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2006 AU TESOL Summer Intensive Workshop

(TESL-560) Leaving No Learners Out: Rethinking Literacy and Language in ESL/ESOL Classrooms

Traditional schooling has not been highly successfully in reaching learners from non-traditional backgrounds, especially for those who have other languages and literacies at home. Moreover, traditional ways of learning may be giving way to new types of learning and indeed new literacy practices in this time of new, expanding communication media.

This workshop examines why traditional approaches to learning have not had greater success with some students and looks at new models and approaches to learning, some drawn from educational television programs, some drawn from video games, in an attempt to reach out to those learners who are often marginalized, so that they may also succeed and obtain the level of education they desire.

The result will be a repertoire of design principles that can be used to structure more effective lessons,  scaffold more effective teaching practices in the classroom and provide hands-on explicit practice that allows student to master academic language and discourse for ESL student audiences including elementary ed.,  secondary ed, and college preparation. 

Quote:  I can’t imagine having finished my degree without having taken this workshop.  Hamid Mohammed, MA in TESOL

 

 

Workshop Leaders:

Gee
James Paul Gee, Ph.D. is the Tashia Morgridge Chair in Reading in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Dr.  Gee's work over the last decade has centered on the development of an integrated theory of language, literacy, and schooling, a theory that draws on work in socially situated cognition, sociocultural approaches to language and literacy, language development, discourse studies, critical theory, and applied linguistics. His recent work has extended his ideas on language, literacy, and society to deal with the so-called "new capitalism" and its cognitive, social, and political implications for literacy and schooling. He has published widely in journals in linguistics, psychology, the social sciences, and education and is a member of the editorial board of twelve journals. In 1989, the Journal of Education, one of the longest running journals in education in the United States, published a special issue devoted to reprinting his early essays on literacy. His books include Sociolinguistics and Literacies (1990, Second Edition 1996); The Social Mind (1992); The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism (1996, with Glynda Hull and Colin Lankshear); and An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (1999). His most recent books both deal with video games and learning. What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003) offers 36 reasons why good video games produce better learning conditions than many of today's schools. Situated Language and Learning (2004) places video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy and shows how they can help us to better understand deep human learning and lead us in thinking about the reform of schools.

Kate Kinsella, Ed.D. is a teacher educator in the Department of Secondary Education at San Francisco State University. She teaches coursework addressing academic language and literacy development in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms. She has maintained secondary classroom involvement by teaching an academic literacy class for adolescent English learners through the University’s Step to College Program.  She publishes and provides consultancy and training nationally, focusing upon responsible instructional practices that provide second language learners and less proficient readers in grades 4-12 with the language and literacy skills vital to educational mobility.  
       Dr. Kinsella is co-author of Scholastic’s Read 180 Intervention Program direct instruction teaching curricula called the “R Book: Read, Write, Reflect.”  She recently co-authored a research monograph commissioned by Scholastic, Inc. addressing the pivotal role of explicit, research-informed vocabulary instruction to close the national achievement gap. She is the program author for Reading in the Content Areas: Strategies for Reading Success, published by Pearson Learning and the lead program author for the 2002 Prentice Hall secondary language arts program Timeless Voices: Timeless Themes.  She is the former editor of the CATESOL Journal (CA Assn. of Teachers of ESL) and serves on the editorial board for the California Reader. A former TESOL Fulbright scholar, Dr. Kinsella has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Marcus Foster Memorial Reading Award, offered by the California Reading Association in 2002 to a California educator who has made a significant statewide impact on both policy and pedagogy in the area of literacy.  In 2005 she received the California Department of Education’s Award of Excellence for her contributions to improving the education of California’s immigrant youth.
       For more information about Dr. Kinsella's portion of the workshop, click here

Angela Dadak Angela Dadak is Instructor of Record for this summer's intensive workshop. She is the International Student Coordinator for AU's College Writing Program and Writing Center. She has created and taught courses at AU designed to introduce new international undergraduates to the AU discourse community. Her research interests include second language writing, cross-cultural communication and adaptation and faculty development.
Prof. Brady
Brock Brady is Coordinator of American University TESOL Programs and Director of Summer TESOL Insitute, ELT-1 (Online): Brock Brady teaches courses in Language Assessment, Cultural Issues in the ESL/EFL Classroom, and Curriculum and Materials Development, and Teaching Methodology. His research interests include cross-cultural discourse analysis, new methods for teaching pronunciation, teacher preparation programs, and methodology of successful distance learning. He is a past president of the Washington Area TESOL Affiliate.

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TESOL Program
Language and Foreign Studies
American University
Washington, DC 20016-8045

Tel: 202.885.2582
Fax: 202.885.1356
Email: tesol@american.edu
Last Modified: June 13, 2006    
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