Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages

Teaching the ESL Student

The English language is a difficult one to master , even for the native speaker . Its many rules and exceptions comprise a language that , in conversation and in writing , can be complex . To the student for whom English is a second language - also known as ESL students - speaking reading and compositional writing in the American academic setting can be extremely daunting . Learning English , like any skill , improves with practice . For the ESL student , English mastery is an achievable goal even though the learning process may be fraught with frustration

br Therefore , it incumbent upon the instructor to approach students with patience and clarity . Likewise , it is necessary to select reading and learning materials that are designed to facilitate a greater understanding of sentence structure , vocabulary and diction . Therefore the greater the emphasis on reading and writing as supplementary to one another , the more probable that an ESL student will become an adequate writer

The overarching goal of the ESL instructor is to help non-native speakers to draw equivalency in meaning between terms and ideas originating from two different languages . With regard to objects , ideas and principles , the symbols which constitute our words are specific to and different within the context of each language , even when the objects , ideas and principles are universally the same in meaning . For a student of a language which is foreign to her , comprehensive instruction is an absolutely essential tool for properly applying linguistic meanings to new words

In to be an effective ESL instructor , the teacher must adhere to a host of conditions . The responsibility of greatest importance to the ESL instructor is in carefully selecting the terminology which is used to convey meaning in bilingual instruction . The two variables of central concern in conveying an idea or meaning as these are represented in separate languages are the `source language ' and the `target language ' The source language is the one within which students are already literate . An effective ESL teacher will , in the determination of its word choice within the source language and its correspondent target language terminology , abide three primary criteria

In defining suitable relationships which attribute equivalence to source and target terms , the teacher must first seek to achieve descriptive adequacy . According to linguistic expert James Manley , it can be said that a translated term is adequately descriptive if it is comprehensible and directs our attention to the object under discussion ' Under such conditions , that the terminology is suggestive of a relationship with the object to which it is intended will support the legitimacy and effectiveness of a curricular instruction

The second condition of prime importance is the provision of instruction and the use terminology which is not ambiguous in its assertion of meaning . This can be confounded by the presence of single words that are known to possess multiple meanings in a source language but which are represented by two separate terms in a target language Homographs , as these are referred to in the English language , may cause a...