Developmental+Notes+&+Conferences

NADE Conference 2012, Orlando, Florida March 2012 Daniel Everhart Instructor, Developmental English Southeast Community College

Here are some notes I took at the NADE conference. As I attended sessions, I found specific themes resonated for me throughout sessions. Maybe this was because I was curious about these topics. Maybe it was because we as a college share many of the growing pains that colleges nationwide are experiencing. Theme One: //The needs of students (post ESL) and native English speakers in developmental courses are different and often must be reconciled within the same developmental class.// One session discussed these differences. The post ESL student’s primary challenges center around lack of sufficient vocabulary, difficulties with verb tense and articles, and lack of familiarity with traditional Western thinking modes (use of sources; hierarchy of main idea, major detail, & minor detail; and organizational modes). Whereas, the “typical native speaker” experiences challenges rooted in critical thinking processes, experiential knowledge with written English in reading and writing, and behavioral/holistic problems. As we all know, the needs of these two types differ dramatically in what they need from an instructor. Where the post-ESL student struggles with word recognition, native speakers struggle with processing information, and critical thinking skills. An ESL student can take hours looking up unknown vocabulary and still need help from the instructor understanding what the whole means. In contrast, a native speaker will read over words he/she doesn’t understand hurting effective comprehension. The instructor must model and coach the student to aid in processing as well as help the student rehearse different processing steps for main idea, detail, implied meaning, and inference. For many post ESL students, their reading and writing rate is considerably slower due to the lack of vocabulary. It may take them a week to decode an article that the native speaker reads (albeit ineffectively) in one sitting. This can affect the pace of the classroom. On the other hand, native speakers may think they’ve read an article and comprehend it but really do not understand what they’ve read. The instructor must go over the material again and check for understanding at a word-by-word and at a holistic level. In this session, the speaker described how she paired students together in reading and writing activities. Pairs were created based on initial diagnostics and “interviewing” students. Each pair had to collaborate on one or more reading and writing activities each week. Several pairings were of one ESL student and one native speaker. The speaker showed us several examples of success from this endeavor. Theme Two: //Many colleges are in the process of developing new infrastructure (faculty & curriculum) to support developmental (foundational) classes. This process involves an ongoing effort to define what role and purpose such classes play within that specific college. The role of developmental instructor continues to evolve in many of these cases.// In one session, a developmental instructor from a community college in Houston described the way they transformed their remedial courses into introductory nursing / study skills / reading & writing classes. Developmental instructors in collaboration with the nursing program developed courses that offered students the ability to learn medical terms while they worked on study skills, reading, and writing. The class (which was specifically designed for pre-nursing students) integrated introductory material from the nursing department with instruction to improve reading and writing skills. Developmental instructors worked with instructors from nursing to give students insight into their program. (Note: The classes they created were not far from a cross between our medical terminology classes, Beginning Writing, and Reading Strategies. Their classes targeted students needing developmental classes and who expressed an interest in the nursing or the medical field in general. Of course, this involves the cooperation of specific programs in question. This approach according to the presenter offered students an insight into a specific field, vocational culture, and is an excellent motivational tool for retention. The one issue I have with this approach is that program content shouldn’t take the place of the general core requirements in reading and writing. There are specific universal goals inherent in general core courses. It is important that we as developmental instructors recognize that integrating specific program content is secondary to achieving general core requirements listed by SCC.) Well, these are some of the notes. I’ll try to send out more as time allows. Sincerely,

Daniel Everhart Instructor, Developmental English Southeast Community College