TESL Community Learning Classroom

Marilyn Abbott, PhD

Teaching English as a Second Language Program, Department of Educational Psychology, Faculty of Education, University of Alberta

Meeting Low Proficiency English as Second Language Learners' Language Needs

Welcome to Dr. Marilyn Abbott's Undergraduate Student Services Field Experience Project!

The goal of this project is to help in-service and pre-service teachers meet the needs of ESL students.

Please take a browse through this site to find out more about the project and how it can help you.

About the Project

Goal

The overarching goal of this project is to help in-service and pre-service teachers become better prepared to meet the complex diverse needs of English as a second language (ESL) learners who have limited literacy and limited formal schooling in their first language.

Activities

Four focus group interviews were conducted at four Edmonton schools that have had recent influxes of (ESL) learners who have limited literacy and limited formal schooling in their first language. The focus groups explored the professional development needs of teachers working with these limited proficiency ESL learners. Workshops designed to meet the most frequently expressed professional development needs were then developed by groups of university students and public school teachers who were enrolled in EDPY 413 - Principles and Practice in Teaching ESL Learners. The presentations are posted on this website.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to...

  • The administrators and teachers from Edmonton Catholic and Public School Boards for their time, insightful comments, and support of this research
  • Kerri McLaughlin-Phillips and Karen deMilliano for facilitating the data collection at the ECSB ESL Centre
  • University of Alberta’s Undergraduate Student Services for funding this Field Experience Project
  • All the wonderful EDPY 413 university students for their efforts to develop presentations that make such interesting connections between theory and practice
  • Research assistants Amy Holtby, Christine Pannekoek, and Kent Lee for their assistance with this project