Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Curriculum Alignment

An important goal of our CDCP Noncredit Certificate of Completion program (i.e. our NESL 301 to NESL 304 sequence) is to get our noncredit students into (better) employment or a college major.

At recent statewide faculty forums organized by the Board of Governors Task Force for Jobs and the Economy, it was pointed out that a topic missing from the thread of structured career pathways is how to align basic skills curriculum, including ESL, with workplace skill requirements. ESL faculty at the listening events expressed frustration that current ESL curriculum still feels a bit too irrelevant.

Not coincidentally, some more academic-oriented ESL departments of community colleges have sought to bring their ESL curriculum in alignment with their English counterparts. LA City College is one such example. Dr. Lane Igoudin, who teaches at LACC, has just published an article in CATESOL News to describe a few strategies for aligning ESL with English. Click here to read more.

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