A Balanced Curriculum for
Intensive English Programs (IEPs)
ESL Curriculum Insights from Dr. Neil J. Anderson, Former TESOL President
Eskey (1988) pointed out 25 years ago that second language reading instruction “exhibit[ed] a strongly top-down bias” (p. 95) and thus as second language reading specialists, we needed to do a better job of helping L2 readers “hold in the bottom” by including systematic decoding instruction as part of a second language reading curriculum as well as instruction on how to effectively use top-down strategies.
What I find so interesting in primarily the first language reading literature that addresses top-down and bottom-up approaches is that they place the argument as if this is an either or… you’re either top-down or bottom-up, but for many years we’ve known that really reading is an interactive process that involves both bottom-up and top-down strategies. And both work together simultaneously to help us in our instruction of getting readers to the goal of comprehension.
The more that I’ve learned about teaching reading to ESL learners… it’s really the combination of both bottom-up and top-down reading strategies that we want learners to get into place. Teaching top-down strategies actually is pretty easy, and most English language teachers do that very well. But unless we know the rules for decoding the words in English—were not adequately giving the students the bottom-up skills that they need.
For additional insights about effective ESL instruction in Intensive English Programs, view Dr. Anderson’s webinar:
How can Reading Horizons Help?
Reading Horizons provides a research-based approach that breaks the bottom-up strategies needed to understand the English language into a step-by-step process that shows ESL students exactly what they need to do in order to learn to read, write, and pronounce English words.
Reading Horizons teaches phonics in an explicit, systematic, and multi-sensory fashion. As students build these foundational skills, Reading Horizons layers in activities that promote pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension development. Because the program provides a thorough explanation of the rules and structure of the English language, ESL students are empowered with strategies that dramatically decrease their reading, spelling, and pronunciation errors.
Reading Horizons instructional software caters to ESL students by providing language translations of the lesson material in Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Haitian-Creole. (The software has also been used successfully with Arabic, Korean, Portuguese, and other languages even without the language translations).
The reading exercises were deliberately designed to help ESL students adjust to the American culture and lifestyle by including various text types typical to everyday life.
A pronunciation tool shows the proper tongue and mouth placement for each of the sounds in the English language.
Reading Horizons accelerates learning through individualized instruction and practice. Every lesson, chapter, and comprehension exercise—in both the software and direct instruction materials—has built-in assessment components that allow teachers to easily monitor student progress every step of the way. If students demonstrate proficiency in a skill, they move faster. If they struggle, they slow down to get the instruction and practice they need.
By continuously assessing students and adjusting instruction to meet their needs, ESL students receive instruction that is perfectly efficient. Because the program is so streamlined and focused, most ESL students show measurable gains within the first few weeks of instruction.
What About Higher-Level ESL Students?
“When we started with our lowest level students using the Reading Horizons software in class… higher-level students would come to us and say, ‘I never got the Reading Horizons software, is there any way that I could take advantage of that?’ So… we’ve realized that for higher-level students there’s a gap in their bottom-up processing strategies, that they don’t have the decoding skills that at least in our case, the lower-level students are being taught. So we have opened up and expanded our focus on teaching bottom-up processing strategies beyond our lowest level.” – Dr. Neil J. Anderson
Regardless of a student’s current ability, they are going to come to words they don’t know how to read or pronounce. Thus, every ESL student benefits from understanding the “why” behind the language and learning the foundational skills that help them break down each word and prove the proper pronunciation.