What do your ESOL students have trouble with right now?  What are you struggling to teach ESOL students?

Over the years, I have been asked how to start teaching ESOL students many times by many teachers.  Thomas Johnston had an excellent answer to this question that I turned into a slide deck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/170Y9LXHxcvW-M8tC08Vic-0YMQlXRTSd/view?usp=sharing

I also have a page on this site that does something similar: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/help 

• You should explicitly tell your students that copying directly from the internet is not allowed.  

• You should do make sure to do some kind of comprehension check to ensure that students understand. 

• Then, reject work that is directly copies.

• Realize that some culture don't have the same ideas about authorship, the ownership of ideas and words, copyright, and plagiarism that Americans do.

  • "Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Source Referencing and Plagiarism" by Noelle Vance

    • TL;DR:  Plagiarism is viewed differently across cultures. In Western academia, citing sources is essential to protect individual ownership of ideas, while in other cultures—especially those with collective traditions—knowledge may be seen as communal, making attribution less emphasized. This creates challenges for international students who may unintentionally break Western citation rules. Practices like patchwriting (copying with minor changes) are often used as learning strategies but can be misread as plagiarism. Collaboration, common in some cultures, can also blur the lines of authorship. Educators should address these differences directly, teaching not only citation mechanics but also the philosophy behind academic integrity. A culturally sensitive approach can reduce misunderstandings, support ethical scholarship, and help students adjust to Western standards without stereotyping.

• These are my plagarism materials.

  • Webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/mccoy23-24/units/0-5-plagiarism

  • Video: https://go.screenpal.com/watch/c0jQYCVk8Ux  

  • Branching Form: https://forms.gle/rFqQ2Jtrvy1kjbkQ8 

Plagiarism and AI

• Generally, actually trying to confirm that something is AI is a bad idea.  I would just ask the student to define all of the words used in the suspected piece.

• I have resources on the student use of AI

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Translation Methods:

• If you are struggling with ESOL students, please email jason.mccoy@slps.org

• If you need some resources right now, try this: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/help 

• If you are not able to provide English instruction to an ESOL student, translation might be the best way to get the material to the student.  You should do this carefully.  You should also know that some of our learners don't read in their first language, so leveling texts might be better than translating them.

  • Leveling Texts

    • Diffit does this for you: https://web.diffit.me/ 

    • It is possible to level texts with AI, but your results will vary.  I suggest asking the bot to: "Rewrite this text in simple English.  Where tier 2 words are used, define them in parentheses".

    • Common Lit will give you leveled texts:https://www.commonlit.org/ 

    • Newsela will give you leveled texts: https://newsela.com/ 

    • Providing Sentence Stems is helpful: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/sentence-stemsframes 

    • Providing wordbanks, terms, and definitions is helpful.

    • Explicitly covering vocabulary is helpful.

  • Translating Texts

    • Google Documents will translate the texts you have already created: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/187189?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop 

    • Google Translate will translate PDFs and whatever else you want to translate: https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=ar&op=translate 

    • Chrome will translate webpages: https://go.screenpal.com/watch/cZQTlQVSzUH 

    • AI can do translation and translate for multiple languages: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/reduce-the-linguistic-load/rapid-ai-translation-with-multiple-languages 

    • Many popular stories are already translated and sometimes, you can find them through a google search.

GSTEM Live Spoken Translation Cheat Sheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xYpFKV7fbZllwm5z0yIawcpJsRhK3KWM/view?usp=sharing 

• • Leveling Texts

    • Diffit does this for you: https://web.diffit.me/ 

    • It is possible to level texts with AI, but your results will vary.  I suggest asking the bot to: "Rewrite this text in simple English.  Where tier 2 words are used, define them in parentheses".

    • Common Lit will give you leveled texts:https://www.commonlit.org/ 

    • Newsela will give you leveled texts: https://newsela.com/ 

    • Providing Sentence Stems is helpful: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/sentence-stemsframes 

    • Providing wordbanks, terms, and definitions is helpful.

    • Explicitly covering vocabulary is helpful.