CSU Sacramento
I chose this presentation because it seemed to be relevant to our final writing exams that we give at LPC. It also seemed to talk about same types of issues as we do while we do our holistic grading. Before the presentation, I hoped that I would be leaving with good materials and ideas to share with my colleagues at LPC. I was right. This presentation was informative and just plain fabulous. The presenters did an excellent job.
The presenters reminded us that all the writing is always linked to reading. Sometimes we forget that. The presenters worked in a writing center in CSU Sacramento where they have many basic skills and ESL students taking their writing exams. The presenters showed examples of their original essay prompts and then showed how they had revised these prompts to make them better. They also discussed how in their 6 point rubric all the holistically scored essays always were given either 3 or 4. They decided to create a document that describes each number and what skills that number consist of.
The presenters then talked about the process that they use to get students ready for their reading that is used in their midterm and final exams. The teachers provide a note-taking chart for students which is used by students to write down important points about the article they read. This chart can be used during the test, but the article cannot be used. The presenters mentioned that students prepare more for their test because they know they don’t have the article with them, and they also think, analyze, and annotate more because they don’t have the article for the test. Sounds wonderful!
The presenters have found that students who use these charts for their midterm and final exams understand the reading much better than before. Some of the other techniques that teachers are using at CSU Sacramento to get students interested in the reading is showing videos from YouTube, highlighting favorite quotes and sharing them with a class, using visual images about the topic, giving only titles of the articles first and asking students to predict the topic, and asking the school’s forensics team come and debate on the topic in front of the class. This presentation was fabulous as I mentioned earlier, and I left with many great ideas that I hope I can incorporate into my own classes.
Get Away from the Copy Machine by Deborah Brooks, Merritt College
The title of this presentation was intriguing, so my friend and I thought we would go in and see what this presentation was about. It was the last session of the day, and I was tired and my friend was hungry, but we decided to stay. We arrived a few minutes late and this tall energetic woman was moving back and forth in front of the room asking people in the audience questions. This was not what I had expected. We sat down and started to listen her grammar questions to people: “Do you like sport? – Yes, I do.” “Can you sing? – No, I can’t.” and around the room she went. Then she noticed us and said to us, “No one in my classroom is just listening. Take out your notes!” My initial reaction was to stand up and leave the room, but I decided to stay. Even though I was uncomfortable with her presentation style, it was too interactive and aggressive for me; I learned a few good things that I can use in my own grammar class. One of the things that the presenter does in her class is games. Rather than making copies of game boards, she asks students to draw their own. The teacher gives directions, and the students need to understand and follow them. This is a great way to do some listening practice in a grammar class. The teacher uses marker caps from old markers as play pieces. Rather than throwing away the whole whiteboard marker when it is not working anymore, she throws the marker away but saves the caps. Brilliant! The game boards can be used for any kind of grammar point. She also talked about asking students to write sentences and then students walk around the room asking questions and answering other students’ questions. The one thing that stayed with me was when the presenter said that all the sentences that she uses in the classroom are true. I know think about my own example sentences in the classroom and make sure that they are always true. So, even though we had a rocky start with the presentation, my friend and I were happy that we stayed.
The Community College Basic Skills Initiative and the ESL Learner by Mark Wade Lieu, Barbara Illowsky, Stephanie Kashima, and Rick Santos
I chose this presentation because I know that LPC has been working on their basic skills initiative. I was hoping to get some new interesting information about the initiative. This presentation was geared towards the ESL part of the initiative. I have to say that I was a little bit disappointed because I did not really learn anything new about the initiative. This is good kind of disappointment because it means that our college has done a nice job informing me about the initiative. There were some people who had no idea what was going on. The main question, of course, was about money.
I did learn something new during the presentation. I did not know that the literature review for the initiative was called a poppy copy. I also did not know that the committee called “best practices” “effective practices.” They seemed to prefer the second choice. I also learned that this initiative is not supposed to be about money, but it must be about students. The committee kept repeating this over and over again, and I think it was good for everyone to hear. I also learned that the Academic Senate president signs the final copy of the report. I thought that was interesting. Each college initially received $100,000 for the initiative. The money can only be used for non-credit and non-degree applicable courses. The Action Plan for next year was due on May 1, and without this action plan the college would not receive the second round of financing. The committee will have a many nice opportunities for people to learn more about the next phases of the initiative. In June 9-10, there will be a professional development event in Cañada College. The initiative also provides a summer institute in August 10-13 in Newport Beach. This institute focuses on pedagogy, basic skills, ESL, and CTE. There is no cost of the attendees which means that registration, hotel, food, and transportation are all covered. The maximum amount of people who can attend from each college is 5. This means 1 full-time person with 4 adjunct faculty members. This sounds wonderful. I hope someone from our college will be able to go.
Community College Level Rap Session
I attended the Community College Rap session on Saturday. I wish that I would have gone to another presentation during this time. This session was not time well spent. The topics were not applicable to our college, and mainly the session was used to complain about community colleges. However, I had nice time with a colleague from LPC, and we had our lunch while listening to others.
Graded Readers in Low-Level Community College Reading Classes by Allie Joye, American River College
I chose this presentation because it was different from other presentations that I had done during the weekend. It seemed like all the presentations were about writing, and I thought it would be nice to hear something about reading. This presentation was about how to use graded readers in ESL classes. The presenter had brought stacks and stacks of examples that she uses in the classroom, and also most of them are used in their college’s ESL program. The presenter shared her knowledge on how to use the graded readers in an ESL classroom, how to choose good graded readers, what her favorite readers were to use and why, and also how students reacted to the accomplishment of finishing their first English novel. The presenter also shared many of her own materials with the audience on two selected novels that she uses in her class. This presentation was excellent because it gave many good ideas for me to think about when I next time teach a full length text with my own students. I know that I can use some of the materials and ideas from this presentation in my own class.
It is hard for me to choose one thing that was the best during this conference. I enjoyed being there. I liked being surrounded by other professional ESL teachers from different levels and hear them enthusiastically talk about their work. It showed me again how important it is to be part of a conference and share our knowledge with each other. I also really enjoyed that I had a chance to meet with people that I normally don’t get to see. It was nice to sit down and have lunch with colleagues and talk about our work and life. It was really good to hear that everyone is doing well and happy with their jobs. I also enjoyed tremendously all the presentations I went to. Some of them were not quite as interesting and relevant, but I still got to be part of them and I know I learned something from each one of them. I am proud of myself that I was able to do seven presentations in two day. I was tired at the end of the weekend, but very happy that I was going home with bag full of handouts and brain full of new information and ideas. This was an excellent conference, and I hope to get to go to many many more in the future.
My plan is to share this information with my ESL colleagues. I am going to make photocopies of all the handouts that I received from different presentations. I am also going to make a copy of my notes. This report is going to be posted with other conference reports, so I hope that this will be read by other people than just our ESL faculty. I am also more than happy to share my information and knowledge with anyone else who is interested in knowing more.