Book Review

Peregoy, S. and Boyle, O. (2008). Reading, writing and learning in ESL: A resource book for teaching K-12 English learners. (5^th ed.), Boston:             Allyn & Bacon.

English language learners (ELLs) are a rapidly increasing demographic in Florida’s schools in particular and schools nationwide in general. In order to prepare preservice teachers and K-12 teachers alike to work with this population, textbooks such as Reading, writing and learning in ESL: A resource book for teaching K-12 English learners help to fulfill this urgent need. This particular textbook has met the test of time and usefulness to educators like me as it enters into its fifth edition this year.

One immediate need that the text meets is that of differentiated instruction. Preservice and K-12 teachers alike need to know how to differentiate instruction for various levels of language proficiency. The textbook meets this need by including discussion on differentiated instruction and samples of differentiated content lessons following the sheltered instruction, or SDAIE  model. These examples can be found in the chapters on Oral Language Development in Second Language Acquisition, Words and Meaning: English Learners’ Vocabulary Development, Emergent Literacy: English Learners Beginning to Write and Read, English Learners and Process Writing, Reading and Literature Instruction for English Learners, Content Reading and Writing: Prereading and During Reading, and Content Reading and Writing: Postreading Strategies for Organizing and Remembering.  For example, in the chapter on Process Writing, the authors provide strategies for working with beginning and intermediate writers as well as provide a useful chart that allows the ELLs to correct their own papers during the writing process. Another example would be found in the newly added chapter on vocabulary development. This chapter includes research on how ELLs acquire vocabulary and how to provide differentiated instruction and assessment for beginning and intermediate levels.

The structure of the chapter is user-friendly and allows preservice and teacher educators to quickly find the information they need. Each chapter of the book contains a short introduction and guiding questions, a variety of classroom examples and vignettes, an Internet Resources box with useful websites and follow-up activities, MyEducationLab activities, a summary of effective teaching strategies for appropriate grade levels as well as suggested readings, discussion questions and activities rounding out the chapter. In addition, samples of speech and writing produced by K-12 ELLs students are highlighted in helpful boxes throughout the textbook, providing the K-12 educator and preservice teachers with examples of what they may be encountering in the classroom.  

A major edition to the fifth edition of the book is the aforementioned MyEducationLab component, which is a new and improved version of the MyLabSchool component in the fourth edition of the text.  Each chapter has videos associated with it which highlight techniques and strategies that are discussed in the text. For example, on page 151 in Chapter 4 on Oral Language Development in Second Language Acquisition, the teacher in the video discusses an assignment in which English language learners “read a biography of an explorer and make an oral presentation about the life of that explorer while dressed as the explorer” (p. 151, Teacher’s Edition). The MyEducationLab videos also help meet the need of preservice teacher programs to provide a consistent experience for preservice teachers as part of a clinical component of a TESOL course. Placement of preservice teachers can sometimes be inconsistent in the sense that classrooms with ELLs are not always available, even in areas known for heavy ELL population concentrations such as South Florida. A uniform experience through the videos provides a common frame of reference for the preservice teachers and their TESOL course instructors. 

This particular textbook is well-suited as a textbook for a TESOL methods or curriculum course, or as a resource book for K-12 teachers to keep handy when they need ideas on working with their ELLs. I have used this text as the primary course textbook through three editions at a variety of preservice and graduate teacher education programs in universities in Florida. I also refer to this text when I am looking for different ways to present material to my own ELL and mainstream university students because the strategies contained in the text are often hands-on and very engaging, such as creating a group mural of their lives or of a story they have read. As a language learner myself, I often refer to this text to help generate ideas on how to improve my own language proficiency in other languages that I am learning. This text helps reminds me that crayons, poetry, song and experiments are useful tools to use at any age to learn language and content, no matter what our language or educational background is.

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