Thank you for considering the use of this textbook in your advanced ESL writing class. We hope that the fundamental rhetorical modes in the chapters on writing will provide helpful information to your class. We also realize that every instructor should have the freedom of choosing content, so our recommended topics for the essay assignments may be changed to suit your specific purpose.

Our theme-based approach, with content from professional writers, will give your students the opportunity to delve deeply into the readings, learn annotation strategies, and apply critical thinking to their assignments. This approach allows students to build their skills, but it doesn’t expect the instructor to be the content expert. We hope it will encourage collaboration, active learning, and provide guidance towards academic topics.

According to Teaching by Principles by H. Douglas Brown, “Theme-based instruction provides an alternative to what would otherwise be  traditional language classes by structuring a course around themes or topics. Theme-based curricula can serve the multiple interests of students in a classroom and can offer a focus on content while still adhering to institutional needs for offering a language course, per se. …The major principles underlying both theme-based and content-based instruction are:

• the automaticity principle (focus on purpose and meaningful use of language)
• the meaningful learning principle (subsume new information into existing structures and memory systems)
• the intrinsic motivation principle (behavior stems from wants, needs, desires from within)
• the communicative competence principle (attention to language use and fluency)

All these principles are well served by theme-based instruction and/or courses that are successfully able to get students excited and interested in some topic, issue, idea, or problem rather than bored or weary of over-analyzing linguistic rules.

Numerous current ESL textbooks, especially at the intermediate and advanced levels, offer theme-based courses of study. Such textbooks catch the curiosity and motivation of students with challenging topics and as they grapple with a whole array of real-life issues ranging from simple to complex, they can also focus on improving linguistic skills” (222).

We have also included samples of authentic ESL essays written by non-native speakers at the high-intermediate and advanced levels. By allowing your students to read and critique these pieces, we hope that they will begin to pay more attention to their own errors and gain confidence in self-editing as part of their writing process.