Atlantic Community College, English as a Second Language
The English as a Second Language (ESL) program is one part of Project Mac Bridge, which utilizes Macintosh technology in a number of different curricula at the two campuses of Atlantic Community College. ESL performs a crucial role for students by providing an intensive introduction to the fundamentals of hearing, thinking, speaking, and writing in a non-native language.
There are several sections to the ESL program: accredited ESL classes for students entering community colleges; non-credit ESL classes for returning adults completing their high school diplomas or getting their GED; and a federally funded contract base that provides training to help community members find employment.
Started in 1974, the ESL credit program originally required two semesters to complete and was purely grammar-based, relying heavily on competency testing.
Currently the program requires three semesters, and incorporates a more functionally based, whole language approach that includes oral and listening proficiency, communication, and fluency skills.
Associate Dean Peter Mora states, “The college has a fairly robust interest in developing and maintaining the ESL program. In fact, the first application of technology involving personal computers on campus were Apple IIes for ESL. Our people have really been out front in using technology where it is appropriate.”
A state grant funded the 20 original Apple IIe computers. One of the first software programs purchased was a commercial product specific to ESL called Grammar Mastery, from the American Language Academy. Judith Matsunobu, the ESL coordinator, reviews it as “a traditional tutorial drill and practice grammar supplement that students love.” Other packages used by the program include Spell-It and Word Attack, both of which are, “authorable programs that we could fit into our content through authoring, using the existing framework.”
The move to Macintosh computers was made available through three additional grants. Macintosh LCs and SEs are used primarily for word processing, using extensive reading and writing skills. At any given moment, the ESL program is staffed with between five and seven faculty members, and the computer lab is run by both faculty members and student assistants who act as lab aides and tutors.
The program consists of elementary through advanced levels of course study. At the elementary level, the course requirement is an intensive 12 hours a week, which incorporates time spent in the computer lab. The emphasis is on reinforcing current knowledge of vocabulary, and learning new vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. A faculty member is generating HyperCard lesson stacks that deal with different issues related to the students’ lives—both socially and in terms of their jobs. The stacks are function-based and situational: one instance uses greetings and introductions to explore vocabulary, dialogue, listening, pronunciation, writing, and grammar, and directs the student in the use of complementary tape-recorded lessons. In the second half of the semester, students start writing paragraphs on the word processor in Microsoft Works.
At the intermediate level, students reinforce and hone specific grammar points, and work on an extended piece of writing, usually an autobiography. At the advanced level, students produce actual magazines and form books, typically works of fiction. Soon to be incorporated into the advanced level is a CD-ROM program called MacEnglish that contains three components: business English, pronunciation, and general cultural information. It allows students to read an article, hear it read, record themselves reading the article, and then compare their recording against the original.
Both intermediate and advanced levels have a career education unit. Industry guest speakers address interview techniques, and videotapes on interviewing and workplace skills are integrated, with heavy emphasis on role-playing.
At every level of the program, the emphasis is placed on ESL in everyday living: making doctor appointments, shopping, making hotel reservations, asking for information in a variety of situations, as well as addressing safety and consumer issues.
Matsunobu is confident of at least one clear benefit of technology’s incorporation in the classroom: “Students who complete the advanced level of our program, exit the program computer-literate, and are confident in using computers. This provides a definite advantage when they go on to the regular college program.”
There is also a plus in teaching with computers that Mora believes is a key point of the curriculum: “It does enable more flexibility in personalizing that instruction for the individual.” Matsunobu sums up her staff’s experience with the Macintosh in the project’s computer lab: “They give instructors more options for delivering individualized instruction, and there is immediate feedback. If there’s a wrong answer given, the student finds out about it immediately.”
A new direction for the project is a network called MacJanet. MacJanet was developed and purchased from Waterloo College in Canada and is run on an Ethernet background. Under development now is a project that will use MacJanet for interactive writing lessons. Its goal is, according to Matsunobu, “Students working on a network will be able to communicate with each other, and really use the computer as a means of communication. It has great depth for our ESL students. Some students are very shy about speaking. If they can communicate and use the language on the computer, that’s great.”
Mora holds a future view that is “a combination of multimedia—integrating sound and video in a network environment, but always making that consistent with sound for the pedagogy of what’s required in the field.”
Matsunobu finds belonging to a special interest group called Computer-Assisted Language Learning helps the ESL at Atlantic Community College stay at the forefront of technology. Two programs earmarked for purchase when funding permits are MacLang, which allows the computer to interface with a tape recorder for interactive tape recordings; and a program developed at Chemeteka College called Textbook ToolBox, an authoring program that allows the incorporation of sounds.
Contact: Judith Matsunobu, associate professor and coordinator of ESL, Atlantic Community College, Black Horse Pike, Mays Landing, NJ 08330; (609)343-4934, E-mail: ACCA.ACC@applelink.apple.com
