Under the sheltered immersion system, ESL teachers often attend academic classes with their students, taking an active role in class discussions together with the regular teacher. It is effective, but it is also expensive for those who foot the bill. |
Fluency in English is not an option in most international schools in Thailand, it is a necessity. These schools are increasingly finding that the fastest and most efficient way to accomplish this goal is to put students into mainstream academic courses straightaway. What then is role the of ESL?
Nowadays, just about everyone attending school in Thailand learns some English. For most, however, fluency in the language is not a practical option. Time is too limited, classes too large, and opportunities for authentic communication are almost non-existent.
Except, of course, for those lucky students whose parents have the financial wherewithal to send their children into the international school system. There, with English as the medium of instruction in the majority of schools, fluency is not an option, it is a necessity.
As you might expect, English as a second language instruction is a very serious business at international schools. Success is mandatory and it must come quickly so that students can access the mainstream curriculum.
Traditionally, there have been two main options for ESL instruction in international schools. The first is the so-called "pullout" option in which students not yet proficient in English are separated from their mainstream peers. In such situations, ESL students may simply study English or they may get a mix of English and academic content.
The problem with the pullout model is that students often have difficulty assimilating when they leave ESL for the mainstream academic programme. They may be proficient in basic English, but they have difficulty with academic English and they may lack the social skills necessary to fully participate in class.
For this reason, there is a growing movement to put ESL students in at least some mainstream classes from day one, even if they are rank beginners in English. "If the conditions are right," says Andrew Davies, principal of the high school at the International School Bangkok, "second language learners learn faster and more authentically if they are in the mainstream."
But what exactly are these "right conditions"? We visited three local ESL programmes to try to find out.
The International School Bangkok
According to high school ESL department head, Barbara Kalis, ISB has developed its own version of what is known as the "sheltered immersion model". It is sheltered in the sense that ESL students are separated periodically from their mainstream peers for some direct ESL instruction and academic assistance. For most of the school day, however, they sit in regular academic classes as fully-fledged ISB students.
It is far from a "sink or swim" situation, however, since ESL teachers play an important role in the mainstream curriculum. In the lower levels, Ms Kalis explains, "the ESL teacher team-teaches with the mainstream teachers. There are two teachers in the classroom. They work on the curriculum together. They do the activities and visuals and acting out, whatever needs to be done in order to give the kids access to the curriculum."
The situation is similar in the upper grades. This term, for example, Ms Kalis is working with the ninth grade history team on their world civilisations course.
"We have team planning every other day," she says. "I plan with that team and work with the curriculum. On the curriculum there is part which says ‘language implications’. So as we write the curriculum we build in the language component, considering what our students need in terms of language in order to access the mainstream curriculum."
High school ESL students also meet for a class in the EAP (English for Academic Purpose) Centre which they attend in place of a required study hall or a free period. "In that time," explains Ms Kalis, "we teach academic language skills that they need to be successful. Students also receive direct support with their academic courses through the EAP Centre."
In the EAP Centre, students also learn to refine their own language learning strategies. Each is required to define personal language goals and report on their progress in meeting these goals.
"I think it’s important for the kids to feel that they’re getting what they think need," says Ms Kalis. "Over time they begin to think about their own language learning strategies and what helps them and what doesn’t help them. I always let them do what they think is good for them and try to talk about it because that’s the whole point. Most of them, after a while, come to terms with what is helpful for them."
New International School of Thailand
From ESL coordinator Raymond Normand’s description of his programme, ESL at NIST is very similar to the ISB programme in theory and implementation. Students enter mainstream academic courses immediately, but they also receive direct English language training coupled with academic support.
To do otherwise, he says, would not be in the best interests of the children. "With total withdrawal, he says, you get a lot of setbacks. The children are stigmatised and it’s not as realistic as being part of the mainstream."
At the same time, however, Mr Raymond stresses that "the presence of the ESL children within the class must not affect the standard of teaching. Although the mainstream teacher is sensitive to needs of ESL students, to lower their expectations would not be appropriate."
In the ESL segment of the programme, classes are capped at 10 students. "The whole idea of ESL," says Mr Raymond, "is that those students need the individual attention. The classes could be as small as 2 or 3. And as the students progress, then they’re promoted from level to level. They can move on a semesterly basis."
"The key to the (ESL) programme in both elementary and secondary levels," says Mr Raymond, "is the integration of content. The ESL teacher, in liaison with the mainstream teacher, works out a programme.
"Let’s say in the year two, if they are doing rain forest in the mainstream," he explains, "the ESL teacher would keep the same theme, identifying the needs of the students and creating lessons at the difficulty at which the children can cope."
To give an idea of how this works, Mr Raymond gave an example from his own class. He was teaching a group of eighth-year students and on the previous day he had attended their science class. The subject was forces and movement and the students had been assigned to describe a demonstration that had been carried out using a ping pong ball and a straw to put the ball in motion.
"When it came to writing it," says Mr Raymond, "of course, they had major problems – this is an intermediate class – so this morning, I repeated the demonstrations in ESL class. Yesterday after the class I gave them a short input on simple sentence structure, a revision of that, and an extension of writing more complicated sentences so they would be able to place more actions into one sentence.
"As we did the demonstration, I got their reactions and their verbal descriptions which I scripted on the board to show them the structure of the sentence and to show them the order of observation, thinking, relations of the different movements that take place and providing them with the vocabulary which they need for the subject. For example, force is not ‘put’, it is ‘applied’. The ball doesn’t ‘stop in the end’, eventually the ball ‘comes to rest’."
Bangkok Pattana
At Bangkok Pattana, ESL students join mainstream classes from day one, but that is where the similarity with ISB and NIST ends. ESL is very much a separate course, a part of the British IGCSE system, complete with its own external examination at the end of year 11.
"Basically," says ESL co-ordinator Robert Brown, "we have a relatively strict policy compared to other international schools in Thailand and in the whole region. We really insist that any English as a second language student who is below a native English speaker’s level studies English as a second language. They come to our classrooms when other students are learning Spanish or French – it’s a language course. It’s a reading and writing course and when they get to age sixteen, they will take an IGCSE exam in English as a second language.
"So we drop a lot of students onto the programme if there is any hint that they have ESL difficulties whatsoever – including quite talented high flyers. We just see the need for ESL in relation to their academic ability. Coming off is almost a no-no to be honest.
"Firstly, they need that qualification. Many of them won’t get English as a higher pass, English IGCSE, and so they actually need that qualification because that English as a second language qualification is deemed to be equal to English, it is an English qualification. It’s internationally recognised. It’s recognised by Thai universities. It’s recognised by international universities."
Interestingly, Mr Brown sees no role for ESL teachers in providing students with assistance with their academic courses. "We have no in-class support," he says. "We don’t need it. We are fortunate enough to be incredibly selective. We can take the cream, to be honest. They perform in the classroom fine, especially their speaking and listening. You wouldn’t know they were ESL students. They are completely fluent."
Then why do they need ESL at all? Like his counterparts at ISB and NIST, Mr Brown notes that "reading and writing is a different story and you will have persistent language mistakes."
Mr Brown obviously has strong feeling about this. "An ESL student is really always going to be an ESL student. It is very rare that you will find a completely bi-lingual student. There are very few people who are completely fluent in two languages at the native speaker level."
Unfortunately, it is easy to mistake spoken fluency for true proficiency, hence there is often parental pressure to take children out of the programme. Says Mr Brown, "the pressure to come off ESL can lead other schools, I believe, to taking students off the programme too early. There is a lot of parental pressure internationally to take students off. I’d say nearly all because of financial reasons."
ESL is generally treated as a separate fee and it can be quite expensive. Clearly, having ESL as a fully credited IGCSE course helps Bangkok Pattana resist such pressure.
Not your typical ESL class
This was not the kind of ESL class you might expect to find in Thailand. First of all, there were only nine students, five of them Thai, two Korean, one Japanese and one Israeli. On the surface, the subject had little to do with the English language at all. Teacher Raymond Normand spent the class period leading the students through a discussion of short texts on the Japanese occupation of Asian countries during World War II. Specifically, the students were asked to consider the reliability and usefulness of the sources of the texts. Were they primary or secondary sources? Were the originators of the texts in a position to really know what they said? Could they be biased in any way? This was an example of an advanced ESL class designed to directly support an academic course – in this case history. The students were all fully enrolled in the regular NIST programme with one exception. Instead of studying poetry or literature in an English class, the students received ESL instruction to help them with their other academic classes. The students were already quite fluent in the language and showed little hesitancy in speaking up in class. Their problem, said Mr Normand, was communicating their ideas in formal written English, particularly under the time constraints of an examination. Just such an examination was scheduled the following week in history class and that was the impetus for the day’s lesson. The students were learning how to structure answers pertaining to sources. In their previous attempts, the students had demonstrated a number of common failings. For example, under time pressure they might contradict themselves, terming a source reliable in one paragraph and unreliable in the next.
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |