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ESL programs in the United States are, for the most part, adequate, but not great. A typical ESL program is concerned with the pressing need to integrate an immigrant student into the educational stream with his or her peers. Once a minimal fluency is achieved - and the standards vary from place to place - the student is deemed capable of studying in the English-language classroom. Colleges provide summer ESL classes to international students who need to arrive at a certain competency level before fall classes. That's their aim, and that's what they do. At no level is there an effort to take them past minimal proficiency. The sad part of the story is that so much is missing from ESL lesson plans. I know all about budget constraints, but it seems possible that ESL students, after their "graduation" from ESL classes, could be given follow-up to teach them "the rest of the story" (as Paul Harvey would say). Beyond the greetings, which they can learn from a textbook while still overseas, and beyond the survival vocabulary, there's a whole world of nuance, obscure cultural references, intonation, and other socio-linguistic stuff that the student is left to pick up on his/her own. They will pick it up, eventually (one hopes). But meanwhile, this leaves them sounding ignorant. For children, it's a demeaning position to be in. What remedy do I suggest? I propose regular follow-up ESL lessons, studying - at the very least - intonation patterns, diction and phonetics, and colloquialisms. Of course the program would have to be age-appropriate. It needn't be a pull-out program issue. In fact, these lessons could be made to fit seamlessly into the Language Arts classes of the mainstream curriculum. In other words, where ESL "graduate" students are present, I propose an amended Language Arts or English curriculum to add some philology. The native speakers of English would eat it up. I know because I have talked to kids about fun stuff like weird etymologies, ambiguities, puns and other wordplay, and they find it interesting. It heightens their awareness of language as a tool. And they would never notice that they were studying something intended to benefit any particular student. I call on educators to write elements into school programs to recognize the need that ESL students have for something more than the minimum.
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ESL Program Editorial
