Former ELC Student Earns
Academic Scholarship
Spring 2016
English Language Center
Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Road
B 230 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
The ELC GLOB
English Language Center
ESL 491: A New Course Offering for Graduate Students
By Patricia Walters
Ms. Noura Massri, a student at the ELC before embarking on her undergraduate program in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, was
awarded the Marilyn Mood Endowed Scholarship on
April 14, 2016. This scholarship is awarded annually to
a deserving student in nutritional sciences who plans
to pursue a career in the field. Noura fits this bill perfectly. She hopes to conduct research in an industrial
or academic setting, with the goal of helping people
lead healthy lives.
Noura began her studies in food technology engineering in her home country, Syria. She was attracted
to this field of study because she enjoyed chemistry
and sciences. At MSU, she enjoys being in a “diverse
environment, meeting so many people from different places and different majors.” In Syria, she said,
a class cohort goes through a degree program and
classes together for 4 or 5 years. However, here, she
has taken core courses with fellow students who then
branch out to other colleges and majors. Through
her classes, her campus job, and the clubs she is involved in, she has made many friends, which is what
she finds is a highlight of her experience. To juggle
everything, she has to plan her week out carefully.
“It’s hard some days,” she admits, “because I have to
schedule my meetings, my job, and my study time.
Some days are very long.”
She appreciates her experience at the ELC, which,
she says, played “a critical role in my social and academic transition to MSU. I feel that this is very important because without the supportive teachers at ELC,
I would not be able to achieve this academic accomplishment.”
Undoubtedly, her hard work is paying off. The English
Language Center congratulates Noura Massri for this
wonderful recognition!
ESL 491 (Continued from page 1)
As for the cultural component of the course, Lin says,
“Also, there is some cultural knowledge and it is very
useful to know it, so that we can communicate in a more
comfortable and confident way.” Student Youngjun
Lee agrees: “ITAs can get more information about the
real situations for their future classes and learn strategies to address some specific topics in an American
academic context.”
One small example of a topic covered in class was answering student questions. Americans expect someone to answer a question within 3 seconds. Therefore, a
non-native speaker needs to know that longer silences
can be misinterpreted as the student not being heard
or the teacher not knowing the answer. Certainly, this is
something a TA wants to avoid and strategies such as
saying “let me think” or even “umm” can help them to
be more successful in these situations.
Students say they have found the course beneficial. Lin
says, “I’m less concerned with my accent compared to
before. The teacher and some parts of the textbook
told us that we can keep our accent and express ourselves clearly.” Hana Kang says, “It’s hard to improve
English in a systematic way just by speaking with
friends.” Siwen Guo says, “I have already recommended this course to my friends because I think it’s helpful
to have a specific course for the TAs in our program.
It works not only on our listening and the pronunciation but also on our organization and explanation of
the content in our area.”
ESL 491 students and their instructor spell out sentence stress and intonation
By Stacy Sabraw
Most people know that the English Language Center
offers courses in the Intensive English Program (090094), English for Academic Purposes courses (ESL
220-223) and Special Program courses. However, most
people do not know that the Center also offers Special
Topics courses (ESL 291 and ESL 491). In fact, the first
versions of these courses were held during the Fall 2014
semester. With a lot of outreach by faculty and administrators of the ELC and collaboration with faculty from
other colleges and departments, students who may
never have taken a course through the ELC before can
still get the language and academic skills support they
need. One such course was designed for a very specific group: graduate students in the Measurement and
Quantitative Methods (MQM) Ph.D. program.
This particular version of ESL 491, which began this semester, is for international teaching assistants to help
them speak more intelligibly in English and teach them
how to navigate specific situations in American culture
both inside and outside the classroom.
Regarding the speech improvement part of ESL 491,
student Qinyun Lin says, “This course helped me realize that I did not pronounce certain words correctly or
clearly. With this awareness, I started to pay more attention to certain words or syllables and try to say them
clearly every time I used them.” Student Unhee Ju agrees
and adds that she learned how to, “properly use thought
groups, intonation, pausing, and prominent syllables.”
Continued on last page
Dr. Susan Gass,
TESOL 50 at 50
At this year’s 50th International TESOL Conference in
Baltimore, Dr. Susan Gass, ELC
Director and Distinguished Professor, was recognized as one
of the 50 leaders in the field of
Teaching English to Speakers
of Other Languages (TESOL).
This celebrated group of 50 has
“made significant contributions
to the profession with in the
past 50 years.” These leaders
have helped develop English
language teaching and learning
into a profession that touches
the lives of students and educators worldwide.
Congratulations Dr. Gass!