My Reflections - ESL Course #2 (An Introduction to Second Language Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening)

The role and value of the Canadian Language Benchmarks for Adults in assessment and program planning was an important part of this course. Other CLB documents that I became aware of and/or used during this course are Additional Sample Task Ideas, A Guide to Implementation, Companion Tables, “Can Do” Checklists and ESL for Literacy Learners. These documents are informative and will be used extensively.

Designing needs assessments and administering one to a student was a great learning experience. This initial assessment is useful for determining students’ approximate benchmark levels, interests, goals, and learning preferences. Listening, speaking, reading, and writing samples completed at the needs assessment session can be used to measure students’ progress throughout the course. Interviewing students individually may be time consuming; however I felt that I had learned things that I would not have known about the student had the assessments been completed in a group setting.

Another part of this course was developing a professional development plan. This was interesting and will be useful in providing a focus for future PD. The first step in making this plan was to research various ESL job descriptions. The next step was to list the key knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to do the job well. After that I highlighted all the skill areas that I already possessed. Anything not highlighted were skills that could become part of my professional development plan. After selecting fours skills, a plan was made to develop each which included the specific skill to be developed, actions that will be undertaken to learn the skill, resources that may be accessed, target completion date and how I will know when I have learned the skill.

This course continued with on-line viewing of ESL lessons. I enjoy watching and learning from these videos.