ESL

Position paper on promoting students' ESL skills in face-to-face learning through use of ICTs

Stephen Pathipati Arokiaswamy, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Problem

The enrollment of limited English proficient students due to ethnic and linguistic diversity has become a challenge to teachers and started a debate on how to best instruct them to acquire language skills (Lee, 2006). Becoming proficient in a new language is a painful and daunting task and poses a big challenge to the teachers (Yberra & Green, 2003). Proficiency in the second language skills is a painful process for many language minority students (Liaw, 2008). English as a second language learners face problems in writing compared to the native speakers, creating a challenge to the ESL teachers (Liu, 2011). Moreover, EFL learners have difficulties and weaknesses in their communication skills (Rahimi, Ebrahimi, Esk & Ari, 2013). Also, ESL learners struggle to improve their academic English and are eager to learn more vocabulary to get access in to credit courses and universities (Tang, 1997). According to Tsai and Jenks (2009) there is lack of interaction, speaking and listening activities in the ESL classrooms. Proficiency in vocabulary is the greatest challenge for the recent high school immigrants in Canada (Snow & Kim, 2006). In 2009, 54% of ESL students failed the mandatory secondary English literacy test (Li, 2010). The EFL learners in Taiwan expressed in a survey that they have poor listening comprehension skills (Tsai & Jenks, 2009). Non-native English speakers have difficulty in pronunciation, and have longer pause length (Tanner, 2008). ESL learners found it difficult to express themselves in writing stories (Peng, Park & Fitzgerald, 2006). There is a wide gap between the ESL learner’s knowledge of vocabulary, reading skills and the grade level requirements creating immediate need to acquire language skills (Li, 2010).