INTRODUCTION
The 2009 volume of the MinneWITESOL
Journal brings a welcome addition to the editorial staff. Continuing
editors Mike Anderson and Bonnie Swierzbin are very pleased to have Gail Ibele
and Andrea Poulos of the University of Wisconsin at Madison join them as
co-editors. Welcome, Gail and Andrea!
ARTICLES
The first section of Volume 26 includes articles that explore a
variety of issues related to teaching ESL.
In the opening article, Tina Scott Edstam and Constance L. Walker
explore a model of on-going collaborative professional development among ESL
and other mainstream teachers. Using the
example of one school district, they explain how this model may be more
effective than common one-time in-service trainings, and explore the factors
crucial to creating successful in-service professional development.
A
weakness in the area of TESOL research seems to be that the majority of studies
have been carried out on well-educated participants. One example is the research that has been
done on the effectiveness of explicit instruction in request-making. In her article on metapragmatic requesting
instruction, Emily Suh reviews the research that has been done in this area,
and goes on to describe her pilot study done in an adult basic education/ESOL setting.
In the third article in this volume, Janelle Fischler describes a
study that investigates
the effectiveness of teaching English word and sentence stress patterns to high
school students through the recitation of rap music. In addition to a perceptible
improvement in the pronunciation of most of the study participants, she
recounts how the students gained metacognitive skills regarding word and
sentence stress production.
REPORTS
In the second
section of this volume, Karen Lybeck reports the results of a survey of
in-service ESL teachers regarding their pre-service preparation and their
current teaching practices. The purpose
of this article is to share insights with teacher trainers on how to strengthen
the connection between pre-service training and continuing professional development.
In
the second report, Jennifer Ouellette-Schramm introduces the reader to the
terms and ideas of adult stage theories, that is, theories involving the notion
that adults may continue to psychologically develop in identifiable stages. She
reports on possible applications in the field of adult basic education/ESOL.
REVIEWS
The third section of the Journal
includes reviews of books for mainstream teachers with ELLs in their classes,
ESL textbooks, and a multimedia tool.
Based on her many years of experience in education and
professional development , Ann Mabbott reviews several textbooks that our
readers can recommend to their mainstream teacher colleagues with ELLs in their
classrooms. Her review compares Adding
English: A Guide to Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms, Making Content
Instruction Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model, and Classroom Instruction That Works for English
Language Learners.
Kristine Ranweiler examines Edge:
Reading, Writing & Language Level A, an ESL language arts textbook for
high school students with an intermediate reading level; Katie Subra reviews Present Yourself 1: Experiences, a text
designed to help low-intermediate young adult ELLs to prepare and deliver
speeches in American English; and Julie Sivula Reiter reviews Well Read 4: Skills and Strategies for
Reading, which is designed for high school or college-age students whose
English reading proficiency is at a high-intermediate or low-advanced level.
The section finishes with a review by Steven Ahola of Voice Thread, a web-based multimedia
slide show that may include text, audio, and video files.
There will not be a special topic for Volume 27 of the Journal, but we hope that readers will
continue to submit their work on various issues related to teaching ESL, with
special encouragement to submit grammar usage studies, which have appeared in
the Journal in the past, but have
been fewer in number in recent years. We
welcome your explorations into the realms of American English grammar which
remain uncharted.
We thank all of those involved in the process of creating this
volume of the MinneWITESOL Journal,
particularly the authors and the Editorial Advisory Board. We also thank
Hamline University, the University of Minnesota, and University of Wisconsin
for their support of the editorial process.
Mike Anderson Gail
Ibele
University of Minnesota University
of Wisconsin-Madison
Andrea Poulos Bonnie
Swierzbin
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Hamline University