Bridging the Gap: University Practice for Academic Success
While in the New School MA TESOL program, I developed a firm belief that using student needs to drive classroom and programmatic curricular decisions is of utmost importance. This part of my educational philosophy can be seen in many decisions I made in my time spent as a program director in a third-party intensive English program (IEP) at a large public university. Perhaps none more so than the decisions I made in the development of the University Practicum Course.
When I first started as the program director, the overarching goal for this University Practicum Course was to linguistically prepare students to be successful in an American university classroom. This was done by having students take a university class as just one part of the larger University Practicum Course. The nine total hours per week of the University Practicum Course were composed of three hours spent in the university lecture hall and six additional hours in an IEP class with the ESL instructor who attended the university lectures alongside the ESL students.
For the university lecture portion, the ESL students were responsible for attending all lectures, fulfilling all class requirements, and completing all assessments. However, the ESL students did not receive any college credits for taking the university class as it was purely for practice. Students did receive a grade for the work they completed for the university class that was calculated by the university professor. However, rather than using the grade to determine the awarding of credits as is customary in a university setting, this grade counted as 25% of the larger University Practicum Course grade.
The other 75% of the grade was calculated by the ESL instructor for the work done in the six additional hours in the IEP portion. Initially, the focus of this 75% was on students mastering the language skills needed to demonstrate comprehension of the course content. A lot of time was spent reading and reviewing textbooks, memorizing content vocabulary, and pulling apart lectures in order to ascertain meaning. Mock exams were commonly used as a means for assessing the understanding of course content and, each term, students were expected to complete a research assignment. These assessments allowed the ESL instructor to measure how well the student understood the course’s input and how well the student was able to produce comprehensible output.
However, in my first year of directing the program, it became clear that in addition to practicing linguistic elements, students also needed help understanding cultural differences between an American classroom and that of the students’ previous educational settings. This need was noted by the ESL instructor, Anne Kerkian. She was spending time that was supposed to be dedicated to the digestion of academic texts and comprehension of sophisticated lectures on matters such as how to best interact with the college professor, what to expect in a large lecture setting including how to lessen the distractions of US students Snapchatting and playing Farmville, as well as what constitutes academic dishonesty.
I clearly remember a conversation I had with Anne in which she was telling me she was surprised by the results of a brief survey she gave her students after their midterm exam. In the survey, she asked her students what was difficult about the exam and what surprised them about the experience. She was expecting comments on the challenging aspect of the vocabulary and how there was so much reading on the exam. Instead, she received many comments about how shocking it was that the TA proctored the exam in place of the professor, how filling in Scantron sheets was a new experience, and how slowly they finished the exam when compared to the vast majority of the domestic students.
Once Anne spoke to me about the cultural gap between our ESL students and what was required to achieve success in the university lecture, we began to rework the curriculum for the University Practicum Course especially in regards to the assessments used in the IEP portion of the class. We kept the grade students achieved in the university class as 25% of the total University Practicum Course, but we changed how the other 75% was calculated. We developed the class into three modules: self, classroom, and campus, and for each module, tasks and assessments were created to either measure cultural understanding or to promote closing the existing cultural gap.
The three modules of the University Practicum Course.
For self, we added written reflections intended to help students pinpoint cultural differences that may prevent success such as expectations related to participating in class and plagiarism. In the classroom module, we required students to connect with their professor via a formal email and follow-up in an office hour in order to help them become accustomed to the student-teacher relationship frequently found in an American university classroom. We also developed an exit interview designed to ascertain understanding of university class culture. This interview included questions such as “What information does a syllabus contain?” and “What could you do if you were struggling in a class?” as well as “What are some things you can do before/during/after a lecture in order for you to be successful?” For campus, we developed a scavenger hunt. This scavenger hunt required students to seek out key departments and offices on campus (like the police department and the student events office) and to interact with people who worked in that office to gather evidence like videos, selfies, brochures, or other promotional material.
I believe that our efforts to use student needs worked to close this cultural gap and to promote student success. After changes were made in the curriculum of the University Practicum Course to include and assess understanding of cultural differences, alumni of the IEP began to return to our office to comment on how prepared they felt for their university classes, and Anne received several emails from alumni thanking her for helping them to be successful university students. Further, we received resoundingly positive feedback from the professors who had the University Practicum Course ESL students in their class. Here are some examples:
My overall experience has been that including the ESL students has encouraged a very positive learning environment.
I know the ESL students made an effort to interact with non-ESL students during the small group work; I think it is fantastic for the other students to interact with students with a different background/ perspective.
It significantly increased the ethnic diversity in the classroom. When I looked out over the classroom, the difference from previous semesters was obvious.
I know the ESL students made an effort to interact with non-ESL students during the small group work; I think it is fantastic for the other students to interact with students with a different background/ perspective.
This indicated that the cultural gap was closed from their point of view as well. Professors who were initially very nervous to have ESL students sit in their class came to appreciate the attentive nature of the ESL students as well as the benefits of having an ESL instructor as a resource to field questions regarding best practices regarding creating a culturally inclusive classroom for international students.
In short, using student needs to guide curricular decisions allowed me to see the importance of helping students bridge cultural differences through experience and practice in order to promote success. Secondary results of using student needs in developing the University Practicum Course included fostering positive connections between ESL students and the university at large as well as between the IEP and various departments on campus.
Author’s Biography:
Sarah Lopolito is currently the vice president for educational services at Pinehurst Educational Consultants. She began her career in education in 1997 and has been focusing on English as a second language instruction since 2009. As a former program director, she also has experience with developing curriculum and events designed to promote the success of international students.