English for Academic Purposes

ANNOUNCER:
It’s time for Academic Listening - a series for students at English-speaking universities.
Imagine: today is the first day of your uni life … How do you feel? Excited and confident? Or maybe a little anxious? How do you think you’ll cope? And how can you make the learning experience easier? For an insight, join Susan Fearn and members of the World Service class of 2001.
Susan: Well, if you think you might have problems, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
CLIP: Students
Angelica: Entering into the English speaking educational system for me was quite a change - the main problem was understanding lectures - academic English is quite high level of speaking therefore the first was to become familiar with the listening understanding.
Constant: I think the pronunciation of English people is not the same as I learned at school - I come from Ivory Coast, it's in West Africa - the teacher in my country had a French accent -the teacher of English - and it's not the same accent here, so I think the pronunciation, the accent is quite different .
Emma: You know how to express yourself in your own language - you know what you want to say but it's difficult to put it in the exact words.
Susan: In this series we’ll enter the world of further education and focus particularly on some of the linguistic problems experienced by students like you. And we’ll try to identify strategies for coping with study in another language. Students and teachers will share their tips on effective learning, and give advice on some of the pitfalls to avoid. There’ll be a mix of theory, practice and personal experience.
In this first programme, we focus on a special kind of English course, designed to prepare students for their studies. It’s called EAP.
CLIP: Christine Reeves
EAP is actually studying English for Academic Purposes.
Susan: Christine Reeves teaches at Bell Norwich, a language school in the East of England.
CLIP: Christine Reeves
That means studying English - the kind of English that you're likely to need to cope with life and studying at a British University or any other English speaking university - it could be the United States it could be Australia - and it prepares them and gives them necessary skills which enable them to manage their studies.
Susan: English for Academic purposes is a particular kind of English – used by a particular group of people. If you speak Academic English, you’ll know a special vocabulary associated with your subject, and you’ll be used to writing or speaking in a particular way. You’ll know how to structure an essay or a report, for example; and you’ll be familiar with the language used in lectures, seminars and tutorials.
If you study EAP, you’ll practise special language skills for studying at a high level, and you’ll gain a number of useful strategies to make your learning more effective. Christine Reeves again.
CLIP: Christine Reeves
Most EAP courses would cover various components - for example here at Bell the components we would always cover would be study skills, the students would also do quite a heavy component of writing, there would be a lecture, a weekly lecture, and there would normally be a component of social English to help them manage at the bank, for example, that sort of thing.
Susan: An EAP course introduces you to the special language associated with the academic world – common words, expressions, particular structures. It provides a range of advanced study skills.
A good EAP course will give you training in general English as well. During your university course, you’ll lead a double life. On duty: as a student -grappling with academic ideas in academic English… and off-duty, in everyday situations, using less formal English. It’s not unusual to have problems in both areas.
CLIP: Students
Constanza: I would like to be more fluent with my speaking because I've got ideas in my mind but I don't have enough language to transmit my ideas - that's my problem.
Jose Arturo: In the case of English language, there are many different accents, and when you learn the English in your country, you only learn the English prepared for learning English -that is a more careful accent, that is not very fast. And when you come here - honestly,sometimes I can't understand anything. Some people speak fast, some people speak with notcare of stressing the words that they say, so sometimes it's very difficult to follow them.
CLIP: Christine Reeves
Initially the problems they face are probably of an academic nature, for example they go to lectures and they find that they can’t understand, or they can’t take notes very quickly. They have quite a lot of reading to do and don't know how to cope with it. On top of that it could be their first experience of living in another country, so they're unfamiliar with some of the systems that we have here, like registering with a doctor, and then just basically making friends- they could feel incredibly lonely and isolated. These are the problems they’ll face when starting university.
Susan: Simon Williams teaches EAP in the Language Centre at University College,
London. He believes that difficulties experienced by language learners in lectures and other academic situations occur chiefly because they just don’t have enough mental energy.
CLIP: Simon Williams
The sort of problems that non-native speakers might have are summed up in one word, and that's “overload”. The listener is paying so much attention to decoding words that they recognise and phrases that they recognise – it's almost like trying to do a word-by-word translation. You can’t translate in that way. You have to get a global picture, as well as looking at individual items. The student pays so much attention to the language that they miss out on the content. They’re looking at the vehicle, rather than what the vehicle contains.
Susan: As well as coping with new vocabulary and lecturers who speak quickly and with unfamiliar accents, you may find it very difficult to listen out for the main points of a lecture and take notes at the same time. So what can you do?
CLIP: Simon Williams
Get hold of some texts, perhaps over the internet, or through a library, or through journals or magazines that might be available in newsagents, or through friends, and then study recurring specialist words in those texts; but also look at the kind of structures the kinds of organisation used, because different subjects typically use different organisation or genres to put things together.
Susan: Preparation is the key. Be prepared! According to Simon Williams, students can make their academic life much easier by getting to know specialist vocabulary in advance. And Simon Williams advises students to obtain an English-English dictionary, and maybe a subject dictionary - of Medicine, of Law, of Linguistics. Listening to the radio, watching TV - these are all methods of improving both general and specialist English – as members of our World Service class will tell you.
CLIP: Students
Constant: I'm a computer engineer and so I always use internet and most of the websites are in English so I think internet is a very good way to improve your English. I think especially the reading - reading and vocabulary.
Constanza: I usually watch TV programmes in English so it helped me with listening and sometimes when I watch TV I prefer to use subtitles in English too - so you can practise together listening and reading.
Jose Arturo: Try to read books related with your subject. Even material you already know in your language because some people can say 'oh that book, I know it, I've already read it in Spanish three times'. You have to read it in English to see if you notice substantial differences.
Susan: During this series we’ll focus on some of the strategies you can use to improve your listening ability and your performance in other academic situations. We’ve said already that preparation is important. Simple things like looking up specialist vocabulary, reading the course outline, looking at the title of a lecture, for example, they can all help you predict its language and content. Here’s an example of this from some research carried out by R. Anderson and colleagues.
It illustrates that “prior information about a text” can help you to make predictions about its content and influence your interpretation. Here, “prior information” comes in the form of the title.
CLIP: Actor's voice
A Prisoner Plans His Escape
Rocky slowly got up from the mat, planning his escape. He hesitated a moment and thought. Things were not going well. What bothered him most was being held, especially since the charge against him had been weak. He considered his present situation. The lock that held him was strong, but he thought he could break it.
Susan: Now here’s that story again – same words – and same actor! - only the title has changed. Notice how this new “prior information” changes your interpretation of individual words and overall content.
CLIP: Actor's voice
A Wrestler in a Tight Corner Rocky slowly got up from the mat, planning his escape. He hesitated a moment and thought.
Things were not going well. What bothered him most was being held, especially since the charge against him had been weak. He considered his present situation. The lock that held him was strong, but he thought he could break it.
ANNOUNCER:
That was your introduction to English for Academic Purposes presented by Susan Fearn. At the beginning of the programme, Susan invited you to reflect on some of the problems that EAP students experience - and asked you to think about how they might cope. I wonder how accurate your predictions were. Next time you listen to some English - whether it’s a radio programme or a university lecture - listen out for clues about what’s coming next… and see if it helps.

Academic writing

ANNOUNCER:
It’s time for Academic Listening - a series for students at English-speaking universities. Join Susan Fearn and members of the World Service class of 2001 as they continue to look at academic writing.
Susan: No-one ever said that being a student would be easy! But we start today with a practical tip from one of our World Service students. If two brains are better than one – why not team up with other students when you study… especially when you’re working on a written assignment.
CLIP: Student Emma
When it comes to students helping each other - say for example you are given an assignment - we always get three topics, and we choose one, and we have what we call e-groups and we email each other and everyone says - I've taken the first question: anyone who's interested to have a discussion about that? So you come together as a group for the same question, do your research and discuss it, and everyone shares their ideas and then go and write your assignment - give it to each other to read - especially to check the grammar. We always make use of Talk about students with English as a first language. This is very helpful.
Susan: You may find that you’ve got plenty of ideas for your essay, but that it’s hard to express them in accurate and appropriate English. Or you may have problems organising your written work. Well, last time we suggested that it’s a good idea to approach writing as a series of stages in which you prepare and revise draft versions of your work. Today, we’ll think about some of the stylistic conventions that you have to follow as a writer of academic English, and we’ll think a little more about the research stage of the writing process.
Brainstorming is something you could do with other students. But wouldn’t that be cheating? Not according to Tony Lynch. He’s a senior lecturer at the Institute for Applied Language Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
CLIP: Tony Lynch
On this question of students collaborating on writing - I don't have a problem with that personally. I'm quite happy if my students work together - my experience is, when students collaborate on an essay assignment, even if they are all doing the same essay, they don't end up with the same text. I think some lecturers are afraid that they'll end up with a single text written by 30 people who hand in 30 copies of the same thing - that's not my experience. And in fact when I was a student we were encouraged to work together in what were called 'syndicates' -even preparing exam answers, so we would discuss the questions in advance and work out what we thought a good answer would be.
Susan: As we’ve already noted in this series, the quality of your assignments as a university student will depend partly on the quality of your research. We’ve spoken about how to make best use of the university library and how to gather relevant information quickly and efficiently. We also suggested that your lecturer might be able to give you a list of books and articles to refer to. But if you get no such help, try to find a recent publication with a bibliography or list of references. Then, use this as a starting point to direct you to other material.
Simon Williams teaches English in the Language Centre at University College London.
CLIP: Simon Williams
Be systematic in the use of the reference list at the back of a book. You can use it to find other books that might be helpful, and for that reason, start with a contemporary book. Using the reference section of a book, you're going to build on the work someone else has already done. Sharing in academic community, you’ll make your own contribution in the work you do.
Susan: Libraries contain thousands of books – and you can’t read them all. You need to make sure you select what’s most relevant for your topic or assignment. As you read, make a note of any interesting or key points. But again, be selective.
Be clear about your purpose for writing the notes. You won’t need notes on everything. Think too about how you keep your notes. One technique is to use a series of cards.
CLIP: Student
I write notes and cards before writing the manuscript and I organise the cards according with the subject, and you classify your notes according to the main subject (transcript not available)
Susan: If you make your notes on cards, you could try writing only one point on each and using only one side of the card. Then, when you come to write your assignment, you can arrange and rearrange the cards in the most appropriate order, making new sequences and discarding the unwanted ones. Try to be consistent in the way you lay out your notes. Make sure there’s a heading on each page or card, and that you make a note of the source. If you add any of your own comments, make sure you can distinguish these from the author’s ideas. Where possible, Simon Williams recommends paraphrasing what the author has said
CLIP: Simon Williams
As you're reading, keep notes of key quotes – ideally try to re-express what the writer is saying
in your own words. Two reasons: it makes your own writing more fluent, less feeling that is being interrupted by other speakers. Secondly, it means that you’re having to manipulate material, think through the implications of the ideas. So you’re working with the material in your mind, understanding it more and applying to new situations.
Susan: Tony Lynch points out that it’s essential to keep an exact record of any sources you use. In the British and in many other university systems, if you quote from the work of others, you’re obliged to acknowledge the original author. If you fail to do this, you may be accused of plagiarism and severely penalised.
CLIP: Tony Lynch
Plagiarism is using someone else's ideas or someone else's words without acknowledging that they are the source. So it's quite simple to avoid - you avoid it by making sure that when you are writing up your notes from your reading that you do take the correct details, the publication details, and when it comes to the stage of writing up that you make clear in your text which ideas - in fact which quotations - are coming from which source. In terms of how to avoid it it's very simple - the bigger question is why, why should you avoid it. And I'm afraid the answer is and at least in the culture that I work in Britain a student who doesn't acknowledge the source is assumed to be wanting to hide the fact that she or he has used material, in other words that they are trying to present someone else's ideas as their own.
Susan: This is not to say that you shouldn’t quote from the work of other authors. In fact, evidence of wide reading is often one of the criteria for high marks. What’s important is to acknowledge all your sources.
Collecting this information can be time-consuming – which is why it’s much better to make a note of all the relevant details as you carry out your research.
In the very first programme of this series we said that when you become a student you join a community of people who use English in a particular way. As a member of that community you have to follow the same stylistic guidelines and conventions. The people who will read and mark your work will expect this. Tony Lynch again.
CLIP: Tony Lynch
You have to make sure of course that what you write is what the reader wants. In the case of university level writing, the person to check with is the person who sets the title - the lecturer.
It's not always clear, even if lecturers think it is, what exactly they want by way of an answer so the shortest way to make sure you answer what they want is to check with them.
Susan: Your tutor is a very good person to advise you on questions of style and appropriate register, and on how the university requires you to present your work. Keeping your reader in mind as you write may also influence the actual content of your work.
CLIP: Student
This is written with my supervisors in mind … and the people who are going to read it. Since I write for specialists in this area, I have to display that I know. I don’t have to explain a lot, I have to display my knowledge.
Susan: You’ll find that academic writing becomes easier with practice. And you’ll find that the more academic reading you do, the more familiar you’ll become with the stylistic conventions used by academics in your field and which you’ll need to follow. This would be true for any student in any country, as Tony Lynch points out.
CLIP: Tony Lynch
Students often say to me - I understand what you are saying and writing in Britain, but do I have to become like a British student? And the answer is - no, but you have to play to the same rules of the game as the British student does. The British student has the advantage of knowing
what the rules are, and the overseas student needs to keep to the same rules - if they don't do what the British reader expects them to do, they'll end up getting a lower mark than they would have done otherwise.
Susan: And that brings us to the end of today’s programme, in which we’ve reflected on the process of academic writing.
We’ve talked about the importance of focused research; we’ve discussed techniques for making notes; and we’ve spoken of the importance of acknowledging sources when you quote from the work of other authors.

Supreme Court Sides With Arizona in Language Case

The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Arizona officials who said the federal government should not be supervising the state’s spending for teaching non-English-speaking students.
Chris Hinkle for The New York Times
Miriam Flores, one of the parents who sued the state, with her daughter Isabella, in Nogales, Ariz.
The 5-to-4 decision reversed a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which said the state was still violating a law that required “appropriate action” to help English language learners overcome language obstacles.
But the case, Horne v. Flores, brought by parents in Nogales 17 years ago, will go on. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, remanded the dispute to a federal judge in Arizona for another look at whether the schools in Nogales, a small town on the Mexican border, now provide equal opportunities to English language learners.
Since 2000, when a federal district judge found that the state’s minimal spending on instruction for English language learners violated the federal Equal Educational Opportunity Act, the state has substantially changed its programs, increasing financing, reducing class sizes and moving from bilingual education to structured English immersion.
The state public instruction superintendent, Tom Horne, asked to be released from court supervision, arguing that Arizona had made such progress with its English language programs that it was no longer warranted. The Ninth Circuit acknowledged that the state had “made significant strides,” but not enough to end the supervision.
Justice Alito — joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — said the lower courts should have been more flexible in evaluating the state’s improvements, especially since federal court decrees in institutional reform cases had the effect of “dictating state or local budget priorities.”
“Rather than applying a flexible standard that seeks to return control to state and local officials as soon as a violation of federal law has been remedied,” Justice Alito wrote, “the Court of Appeals used a heightened standard that paid insufficient attention to federalism concerns.”
Justice Alito said the appellate court also erred by looking narrowly at the schools’ compliance with the original judgment on financing, rather than looking broadly at whether their English language programs’ improvements had cured the problem.
The federal equal-education law, Justice Alito said, focused on “the quality of education programming and services provided to students, not the amount of money spent on them.”
Justice Alito sent the case back to the lower court for further consideration of four changed circumstances that could warrant releasing the state from the earlier judgment: the adoption of new teaching methods, the enactment of the No Child Left Behind law, structural and management reforms in Nogales, and increased overall education financing. He also instructed consideration of whether the case had been wrongly expanded to cover all of Arizona, not just Nogales.
In a lengthy dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the lower courts correctly focused on Arizona’s financing for English language learners because inadequate financing was the basis of Nogales’s violation of federal law.
The dissent, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter and John Paul Stevens, appended a chart showing the high failure rates of Nogales’s English language learners on state tests and emphasized the importance of ensuring their educational access.
The majority ruling “risks denying schoolchildren the English language instruction necessary to overcome language barriers that impede their equal participation,” Justice Breyer wrote.
Given that 47 million Americans do not speak English at home, he said, “I fear that the court’s decision will increase the difficulty of overcoming the barriers that threaten to divide us.”
Justice Breyer criticized the majority opinion’s outlined framework for review. “Does the court mean to say, for example, that courts must, on their own, go beyond a party’s own demands and relitigate an underlying legal violation whenever that party asks for modification of an injunction?” he wrote.
The dissent also takes issue with the majority’s statements on federalism.
“The court may mean its opinion to express an attitude, cautioning judges to take care when the enforcement of federal statutes will impose significant financial burdens upon states,” Justice Breyer wrote. “An attitude, however, is not a rule of law.”

Achievement through community schools at the heart of 'Say Yes to Education'

NYSUT's Dick Iannuzzi stops in at an after-school program where kindergartners work on math skills. Left, student Genia Reed works with teacher Amy Vargason. Photo by Lauren Long.
It's 4:20 p.m. on a Thursday at Dr. Martin Luther King Elementary School in Syracuse and the place is still bustling.
Every seat in an after-school computer lab is filled as a teacher and teaching assistant help eager youngsters.
Down the hall, students in various classrooms, working with a college-age tutor, practice math flashcards and count in Spanish. A chorus is singing an uplifting spiritual in the music room.
Students here, for the first time, are being exposed to new enrichment offerings: leadership classes, kung fu, yoga, step dance, African art and drumming.
In the health office, pediatric nurse practitioner Theresa Zimmer tends to an 8-year-old boy's bleeding mouth, providing a salt water rinse and a warm hug of encouragement.
Dental hygienist Judy Morgillo urges him to stop wiggling that loose tooth with such gusto.
A social worker works the hallway, chatting with students and touching base with a colleague about a child's progress.
In a little more than an hour, more kids and their families will arrive for Math Night. Their ticket to admission (and free dinner) is to look at some science project displays around the school and fill out an answer sheet about what they learned.
After hours of games that make math fun, students and their families head home at about 7:30 p.m.
It's just another round-the-clock day at one of Syracuse's Say Yes to Education buildings, where the term "community school" is the real deal. Tomorrow's before-school programming starts at 7:15 a.m.
The extended day, extended year — extended everything — is a big part of the Say Yes to Education private foundation that has taken Syracuse schools under its wing.
At the heart of this pioneering program are two core components:
A system that provides pre-K-12 kids and their families with intensive support — from extra tutoring to health services to pro bono legal advice — to help them succeed academically and graduate from high school, and ...
The ultimate commitment: the promise of free college tuition, fees and books for any student who earns acceptance to one of the participating public and private colleges.
Say Yes has succeeded with small groups of kids in select cities, but Syracuse is the first in the nation to launch it districtwide.
Dollars and a dream
Wall Street financier George Weiss founded Say Yes to Education in 1987 when he promised 112 economically disadvantaged sixth-graders in Philadelphia that he would pay for their college education if they graduated from high school.
Of the pilot group, 63 percent graduated from high school; about 39 percent received a post-secondary credential. (Just a year before, only 26 percent of the Philadelphia class finished high school.)
Since then, the philanthropic program has spread to several cities with selected groups of students in Cambridge, Mass., Hartford, Conn., and Harlem.
Say Yes has begun working with younger groups, offering an increasing array of support services — after-school programs, summer camps, mentoring, tutoring and other social, mental and health care programs students need to succeed.
After all, how can children concentrate on schoolwork if their family is getting evicted from their apartment, or if one of their siblings misses class because an asthma attack sent her to the emergency room?
The results have only improved, as Say Yes has modified the program to start earlier in a child's life.
"We've learned that the earlier you start, the better the results," said Say Yes President Mary Anne Schmitt-Carey. "In fact, we are convinced that our kindergarten cohorts have a good shot at leveling the playing field completely."
The district is implementing the program gradually, adding several buildings per year, until 2011-12, when it's operating in all 36 schools and serving Syracuse's more than 20,000 students.
The higher education guarantee is open to all seniors who have spent the last three years in the district — and hundreds of students will go to a college in September.
"This is an extremely exciting and promising venture, demonstrating what's possible when there's true collaboration. NYSUT is proud to support STA in this endeavor," said NYSUT president Dick Iannuzzi. He joined officials from the union's two national affiliates on a recent Say Yes Labor-Management Day tour.
"This child-centered community school approach underscores the fact we must do much more than provide academic support," he said. "We must tackle our students' emotional, social and health care needs, too."
The Syracuse effort is groundbreaking, he said, because it is a collaborative effort among teachers, support personnel, district administrators, city and state officials, the higher education community, local businesses, community groups and the private foundation.
"I believe you will get results because the plan will change the system for every child in Syracuse," said National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel. "I want this to work because I want there to be a model for every child."
The American Federation of Teachers, led by Randi Weingarten, has made community schools a top initiative for reform.
"This program offers a wonderful vision of what it can look like," said Joan Devlin, who heads AFT's education issues department.
Union buy-in
"Since Day One, the Syracuse Teachers Association has been supportive and included at the table every step of the way," Schmitt-Carey said. "The union really helped pave the way to make it happen."
Collaboration, though a nice word, is hard work, said Syracuse TA President Anne Marie Voutsinas. "We all just want to do what's best for the kids."
Despite "bumps along the road" in the first year of implementation, negotiations have yielded some landmark arrangements, including an urban teacher calendar that compensates educators for extended hours during the school day and school year, and more time for professional development.
This summer, six Say Yes elementary schools will offer five-week academic enrichment programs. Instruction will be provided by teachers in the morning; college students will serve as "camp counselors" in the afternoon.
The union negotiated a provision to provide flex time for social workers and make them 11-month employees.
This made it possible for Say Yes to add a social worker in every building so individual caseloads would be fewer than 200 students. Organizers worked with the union to build in time for home visits by social workers.
Funding comes through a mix of local, state, private and foundation sources. More federal funding is possible since community schools are supported by the Obama administration.
Schmitt-Carey wants to make the program self-sufficient within six years. While the program's extra support comes to about $3,500 per child per year, urban school districts typically spend $10,000 to $14,000 per pupil annually using state and federal funding for after-school, summer and mental health programs.
"The trick is to spend the money as effectively as possible," she said. "We identify gaps and raise money."
Thus far it's a bit more private money than originally envisioned, Schmitt-Carey said, "But we have faith there will be future funding."
So far, 24 private colleges and universities will provide scholarships to eligible graduates. SUNY and CUNY campuses are taking part with help from $1.5 million in community foundation funds.
Participating colleges require students to first tap all financial aid avenues, and some colleges require a $75,000 income cap.
Aside from providing scholarships, Syracuse University President Nancy Cantor is providing extensive technical assistance through SU's Education Department faculty and students.
Say Yes has already prompted more families to move back to the city, according to Syracuse Superintendent Dan Lowengard.
"For sale" signs in the city now include the "Say Yes" logo as a visible reminder that things are changing in this city, where fewer than half the students graduate from high school and more than 78 percent qualify for subsidized school lunches.
"We knew we had to do something dramatic to change the entire system, not just tinkering," Voutsinas said. "We knew we had to give our kids something big. It's called hope."

* Bustling: animado
* Eager: impaciente, ansioso, entusiasta

* Uplifting: elevado

* To launch: lanzar, emprender

* Array: selección

* Evicted: desalojado, desahuciado

* Sibling: hermano

*To tackle: enfrentar, abordar

*Groundbreaking: innovador

*Supportive: comprensivo

*Pave: pavimentar, adoquinar

*Bumps: baches

*Yield: rendimiento

*Landmark: punto de referencia, hito

*Arrangement: plan, acuerdo

*Caseloads: número de casos
*Funding: financiación

*Envisioned: imaginado
*Income: ingresos

*Prompted: puntual

*Subsidized: subvencionar

Success at Small Schools Has a Price, a Report Says

Replacing large, poor-performing high schools with smaller schools in New York City has led to lower attendance and graduation rates at other large high schools, which have struggled to accommodate influxes of high-needs students, according to a report to be released on Wednesday.
Small schools, which cap enrollment at several hundred students and boast themes like environmental science and the performing arts, have emerged as a hallmark of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s education reform efforts. Over the past seven years, the city has closed more than two dozen large comprehensive high schools, which typically enroll thousands of students, and replaced them with smaller schools, which are supposed to foster more intimate relationships and higher student achievement.
The report, conducted by researchers at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, does not dispute the success of small schools in improving graduation rates of needy students. But it argues that the city should do more to support comprehensive high schools, which have been saddled with large numbers of the high-needs students who do not enroll at small schools.
The 18-month study examined 34 large high schools and found that 14 of them had decreases in attendance and graduation rates from 2003 to 2008, when the number of small schools in the city multiplied.
Based on interviews with principals, teachers and parents, the report concluded that the reason for the decreases was that the comprehensive high schools were overwhelmed by influxes of students who had histories of poor attendance, behavior problems and low academic achievement. Many of those students came from closed failing schools that were replaced with small schools, the report said.
“Small schools have really made remarkable gains for thousands of kids, but there’s a price, and the price is a lot of the large schools have gotten worse,” said Clara Hemphill, an author of the New School report, who is known for her guidebooks on the city’s best public schools.
The city’s Department of Education disputed several of the report’s findings, saying decreases in graduation and attendance rates at large high schools could not be linked to the creation of small schools.
Melody Meyer, a spokeswoman for the department, noted that demographic changes alone could account for an influx of 15,000 high school students from 2002 to 2005, and that graduation rates had improved citywide over the past seven years.
In an interview with the researchers, Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein defended his small-schools strategy, saying that even if schools were burdened with high-risk students, it was better than leaving those students in failing schools.
“There were some growth pains,” he said. “The process is not over.”
Stephen M. Duch, principal of Hillcrest High School in Queens, which serves 3,200 students, said that his school had instituted small learning environments — with themes like pre-med, theater and health careers — partially in response to an infusion of higher-needs students after the opening of small schools in the area.
“Given the deflection of students, it was even more paramount to change the way we ran the school,” he said. “You bring over 3,000 kids into a building of 200 teachers, and it can be very anonymous. Students could fall through the cracks.”
One point of agreement between the city and the researchers was the looming challenge posed by a state mandate to impose more rigorous graduation standards, which affects this year’s ninth graders. The report noted that a disproportionately high number of students at small high schools might have difficulty satisfying requirements for the more rigorous state Regents diplomas that will soon be required.
The City Council’s Education Committee is expected to discuss the new graduation requirements on Thursday.
The report expressed caution about the future of small schools, which boast an average class size of 27, compared with 34 citywide. It found high rates of principal and teacher turnover at the schools, and said that attendance and graduation rates had declined each year at many of the schools that opened since 2002, though they still outperformed the schools they replaced.
“It’s partly that they burn very hot and fast,” Ms. Hemphill said. “They start out with a huge level of enthusiasm among teachers and staff, but it’s really, really hard work, and after a certain number of years of 80-hour workweeks, the teachers get tired.”
Critics of small schools have argued that much of their success can be attributed to the fact that they serve populations markedly different from the failing schools they replace. The New School report, however, indicated that while disparities had existed in the past, most small schools matched citywide averages in the number of students who were from low-income families, were in special education programs or were struggling with English.

To boast: presumir

Hallmark: distintivo

To foster: fomentar

Achievement: logro, proeza

To conduct: realizar, dirigir

Needy students: necesitados

To saddled: cargar con algo, endilgar

Attendance: asistencia

Remarkable: notable, extraordinario

To burden: cargar

To institute: establecer, iniciar

Deflection: desviación

Paramount: supermo, extremo

Looming: amenaza en ciernes, inminente

Requirements: requisitos

Turnover: facturación

To outperform: superar a

Markedly: notablemente

Low-income families: familias de escasos ingresos

No Longer Letting Scores Separate Pupils

STAMFORD, Conn. — Sixth graders at Cloonan Middle School here are assigned numbers based on their previous year’s standardized test scores — zeros indicate the highest performers, ones the middle, twos the lowest — that determine their academic classes for the next three years.
But this longstanding system for tracking children by academic ability for more effective teaching evolved into an uncomfortable caste system in which students were largely segregated by race and socioeconomic background, both inside and outside classrooms. Black and Hispanic students, for example, make up 46 percent of this year’s sixth grade, but are 78 percent of the twos and 7 percent of the zeros.
So in an unusual experiment, Cloonan mixed up its sixth-grade science and social studies classes last month, combining zeros and ones with twos. These mixed-ability classes have reported fewer behavior problems and better grades for struggling students, but have also drawn complaints of boredom from some high-performing students who say they are not learning as much.
The results illustrate the challenge facing this 15,000-student district just outside New York City, which is among the last bastions of rigid educational tracking more than a decade after most school districts abandoned the practice. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Stamford sorted students into as many as 15 different levels; the current system of three to five levels at each of four middle schools will be replaced this fall by a two-tiered model, in which the top quarter of sixth graders will be enrolled in honors classes, the rest in college-prep classes. (A fifth middle school is a magnet school and has no tracking.)
More than 300 Stamford parents have signed a petition opposing the shift, and some say they are now considering moving or switching their children to private schools. “I think this is a terrible system for our community,” said Nicole Zussman, a mother of two.
Ms. Zussman and others contend that Stamford’s diversity, with poor urban neighborhoods and wealthy suburban enclaves, demands multiple academic tracks, and suggest that the district could make the system fairer and more flexible by testing students more frequently for movement among the levels.
But Joshua P. Starr, the Stamford superintendent, said the tracking system has failed to prepare children in the lower levels for high school and college. “There are certainly people who want to maintain the status quo because some people have benefited from the status quo,” he said. “I know that we cannot afford that anymore. It’s not fair to too many kids.”
Educators have debated for decades how to best divide students into classes. Some school districts focus on providing extra instruction to low achievers or developing so-called gifted programs for the brightest students, but few maintain tracking like Stamford’s middle schools (tracking is less comprehensive and rigid at the town’s elementary and high schools).
Deborah Kasak, executive director of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform, said research is showing that all students benefit from mixed-ability classes. “We see improvements in student behavior, academic performance and teaching, and all that positively affects school culture,” she said.
Daria Hall, a director with Education Trust, an advocacy group, said that tracking has worsened the situation by funneling poor and minority students into “low-level and watered-down courses.” “If all we expect of students is for them to watch movies and fill out worksheets, then that’s what they will give us,” she said.
In Stamford, black and Hispanic student performance on state tests has lagged significantly behind that of Asians and whites. In 2008, 98 percent of Asian students and 92 percent of white students in grades three to eight passed math, and 93 percent and 88 percent reading, respectively. Among black students, 63 percent passed math, and 56 percent reading; among Hispanic students, 74 percent passed math and 60 percent reading.
The district plans to keep a top honors level, but put the majority of students in mixed-ability classes, expanding the new system from sixth grade to seventh and eighth over three years. While the old system tracked students for all subjects based on math and English scores, the new one will allow students to be designated for honors in one subject but not necessarily another, making more students overall eligible for the upper track.
The staff of Cloonan Middle School decided to experiment with mixed-ability classes for the last eight weeks of this school year.

David Rudolph, Cloonan’s principal, said that parents have long complained that the tracking numbers assigned to students dictate not only their classes but also their friends and cafeteria cliques. Every summer, at least a dozen parents lobby Mr. Rudolph to move their children to the top track. “The zero group is all about status,” he said.
Jamiya Richardson, who is 11 and in the twos’ group, said that students all know their own numbers as well as those of their classmates. “I don’t like being classified because it makes you feel like you’re not smart,” she said.
The other day in Jamiya’s newly mixed social studies class, students debated who was to blame in an ancient Roman legal case in which a barber shaving a slave in a public square was hit by a ball and cut the slave’s throat. At one point, Jamiya was the only one in the class of 25 to argue that it was the slave’s fault because he sat there at his own risk — which the teacher said was the right answer.
Cloonan teachers say they had not changed the curriculum or slowed the pace for the mixed-ability classrooms, but tried to do more collaborative projects and discussions in hopes that students would learn from one another. But Joel Castle, who is 12 and a zero, said that he did not work as hard now. “My grades are going up, and that’s not really surprising because the standards have been lowered,” he said.
In a recent social studies class, the top students stood out as they presented elaborate homemade projects about Roman culture — mosaics, dresses, weaponry — while several of their classmates showed up empty-handed. One offered the excuse that his catapult had disappeared overnight from his bedside.
“A catapult thief?” questioned the teacher, Mimi Nichols, in disbelief before directing him to find his project by the next day.
Afterward, Ms. Nichols said that the less-motivated students had still learned from their classmates’ example. “That in itself is valuable,” she said. “For children to see what is possible.”

David Rudolph, Cloonan’s principal, said that parents have long complained that the tracking numbers assigned to students dictate not only their classes but also their friends and cafeteria cliques. Every summer, at least a dozen parents lobby Mr. Rudolph to move their children to the top track. “The zero group is all about status,” he said.
Jamiya Richardson, who is 11 and in the twos’ group, said that students all know their own numbers as well as those of their classmates. “I don’t like being classified because it makes you feel like you’re not smart,” she said.
The other day in Jamiya’s newly mixed social studies class, students debated who was to blame in an ancient Roman legal case in which a barber shaving a slave in a public square was hit by a ball and cut the slave’s throat. At one point, Jamiya was the only one in the class of 25 to argue that it was the slave’s fault because he sat there at his own risk — which the teacher said was the right answer.
Cloonan teachers say they had not changed the curriculum or slowed the pace for the mixed-ability classrooms, but tried to do more collaborative projects and discussions in hopes that students would learn from one another. But Joel Castle, who is 12 and a zero, said that he did not work as hard now. “My grades are going up, and that’s not really surprising because the standards have been lowered,” he said.
In a recent social studies class, the top students stood out as they presented elaborate homemade projects about Roman culture — mosaics, dresses, weaponry — while several of their classmates showed up empty-handed. One offered the excuse that his catapult had disappeared overnight from his bedside.
“A catapult thief?” questioned the teacher, Mimi Nichols, in disbelief before directing him to find his project by the next day.
Afterward, Ms. Nichols said that the less-motivated students had still learned from their classmates’ example. “That in itself is valuable,” she said. “For children to see what is possible.”

*Longstanding: viene de largo, antiguo

*Tracking: división en grupo según nivel académico

*Evolve: evolucionar

*To make up: componer un grupo

*Boredom: aburrimiento

*High-performing: mejor desempeño

*Facing: orientado

*Replaced: sustituido, reemplazado

*Two-tiered: dos niveles

*Shift: cambio, turno

*Achiever: exitoso

*Gifted: dotado

*Funnel: embudo

*Watered-down: descafeinado, diluido

*To lag: quedarse atrás

*Collaborative projects

Teach Kids to Think and They'll Want to Learn

A teacher is balancing the art of planning lessons to teach district grade-level expectations based on New York state learning standards while addressing the individual needs of students. This teacher:
knows the lessons in the classroom today must shape students to be independent, creative, and critical thinkers for the future;
immerses the students in language-rich experiences through well-planned lessons and exposure to a variety of genres across all content areas;
cultivates students' thinking that reaches various levels;
diligently uses questioning techniques that can guide students to deepen their levels of understanding;
feels the rewarding responsibility to foster love of learning in allstudents.
This love of learning that is nurtured will empower each student to successfully enter the workplace of the 21st century. This teacher is any one of us.
This teacher is you.
Most of us do not think about how we think. We just do it. Yet there is much to consider when we decide to teach our students how to think. Creative thinking, critical thinking, and metacognitive thinking are three processes that interact in a dynamic way to advance students' comprehension, performance, and achievement. The interaction is dynamic because creative thinking allows thinkers to generate ideas. Critical thinking allows thinkers to evaluate the value of the ideas, and metacognitive thinking allows thinkers to reflect on their thoughts about those ideas. Through metacognition, thinkers begin to take control of their learning.
For example, after reading a paragraph in a text, Victoria, a fifth-grade student, questions herself about the concepts discussed in the passage. She knows her goal is to understand the text. Self-questioning is a common metacognitive comprehension strategy that allows a reader to monitor his or her comprehension. Victoria finds she is unable to answer her own questions or that she does not understand the ideas in the text. She must determine what else she could do in order to meet her goal of understanding the text. She decides to go back into the text and reread sections of the material. After rereading, she can now answer her questions. Victoria decides she now understands the material. The metacognitive strategy of self-questioning ensures that the goal of comprehension is met.
Bloom's Taxonomy, Reciprocal Teaching, and Question-Answer Relationships are three strategies teachers can apply to guide students to take control of their own learning. Students begin to set their own purpose for their learning as they monitor their comprehension. An energy and desire to learn are established because students have been given the tools for thinking, reflecting, and extending their comprehension from literal to deeper levels of thinking.
Reading is thinking that is cued by written language. We cannot think for our students; we cannot even show them the complex operations that make up the reading process. However, we can teach in a way that gives students a good idea of what effective readers do as we support them using these strategies daily (Fountas and Pinnell 2000).
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP 2003) is the only federally funded large-scale testing program in the United States. Reciprocal Teaching, Question-Answer Relationships (QARs), and Bloom's Taxonomy align perfectly within the NAEP framework of questions that require students to integrate information from a variety of sources. Students are increasingly expected to be comfortable independently reading a range of genres - fiction, nonfiction, procedural text - and evaluating texts they read. Fewer than one-third of the questions on state tests will require students to simply recall information (NAEP 2004).
In addition, with mandated federal testing in grades 3-8, the thinking structures outlined in this article not only align with state and district standards, they can provide a solid sense of accountability as educators strive to prepare students not just to do well on tests, but to prepare them for the future.
Reciprocal Teaching
Reciprocal Teaching is a technique built on four strategies that careful readers use to comprehend text: predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing (Palincsar & Brown, 1984). The teacher models each strategy by thinking aloud as he or she demonstrates the use of strategies. The teacher talks through his or her thoughts before, during, and after reading. Students then apply as the teacher facilitates group discussions. Over time the teacher gradually releases responsibility to the students for eventual independent application. The students take turns "being the teacher" and thinking aloud. They describe their thinking, using the principles of the strategy, as they monitor their comprehension (Oczkus 2003).
Question-Answer Relationship
QAR was developed by Taffy Rafael (1986) as a tool for clarifying how students can approach the task of reading texts as they ask and answer questions to deepen comprehension. The QAR strategy is one of the best ways to help readers understand that reading requires thinking (Hollas 2008). It teaches readers where to seek answers to questions when they are given multiple-choice and open-ended questions. It helps students realize the need to consider information from the text and information from their schema (background knowledge). QARs provide a language that teachers and students can use to discuss, dissect, and analyze vague ideas in a reader's mind. This language is internalized so students can become independent as they comprehend text beyond the literal level.
A colleague and special education teacher, Laura Castagna, has found success implementing QARs within a small group of fourth-grade students. She noticed one student in particular. Before QAR was introduced, Nick had great difficulty comprehending text at the literal level. Over a few weeks, he grasped the different types of questions. As he became more independent, Nick said he felt like he knew a secret and he now knows how to find the answers. The essential idea of QAR is that reading involves a reader making connections between his or her background knowledge, the ideas in the text, and the author's purpose for writing the text. Developer Rafael named four categories of types of questions (Raphael, Highfield & Au 2006):
Right There: Text Explicit - the answer is in one place in the text.
Think and Search: Text Implicit - The answer is several places in the text.
Author and Me: The reader needs to think about what he or she already knows and synthesize that information with information in the text to make a basic inference.
On My Own: The answer is not in the text. The reader must apply a strong sense of background knowledge or research other texts to respond.
The Revised Bloom's Taxonomy
Benjamin Bloom created the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the 1950s as a way of delineating the different levels of thinking and student outcomes (Bloom 1956). In the 1990s, Lorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom's, led a team of cognitive psychologists in revising the taxonomy with the primary focus of making it more useful for teachers (Anderson & Krathwohl 2001). Table 1 outlines the differences between the original and the revised taxonomy. The main difference is in the language. The revised taxonomy states each category as a verb to encourage active, higher-level thinking. Note also that the category of synthesis is renamed create and has changed positions in the hierarchy.
Impact on Teaching
There are always opportunities to incorporate higher-level thinking skills within all literacy lessons - using meaningful texts - across the curriculum. Table 2 lists thinking strategies each technique can provide before, during, and after reading. I began to track the progress of all of my students within a special education resource room and an integrated classroom. All students were taught within small-group strategy instruction sessions. As I scaffolded instruction within a guided reading structure, I monitored the students' progress along with their ability to transfer the skills independently. The following evidence is based on a classroom action research project that I implemented over the course of last school year. I taught the students in a resource room setting or small-group instruction within an integrated setting. The students were fourth- and fifth-graders with learning disabilities.
Research in Action
My action research sought to describe how reading comprehension and higher-level thinking skills can be effectively promoted with struggling fourth- and fifth-grade students with learning disabilities. A second goal was to ascertain how best to proceed with the planning and implementing of effective literacy instruction to guide students with learning disabilities to actively gain meaning from text.
Method:
This classroom research process was based on the principle of natural inquiry. I used a qualitative approach to deepen my level of awareness for the learning process within my resource room small-group instruction. I documented student progress through the use of performance assessment and teacher observation. I evaluated students' abilities to remember, retrieve, summarize, paraphrase, apply, analyze, evaluate, create, and generate new ideas. I surveyed the students' metacognition through the use of questionnaires and anecdotal notes. Quantitatively speaking, I counted and recorded the accuracy of multiple-choice questions.
[Chart: See PDF version]
Claims Formulated from Research Findings:
I used a qualitative approach to formulate the following beliefs:
The teacher must provide explicit instruction to increase the likelihood of students applying higher-level thinking strategies independently.
Reciprocal Teaching provides a language for readers to actively connect with text.
QAR instruction helps students with disabilities realize the need to consider both information in the text and information from their schema.
When exposed to direct instruction that incorporates the QAR model, Reciprocal Teaching, and higher-level thinking according to Bloom's Taxonomy, students with learning disabilities can develop greater metacognition about their reading process in order to be independent active readers.
Impact on Student Learning:
Introducing reciprocal teaching with scripted "teacher cards" encouraged the students to intermittently make predictions, ask questions, clarify, and summarize. These cards provided a scaffold to guide the organization of each reader's thinking patterns.
The students began to incorporate the language of reciprocal teaching in their oral responses to indicate that they were beginning to internalize the process for independent thinking. For instance, students began their responses with "I predict" or "I wonder..." I observed the ease with which students said, "I don't get it. I should just reread to clarify." I found that using reciprocal teaching alone served to guide readers to make basic predictions and extend their thinking to paraphrase, recall, and activate their background knowledge.
Weaving in higher-level questions brought students to a deeper level of understanding. For instance, I used the principles of reciprocal teaching during a read aloud of Grandfather Twilight (Berger 1984). This story provided many opportunities to apply the principles of reciprocal teaching. Students actively made predictions, asked questions, summarized, and we reread to clarify when they needed. They used the familiar language to name their thinking. However, they stayed within the literal level of comprehension. All of the students were actively engaged in gaining meaning from text. It was necessary to incorporate QAR and Bloom's Taxonomy to encourage students to reach higher levels of thinking, such as making inferences. The following is a sample of the questioning that guided them to understand the text at deeper levels:
I asked: Where did Grandfather Twilight live?
Students responded: In the trees.
I asked: How do you know this?
Students responded: It was in the story we just read. The students were able to locate the exact sentence in the text.
I repeated: Yes, the answer was right there in the... students chimed in ... text.
I asked: What time of day was it in the story?
Students: Twilight
I asked: How do you know?
Students: It's right there in the text.
Next I added: In the story, what time of day is twilight?
Students responded: As it gets dark and the sun is going down.
I asked: How did you know the answer to that question?
The students were quiet.
I asked: Can you find the answer right there in the book?
The students said: not really.
I added: Then you must have used your ... my voice trailed off ... waiting ... and then two students responded with excitement - schema! (background knowledge)
Anchor charts displayed in my classroom guide memory and application of each strategy use. Over time, students were able to write down meaningful questions while applying reciprocal teaching, code the questions based on the QAR model, then identify the level of Bloom's Taxonomy to which their questions belonged. For instance, while reading Ruby Holler (Creech 2002) Michael wrote on a Post-it, Why did Dallas call the bird a 'magical silver bird'? He thought of the answer and coded it "Author and Me (AM)." He said, Dallas likes to be imaginative because he is trying to feel happy. Michael explained that he coded his thinking AM because you have to use some clues from the text ... but you also have to think about what you think. The group agreed that Michael achieved thinking at levels 2 (understand), 4 (analyze), and 5 (evaluate) of Bloom's Taxonomy. The best part is that Michael and his peers have shown signs of metacognitive, creative, and critical thinking skills. They are taking control of their learning. They took this control with them right back into their classroom.
My colleague Mary Laurine, a general education teacher, noticed the students were able to explain the process of applying QARs to a reading in the social studies textbook. Each student was able to transfer his or her knowledge to the general education setting. Mary noticed that the general education students benefited in ways similar to the students with learning disabilities. The QAR provided them with the language they needed to explain their thinking. In addition, the students with learning disabilities were provided with a structure to organize their thinking.
Implications for Future Teaching
Reciprocal Teaching, Question-Answer Relationships, and Bloom's Taxonomy can guide educators to make effective decisions about how to teach students how to think across genres and content areas. Teachers should discuss with parents the language of literacy and higher level thinking that their children are learning in order to further support transfer and independent use of higher level thinking. The results of applying these strategies have proven to me what I already knew - students with learning disabilities are capable of reaching higher levels of thinking. Through direct instruction that gradually releases responsibility to guide each student, teachers can realize they are creating learning experiences that teach beyond the moment. They are teaching each student to be an independent, active reader - a reader who can think at higher levels.