Author Archives: Raj Khatri

About Raj Khatri

Land Acknowledgment: "I acknowledge that I am on the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, and other Indigenous peoples. I am grateful for the opportunity to live, learn, and share here." Raj As an EAP/ESL instructor, I have always enjoyed, for over 20 years now, facilitating both adult and K-12 EAP and EAP classes that include international and immigrant students and students with refugee backgrounds in a variety of settings across North America and Asia. In addition, I have engaged in mentoring pre-service ESL/EFL instructors for several years. I appreciate George Brown College's providing me with the opportunity that allow me to continue to engage in supporting students in their academic pursuits through application of inclusive practices in a communicative language teaching environment and learning from and sharing with colleagues and building expertise in my capacity as Professor of ESL-SoTL at the School of ESL within the Centre for Preparatory & Liberal Studies (CPLS) of the College. As well, I am grateful to the Department of Linguistics of the University of Victoria for the opportunity to serve as TESL Practicum Supervisor and share with and learn from pre-service TESL instructor-colleagues and enhance my knowledge and expertise in the field for about five years in the past. In addition, my learning as ESL Instructor III at the University of Regina for two years and a half before joining Camosun College in Victoria as ELD Instructor in the fall of 2014 was crucial to further advancing in the field. I always appreciate the opportunity I was provided with in the process of facilitating EAP, ESL, LBS and LINC classes in various capacities, including Professor at Centennial College and Instructor at the Toronto Catholic District School Board, and Seneca College in Toronto in the past. Awarded the University of Victoria Fellowship and the Geoffrey & Alix O'Grady Scholarship in Linguistics for Academic Excellence, I have also been working with Dr. Huang on my doctoral studies in linguistics, with a major focus of research in applied linguistics, at the same time. Before I completed my Special Education program with Honors at Queen’s University in Ontario and was certified to teach in the K-12 public education system as an Ontario College teacher (OCT), as well as to teach adult ESL classes as TESL Ontario accredited instructor in 2009, I worked with Dr. Haulman during my second Master’s degree in TESL at the University of Central Oklahoma, where I received the President’s Honor Roll for four consecutive semesters and graduated Summa Cum Laude. I was deeply honored when Brad Henry, then Governor of the State of Oklahoma in the United States, recognized my public input about college safety and public education in 2007 and 2008. Holding the belief that it is important to give back to the community, I have always been engaged in voluntary activities, both in professional and community contexts, and have been enjoying working with people from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. My voluntary services extend from supporting schools in Nepal, working with Plan International Canada in their 'Because I am a Girl' initiative in Nepal, to facilitating ESL/EAP classrooms at various settings, including at the Toronto District School Board, the Toronto Catholic District School Board, and Regina Public Schools and supporting voluntary organizations that include WoodGreen Community Services (Toronto), Regina Food Bank, the Salvation Army (Regina), the Regina Green Patch, and Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society in various capacities. I have been an accredited member of TESL Canada (Professional Standard III Permanent; since 2009), and Ontario College of Teachers (OCT; since 2010), and I hold Saskatchewan Professional 'A' Certificate. As well, as a member, I have been participating in professional development activities at TESOL International since 2007. My areas of research interests are L2 reading, reading strategies, adult ELLs with disabilities and universal design for learning (UDL) among EAP students. Thank you for visiting! Happy exploring!

Using Task-based Instruction in Canada: Can Sheltered Instruction Complement? (For presentation at JALT PanSIG 2017)

I would like to invite you to my presentation titled “Using TBI in Canada: Can Sheltered Instruction Complement?”, which is taking place at 11:00 AM on Sunday, May 21 in B101 at Akita International University in Japan.

I will start off the session with a brief introduciton of the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLBs),which is a national standard and framework of reference for teaching adult ESL in Canada and adheres to the principles of TBI among other instructional approaches. We will then discuss its incorporation into adult ESL classrooms, using mainly components and features from the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model. I believe that there will be some SIOP strategies for you to take away and incorporate in your EFL/JSL and mainstream classrooms in Japanese teaching and learning contexts.

Thank you very much!

Advertisement

Working with students with disabilities in ESL/EAL classrooms

Do you teach an adult EAL class with exceptional students? Or, do you feel that some of your adult EAL students who are yet to be diagnosed with disabilities might benefit from differentiating instructions? Then you may find this article (pp. 6-9) useful:

Welcome to ADAPT Strategy: A 5-step Strategy for Inclusion in adult ELL Classrooms, pp. 6-9.

Reading Strategy Use among adult EFL Learners in Nepal

Research interest in L2 reading strategy use has been growing considerably among second language practitioners and researchers. Reading strategies are the comprehension processes employed by readers to make sense of what they read (Brantmeier, 2002). As there is a wide consensus among practitioners that the use of a variety of reading strategies can help adult ESL students develop their reading comprehension, the present research investigated adult EFL students’ perceived awareness of reading strategy use in academic context in Nepal. The findings revealed that participants used all three categories of reading strategies at a high- and medium- usage levels. However, no significant differences in overall reading strategy use were found between male and female participants. Significant differences are found between the male and female participants (p < .05) in the means of 3 of the 30 individual reading strategies. Males’ mean values are significantly higher than females’ for Global 24 and Problem-solving 25, whereas females’ mean value is significantly higher than males’ for Support 10. Among the other 27 reading strategies, there is no significant difference between males and females, although females’ mean values are higher for 17 individual reading strategies and males’ mean values are higher for 10 individual reading strategies. The overall mean value for all the strategies taken together is higher for females; however, the difference is not statistically significant. These findings indicated that this particular group of students are aware of a variety of reading strategies. Global strategies are related to reading comprehension (Anderson, 2005). As Global is the least reported category of strategies, the use of Global strategies be encouraged among the readers. It is important that readers’ awareness of appropriate strategies be promoted since when readers are aware of the reading strategies they have already identified, their conscious decision to use appropriate strategies becomes helpful in comprehension of the text (Akkakoson, 2012).