Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL)

Learn to analyze your students' language and to design instruction to improve their grammar. Expand your knowledge of the grammatical structures of English which give learners the most trouble due to interference from their first language. Learn how to assist your students in overcoming these difficulties. Help your ESL students leap the grammar barrier!

Broaden your understanding of language by analyzing its structure as you focus on the similarities and differences between English and other major languages. Analyze the role of language in society and the elements of linguistics which apply to language learning and teaching. Gain new insight into sounds, words, sentence structure, oral and written discourse, central aspects of nonverbal communication, and the history of the English language.

Demystify the language acquisition process and gain a thorough understanding of the theories and factors in first and second language development. Explore the psychological, cognitive, sociocultural, and pedagogical factors that affect language learning and current teaching methods.

Learn the most effective techniques for teaching English language learners. Explore current methods in English Language teaching in specific language skill areas such as listening, speaking, reading, writing, pronunciation, vocabulary development and grammar, with emphasis placed on communicative teaching techniques and theories. Discover textbooks, audio-visual aids, instructional techniques and evaluation procedures for ESL learners at various levels, including those in elementary, secondary, college, and adult programs.

Find out more about your students' cultures to help your class overcome language and cultural barriers. Explore aspects of culture and cultural diversity while learning methods to enhance your students' cultural appreciation. Apply this theoretical knowledge to your classroom as you relate these concepts to cross-cultural interactions in educational settings and gain an understanding of their implications for pedagogical practice.

Improve your understanding of assessment strategies and the political and sociological issues surrounding the field of language assessment. Gain new insight into the purpose of testing, methods of assessment, state mandates regarding the language assessment and placement process, interpreting test results, and technical testing concepts. Study both standardized and teacher-made tests and learn about sensitive issues such as the sociological and psychological results of testing.

Learn the most current practices in the teaching of standard American English pronunciation to all English language learners. Master techniques for teaching the elements of English pronunciation including vowels, consonants, rhythm, and intonation.

Discover the great benefit of integrating games into ESL instruction! Games bring fun to the classroom, lower the affective filter, foster real-life communication and cooperative learning, while motivating your students to study and learn. Learn a wide variety of language games and techniques for adapting existing games to new audiences. Gain new insight into choosing the most appropriate games as well as integrating them in an effective ESL program.

An elective course for TESL. Games provide motivation for students to learn a foreign language by creating an immediacy of need for communication. Games bring fun to the classroom while reducing the learner's stress and self-consciousness. In this course, you will practice game activities for ESL and ELD classrooms designed to introduce and reinforce language skills in the domains of pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling, primarily at intermediate through advanced levels of language mastery. As the final project in this class, you will create a board game for your particular teaching situation.

An elective course for TESL. Now you can gain the valuable classroom experience you need to advance your teaching skills. If you have little or no language teaching experience, this course allows you to acquire the hands-on classroom management skills and experience you need in front of a class. After two initial meetings where you will review lesson planning strategies and setting instructional objectives, you will teach the English Fluency and Accuracy (Linguistics 801) class with the assistance of the classroom instructor. In addition to gaining experience in actual teaching situations, you will benefit from small group debriefing and feedback sessions. You will teach a minimum of three hours, while gaining valuable insight as you observe and give active feedback on the teaching of your peers.

A practical, hands-on course in the teaching of reading skills, with special emphasis on the unique needs and abilities of adolescents and adult learners in developing effective readers. The course consists of short lectures followed by demonstrations and discussions. The focus is on the purpose of the students' reading. Such skills as scanning, skimming, finding main ideas and making inferences are taught. Participants are expected to create and demonstrate reading exercises or games in the class.

Explore the goals and objectives associated with oral language skills, including fluency, accuracy and comprehensibility. Learn practical classroom activities appropriate for teaching listening comprehension, as well as methods for evaluating the speaking ability of your students. Advance your teaching skills and help your students take their oral language skills to a higher level through this course.

Explore the dynamics inherent in the instruction of writing both as process and product. Develop strategies which address lesson planning, group management, assessment, rubrics, and evaluation of student writing. Explore current trends in teaching writing skills to second language learners in a multicultural setting.

Examine second language vocabulary acquisition theory, including the linguistic and cultural aspects of vocabulary learning. Discover various approaches to teaching vocabulary. Analyze the complexity of vocabulary knowledge, the distinction between learning words incidentally and learning them intentionally, the role of context in word learning, and the role of the dictionary in vocabulary learning