Pragmatics, the social language skills human beings use through everyday social interaction, is a critical and complicated segment of learning a new language. Thus, it is essential to teach pragmatics in English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms and ESL teachers have pragmatic knowledge. This qualitative case study was designed to investigate…

When U.S. English learners (ELs) attend college, they are more likely to enroll in 2-year community colleges than in 4-year colleges. Prior research points to the tension between English as a second language (ESL) programs providing support to ELs and lengthy ESL programs acting as barriers to ELs seeking access to mainstream college coursework.…

Community Colleges (CCs) in the U.S. provide open access to education for an extremely diverse student body, with large numbers of emergent bilingual students enrolling in CCs. This paper describes the rationale behind offering professional development to instructors across CCs on teaching Language Across the Curriculum (LAC). In order to meet the…

To improve academic ESL, a community college has been experimenting with linking an ESL class to a Sociology class. The primary goal was to use the methodology of Content Based Instruction to develop a curriculum that would promote academic vocabulary acquisition, critical thinking, and authentic communication in a sheltered environment. The…

This essay discusses the difficulties many English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students face when mainstreamed into academic content courses while still enrolled in ESL classes. The author demonstrates the benefits of pairing an ESL speech class with a content area course as a method for improving English language skills. (Contains 44 references.)…

These presentations examine the use of a new Macintosh Lab in Commercial Art Technology, Spanish, and English Composition classes at Clark State Community College. The first paper describes the Commercial Art Technology program at the college, highlighting the use of the Mac Lab installed in September 1993 and discussing the Electronic Publishing,…

This paper describes the Foreign Language Alternative Program (FLAP) of Bellevue Community College, in Washington state. The program is designed to provide students with alternative choices best fitted to their individual needs, and is thus individualized and equipped to deal with both academic and vocational programs. The first year of a given…

The instructional guide for the Cutting Edge workplace literacy program, a cooperative project of El Paso Community College (Texas) and Levi Strauss and Company, is an expanded version of one appendix the project handbook. It describes and provides an instructional model for the three-part, job-specific, video-based program of English as a Second…