CATESOL24

Can Processability Theory (PT) predict and enhance the syntactic development of Chinese college EFL students? This session explores PT's applicability through targeted teaching interventions aiming to improve learners' syntactic developmental stages and provide practical insights for educators. Two experiments were conducted: an online pre-test to assess developmental stages and a task-based language teaching intervention. Results indicate significant improvements in syntactic development, demonstrating PT's potential to inform and improve EFL instructional practices.

Interested in using corpus-informed materials in your pedagogy or research? CIRT-IG provides a forum for practitioners, researchers, and teacher trainers to discuss how using corpora in the classroom can facilitate language learning and to share effective instructional practices that grow out of this use. Join a growing corpus of corpus users at our annual business meeting and networking session. Bring questions, ideas, and coffee -- and collocate with CATESOLers.
See https://padlet.com/mwald/cirt_ig for more information.

Explore the innovative and free USA Learns Citizenship course, developed by the Sacramento County Office of Education, and designed to prepare students for the U.S. Citizenship test and interview. This presentation will be a quick dive into the course's comprehensive curriculum, interactive online tools, and student/teacher-friendly design that empower learners with essential knowledge and skills. Discover how this accessible resource supports teachers and guides adult learners in achieving their American dream.

AR and AI create immersive learning environments for adult learners by adapting to individual learning styles. They provide flexible, accessible, and contextualized content delivery, making the learning experience more engaging and effective. By using AR and AI, adult learners can benefit from a more efficient and effective learning experience that can fit around their schedule. These innovative technologies are transforming adult education and helping people achieve their educational goals. Join us today to explore this exciting session.

Developing students' proficiency with key academic vocabulary along with corresponding patterns and collocations is essential for success in academic writing. A co-author of the new third edition of the Word Combination Card demonstrates how to teach students to use high-frequency academic vocabulary, collocations, and patterns correctly and confidently. Covered areas include topic sentences, cause-effect, comparison-contrast, exemplification, reporting information, expressing quantity, and more. Materials will be provided.

Digital literacy is not usually considered an integral part of low level ESL instruction. Faced with the need for basic skills and vocabulary, technology may seem a secondary concern. However, presentation software can provide an effective means of engaging students, allowing them to manipulate text and images and express themselves more easily than many written tasks. This presentation will give research-based evidence for student-created slides in beginning ESL classes, recommendations for project implementation, and examples of successful projects with student samples. Finally, participants will outline and share their own ideas for slide projects adapted to their specific classrooms.

One primary objective of an ESL classroom is to ensure that students have effective communication skills, often by enhancing their vocabulary acquisition skills. Considering classroom games in the context of project-based learning, games can present tantalizing opportunities for enhancing vocabulary learning through increased interaction with the content and classmates. This workshop will outline and sequence cooperative gaming suggestions that have been utilized effectively in intermediate- and advanced-level integrated ESL courses and will include a basic analog vocabulary review game, participation in embedded communication activities, and examples of student-led modifications, followed by a brief discussion of participant takeaways.