English As A Second Language Program Continues To Grow

Take a walk across campus, and you are likely to notice an increasingly diverse student population at Winston-Salem State. Students from other countries are often learning English for the first time.

ESL, or English as a Second Language, is a program designed to help students whose first language is not English. Dr. Adnee Bradford, former chair of the Department of English and Foreign Languages, played an instrumental role in launching the ESL program at WSSU.

"Our program is in its infancy," she said.  "When you develop a new program, you have to do a lot to nurture that program and get it off the ground."

Bradford explained that the benefits of an ESL program are numerous. Before starting the ESL program, Bradford and others conducted surveys in area schools to see if there was a need for teachers to be trained in ESL.

"The majority of teachers in elementary and secondary schools recognized the need to be trained in order to work efficiently with students whose first language is not English," Bradford said.

The ideals of the ESL program also help local teachers by promoting the goals of "No Child Left Behind," laid out by President Bush.

However, teaching ESL is fraught with difficulties and obstacles. Essentially, the teacher must overcome those difficulties and obstacles to learn how to manage a different set of needs. First-generation Americans may not be as fluent or knowledgeable in the English language as native speakers, said Dr. Ludovic Kovalik, an ESL instructor.

"The needs of the students are very different," Kovalik said. "ESL students approach English from a different perspective."

Bradford said that she has heard about the difficulties of teaching ESL while speaking with her colleagues.

"These students whose first language is not English are learning English as if it were another language," she said. "So any problems that any student has learning a language that is not their own is what these students face."

Janice Nickell, an alumna of WSSU, had a brief stint teaching ESL at Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem. While there, she experienced some of the challenges that many ESL teachers face.

"I don't speak Spanish," Nickell said. "And I was teaching Spanish-speaking students how to speak English." To overcome the language barrier, Nickell opted to use picture books to communicate with her students as they learned to speak English more fluently.

The ESL program at WSSU has continued to grow, and one of the good things about the program is that it provides unique local training, Bradford said. The ESL program offers new opportunities to students who are already teachers but who are furthering their education.

In addition to the ESL add-on licensure, there is a new graduate program in ESL and Applied Linguistics being offered at WSSU.

"We are grateful that we have this program," Bradford said. "And we are looking forward to getting the certification for the masters' program."

The graduate program is designed to meet the needs of the teacher and provide extra training. "They, in turn, could work with students whose first language was not English," she said.

Kovalik expressed his support of the new program, saying that it is a good opportunity and having a masters degree makes one more marketable in planning a  career.

"The newly established ESL and Applied Linguistics masters program at WSSU would be a huge opportunity for people who hold a bachelors degree in English, or any other area, for that matter," he said.

At the time of this article, Dr. Funwi Ayuninjam, coordinator for the ESL program, was unavailable for comment.