The GRCC - ESOL Program - Online Instructor's Handbook

Description of ESOL Level 4
Submitted by Aaron Leavitt

(The following statement is the official course description from the GRCC College Catalog)
     Low-intermediate level of ESOL for students who are permanent resident of Washington state. Students listen to and talk about familiar topics relating to their community and work, and read multi-paragraph texts and simple stories. Students use vocabulary and grammar to write a narrative paragraph on familiar subjects, and express their needs including asking questions and communicating personal information.  

Prerequisite: ESOL Level 3, placement test and instructor's permission.

(The following is from Aaron Leavitt's introduction to Level 4.  See the sections below for specific areas and the link below to view the whole document.)

     I think of Level 4 as the first level of the upper-level classes. The students in the first three levels of our program need a lot of structure in the way they learn English. This structure gives students the safety net they need at these levels and also focuses the task to something limited and not overwhelming to the students. Levels 1 through 3 are concrete, which then means that level 4 is when students will experience more abstract concepts. The tasks we give students should push them to express themselves more fully and to show more of their own initiative.  It is in level 4 where the flood gates open and it is important to find ways to corral the flow of language through content that is engaging and meaningful to our students.

     Students in this level come with a variety of language backgrounds. During placement testing, a student who has mixed skills (high verbal, low literacy or vice versa) has a very good chance of landing in level 4. We have had an increasing number of students enter our program with very high verbal skills and very low writing and sometimes reading skills. On the other hand we still have students entering our program who learned English in countries with a heavy emphasis on writing and grammar. These students tend to have lower verbal skills. How you pitch your class will vary with the students you have.

The information here describes the curriculum. Follow the links in the navigation bar to the left to find course materials for ESOL Level 4.

GRCC is an active part of the Washington State Adult Learning Standards Curriculum Development project. For more information, please visit the SBCTC site for Learning Standards.

Click to read the whole document for the Level 4 curriculum or read it below, section by section.

    The focus of Level 4 writing is on fluency with an emphasis on syntax (grammar and sentence structure) and mechanics (spelling, capitalization, punctuation). It is about writing narratives, informative or expressive texts that are coherent and having the ability to string grammatically correct sentences together tied to a common idea. For a more detailed description of our program’s orientation to writing, please read the document entitled Fluency through Writing on the instructor website.

    Writing is hard to do, especially if it isn’t engaging or meaningful to the students. I give all my students dialogue journals (blue books) at the start of the quarter. They can write whatever they want throughout the week and turn them in on Monday. I don’t explicitly correct their mistakes, but rather model their corrections in my replies and comments. However, if I find errors that are consistent, I will talk to the students individually.

    Writing circles is an activity I use to incorporate creative writing during class using the book More True Stories. I set up the story (pre-teach vocabulary, and introduce characters and setting), and have students listen to part of a story a couple of times. The students then discuss what they heard and talk about a possible conclusion. Then I give them time to brainstorm and free write either their ending to the story or a more detailed narrative using the sandwich approach (introduction, main idea, details, and conclusion). After a set time, the students must stop, read their own paper carefully, revise and edit the best they can using an editing checklist. I then give students time to read their papers to each other at their tables. I collect the papers and we listen to the end of the story and compare our conclusions. This is a great activity to get students to think creatively and to practice writing for an audience.

     For over a year, Anne Dolan (ABE/GED®) and I have done a pen-pal project between our classes. Our students are paired up and write to each other weekly. Students ask each other a series of questions every week. As time goes on, the students really get to know a lot about each other. Students write their questions on a separate piece of paper and work with a partner or group to form grammatically correct questions (reinforcing the idea that writing is a process). Once they are finished, I check their questions and students can then write them in their pen-pal book (blue book). The same method applies to student responses the following week.