ESL class to help younger students 6/24/2009 1:19 AM
By ROB NOVIT Senior writer
For the past two years, USC Aiken English professor Vicki Collins has taught an English as Second Language (ESL) class on campus.
Through her experiences at the college level, she has seen a need for such a class for younger children. The result is a Young Writers ESL Camp for kids in grades 5 through 8, scheduled at the university July 13-17 from 1 to 4 p.m.
The camp is coordinated through the Aiken Writing Project and the Kids in College program sponsored through USCA's continuing education program. The sessions will include opportunities for creating writing, poetry, scripts, visits with a journalist, writing about visuals and places and memoir/autobiography writing assignments. Some scholarships for the camp will be available, Collins said.
"We hope to do classes with four main components - listening, speaking, reading and writing," Collins said. "That's what I do in the college class. I want these (younger) students to be better prepared when they return to the classroom and make it easier on the teachers, too."
Sharing her interest in ESL instruction is USCA senior and English major Kiri Dunlap. She will assist Collins with the ESL class and is also helping her with a traditional writers' camp for middle schoolers with English as their native language.
Dunlap occasionally works with ESL students in the English department's writing room. She will team with Collins in the fall for a presentation on ESL tutoring at a College Learning and Reading Association conference in Virginia.
English is often considered one of the most difficult languages to master, said Collins, because of its many idiomatic expressions, irregular verbs and the many sounds possible for every vowel. Some of her ESL college students are amazed that Americans continue to study their own language in college.
"Language acquisition peaks at a very young age," said Collins. "The earlier they're exposed to a different language, the more quickly they can pick it up."
For more information about the ESL writing class, call the continuing education office at 641-3288. Collins can be reached at vickic@usca.edu
Contact Rob Novit at rnovit@aikenstandard.com
or at 644-2391.
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