Kingsborough Community College, CUNY

MINUTES

3:30-4:30 pm – following New American Voices Event

Room U220

In Attendance: ESL Co-Director, Patricia George; ESL Co-Director, Kristine Mariano, Monica Filimon, Jonathan Holley, Gabrielle Kahn, John Keller, Neil Kernis, Ryan Lee

Announcement

WRAP UP

• Need to pick a new date: conflict on December 12^th (CRC / English Department Holiday event)
• Changed to Monday – Zoom and phone numbers
• Make sure students keep their section when registering

Discussion Topics

NEW AMERICAN VOICES SYMPOSIUM 12/5/23

• Overall impressions
  • What worked well?
    • Students felt valued 
    • Students speaking when accepting awards
  • Suggestions for improvement for next December?
    • Too much food – order less next time
    • Space was too big
    • Make sure event is not during speech/psych, etc. when planning

WRITING PORTFOLIO PROGRAM GOAL

Determine appropriate genres for developing a writing portfolio that students will follow in ESL91, ESL101, and ESL102. The goal is to prepare them for the writing requirements of English Composition (ENG12, ENG12A0, and ENG24)

Discussion on what we’re doing in our classes:

• Challenges: students are not homogenous, shift in comp to rhetoric, changes in ENG 24 curriculum

ESL 101

• Introduction to basic reading content and sentence structure through interaction with introductory reading passages. Discuss the following:
  • Write short paragraphs in response to readings with an emphasis on the learner’s own experiences.
  • Narrative
  • Expository
  • Digital Story (or a narrative oral presentation)
• Faculty agreed that students will benefit from an introduction to basic reading content and sentence structure through interaction with introductory reading passages. Compositions will include narrative, expository, self-reflection, and digital stories: students will write short paragraphs, draft revisions, and creative works in response to readings with an emphasis on the learners’ own experiences.

ESL 102 / ESL 91 (Input from Jonathan Holley, Doug Lebert)

• Focus on further development of rhetorical strategies in English and skills for more effective reading, writing, critical thinking, and vocabulary development. Discuss the following:
  • Persuasive
  • Compare/Contrast
  • Other multimedia (could be a digital story – self-reflection)
  • Capstone
• Faculty agreed that students will benefit from a focus on further development of rhetorical strategies in English that include more effective reading, writing, critical thinking, vocabulary, and thesis development. Compositions will include an expansion of the narrative genre and an introduction to persuasive and comparison genres, text-based rhetoric, and capstone essay development.

Faculty will meet in the spring to share student portfolios from each class to assess the value of the genres selected and student progress.

VOTING RESULTS:

• MAJORITY IN FAVOR: “Next English” Pilot Study – 60% / 40%
  • Pilot Study process will be presented in March
• MAJORITY IN FAVOR: End-of-Semester Writing Prompt/Evaluation – 60% / 40%
  • Committee to develop prompts to form in March
  • End of semester evaluation should include reading
  • First semester will be just a pilot and not part of student final grades
  • Eventually the evaluation can be part of the final grade breakdown but should be the same percentage for all classes.
  • The evaluation could be used to prove to students that they aren’t ready for ENG 12
  • Discussion on English chat GPT/Google translate. Evaluation can also show students’ authentic abilities.
• 12 voted in the poll about Roberts Rules (there are only 10 of us)
  • Will create a new poll in the Spring to be submitted by ESL faculty during the March meeting.
  • Maybe we should just pull some ideas from RR to use as well as make our own.

COMP/ESL LEADERSHIP MEETING 12/7:

We will discuss the Next English pilot and then see how students do in the fall after they have completed the semester.