What are remedial english classes in a community college?

Community colleges often offer remedial classes to their core subjects, including English, math and sometimes science. These courses provide the best opportunity for those behind in their academics to catch up. Schools often recommend remedial English to students who show poor skills in the subject and cannot keep up with their grade-level courses.

What Is Remedial English?

Remedial English courses have a curriculum similar to the ones for other English courses, except that these classes also cover topics from earlier grade levels. The technique of most remedial courses is teaching the material at a slower pace to help the student understand the subject matter completely and thoroughly.

Why It's Called Remedial

Schools refer to the courses as remedial English because the student needs to remedy their English skills.

Student Resentment

According to Ben W. Griffith Jr. of Bessie Tift College, remedial students offer carry a resentment about being assigned the class, which does not offer credit toward a college degree and is designed solely for the purpose of strengthening a student's language skills. This has been found to make students feel as if they were being penalized.

Foreign Exchange Students

Often foreign exchange students who do not use English as a first language need extra attention in this area. Chances are that these students will not be able to keep up with native English speakers. Remedial courses offers these students the opportunity to continue their education and develop their English skills at the same time.

Impact

In a study conducted by Meg Leake and Sally A. Lesik, on average students who participated in a remedial English program had a first-year grade point average 0.392 points higher than those who did not participate. Their study, published in 2007 in the International Journal of Research & Method in Education, looked at the scores of 197 first-time, full-time college students.

Source:

What are Remedial Classes

Impact

Student Resentment

More Information:

What are Remedial Classes

Impact of Remedial English