Relationship building with students and instructors of ESL: Bridging the gap for library instruction and services

Abstract

ESL students often do not utilize the librarian for help or attend library orientation and instruction sessions. Academic librarians and ESL composition instructors need to bridge the gap in order to help guide international students during their academic career. This paper aims to address this issue. This paper will describe the benefits of relationship building between a librarian and two ESL instructors at the University of Toledo and the information literacy instruction sessions created for two ESL composition classrooms. The paper finds that librarians and ESL instructors can bridge the gap for ESL students. Understanding the needs of the international/ESL community can help librarians approach ESL instructors or the international/ESL community in a way that allows the ESL student to feel comfortable and to seek out the librarian's assistance as new needs arise. The collaboration at the University of Toledo indicates that closer relationships are needed between librarians and ESL instructors and that more than one library session is needed to help ESL students feel comfortable with librarians and libraries. Understanding the culture, values, beliefs, and practices that ESL students bring from their home countries and exhibit in the composition classroom can help librarians create programs that help define library services and help to bridge the gap between services provided by the librarian and the ESL composition instructor. The very strong relationship built between the librarian and the ESL instructors had a very positive affect not only in the initial trial, but also in developing part of the curriculum for ESL composition students. This paper has great potential value for both librarians who are interested in embedding themselves in ESL programs and for ESL instructors. © 2012, Emerald Group Publishing Limited