Learning English, Foreign Students, and Bios Christian

For the past thirteen years, the instruction of English to our students from other countries has been similar to how we instruct our native born students. It has been very successful in our eyes because when all of our students graduate, their reading, writing, and speaking skills stand out compared to the Arizona culture around them. Daily, our methods include hours of writing, reading, and speaking with proficient English speaking adults. Our instructional methods are intensive, rarely include the passive instructional method of lecture, and require constant interaction/conversation with our instructors. The instructors expect writing, reading, and speaking in almost every period. Usually, the instructors immediately grade the assignments to provide feedback when it's best used - today, not tomorrow or the next day.

In the two schools I have been blessed to manage, students from Russia, Ukraine, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Japan, and Mexico have consistently made dramatic gains in their ability to read, write, and speak in the English language. Not that it is easy. No, the students from outside the U.S. have to work very hard to achieve a working mastery which enables them to learn their subjects in English. And the method is consistently successful for highly skilled and lower skilled students who come to us.

Why does it work? Because of the basic components involved in our instruction. Every one of our 49 minute periods involves a new, individual goal for each student that the instructor reviews with each student at the start of class. The student either reads information which must be discussed and mastered in the class period or a task is performed such as an individual science experiment, a math lesson, or a video watched while taking notes and completing a quiz at the end. By the end of each period, the teacher has spent meaningful one to one instructional time discussing, quizzing, and/or checking and correcting for immediate feedback.

Reading, writing speaking for eight periods a day. With our instructional methods, it is very difficult to not learn English at Bios Christian Academy.