Professional development workshop brings renowned ESL trainer to Delaware

Approaching Delaware on Interstate 95, Keith Folse had a sudden sense of déjà vu. It was the first trip to the First State for the renowned textbook writer and veteran teacher trainer—but a brief discussion of local history with driver/tour guide Barbara Morris suddenly reminded him of an article about Delaware he’d seen years ago.

Folse, coordinator of the MA TESOL program at Southern Florida University in Orlando, had included the passage in an early edition of his book Intermediate Reading Practices. He’d chosen the selection, he said, because of its neutrality— “How many ESL students would have any advance knowledge of Delaware?” he thought.

Folse seemed delighted by the chance to fill in the gaps in his own knowledge about the state. The occasion — a professional development workshop on vocabulary teaching led by Folse for ELI faculty and tutors and a handful of colleagues from Drexel University — had an equally positive effect on participants.

“I’m picking up hints that I can put into practice next week,” said Nelson McMillan, ELI tutor and vocabulary cluster instructor.

“He’s exposed a lot of fallacies about vocabulary teaching,” said Rachel Diehl of Drexel University. “We will definitely share this information with our colleagues.”

The author of more than 35 textbooks and teacher’s manuals, including the 2004 Vocabulary Myths, Applying Second Language Research to Classroom Teaching, Folse opened with an anecdote from his own languagelearning trials in Japan.

Hungry and homesick for Mississippi fare, the newly arrived English teacher—determined to make biscuits—set out to buy flour. Armed with a fair knowledge of Japanese grammar but a limited lexicon, Folse failed to communicate his needs at a local mom-and-pop grocery store. The incident taught him the relative importance of vocabulary over grammar, a lesson that he drove home throughout the workshop.

Drawing on more than 25 years’ experience as a teacher and teacher trainer, Folse spent several hours illustrating a variety of techniques to increase students’ frequency of exposure to vocabulary items — a crucial factor in the daunting task of learning the vocabulary of a second language, he said.

"Our job is to make the task less overwhelming and less tedious,” he said.

In addition, he urged teachers to push students beyond their comfort zone, forcing them to expand their language proficiency.

“Human beings jump to whatever level you set,” he said.