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| Distance learning helps ESOL efforts in Boston |
| by Nancy Caronia |
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May 21, 2007
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Boston has a population of 590,000, including more than 150,000 immigrants -- that's one in four residents -- speaking in 140 different languages.
In 2000, the Mayor's Office of New Bostonians instituted English for New Bostonians, a four-year, $4 million public-private partnership to increase English for Speakers of Other Languages programs. The Boston Foundation, Citizens Bank, Boston Neighborhood Jobs Trust, Fleet Charitable Trusts, the Hyams Foundation, and Verizon are contributing sponsors to EFNB in the hope of helping these new residents find success within Boston's city limits.
While many of Boston's approximately 125 community-based adult literacy programs are funded in some part through the state's Department of Education, ENFB chose to focus on fostering ESOL classes for its newest immigrants. In addition, many programs (including ENFB) are looking to distance learning to service a waiting list of as many as 6,000 individuals who can wait up to two years before a slot opens in an ESOL or ESL class.
Lessons From Los Angeles
The nonprofit organization Boston Adult Literacy Fund administers EFNB in collaboration with the city's Office of Jobs and Community Services. Since 1990, BALF supported adult literacy and ESOL programs in the Boston area by serving more than 23,000 adults and raising approximately $2.4 million for literacy education.
One distance learning initiative that BALF is supporting through EFNB is English For All, a free Web-based multimedia system developed by the Los Angeles Unified School District. While the LAUSD model incorporates California standards for ESL and the Latino Adult Education Skills Project, it's simple for DL instructors from other states to modify and add to the curriculum through the creation of Web pages within the organization's Web site.
EFA has five standalone videotapes, each containing four 15-minute programs, and five CD-ROMS designed to work in conjunction with the EFA Web site, plus there are additional materials for students and teachers available as downloadable PDF files.
EFNB is currently funding four EFA pilot programs including one at Jamaica Plain Community Center, which is using a blended learning model. According to distance learning instructor Diana Satin, there are 20 slots per session and 31 students have completed the course thus far. While Satin said the EFA course is quite simple to navigate and implement, she has added optional monthly face-to-face meetings and additional online writing assignments to supplement the EFA materials.
"We also use Web cameras to meet as a group or meet one-on-one to work on such aspects of speaking as pronunciation and vocabulary relevant to students' professions," she explained. "I bought Web cameras that students can borrow on a monthly basis in case they don't own one."
While Satin said she designed the DL course at JPCC, she did "lots of research into existing programs and Web sites on DL for adults to learn about best practices. I tried to include some community building by having a two-evening orientation instead of one and through the monthly face-to-face and Web camera meetings. DL students are also invited to the regular program's graduation celebration."
Home-Grown Solutions
Besides the EFNB's use of the EFA online coursework, the state Department of Education supports one EFA program located at the Notre Dame Education Center in South Boston. It's administered through the Massachusetts Distance Learning Project's Anytime, Anywhere program, which has been providing free access to education beyond the classroom for ABE, GED, and ESOL learners since 1998.
NDEC serves about three dozen DL students per year. According to NDEC distance learning teacher Roger Hooper, learners in the writing classes are currently all ESOL adult learners, although the program supports native speakers of English who wish to improve their writing skills for personal or educational goals such as GED.
Hooper has created parallel lessons in writing skills development to go along with the EFA online curriculum. In the second half of the course, Hooper said, "I move the challenge up a bit by asking them to interpret the story they see on EFA lessons, to analyze from a critical viewpoint, and to go to a new Web site to read thematically-related material and write about the theme in a very different context. This is substantially more challenging material and is designed not just to develop personal writing skills and fluency, but to develop academic and critical writing skills for students preparing to transition into skills training or community college classes."
The NDEC DL programs are supported by the Notre Dame Virtual School platform, which is built on the FirstClass software and allows students to communicate with Hooper via e-mail. A software folder allows students to share writing assignments with Hooper, who can then return assignments to the folder for revision.
"If the student's writing demonstrates a serious grammatical problem with frequent or egregious mistakes on some grammar topic, I refer the student to 'Grammar In Use,' which has short two-page grammar lessons on most essential topics and is self correcting with an answer key," he noted. "In all three classes, my work with students is focused on getting them to write sentences, paragraphs, and short compositions, to review my comments and suggestions about grammar, vocabulary, and style, and to revise and rewrite."
MORE INFO
Anywhere Anytime anywhereanytimeabe.org
Boston Adult Literacy Fund balf.net
English for All myefa.org
Notre Dame Boston ndecboston.org
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