Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Hi my name is Priscilla Butler and I'm an instructor here at Santa Barbara
City College, and I teach ESL.
So today I'm going to talk a little bit about what ESL is,
and that stands for English as a Second Language. So we teach students who come from
a variety of language backgrounds, they may have come from another country to study here
at Santa Barbara City College, or they may have come here earlier in their education
and maybe spent a few years in high school and then come to the college, from a
U.S. high school. And we have a very diverse program so we serve over 1200 students each semester,
and we have a wide range of classes including reading, writing, grammar, and speaking
and listening, and we also have combination classes. And one of the things I think we're
most proud of is the level of diversity, and how we can meet the needs of all different
students so we actually have students from 38 different countries currently studying in
our program, and we love meeting people from all over the world.
So students who join our program have a lot of different purposes and needs,
and we really support any reason that a student comes here for.
So one of those needs might be personal. Some students want to be able to
communicate more effectively in their daily life for basic actions, going shopping, meeting new people,
expanding their social network. But probably professional development is the biggest reason
why some of our students come here. They would like to be promoted at work or pursue a different
type of job, or get a higher level of job within their field. So the personal and professional
goals are very important for many of our students.
And many of our students have longer term goals.
They want to pursue a certificate in a particular area, or a degree. So they may wish to get
a degree here at Santa Barbara City College, and then a lot of our students also have a
transfer goal. So transfer means after they finish our ESL program, and then they go on
to another area in the college to get a major course of study after finishing two years
there they would transfer to a university. And our major transfer universities are UC
Santa Barbara and CSU Channel Islands. But we have students who transfer to many other
universities including UCLA or UC Berkeley, private universities, and in other states as well.
So one reason I really love teaching ESL is, ESL is not only about language,
but it's also about culture. And for the language part, of course I'm interested in how words work
& how sentences work and how reading and writing can serve us in our lives,
but the thing that's most satisfying is to see a student that's developed the ability to
communicate in English that allows them much more opportunity than they had before.
And in addition to my love of language, I love culture and so we have the great privilege
to work with students from all over the world. I mentioned that students come from over
38 different countries. So I love learning about how their cultures are, what their customs
and beliefs are, and trying to understand how all of us here in this global community
can understand each other better, and work together.
So sometimes students if they have been away from school for a while,
of if they're coming to an American college for the first time,
they may be a little bit worried about how they'll do here. So my advice to any new
students would be, first of all be persistent- and that means don't ever give up. Keep trying!
Practice makes perfect after all. And another thing I would suggest is, don't be afraid to ask for help
So in some schools in other countries in the world it's not necessarily common
to tell your teacher that you need help or to go to your teacher and ask a lot of questions,
but here we really encourage you to ask your teacher questions, visit your teacher during office hours,
& seek extra help if you need it. We have tutors here, we have student support services, we
have counseling services, so there are many many ways that we can help you and we hope
that you'll ask for them, and finally I wanted to say that no matter where you come from,
no matter what you're background is, everybody has the potential to succeed in college, so
we hope that you will join us, and try together to change your life through the study of English.
}