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Re: ESL students in A&P [HAPP-L]

This sounds really familiar and I can't say we have come up with a perfect
solution, but we have done two things to help with problems of the sort you
mention in A+P.  Years ago we put a prerequisite of Biological Principles in
front of most of our 4-credit lab courses.  This gives students a chance to
work on science and critical thinking skills in a course before Anatomy and
Physiology or Microbiology.  That helped tremendously.  However, we were
still facing problems with ESL students in Bio Principles so added the
following prerequisites last year.
"One unit of high school science, preferably biology, and Preparing for
College Reading II (11092), Introductory Writing (11099), and Fundamentals
of Mathematics (38010) or waiver by placement testing results or
Departmental Approval"

This gives us students who are a bit more proficient in basic skills.
Again, not the perfect solution, but a help.
The memorization skills may have been strongly reinforced in the student's
earlier education.  Many of us give specific objectives including practice
compare and contrast and structure-function questions and encourage the
students to practice writing in those formats.

I hope this helps a bit, and I look forward to other suggestions that we can
use to help the students succeed.  I try to imagine myself taking a class in
French or Spanish to remind myself of what it must be like!  LK

Linda S. Kollett, Ph.D.
Department of Biology
Massasoit Community College
1 Massasoit Boulevard
Brockton  MA 02302
508.588.9100 x 1622



From: Pam Langley <plangley@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: HAPP-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2003 15:12:44 -0500
To: HAPS Listserve <HAPP-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: ESL students in A&P [HAPP-L]

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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