American Language Program SLS Integration:
Prof. Robert Freud
During the Spring 2013 semester, I included Science Literacy materials and
readings in several of my American Language ESL classes.
Grammar III
Verb Tense
In the Advanced Grammar class (ALP-061), while we were studying verb tense,
we looked at several timelines of the history of science and we used this as a
springboard for talking about events using the past, past perfect, present perfect
and present perfect continuous tenses. We were able to speculate on future
developments using the various forms of the future tense.
Noun Clauses
We watched the TED video on chronic pain by Elliot Krane. After discussing the
video, we looked at the transcript of the talk. Students identified noun clauses
and discussed why this structure, which is a prevalent in academic English, was
used rather than another.
TOEFL Class
This class (ALP-068) prepares students to take the Test of English as a Foreign
Language, a high level integrated skills test designed to show mastery of both
spoken and written English.
Listening Comprehension
Students were assigned homework to watch five TED videos, at least two of
which needed to be science based or TED-MED videos. Students did written
summaries and oral presentations about what they watched.
Pronunciation: Intonation and Stress
Students read Discoveries Emerge from Ideas, a Wall Street Journal article by
biologist E.O. Wilson and how much math scientists really need After
summarizing and discussing the article, students marked the article for stress
and intonation and practiced reading sections of the article with the correct
intonation.
Pronunciation: Tense and Lax Vowels, stress
Students read an article on pain management and RICE treatment. We identified
trouble spots in vowel pronunciation of tense and lax ih vs iy (conSEEDering vs
conSIDering; TEEsiue vs TISsiue). Students marked the article for stress and
intonation.
Success 101(IST-123)
Observation & The Scientific Method
In the unit on Lifelong Learning, students read the classic article The Student, the
Fish and Agassiz, about how Louis Aggasiz taught his students to be active
observers, not just passive recipients of knowledge. We discussed the article.
We watched a YouTube dramatization of the article. We viewed an innovative
IOS App, Fish: a tap essay (http://www.robinsloan.com/fish/) which uses the
Agassiz article as a jumping off point for discussions about observation and what
it means to “like” something on social media. Students created learning plans to
incorporate observation into their study.