English as a Second Language
2024-2025 Program Review

American River College offers courses in English as a Second Language (ESL) that are designed exclusively to provide non-native speakers of English with a command of the academic language necessary to pursue career, transfer, and degree goals. Students whose native language is English but who need help with language fundamentals should seek courses offered in the English Department.

We offer over 75 sections at seven different levels, from novice to advanced. There are five different types of courses:

• ESL (integrated Reading and Writing courses)
• ESLG (Grammar courses)
• ESLL (Listening and Speaking courses)
• ESLLAB (ESL assistance and instruction in the ESL Center)
• ESLW (Writing)

Some of our courses are taught as hybrid classes (half in the classroom and half online) or completely online. We have classes at our Natomas Center in addition to our main campus.

Our students come from all over the world. Our largest language groups include Dari/Farsi, Arabic, Ukrainian, Russian, Spanish, and Pashto. However, at any given time we have students from more than thirty different countries, speaking more than thirty different languages.

Almost all of the ESL students are disproportionately impacted in multiple ways.

Socioeconomic Impact: In S24, 90% of ESL students lived in or near poverty level. 70% in poverty. 

Trauma Impact: Spring 2025 Unduplicated Headcount partially tells the story.

23% Farsi (Persian) (This is generally recognized as the same as Dari tough apparently that's not a choice) from Afghanistan or Iran

22% Ukrainian

18% Russian (Since many Ukrainians are bilingual or are actually native Russian speakers, this could refer to Ukrainians).

5% Arabic (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan)

23% English (Students who chose misinterpreted the intent of the question. None of the ESL students are native-speakers of English).

What do these language groups have in common? They are from active war zones.

Linguistic Impact: Though this seems obvious, consider what that means. If their goal is to transfer and earn a bachelor's degree, that means that they need to learn to write sufficiently well to pass college-level composition, "freshman comp." American students receive 12 YEARS of preparation to do this. In contrast, ESL students are allotted merely 3 years of academic English practice at ARC to achieve this same goal!

First-Generation College Students: This is the first time for essentially all of our students to attend college in the U.S. Though some have attended university and even obtained degrees in their native countries, the system here is very different and extrememly challenging to navigate without close guidance such as a college-grad parent in the U.S. might give to their child.

Immigration Status: Except for a few officially designated "international students," all of our students are immigrants. Many have TPS (temporary protected status) meaning that returning to their home country would put their life in danger.

Gender: In many ESL courses for the A-B Course success rate, there are 5-16 gap points between the males and the comparison group success rate.

Successful Placement

The ESL Department has tenaciously fought to maintain, improve, and receive CCC Chancellor's Office approval to include a writing sample as part of the ESL assessment process. Helping students find the best class to begin their academic ESL work at ARC is absolutely crucial to helping them succeed, persist, and advance towards their goals. The ESL assessment has gone through and continues to go through an extensive multi-year review process. ARC ESL assessment is one of only three community colleges in the state to have been granted probationary approval.

In-Person Instruction

To empower lower-level students to receive Canvas training and improve their academic English, we have offered more of these courses in person. These students are the ones who most often struggle the most with online and hybrid courses, so having more in-person courses prepares them to be able to succeed in all modalities and in the future, to be able to choose from upper-level modality options with confidence and competence.

Individualzaied Instruction & Support

The ESLLAB plays a critical role in this area. Many students who are unable to enroll in lecture courses or perhaps not ready to do so, attend the ESLLAB in the ESL Center. Students receive support at their own pace. The use of the online platform Burlington English for the past four years has been very helpful in this regard. Additionally, the Lab has expanded instructional offerings for students at all levels including the entry level.

Expanded Offerings

With severely impacted enrollments and full-wait lists in ESL, a simple way to meet the needs of ESL students is to offer more ESL courses. When extra FTE has been available such as in Fall 2023 and Spring 2025, the Language & Communication Division has allowed ESL to add several courses. In Summer 2024, we were allowed to add a few more sections, and we have been permitted to maintain those in Summer 2025.

1. Increase FTE overall in order to meet the demand for ESL classes.
2. Analyze and consider expanding evening course offerings.
3. Increase FTE for Summer
4. Continue to develop and offer ESL milestone certificates in partnership with various departments at ARC.
5. Create and implement new ESLLAB materials for lower levels
6. Revamp the ESL curriculum to account for repercussions of the loss of the 20-level ESL courses due to AB 1705.

1. More full-time ESL faculty (In 2025, we had 13 full-tmers; in 2019, we had 18. We're trying to do almost the same with much less!)
2. More FTE to open more sections
3. More IAs (assessment and ESL Center). Follow through with the already approved ESL Center IA.
4. Permanent funding for ESL assessment: permanent reassigned time for ESL assessment coordinators and ESL assessment revalidation team.
5. Counselors with trauma training
6. Two ESL-designated counselors in the ESL Center
7. Support the request for two ESL professors to receive Type B leave and/or reassigned time to revise necessary ESL curricula.
8. Grant reassigned time or other funding to support the development of new materials for the ESLLAB.
9. Implementation of the ESL milestone checker in PeopleSoft for ESL classes.
10. Book support/book financial aid (OER isn’t the answer for ESL students)
11. Make sure books are in the bookstore
12. Computers, hotspots
13. More copies in of books in the library

• Support and maintain the vibrant for-credit academic ESL program; do not implement non-credit ESL
• Offer more ESL sections during "prime time" (when kids are at school) by allocating more classrooms during this time.
• Hire needed student workers in a timely manner for ESL assessment and the ESL Center.
• Renew reassigned time to support the development of more ESL milestone certificates.
• Allocate hours to staff and/or hire new staff to process the ESL certificates.
• Continue reassigned time for ESL Chair.
• Continue offering of the program for adjunct "extra 27 hours" of paid college/department service and professional development.
• Grant FTE to host ESLLAB at Natomas.
• Implement the use of TPS (temporary protected status) to track their progress.
• Permanent funding for The Parrot ESL Newsletter.