Program Review and Action Planning – YEAR THREE
Final Summary Report
Division
Program
Contact Person
Date
Language Arts
ESL
Kent Uchiyama
2/27/11
I. Reflect upon the last three years' analysis and activities.
II. Briefly summarize the accomplishments of the discipline, and how they relate to the review of the
program, the program-level outcomes (PLOs) and course-level outcomes (CLOs).
I. During the last three years, ESL has accomplished a great deal. We launched and completed an
extensive self-study and have begun revising our program in accordance with our findings; we
hired two new full-time faculty members; we collaborated with the Office of Special Programs
and Services and the Grant Development Office to create Project Excel, a new service that
provides support to ESL students seeking certificates, degrees, or transfer; and finally, we found
funding sources to reinstate the ESL tutor training program after we had lost it to budget cuts.
All of these projects are described in more detail as we catalog our accomplishments
below. Despite the deep cuts made to our program as a result of the present economic crisis, ESL
is a vital, dynamic program that continues to explore better ways to serve our students and our
community.
II. Accomplishments
1. ESL TRIO grant and Project Excel
The ESL area was instrumental in securing the TRIO grant that is currently Chabot’s new
Project Excel. We also have been central to its design and implementation.
 During the fall of 2009, Kent Uchiyama met with CTE faculty Mike Absher and Stephen
Small to discuss the kinds of support CTE instructors would find most helpful in working
with ESL students. Based on these meetings, Uchiyama created a preliminary outline of
how ESL support could be provided along the degree and certificate through-lines of these
programs in the form of teaching assistants and supplemental support classes. This work
informed the discussion as the grant was written and laid down a general outline for the
program.
 During the 2009/2010 academic year, Linnea Wahamaki and Kent Uchiyama worked with
Gerald Shimada, Roberto Mendez, and Yvonne Wu-Craig to design the proposed program
for our grant application.
 When we were awarded the grant, the full-time ESL faculty aided in the search for
instructors to fill the required positions. Eventually, Hisako Hintz and Lisa Ikeda were
hired as ESL instructional coordinators.
 During the fall of 2010, based on the interviews with CTE instructors at Chabot and Laney
Colleges, observations of their CTE courses, and information obtained from a CATESOL
conference and a CTL event (Contextual Teaching and Learning: A Faculty Institute),
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Hisako Hintz and Lisa Ikeda created an entire ESL support curriculum for Auto Tech ESL
students. This support course is now being piloted during the first semester of Project
Excel. Similar support curricula are being developed for Machine Tool and Welding Tech
classes.
Lisa Ikeda and Hisako Hintz collaborate weekly to gather curriculum materials. Lisa
observes CTE courses, takes notes, identifies target areas for ESL students, meets with
CTE teachers, and feeds the information to Hisako. Based on the information, Hisako
creates lesson plans, class activities, and materials related to the CTE course content and
the Expected Outcomes for Students from the course outlines.
In the classroom, a Learning Assistant, who is a high level ESL student with a strong
science background, assists the teacher and the students.
The ESL support courses’ weekly agendas, lesson plans, and course materials, which
include up-to-date and multimedia resources, are all posted on the Blackboard site for
continued development and refinement of the curriculum.
As part of Project Excel, Lisa Ikeda and Hisako Hintz are available for drop-in tutoring for
Project Excel students. This provides an ancillary benefit to the ESL program as a whole
since at these times they are available to work with general ESL students as well (although
Project Excel students have priority). This has significantly increased our drop-in tutoring
hours.
Relevance to PLO’s
Since Project Excel provides reading and writing support for ESL students, all these
accomplishments relate to our two current Program-Level Outcomes:
 Decode, summarize, and paraphrase shorter and book-length texts of academic, artistic,
technical, and journalistic prose.
 Write at least 750 words of clear and coherent prose using largely error-free standard
American English.
In light of what we have learned from the TRIO project and our ESL Program
Development FIG, we may wish to add PLO’s that more directly reflect our commitment to
prepare students for the workplace as well as for transfer. We will also want to add a PLO that
addresses speaking and listening skills.
Relevance to CLO’s
The non-CTE aspect of Project Excel provides English support for students in meeting
their goals both during and after the ESL program. As such, it will help students achieve all our
post-110b CLO’s:
ESL 108
 Demonstrate understanding of the basic sound/symbol correspondence of written English.
 Correctly spell commonly used words in English that follow non-conventional spelling.
 Identify the meaning of and use new vocabulary from assigned texts.
 Students correctly spell commonly used words in English that follow conventional
spelling patterns.
ESL 109 Vocabulary Skills
 Identify and correctly use common stems and affixes.
 Use a dictionary to find pronunciation, meaning and usage of unfamiliar words in a given
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context.
Identify the structures covered in the course content.
Student identifies the meaning of and uses new vocabulary from assigned texts.
ESL 110C Reading and Writing: From Paragraph to Essay
 The student uses essay form as an organizing convention.
 The student uses noun adjective clauses, appropriate forms of verbal, past modal
auxiliaries, and passive and comparative constructions.
 The student uses reading strategies appropriate to goal, such as finding main ideas.
ESL 110D Reading and Writing: The Essay
 The student demonstrates command of standard written English grammar by detecting and
correcting non-standard usage.
 The student demonstrates literal and analytical understanding of assigned texts.
 The student writes a short essay on a given academic topic, using concrete support for
main ideas.
ESL 111A Pronunciation
 Student produces common intonation patterns in English.
 Student articulates English phonemes.
 Student participates in small group discussions.
ESL 111B Academic Listening and Speaking
 Student demonstrates facility in taking lecture notes.
 Student shows proficiency in asking questions.
ESL 112 English Grammar: Review for ESL
 Edit for correct use of structures covered in the course.
 Detect errors in his/her own writing.
 Student identifies the structures covered in the course content.
 Student correctly uses structures covered in writing.
ESL 114 Editing for the Advanced ESL
 Correct errors detected in writing to conform to the conventions of written English.
 Correctly uses structures covered.
 Read in an engaged, active style.
 Student detects errors in his/her own writing.
ESL 129 Idiom Usage for ESL
 Identify literal word usage in written material.
 Identify idiomatic expressions in written material.
 Use context to ascertain the meanings of idioms in written material.
2. Completion of the ESL Program Development FIG and beginning to apply our findings.
In the fall of 2010, we completed the ESL Program Assessment FIG and began to explore
how these findings can best be applied to our program. So far, we have accomplished the
following.
 We have met twice with interested English faculty to discuss the English subdivision’s
needs for an ESL program and to explore possible ways to support ESL students (both
graduates of our program and otherwise) in English classes.
 We met with the World Languages department to share successful aspects of our
respective programs and to learn more about the logistics of running a language lab.
 We opened a discussion with Yvonne Craig-Wu to uncover possible funding sources for
new classes in the current economic crisis.
 In response to our FIG findings, we have begun a discussion of possible changes to our
program. This discussion is still ongoing, but so far we launched the following projects:
o Angela Hobbs and Hisako Hintz have begun rewriting our ESL 111 classes to
better reflect the needs expressed in the Community Needs Assessment. As
funding becomes available, we plan to expand our 111 classes from two levels to
four. We’re currently exploring the possibility of using TRIO money to create a
pre-111a course entitled “Speaking for the Workplace.”
o We have also begun the search for possible grant money to create a “Writing for
the Workplace” class and a “Reading for the Workplace” class. We also hope to
find funding to create and pilot an “English for Job-Seekers” course.
o We have decided to make one hour of our core classes lab time. We’re still
exploring ways to make this happen: We may share the World Language Lab
space, use space on the first floor of Building 100, or hold the lab in the same room
as the class itself.
o We have begun the exploration of alternative funding models for parts of our
program, including non-credit classes and Community Ed. Preliminary findings
have not been very promising, but we are continuing to explore these options,
especially in light of possible future budget cuts.
 In March of 2011, Kent Uchiyama presented our findings at the Faculty Inquiry Network
Conference held here at Chabot College.
Copies of our FIG’s reports and minutes of our meetings can be found at this link:
http://www.chabotcollege.edu/LearningConnection/ctl/FIGs/ESLprogramdev/ESLprogramdev.asp
Relevance to PLO’s and CLO’s
In time, our FIG findings will inform every aspect of our program; especially, as you’ll see
in the Next Steps section, our core classes. Because of this, it will affect both our PLO’s and the
CLO’s for our core classes and speaking and listening classes. It will also probably create
changes to our grammar class.
PLO’s
 Decode, summarize, and paraphrase shorter and book-length texts of academic, artistic,
technical, and journalistic prose.
 Write at least 750 words of clear and coherent prose using largely error-free standard
American English.
CLO’s
ESL 110A Review for Basic English for ESL
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The student demonstrates the process and purpose of multiple draft-writing.
The student demonstrates understanding of the concept of an English sentence, including
syntactic conventions of simple sentences and questions.
The student identifies conventions of fiction, such as narrator, character, plot, and setting.
ESL 110B Reading and Writing: The Paragraph
 The student uses the paragraph as an organizing convention.
 The student uses verb tenses appropriately for specific purposes.
 The student uses a variety of approaches to read texts, such as previewing, scanning,
discovering the meaning through context.
ESL 110C Reading and Writing: From Paragraph to Essay
 The student uses essay form as an organizing convention.
 The student uses noun adjective clauses, appropriate forms of verbal, past modal
auxiliaries, and passive and comparative constructions.
 The student uses reading strategies appropriate to goal, such as finding main ideas.
ESL 110D Reading and Writing: The Essay
 The student demonstrates command of standard written English grammar by detecting and
correcting non-standard usage.
 The student demonstrates literal and analytical understanding of assigned texts.
 The student writes a short essay on a given academic topic, using concrete support for
main ideas.
ESL 111A Pronunciation
 Student produces common intonation patterns in English.
 Student articulates English phonemes.
 Student participates in small group discussions.
ESL 111B Academic Listening and Speaking
 Student demonstrates facility in taking lecture notes.
 Student shows proficiency in asking questions.
ESL 112 English Grammar : Review for ESL
 Edit for correct use of structures covered in the course.
 Detect errors in his/her own writing.
 Student identifies the structures covered in the course content.
 Student correctly uses structures covered in writing.
3. Hiring a new full-time ESL faculty member
We advertised, screened, and interviewed applicants for a full-time
ESL position. In the end, we hired Angela Hobbs to fill this position.
Relevance to PLO’s and CLO’s
In an area where our full-time faculty have been spread very thin for the past few years,
the addition of a capable and dedicated colleague, as Angela Hobbs has proven herself to be, is
helping our team meet all the goals we set for our students and ourselves.
4. Finding Funding for and Reinstating ESL TUTR 1b
Because of budget cuts, the ESL Tutor Training class was cancelled during the Spring
2010 semester, which meant that there was no subject-specific training for ESL tutors. Dennis
Chowenhill and Kent Uchiyama wrote a FIG proposal to explore the effectiveness of small-group
tutoring. This two-semester proposal included CAH to teach the Tutor Training Class, which
allowed us to put this class back on the schedule. Uchiyama is currently conducting the FIG in its
second semester.
Relevance to PLO’s and CLO’s
PLO’s
Tutor training will help our students achieve both our PLO’s:
 Decode, summarize, and paraphrase shorter and book-length texts of academic, artistic,
technical, and journalistic prose.
 Write at least 750 words of clear and coherent prose using largely error-free standard
American English.
CLO’s
This, of course, directly impacts the CLO on file for TUTR 1b:
 Assist a tutee to overcome a specific stumbling block to his learning
It also supports our students in achieving all our program’s CLO’s. For brevity’s sake, I will not
catalog them all here.
5. Revised ESL 114 to increase enrollment
After canceling ESL 114 two years in a row because of low enrollment, we met with
interested English faculty to discuss ways we could continue offering the course, since a number
of English instructors told us that their students needed this class. As a result of this collaboration,
we changed the course description to allow students eligible for ESL 110d to take the class. We
also advertised the course more efficiently to our English colleagues so that they could get the
word out to their students earlier. As a result, this semester’s 114 section is now 96% full. This
change had an additional benefit. As a result of cuts to our program, we have had to turn away
many students this semester. Students who were unable to take 110d this semester had ESL 114
as another option.
Relevance to PLO’s and SLO’s
PLO’s
Access to 114 will help 110d students achieve our writing PLO:
 Write at least 750 words of clear and coherent prose using largely error-free standard
American English.
SLO’s
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Access to 114 will help 110d students their writing CLO’s:
The student demonstrates command of standard written English grammar by detecting and
correcting non-standard usage.
The student writes a short essay on a given academic topic, using concrete support for
main ideas.
6. Collaboration with Early Childhood Development
Christine So worked together with the ECD program to create two new ESL support
classes for the Spanish Language ECD cohort. So is currently teaching these classes. ESL and
Marcia Corcoran also met with the ECD faculty and Susan Sperling to work out the logistics of
offering an ESL class through a Social Science area.
Relevance to PLO’s and CLO’s
Although the students in the ECD Spanish Language cohort are not technically ESL
students, we the support class helps them attain the following CLO’s:
 The student demonstrates the process and purpose of multiple draft-writing.
 The student demonstrates understanding of the concept of an English sentence, including
syntactic conventions of simple sentences and questions.
 The student identifies conventions of fiction, such as narrator, character, plot, and setting.
 The student uses the paragraph as an organizing convention.
 The student uses verb tenses appropriately for specific purposes.
 The student uses a variety of approaches to read texts, such as previewing, scanning,
discovering the meaning through context.
7. SLO Assessment and Reporting
In March of 2010, we wrote and submitted two program-level outcomes for ESL. We are
moving ahead on schedule as we assess and record our SLO data for all the courses in our
program. This semester, we are reviewing and creating recommendations from the data collected
last semester for ESL 111a, 111b, and 127; we are beginning assessment the CLO’s for ESL 114,
112, and 128. Thanks in large part to Linnea Wahamaki’s previous work in securing BSI funds
for our eLumen Training FIG, our area’s compliance with FIG reporting requirements has been
among the best in the college.
Relevance to PLO’s and CLO’s
Staying on top of assessing and reporting our CLO’s helps us moniter and adjust our
instruction to better help our students all our program’s CLO’s and PLO’s. Again, I will not list
them all here.
8. Met Demands of Accreditation
See #7 above.
9. Community Outreach
During the spring of 2010. Janelle Jones of James Logan High School and Kent Uchiyama
arranged and coordinated a visit of ESL students from JLHS to the Chabot campus. The students
were given a tour of the campus, and received an overview of campus services, and sat in on two
classes.
Relevance to PLO’s and CLO’s
Community outreach does not have a direct effect on our CLO’s or PLO’s, but it does
contribute to keeping our program vital and visible in our community.
10. Improvement of the Quality of Instruction among Instructors Teaching Core Courses
Linnea Wahamaki, Ingrid Hufgard, Dorothy Sole, and Kent Uchiyama have all completed
Reading Apprenticeship training. These instructors are now using these methods in the
classroom, can share RA philosophy and techniques with ESL colleagues, and cab collaborate on
best practices to apply these techniques to our ESL program.
Level leaders were in contact with other instructors teaching at those levels through email,
blackboard, materials sharing, and meetings.
Relevance to PLO’s and CLO’s
Level meetings help us maintain a high standard of instruction in our all our courses, and
in this way they affect all of our PLO’s and CLO’s. Again, I will not list them all here.
11. Continuation of Web Presence and Advertising of ESL Program and Language Center
Website updated in Fall 2009 http://www.chabotcollege.edu/LanguageArts/ESL/.
Block advertisements for Language Center and ESL Program were printed in the schedule of
classes. Language Center services and specific courses were advertised in individual classes
through handouts. Some instructors took their classes to the Center for short orientations/tours.
Relevance to PLO’s and CLO’s
Greater student awareness of the support available in the Language Center affects all of
our PLO’s and CLO’s in that it gives our students access to resources that will help them succeed
in their ESL classes. Again, I will not list all our PLO’s and CLO’s here.
III. Please list what best practices (e.g., strategies, activities, intervention, elements, etc.) you would
recommend? What was challenging? Was there a barrier(s) to success?
Best practices:
1. Use of Course-Level Outcomes and Program-Level Outcomes to assess our program.
As noted above, ESL has made extensive use of the SLO framework as a means to
evaluate our effectiveness, assess our practices, and ultimately revise these practices. We
created a FIG to train our adjunct instructors to assess and document our program’s SLO’s
using eLumen, and we have entered into a continuing discussion of our practices and our
program based upon findings. Also as noted above, we have been notably conscientious in
keeping current with our SLO assessment documenting our findings.
2. Adopting an inquiry model to evaluate and shape our program and teaching.
During the three years of this Program Review, ESL has enthusiastically embraced the
faculty inquiry model to better understand and hence improve our program, our teaching, and
the other forms of support we offer our students. We have conducted four Faculty Inquiry
Groups, gathered data, reviewed our findings, and applied those findings to our program.
 In 2009-2010, Fe Baran, Lisa Ikeda, and Ingrid Hufgard conducted a FIG to determine
the effectiveness of teaching grammar through the vehicle of narrative reading and
writing.
 The ESL Program Development FIG, which ran from 2008-2010, has provided us with
a wealth of data on which we are basing of changes to our program to better serve our
students and our community. These include the vocational support courses serving
Project Excel, rewriting of our ESL 111 courses, the possible addition of more
vocational courses as we uncover funding, the possible creation of a lab component in
our core classes, and a possible restructuring of our core classes to make them more
accessible to our students and to more evenly distribute the amount of material covered
in each class. (The latter two are ongoing discussion among our faculty.)
 As mentioned above, the SLO FIG was a singular success, as demonstrated by ESL’s
record of implementation and documentation of Student Learning Outcomes.
 The small-group tutoring FIG is currently underway, and is yielding interesting results.
Preliminary findings suggest that students seem to want small-group help with reading
more than with writing, and that these groups are most effective when created in
coordination with a specific instructor’s curriculum.
3. Seeking alternate sources of funding to enhance our program.
 In the face of severe cuts to our program, ESL has been able to continue developing
areas of our program through the creative use of alternate sources of funding.
 Project Excel, the courses created for this program, and the many student services
associated with it were all made possible through the TRIO grant we received.
 During the 2009-10 academic year, Linnea Wahamaki was able to create a FIG that
paid for SLO training for adjunct faculty. As noted above, this is one reason why ESL
has one of the best records of SLO compliance at Chabot.
 We were able to apply a similar strategy to reinstating the ESL tutor training program
for the 2010-11 academic year, obtaining funding to pay an instructor by making the
tutor training part of a FIG to research the usefulness of small-group tutoring.
4. Cultivating the professional development of our instructors.
During this Program Review period, our ESL instructors have actively sought to expand
their knowledge of practice and theory, conduct research, and share their findings with each
other and with the educational community as a whole.
 Hisako Hintz and Lisa Ikeda attended both a CATESOL conference and a CTL event
(Contextual Teaching and Learning: A Faculty Institute), and used information gleaned
from these events to write Project Excel’s new VESL support curriculum.
 Kent Uchiyama attended and presented at the Faculty Inquiry Network conference.
 Lisa Ikeda, Ingrid Hufgard, Fe Baran, Linnea Wahamaki, Angela Hobbs, and Kent
Uchiyama have all worked in Faculty Inquiry Groups to conduct research and apply it
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to our program.
All ESL instructors have participated in level meetings to discuss the program, share
practices and ideas, and to problem solve together. These meetings are vital to keeping
us all current and to keeping Chabot’s ESL program integrated and strong.
Challenges/Barriers to Success:
ESL has faced several challenges during the past three years, all of which arise from
California’s present economic crisis:
 The cuts to our program have been deep, and for the past two years we have been
turning away students from our core classes in large numbers. As noted above, we have
partially addressed this by seeking alternately sources of funding, but our program and
more importantly, our students, are hurting.
 As we review the finding of our Program Development FIG, we find ourselves unable
to effect many of the changes pointed to by our research. We have found (and will
continue to seek) ways to make some changes on a shoestring until the economic crisis
is over. However, these worthy improvements pale in comparison to what we could
accomplish if we were given the resources.
 Our program continues to need a dedicated computer classroom for ESL students
with up-to-date learning software programs. At present, evening ESL classes do
not have access to an open computer lab. We need a lab where qualified ESL
instructors can be available to work with students and provide support outside the
classroom. We can't expand our program without having a facility for our
students so that they can continue their studies on a semi-independent basis. A
lab would also allow for more on-campus tutoring and support services, from
which many of our students would greatly benefit. We will continue to seek
alternate ways to provide lab services to our students, but the need for a
dedicated ESL lab persists.
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IV. Next Steps: Recommendations for program and institutional improvement.
Program Improvement:
Our research and our experiences during the past three years have pointed us towards a
number of ways that we’ll seek to improve our program. Some of these we will implement
soon; others will have to wait until the economic crisis has run its course or until we have found
alternate sources of funding.
 Complete the rewriting of our 111 courses, shepherd the rewritten courses through the
Curriculum Committee, and pilot the new courses.
 Revisit our core curriculum with an eye towards the following ends:
o reduce the number of grammar points to be covered in 110b and 110c,
o introduce a lab component,
o explore ways to make our core classes more accessible for students who cannot
make the investment of time required by a six-unit class.
 Ultimately, create an ESL language lab. In the interim, deliver as many lab services as
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possible through alternate means.
Create more vocational courses, as explained above, and find funding for them.
When funds for expansion become possible, explore the feasibility of creating an
Intensive English Program to attract international students.
Create online or hybrid ESL course so that we can expand our "reach" within the
community or outside the community.
Create an ESL newsletter to raise awareness of our program, what we have to offer, and
our achievements.
Improve coordination with counseling and the assessment center so that our students are
given a more thorough advising before starting the program.
Work better with counseling/assessment so that our ESL students don't fall through the
cracks.
Create a film similar to Reading Between the Lives that will document Project Excel and
make visible the learning that takes place in the project.
Institutional Improvement:
At present, the difficulties that ESL is now facing seem to be more situational than
systemic; in other words, the problems we’re facing seem to be arising more from the current
budget crisis than from any institutional problem within Chabot itself.
That being said, we would like to take this opportunity to reiterate our strong conviction
that when this crisis has passed, Chabot’s ESL program has great potential for growth if there is
an institutional commitment to support it. We are at present seeking creative ways to serve
more students and to serve them better without drawing further on our college’s limited
resources; however, there will be a limit to what we can accomplish in this way. As advocates
for our students and for all the English learners in our area, we feel obliged to continually point
out (even at the risk of becoming a bit obnoxious) that Chabot could be doing a lot more for our
community if our institution were able to make the resources available to expand the ESL
program.