Teaching Academic ESL Writing: Practical Techniques in Vocabulary and Grammar fills an important gap in teacher professional preparation by focusing on the grammatical and lexical features that are essential for all ESL writing teachers and student-writers to know. The fundamental assumption is that before students of English for academic purposes can begin to successfully produce academic writing, they must have the foundations of language in place--the language tools (grammar and vocabulary) they need to build a text. This text offers a compendium of techniques for teaching writing, grammar, and lexis to second-language learners that will help teachers effectively target specific problem areas of students' writing. Based on the findings of current research, including a large-scale study of close to 1,500 non-native speakers' essays, this book works with several sets of simple rules that collectively can make a noticeable and important difference in the quality of ESL students' writing. The teaching strategies and techniques are based on a highly practical principle for efficiently and successfully maximizing learners' language gains. Part I provides the background for the text and a sample of course curriculum guidelines to meet the learning needs of second-language teachers of writing and second-language writers. Parts II and III include the key elements of classroom teaching: what to teach and why, possible ways to teach the material in the classroom, common errors found in student prose and ways to teach students to avoid them, teaching activities and suggestions, and questions for discussion in a teacher-training course. Appendices to chapters provide supplementary word and phrase lists, collocations, sentence chunks, and diagrams that teachers can use as needed. The book is designed as a text for courses that prepare teachers to work with post-secondary EAP students and as a professional resource for teachers of students in EAP courses.

The new edition of this comprehensive text fills an important role in teacher professional preparation by focusing on how to teach the grammar and vocabulary that are essential for all L2 writing teachers and student-writers. Before L2 writers can begin to successfully produce academic prose, they need to understand the foundations of the language and develop the language tools that will help them build reasonable quality text. Targeting specific problem areas of students’ writing, this text offers a wealth of techniques for teaching writing, grammar, and vocabulary to second-language learners. Updated with current research and recent corpus analysis findings, the second edition features a wealth of new materials, including new teaching activities; student exercises and assignments; and substantially revised appendices with supplementary word and phrase lists and sentence components. Designed for preservice ESL/ELT/TESOL courses as well as Academic Writing and Applied Linguistics courses, this book includes new, contextualized examples in a more accessible and easy-to-digest format.

Written specifically for graduate students studying to become teachers of composition, this text provides well-documented, specific information about planning curricula, developing syllabi for each level of language proficiency in an ASL writing program, and day-to-day lesson plans for all levels of ASL writing classes.

Through close examination of content-based instruction, this text gives readers a broad sense of the possible applications of sustained content instruction in an ESL setting, and enables them to assess its effectiveness. Praticing teachers and teacher trainers learn the value of teaching ESL students to apply skills within the context of a specific subject, providing familiarity both with the subject and the forms used to present it.

This book documents the results of a multi-year project that investigated the goals for writing improvement among 45 students and their instructors in intensive courses of English as a Second Language (ESL) then, a year later, in academic programs at two Canadian universities. The researchers present a detailed framework to describe these goals from the perspectives of the students as well as their instructors. The goals are analyzed for groups of students from particular backgrounds internationally, for changes over time, and in relation to the ESL and academic courses. The authors use activity theory, goal theory, various sociolinguistic concepts, and multiple data sources (interviews, observations, stimulated recalls, questionnaires, and text analyses) to provide a contextually-grounded perspective on learning, teaching, writing, second-language development, and curriculum policy. The book will interest researchers, educators, and administrators of ESL, university, college, and literacy programs around the world.

Understanding ESL Writers: A Guide for Teachers responds to the overwhelming concern non-ESL faculty have expressed with the influx of ESL students into their classes.