Tag Archives: handouts

• Approaching Grammar with Generation 1.5 Students and Other Ear-Learners (REVISITED)

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Cover Gen 1.5

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

In our college, there was a category of ESL students who stymied the instructors.  They were fluent speakers but continually struggled with basic the grammar on writing tasks.  Any ESL program that has immigrant students will probably have these types of students described as “ear-learners” or Generation 1.5.

Gen 1.5 students are sort of between first generation and second generation immigrant.  They immigrated with their family when they were elementary or high school age.

A growing number of these students indicate a goal of obtaining a college degree.  However, unfortunately, many of them struggle to make the transition from studying basic English skills in ESL courses to taking academic ESL and mainstream academic courses.

Among those who do apply to colleges, a considerable number do not meet the minimum standards for writing and are thus not accepted.

I, along with two colleagues, were able to get a grant a few years ago to study these students and to develop an approach to helping them learn grammar for writing by taking into consideration their special learning styles.

In this posting,

  1. I’ll describe these students and their learning styles.
  2. I’ll also explain the type of materials and include examples that we used with them.
  3. And finally, I’ll summarize the very positive results that we got from the study.

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• Short, High-Interest Articles for Extensive Reading # 10:“Ants Who Stop Elephants and Help Lions”

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Ants Cover shot

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) *

In Kenya, there was a type of tree called acacia trees which had a special relationship with a type of native ant. The trees helped the ants by providing food and a home for them. And similarly, the ants helped the trees by stopping animals, for example, elephants, from eating them. Whenever an elephant started to eat the leaves of a tree, these ants would rush up inside their trunks and bite them. Therefore, the elephants avoided trying to eat those leaves, and as a result, the grasslands continued to be covered with those acacia trees.

Unfortunately, this story does not have a happy ending for the ants and trees. (See complete article below.) 

For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings”  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: ESL Reading> Short, High Interest Articles for Extensive Readings

Here is the 10th article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also included are three optional exercises: True-False Questions; Paraphrasing Exercise; Reflection Exercise.

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• Stimulating Small-Group Discussion Activity 2: Loneliness Might Not Be What You Think (Including Paraphrasing Exercises.) REVISITED

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Cover read for discussion SHOT

(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)*

Some reasons why students seemed stimulated by this discussion:

1) Since almost all the students were living away from home, they were able to relate to the challenge of connecting to new people.
2) They seemed interested in hearing how their classmates were coping with living away from home: some loved it and some felt lonely.
3) They enjoyed discussing how social media is both helpful and harmful especially concerning making connections to people.
4) They seemed surprised that some of their classmates are not especially connected to their family members.

Here is the basis for this discussion: According to research, loneliness has little connection to how many people are around us.  In his book,  Lost Connections,  Jonathan Hari explains that loneliness is caused by a loss of connection to others. To end loneliness, according Hari, we need two things: other people and a feeling that we are sharing something meaningful or something we care about with another person or other people.

This and future discussion activities include four parts:

1) A one-page article usually including a brief summary of a high-interest research study.
2) Ten true-false comprehension questions.
3) Pre-Discussion Exercise in which students read and think about several questions about their experience and opinions about the topic before discussing them in groups.
4) Small-group discussions of the article in which each student is given a paper with different content/personal experience questions in the form of Student A, B or C.

Bonus for this Discussion Activity 2: Paraphrasing exercise.

About Discussion Activity 2: Loneliness Might Not Be What You Think and the handout.

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• Short, High-Interest Articles for Extensive Reading # 9: “An Important Reason Why Teenagers Stink”

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Cover pic stink

(This posting includes a handout LINK AT THE END OF THIS POST which you are welcome to use with your students.) *

People think close family members smell worse compared to the smell of strangers, according to recent research. And there is an interesting reason for this.

Most studies about recognizing human smells (odors) looked at mothers and their newborn babies. The studies found that they recognized each other’s odors soon after birth. However, a team of researchers wanted to know how well other family members could recognize the smell of each other.

Twenty-five families with at least two children between 6 and 15 years old volunteered for the study. The participants were given special T-shirts and soap that had no odors. They slept in the T-shirts for three nights. Each morning, they put the T-shirts in special bags and then washed themselves with only the special odorless soap (in other words, soap that has no smell).

Next, researchers asked everyone to sniff with their nose two T-shirts. One of the shirts was worn by a family member and the other by someone they didn’t know and was not a relative. The researchers asked mothers and fathers if they could identify which shirt was their children’s, and asked children if they could tell which was their parents’ or siblings’. In addition, they asked which odor they preferred.

Here are the results: (See complete article below.)

For background information about these articles and for suggestions for how to use them with your students, see  • Introducing “Short, High-Interest Readings”  Also, I’ll be adding more of these articles in the right-hand column: ESL Reading> Short, High Interest Articles for Extensive Readings

Here is the 9th article. You can download the article for your students by clicking on the link at the end. Also included are three optional exercises: True-False Questions; Paraphrasing Exercise; Reflection Exercise.

Continue reading →