ESL students in A&P [HAPP-L]

[Pam Langley <plangley@xxxxxxxxx>]

One of our faculty today asked me to ask the list how they assess ESL
students' readiness for A&P. Here in New Hampshire, we are really only
just starting to see any significant ESL issues, but have grown to where
we have students from 35 different countries speaking at least 35
different languages - which makes us very happy as a campus community,
but which presents instructors with classroom issues they may not have
encountered before.

We do have an ESL specialist available for help for both students and
faculty, but once students are eligible to register for non-ESL classes
based on their TOEFL score, they are loathe to seek additional help. Do
any of you have any recommendations for appropriate cut-off scores on
the TOEFL for admission into A&P? [Ours is two-semesters with lab; high
school biology and chemistry with labs as prereqs; the big Tortora or
Marieb for primary text.] The ESL and Biology folks considered creating
a medical terminology course specifically for ESL students, but it was
felt that students would not take it because they tend to be very
confident in their language skills whether it's justified or not.

Also, this particular faculty member says she finds that her ESL
students seem to be able to read the words more or less OK and to
memorize pretty well. Therefore, they do pretty well on
identification-type lab exams and lecture questions that are simple
facts, but when they get to labs with complex directions or physiology
lecture questions that involve working through a series of steps to
reach a conclusion, they cannot take their language skills to that next
level, though they probably have the inherent reasoning ability to do
the tasks if they understood what was being asked (unlike those non-ESL
students who are simply not intellectually equipped to handle the
challenge...)

So - she's looking for advice for some sort of pre-assessment that might
provide students and advisors with a better idea of their readiness for
A&P.

Any ideas would be appreciated...

thanks,

pam




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