ESL APP Summary Report
December 13, 2011
Here’s a summary of the ESL APP pilot project for this semester.
A. Tutoring
Out of Rita’s initial ESL 3 Low class of 41 students, we identified 19 who had a 9th
grade and below education, 12 of which had had seven or less years of formal
schooling. By the time I began to interview students for the tutoring component in
early October, 9 of these 19 students were attending class (regularly). These
students were identified based on a literacy screen in which students wrote about
their prior education and a survey document which Rita designed that asked
students for personal information which included years of prior education.
I met with the nine students on October 3rd and 4th (approximately 6 weeks after
the beginning of the semester) to identify areas of focus for the tutors, other
issues that might interfere with their learning and to set up the tutoring schedule.
A few students were able to attend tutoring sessions before or after class, but it’s
unclear how many continued with their original schedule.
Tutoring began the week of October 12th with two tutors from S.F.S.U. MATESOL
program and continued for 6 weeks, the last of which didn’t involve tutoring as it
was the volunteers last week. Both tutors were Chinese who had been high school
English teachers in China and were in their first year of the MATESOL program.
Each worked one day a week for two hours. They both attended all of their
scheduled tutoring sessions and completed summaries of their work with students
after each session. Each tutor was given an overview of the project goals and I
met with each of them to talk about how to handle the tutoring, emphasizing that
they should help the tutees with reading, developing strategies for independent
learning, and conversation. Generally, the tutors worked with the materials that
Rita was using in class that day, reinforcing what they had or were learning.
A tutoring schedule was set up for each volunteer, but not all of the students were
present on their tutoring day, so Rita identified other students in the class who
she deemed would benefit from the tutoring. Though we gave the tutors a
schedule and feedback form to complete with the names of students they tutored
each day, we only have records for the first four weeks of tutoring. With the
exception of two students, most attended all or almost all of their tutoring
sessions. The table below indicates the amount of tutoring each student received
over four weeks and their enrollment for spring semester.
Students
Number of
Sessions
Spring
2012
4
2
3
3
4
1
3
4
4
3 High
3 High
3 Low
3 Low
3 High
Dropped
4 Low
3 High
4 Low
Li Qiao Gao
4
3 High
Jessica Espinoza
Viriglio (This student filled in when regularly
2
1
3 High
3 High
Original Nine:
Ana Velasquez
Leticia Vasquez
Delmy Nerio
Elva Rodriquez
Maria Rodriquez
Christian Lara (This student dropped early on)
Adilio Campos
Dulce Felix
Janeth Campos
Additional students
(Both started late in the semester)
scheduled tutees were absent)
In a focus group meeting with the tutees at the end of the semester, they had this
to say about the tutoring:
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Everyone felt the tutoring was extremely helpful. They liked having the
individual attention that helped them focus on the questions they had
about the lesson.
They all felt 20 minutes was too short. They all recommended 30 minutes
of tutoring.
One student mentioned that on a particularly busy day, she only got 8
minutes with her tutor because there were so many other students who
were there for tutoring.
Another student mentioned that one of the tutors (Yi) lacked patience and
was overly strident with students. They said she got angry when they
didn’t understand something.
One student said she didn’t go to class on her tutoring day because she
didn’t want to work with the tutor anymore!
One student mentioned that in class she feels shy about asking questions,
so it was great to be able to ask questions privately of the tutors. She had
more confidence to ask questions in that setting.
They felt that generally the tutors explained things well and helped them
understand the lesson better because she didn’t want to work with the
tutor anymore!
They suggested that the program should have more tutors so that
everyone can get enough time each week and that the tutors should be
patient with students.
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Thoughts for tutoring in Spring 2012.
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Following the students suggestions we should lengthen the tutoring time
to 30 minutes.
We should recruit at least four MATESOL tutors and orientation should
include the importance of listening to students and being patient,
encouraging and friendly.
We should try to recruit volunteers who are interested in the LESLLA
population.
Orientation should take place with the group as a whole before the
tutoring starts and contact should be made directly with SFSU as going
through the SHINE folks here wasn’t very successful. (Apparently SFSU
assigns the MATESOL students themselves; they don’t go through our
office and we initially didn’t have any MATESOL tutors assigned to our
project).
We should start tutoring as early as possible and give tutors a stack of
tutoring reports to ensure that we have records for the whole semester.
One tutor didn’t realize that each tutoring sessions should be only 20
minutes (She sometimes kept students for long periods of time), so this
should be emphasized.
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Denise will check in with tutees after the third week of tutoring to find
out how things are going and she’ll meet with tutors afterwards to give
feedback/guidance.
During the time that Denise took photographs of the tutors and tutees
for a SHINE article, she observed that one of the tutors was overly
focused on error correction and gave students little time for questions,
reflections or personalization. Though some of this can be dealt with in
the orientation and one-on-one meetings with tutors, we feel that
allowing them some time in the classroom to observe methodology would
be helpful to them personally and enhance the work with tutees.
Therefore we will alter the tutoring plan a little:
o During the 25-minute Free Voluntary Reading (FVR), tutors will
work individually with tutees.
o For the second 30minutes, tutors will help out in the classroom.
o Tutors will continue to work with tutees for the last hour of
class
B. Other program Innovations
1. Extensive Reading/Free Voluntary Reading
In the December issues of TESOL Journal, Krashen points out that reading,
specifically FVR, is a major path to academic language proficiency in that it
provides a bridge that makes comprehension of academic texts comprehensible. It
was great to read that we were on the right track with our FVR component this
semester!
We set up a student reading library in the classroom using easy starter
books from a variety of publishers. Some of these books were borrowed from the
Mission book lending library, some Denise got from publishers and others were
purchased specifically for the ESL APP this semester. The first 15 minutes of
each day is dedicated to FVR. The student focus group had this to say about the
reading component:
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All the students felt that the time was too short. They recommend 25
minutes of in class reading. They said they needed more time to get into
the book. And often felt frustrated about stopping too soon.
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They also said that reading everyday was important. If they read only
twice a week, even for a longer time, they are afraid it would be too
difficult to pick up the story again; they might have forgotten too much
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Although one student read 6 – 7 (she said she got the thin books), most
students read between 3 and 6 books, but they didn’t finish any because
they didn’t always find the same book each day; other students had already
taken their books before they arrived.
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Students felt that some books were more difficult to understand, but
generally the books were at an appropriate level for them.
I may have lost the student focus group summary I wrote up (was on my
stolen computer), so I’ll review the response and rewrite that soon.
Thoughts on FVR for Spring 2012
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We’ll increase the FVR to from 15 minutes at the beginning of class to
20minutes.
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Rita and I will institute with a system that we hope will make it easier
for students to complete books next semester. Each student will get a
sticky note on which they will write their names and attach to the inside
cover of the book they are reading (these will be color coded as these
reading library is also being used by Denise’s Levels 3-4 and Level 5
classes). Once a student finishes a book, they transfer their sticky note
to another book. We’ll see how this works.
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We will also design a reading log for students to keep track of which
books they read and how many they completed during the semester.
Rita will review the log and initial it periodically to give the students a
sense of accomplishment. Perhaps the tutors could fill in this log with
them and discuss the books they are reading as part of their tutoring
duties. We’ll print the log on colored paper.
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Rita and the tutors should include more instruction on using contextual
clues to guess meaning of words as well as developing more tolerance for
ambiguity by skipping words they don’t know, for example.
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We’ll also dot color code the books according to level of difficulty in
order to assist students in finding appropriate books and to aid in the
maintenance of the reading library. We’ll ask the classroom SHINE
volunteers to put the books away so as to keep the library organized.
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We’ll also include other reading material, such as magazines, children’s
books, newspapers on a table in the room, along with pocket chart
handouts on community organizations and other resources.
2. Student Journals
Students made journal entries each week to which Rita and Denise both
responded. The prompts initially asked students to think about ways they could
practice English outside of the classroom and report on things they were doing
outside of the class to learn. Other prompts were related to holidays and themes
being discussed in class... The student focus group had this to say about the
journals:
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Everyone loved having the opportunity to journal with Rita and Denise.
One student mentioned that she liked having the opportunity to apply the
punctuation rules she was learning in class.
Another student said that it was easier to write in a journal because you
wrote your own ideas; as opposed to writing comprehension questions from
a reading where you had to write about things you weren’t sure about.
They all liked dialoging with the teachers and found it a fun challenge to
figure out how to answer questions the teachers posed in the journals.
They highly recommend continuing this activity.
Thoughts on journals for Spring 2012
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More prompts that deal with the themes of the class as opposed to what
students are doing outside of class, as these turned into laundry lists of
things students do in general, rather than specifically what they did that
week.
3. Outside learning logs
We had students fill out outside of class learning logs each week for the most of
the semester, but again, it seemed that they just checked everything on the log, so
it’s not clear how useful this activity was. Perhaps do it once a month?
In summary, the success of the ESL APP this semester was numerous. Most of the
LESLA students received a substantial amount of tutoring each week which for the
most part they enjoyed and felt was useful. The FVR library was set up and
students felt this was a useful activity as were the writing journals.
Rita did work on reading strategy development with students and this should
continue and be expanded in the next semester. Students asked for more
homework and indicated that would be interested in integrating some technology in
the program. We might think about how to incorporate more mobile learning next
semester as well.
We’ll start by including a technology question on the student profile survey that
Rita does at the beginning of the semester and go from there. Based on students’
access to technology, we’ll come up with a plan. The goal for incorporating
technology is to continue to foster student independent learning and as we help
them find Internet resources they can use.