Re-Envisioning ESL for Short-Term Programs

Abstract

ESL professionals have traditionally taught the four language skills, vocabulary, and grammar in Intensive English Programs (IEPs) to help incoming students satisfy the university’s ESL requirement. As international education continues to change, however, the ESL profession will need to re-conceptualize its role and make explicit its evolving relevance. IEPs and traditional ESL classes are not necessarily applicable to short-term programs, whose purpose is to give participants some experience at a US institution with a focus on a specific discipline or area of study.  This paper demonstrates two ways ESL professionals re-envisioned their role at the university for short-term programs (STPs) by creating English courses for the international education experience. With linguistic and cultural guidance from the ESL instructors, participants in these English courses critically analyzed impactful observations, perceptions, ideas, or events from the STP and gave PowerPoint presentations at a program-wide conference on their analysis of one academic or non-academic concept or observation that had the most impact.