BiblioVault - Books about English as a Second Language

Empowering the Community College First-Year Composition Teacher

Pedagogies and Policies

Meryl Siegal and Betsy Gilliland

University of Michigan Press, 2021

Community colleges in the United States are the first point of entry for many students to a higher education, a career, and a new start. They continue to be a place of personal and, ultimately, societal transformation. And first-year composition courses have become sites of contestation.

This volume is an inquiry into community college first-year pedagogy and policy at a time when change has not only been called for but also mandated by state lawmakers who financially control public education. It also acknowledges new policies that are eliminating developmental and remedial writing courses while keeping mind that, for most community college students, first-year composition serves as the last course they will take in the English department toward their associate’s degree.

Chapters focusing on pedagogy and policy are integrated within cohesively themed parts: (1) refining pedagogy; (2) teaching toward acceleration; (3) considering programmatic change; and (4) exploring curriculum through research and policy. The volume concludes with the editors’ reflections regarding future work; a glossary and reflection questions are included.

This volume also serves as a call to action to change the way community colleges attend to faculty concerns. Only by listening to teachers can the concerns discussed in the volume be addressed; it is the teachers who see how societal changes intersect with campus policies and students’ lives on a daily basis.

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English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice

Diane Belcher, Editor

University of Michigan Press, 2009

The field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is among the richest areas of second language research and practice because increasing globalization and changing technologies spawn new modes of intercultural connection and new occasions for second language use. English for Specific Purposes in Theory and Practice compasses this burgeoning field by presenting new research and commentary from some of the field’s leading scholars.

This volume explores ESP from academic (secondary and tertiary), occupational (business, medical, and legal), and socio-cultural perspectives. Recurring motifs throughout the volume are the effects of globalization, English as a lingua franca, and the impact of migrant populations. One of the major questions this volume seeks to answer is, How can ESP instructors meet their own teacher knowledge needs? Also considered is, How have ESP practitioners succeeded in gaining control of the knowledge they need to address their students’ needs?

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English in Today's Research World

A Writing Guide

John M. Swales and Christine B. Feak

University of Michigan Press, 2000

The authors of Academic Writing for Graduate Students have written a book for the next level of second language writing. English in Today's Research World offers students a very high level of writing instruction, with a specific focus on the projects students undertake--such as dissertations and conference abstracts--at the end of their university work or as they begin careers in research or academia.
In addition to instruction on writing for publication, English in Today's Research World provides needed advice on applications, recommendations, and requests--types of communications that are particularly vulnerable to influences from national cultural expectations and conventions and that, therefore, place the NNS writer at increased disadvantage.
The text is both a reference manual and a course book, so that researchers can continue to use the book after they have completed their formal education. New ESL/EFL teachers can use English in Today's Research World as a reference book for themselves or as a teaching aid in the classroom.

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English Sentence Structure

Robert Krohn and the Staff of the Michigan English Language Institute

University of Michigan Press, 1957

Part of the classic Michigan Rainbow series.
English Sentence Structure presents and clarifies all facets of the sentence for beginning and intermediate students. Oral drills, examples, and written exercises form a pattern of regular review and self-evaluation. Each lesson is coordinated with English Pattern Practices.

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English Structure Practices

Keith S. Folse

University of Michigan Press, 1983

This workbook, which may be used independently or in conjunction with English Sentence Structure, contains more than 400 exercises that cover beginning- and intermediate-level grammar points such as tenses, articles, count and noncount nouns, modals, verbals, relative clauses, passive voice, adverbs, and conditional sentences.
This is the workbook to accompany English Sentence Structure.

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The ESL Writer's Handbook

Janine Carlock, Maeve Eberhardt, Jaime Horst, Lionel Menasche

University of Michigan Press, 2010

The ESL Writer’s Handbook is a reference work for ESL students who are taking college-level courses. Because its purpose is to provide help with the broad variety of writing questions students may have when working on school assignments, the text focuses on

English for Academic Purposes. Unlike other handbooks on the market, this book’s sole purpose is to address the issues of second language learners.

This spiral-bound Handbook complements a student writer’s dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar reference book. It would be suitable as a text for an advanced ESL writing course when used together with the companion Workbook (978-0-472-03404-8). The Handbook is concise and easily navigated; is accessible, with clear and direct explanatory language; features information on both APA and MLA styles (including a sample paper for each); and includes many examples from ESL student writers to provide realistic models.

Included as special features in the Handbook are:

• The topic selection is based on ESL writers’ needs as observed by the authors over many years.

• The coverage of topics is more complete than the limited amount usually provided for ESL writers in first language or L1 handbooks.

• The explanatory language is appropriate for ESL students, in contrast to the more complex and idiomatic language of other English handbooks.

• The level of detail is more manageable for ESL students, compared to what is in other English handbooks.

Many of the examples of paragraphs, essays, research papers, and exercise sentences were written by ESL students; this encourages users of this Handbook to realize that they can also become effective writers.

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The ESL Writer's Handbook, 2nd Ed.

Janine Carlock, Maeve Eberhardt, Jaime Horst, Lionel Menasche

University of Michigan Press, 2018

The ESL Writer’s Handbook is a reference work for ESL students who are taking college-level courses. Because its purpose is to provide help with the broad variety of writing questions students may have when working on school assignments, the text focuses on English for Academic Purposes. Unlike other handbooks on the market, this book’s sole purpose is to address the issues of second language learners.

The spiral-bound Handbook complements a student writer’s dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar reference book. It would be suitable as a text for an advanced ESL writing course when used together with the companion Workbook (978-0-472-03726-1).

The new edition features significant revisions to Sections 3 and 4; in particular, both APA and MLA style guides have been updated and new sample papers for each are included. The new edition includes new and revised exercises and many new samples of student writing.

Like its predecessor, the 2nd Edition has these special features:

The topic selection is based on ESL writers’ needs as observed by the authors over many years.
The coverage of topics is more complete than the limited amount usually provided for ESL writers in first language or L1 handbooks.
The explanatory language is appropriate for ESL students, in contrast to the more complex and idiomatic language of other English handbooks.
Many of the examples of paragraphs, essays, research papers, and exercise sentences were written by ESL students to help users realize that they too can become effective writers.

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Essential Actions for Academic Writing

A Genre-Based Approach

Nigel A. Caplan and Ann M. Johns

University of Michigan Press, 2022

Essential Actions for Academic Writing is a writing textbook for all beginning academic students, undergraduate or graduate, to help them understand how to write effectively throughout their academic and professional careers. Essential Actions combines genre research, proven pedagogical practices, and short readings to help students writing in their first, second, or additional languages to develop their rhetorical flexibility by exploring and practicing the key actions that will appear in academic assignments, such as explaining, summarizing, synthesizing, and arguing.

Part I:

Introduces students to rhetorical situation, genre, register, source use, and a framework for understanding how to approach any new writing task.
Demonstrates that all writing responds to a context that includes the writer’s identity, the reader’s expectations, the purpose of the text, and the conventions that shape it.

Part II:

Explores the essential actions of academic writing (explain, summarize, synthesize, report and interpret data, argue, respond, and analyze).
Provides examples of the genres and language that support each action.

Part III:

Offers four extended projects that combine the essential actions in different genres and contexts.

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Exploring Options in Academic Writing

Effective Vocabulary and Grammar Use

Jan Frodesen and Margi Wald

University of Michigan Press, 2016

Exploring Options is designed to help student writers develop their knowledge and use of academic language to meet the demands of college- and university-level writing assignments. It draws on the research identifying lexical and grammatical patterns across academic contexts and provides authentic reading contexts for structured vocabulary learning. Recognizing that vocabulary choices in writing often require consideration of grammatical structure, Exploring Options focuses on specific kinds of lexico-grammatical decisions—that is, the ones involving the interaction between vocabulary and grammar--that students face in shaping, connecting, and restructuring their ideas. The book helps writers learn how to effectively use resources such as learner dictionaries, thesauruses, and concordancers to improve academic word knowledge.

Following a unit on using resources for vocabulary development, the contents are divided into three parts: Showing Relationships within Sentences, Connecting and Focusing across Sentences, and Qualifying Statements and Reporting Research. Part 1 focuses on verbs and modifiers that express increases and decreases, verbs and abstract nouns that describe change, connectors and verbs describing causal relationships, and parallel structures. Part 2 explores the words that help connect ideas and add cohesion. Part 3 discusses how to express degrees of certainty and accuracy and the use of reporting verbs.

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