A Syrian Immigrant’s Perspective on Teaching English to Non-Native Speakers

This webinar presents an activity that teaches English to international and immigrant students. The presented activity includes three procedures that shore up students’ confidence and build their prowess in a college writing course. First, participants use a candy-based exercise, including the well-known Hershey’s Kisses, to stimulate the five senses and generate descriptive words. Next, participants focus on using the descriptive words to create sentences with a template that organizes ideas and creates a structure for paragraph development and coherence. Finally, participants cooperate to create a separate paragraph that describes a different object or experience by modeling the pattern provided in the template. 

Learning Outcomes:  

  1. Learn a new activity to teach writing to non-native English speakers. 
  2. Use a new approach to increase student engagement rates. 
  3. Reduce linguistic barriers and increase the confidence of non-English speaking students. 

Professor Ali Khalil joined the English department at the Community College of Rhode Island in December 2018. From 2011 to 2018 he served as an English instructor and an international student advisor at the flagship campus of Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. In addition, Professor Khalil served as the President of the Arkansas Association for Developmental Education in 2018. As a current doctoral candidate at Arkansas State University, he is researching best retention practices and policies at two-year community colleges and four-year universities. Professor Khalil is an active member of the National Education Association and the National Organization for Student Success. Since 2019, Professor Khalil shared his insights on best practices of teaching English to non-native speakers, along with high-impact retention policies, at the International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence in Austin, Texas; the Two-Year College English Association conference in Portland, Maine; the New England Association of Teachers of English conference in Danvers, Massachusetts; the American Association for Behavioral and Social Sciences conference in Las Vegas, Nevada; and the National Organization for Student Success conference in Nashville, Tennessee. In 2018, Professor Khalil was awarded the Middle East Research Grant from Arkansas State University. As a Syrian American, Professor Khalil brings a new perspective on student success as practiced in other nations, including Syria, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates, where he recently conducted a research on curricular policies and their impact on students’ persistence. 

Please Note:

Only those attending the LIVE webinar will receive a certificate of attendance. Thank you!