The ALADIN Curriculum Books 1 and 2

The ALADIN curriculum builds academic language proficiency. The program was developed after extensive research on the differences between well-prepared and underprepared students and extensive analyses of the language tasks of the undergraduate classroom. The following elements were included in the curriculum and assessment development:

1. Analysis of college language tasks, lectures, and textbooks.

2. Extensive test development and field-testing with high school and college students of all linguistic backgrounds and all proficiency levels.

3. Analysis of the differences between well-prepared and underprepared students on the assessment language tasks.

4. Extensive field-testing of curriculum with experienced teachers.

    ALADIN academic language lessons are based on videotaped lectures by professors from a wide range of academic disciplines.  Male and female professors selected to participate represent the major ethnic and linguistic groups.  Each lesson includes:

• Lecture note-taking skills development: how to listen for lecture cues, how to use abbreviations, note-taking strategies.
• Academic vocabulary building: prefixes, suffixes, roots, word attack skills, word families, vocabulary in context, student dictionary.
• Reading skills and strategies with college text; text summarizing.
• Sentence complexity practice with the most common complex sentence structures in college texts and lectures.
• Academic culture: information about college degrees, courses, professors, syllabi, and other information that may be unfamiliar to first-in-family college students.

ALADIN Book 1:

Pretest

Lesson 1:  Educational Psychology: Learning Theory (also Pretest)

Lesson 2:  English: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

Lesson 3:  Business Law: Legal System Overview

Posttest

Preview lecture excerpts from Book 1.

ALADIN Book 2:

Pretest

Lesson 1:  History: Life in Sparta

Lesson 2:  Chemistry: Historical Development

Lesson 3:  Chicano-Latino Studies: The Chicano Experience

Posttest

    Each lesson is based on a videotaped lecture and college textbook excerpts. Students gain experience with professors from a variety of fields and backgrounds while they learn the academic vocabulary from the context of  each lesson.