Mentorship Project is in its
2nd Semester
ELC instructor Alissa Cohen wanted to help her students
integrate into the larger MSU community in sustained
and meaningful ways. In addition to training them in
English academic language, she wanted to help them to
build skills, experiences, and connections that will serve
them throughout their academic careers at MSU. So in
the Fall of 2013, she started the English Language Center
Mentorship Project. The project matches provisionallyadmitted MSU students in their last semester of intensive
English classes at the ELC with two mentors each – one
domestic MSU student as well as one former ELC student who is now a successful full-time academic student
at MSU.
Together, these two mentors guide and advise their ELC
“mentee” as they complete a series of tasks designed to
help the ELC student connect with the greater university
and benefit from the experience and insight of student
mentors who have been in their situation. In one task,
for example, mentors are asked to invite their ELC students to attend an extra-curricular club activity or event
with them and later to help the ELC students to explore
campus clubs and organizations that fit their own interests. In another task, mentors share their favorite MSU
campus resources with their mentees. In yet another,
ELC students interview their mentors about such topics
as choosing majors, academic workload, and rules and
expectations in academic classes. They then observe a
class with each of their mentors.
Ms. Cohen met with the mentors regularly to discuss
their progress with the mentorship tasks. They talked
about their own challenges adjusting to university life
and to brainstorm ideas for helping their “mentees” to
navigate these same difficulties. What emerged from
some of these meetings was that both domestic and
international students had struggled with many of the
same difficulties their first year at MSU: making friends,
ELC Student Hao Wan (left) with her Domestic Mentor, Marie Gebbie
(middle), and International Mentor, Shasha Liu (right)
English Language Center
Wells Hall
619 Red Cedar Road
B 230 Wells Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Spring 2014
The ELC GLOB
English Language Center
The ELC History Lecture Course Celebrates an Anniversary
By Leah Addis
Spring 2014 marks the 10th semester of the ESL
093 Content Lecture course. What started as an
experiment has become an important part of the
ELC’s curriculum, preparing students for their academic futures at MSU and elsewhere.
finding help at such a huge university, choosing
and changing their majors, learning how to use
the academic resources available to them (most
notably their professors’ office hours), and getting involved outside of academics. Some of
the domestic students even cited instances of
culture shock adjusting to life in a midwestern
college town. Throughout the program, mentors expressed a genuine interest in helping their
mentees and gave insightful and positive comments about how much they themselves were
learning and growing as a result of the project.
Chunlei Zhao, International Student Mentor comments, “For me, this is a unique experience. It
gives me the opportunity to help people who are
in the same situation as I was, and I am glad to
provide all of my knowledge to make their life
easier.” Chang Yu, ELC Student adds, “I got lots
of useful information and university resources
from our mentorship. We also shared interesting
things and met with each other at our free time.
This mentorship let me make my first foreigner
friends in MSU.”
Carson Tabiolo, Domestic Student Mentor, says,
“Since the end of the program, I talk with my
mentorship cohort every once in a while; I’d say
once a month or so. We also love going out to
eat together. While eating we catch up on life,
and discuss other current events. Having them
in my life still gives me so much perspective and
enriches my college experience even further.”
When we first began developing the course, we
were looking for something different to offer our
students. We realized that while most of our ELC
classes are small and communicative (great for
language acquisition) when students leave us, they
experience a range of classroom styles, including
large lectures. We felt it was important that our students also have experience with the lecture format
where the contact with the professor is much more
limited and the expectations are much different.
093 Students listen to a lecture in Olds Hall
Materials were developed in-house, and the pilot ran in Spring 2010. It was well-received from the beginning
and has continued to be successful. All 093 students attend lecture on Mondays and Thursdays. Leah Addis
and Elizabeth Webster share the lecturer position, trading off year-by-year. Depending on the semester, between 45 and 250 students fill the lecture hall. Students take notes on the lecture and use iclickers to answer
questions. The lecturer can see from the responses the level of understanding or the range of opinions in the
room. This makes lecture an interactive experience for everyone. On Tuesdays and Fridays, students meet in
Arabic-English Language & Culture Exchange
Continued on Page 2
By Laura Ballard
Students play a game using their Arabic listening skills
This spring semester, the ELC has again partnered with MSU’s
Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA) to provide
fun and interactive language and culture exchange opportunities for both international and domestics students. In February,
the ELC and CeLTA launched the Arabic-English Language and
Culture Exchange, a group where Arabic-speaking English language learners and English-speaking Arabic language learners
come together to share their cultures and practice their second
languages. At each of the meetings, thirty students gathered to
meet one another, mingle, play language games, and find a conversation partner. Activities included language games from vocabulary races to identifying animal sounds. They also learned
about cultural activities like traditional dances and marriage traditions. As this language exchange and the Portuguese-English
language exchange (which started in Fall of 2013) have been
so successful, the ELC and CeLTA are working to create similar
groups for Korean, Japanese, and Chinese in the Fall 2014
semester.