Story by MAUREEN PAETKAU
Joan Acosta, the one-woman producer of Vancouver's "Westcoast Reader", numbers students in ESL, literacy and a variety of other reading programmes among her readers. — PHOTO COURTESY OF WCR |
The Westcoast Reader has a circulation of 80,000, is published 10 times a year, and has received numerous awards, including the "Innovations in Teaching Award" presented by the Association of Canadian Community Colleges, and a citation from former US President Ronald Reagan in 1987. We know about this excellent paper because it arrives in our department monthly.
The paper is read by high school ESL classes and a surprisingly diverse group of adults, according to Joan Acosta, the editor. These include new immigrants to Canada, First Nations learners, those in adult literacy programmes and victims of strokes who are re-learning to read. It is also used by those who are deaf and many others who have low reading skills for a variety of reasons.
Joan Acosta, who has been sole editor since 1982, the second year of publication, scans the two daily Vancouver newspapers to choose suitable items of local, national and international news. She then rewrites them at three levels of difficulty. She does all the layout of text, photos and graphics herself. She also writes original material plus Teachers’ Notes for each issue. Those provide exercises and activities for students plus suggestions and resources for teachers. In addition, she offers a course through the TESL Teacher Training Program at Vancouver Community College.
With funding presently from the B.C. Ministry of Advanced Education, the paper provides news stories and information on a range of topics including health, safety, law, government services and everyday life.
I was curious about how the paper kept up with and reflected changes in ESL teaching methodology.
"Through talking to ESL colleagues at Capilano College," Joan replied, "attending ESL conferences and keeping up with the literature, I try to stay abreast of current trends." She then incorporates those ideas into the paper and the Teachers’ Notes. "For example," she continued, "a couple of months ago I introduced collocation and had several collocation exercises in the notes." Collocation and teaching "chunks of language" as opposed to isolated vocabulary items is an area of expanding course development mentioned by Andrew Scales of the University of British Columbia’s English Language Institute (ELI). So, indeed, the Westcoast Reader is up-to-date, interesting and meeting a huge need among Vancouver and B.C. ESL programmes.
When asked what gave her the greatest satisfaction, she replied, "receiving letters from students who tell me how much they enjoy the newspaper and how much it has helped them to learn English."
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |