CATESOL 2013:
Acquiring English Proficiency Through Blended Learning
By Brenda Huey-Rosas
S
ince I began teaching, I have been searching for a curriculum that would engage
ELL international students to help them
acquire the academic English necessary
to succeed in mainstream courses. Many
of my students come to school equipped
with the technology of 21st-century learners, and they have been disengaged in traditional classrooms taught with textbooks
where they are not able
to interact with technology or communicate
their thoughts and opinions as they process real-world issues. With the
help of my employers, I
was recently given the
opportunity to put all
Brenda
of my TESOL philosoHuey-Rosas
phies and experience
into a relevant, structured curriculum that
engages ELL students through technology
and real-world themes and ultimately accelerates reclassification rates.
I look forward to attending the CATESOL Annual Conference this year and presenting on this topic in “Acquired English
Proficiency Through Blended Learning.”
So why does this program work? First,
this program was built by an ELL teacher
for ELL teachers. I completed my master’s
degree in English TESOL at San Francisco
State University under the direction of Dr.
H. Douglas Brown, a former president of
International TESOL and author of Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. Dr. Brown helped me develop my own
teaching philosophies for second language
acquisition based on the principles of the
communicative language teaching (CLT)
approach and the content-based instruction
(CBI) approach. I began practicing these
philosophies as an ELL teacher in a multilevel classroom at Cornerstone Academy in
San Francisco, where I was challenged to
create relevant ELL materials for multiple
language levels and launch a comprehensive ELL program. When I came to Fairmont Education Group in 2009, I offered to
write a curriculum for ELL students based
on the theories that I had seen work in the
classroom at Cornerstone. I also wanted to
10 • CATESOL NEWS • FALL 2013
take that curriculum a step further by integrating technology for 21st-century learners. The curriculum I wrote developed into
the Acquired English Proficiency (AEP)
program.
We piloted the Acquired English Proficiency program with the ELL students at
Fairmont Preparatory Academy in 2012.
Overall, we saw a 0.8 level increase in
English proficiency per semester based on
a six-point scale from the SLATE test by
ITEP. Students were able to move from beginning to intermediate in less than a year.
Beyond that, the students were engaged in
class and felt that their class time was invaluable for discussion and participatory
activities.
We found that the AEP program
yielded these results because it is based
on the CLT and CBI approaches. In these
ways, students acquire English proficiency
through reading, writing, listening, and
speaking in a theme-based format, where
they interact with subject-area content in
areas of American culture, history, science,
and world issues.
Additionally, instruction is delivered
in a blended format that combines traditional classroom instruction with a teacher
and online instruction through a learningmanagement system and iBooks. Students
practice English inside and outside the
classroom with communicative activities that promote participation, where the
teacher is the facilitator, and student talktime is a priority. In this Intensive English
Language program, students grapple with
relevant, real-world issues through reading
and listening and the expression of their
opinions in speaking and writing.
After seeing the results of the pilot,
Fairmont Preparatory Academy rebuilt its
entire ELL program based on the AEP curriculum.
Through Fairmont’s blended learning
division Thesys International, we have also
partnered with a number of high schools
and educational providers to offer the AEP
program to their students. These partners
include: Palos Verdes Unified School District (through consultant Dan Fichtner,
former CATESOL president and current
CATESOL Education Foundation president), Pasadena Unified School District,
Cornerstone Academy, and University
Track Preparation. So far, teachers have
commented that their students have been
progressing at an accelerated rate and the
students are engaged to the point of thirsting for more instruction time.
As an ELL educator myself, I find
it very exciting to see the AEP program
working for ELL students at so many different schools. I know how difficult it is to
engage ELL students, [