Nancy Herzfeld-Pipkin has Published the Third in a Series of
Texts
 Nancy Herzfeld-Pipkin has published the third in a series of
texts to teach ESL students both English skills and the language
skills they will need to take courses outside their English
classes. Published in October 2006 was “Destinations 2 – Grammar
for Academic Success,” a companion to “Destinations 2 – Writing
for Academic Success,” published a year ago. These are the
“middle-level” in a three-level series of texts, with two more
publications at the “final” level due out in 2007 and 2008.
Nancy Herzfeld-Pipkin has been teaching English as a Second
Language since 1976. “Even after nearly 30 years I remain
enthusiastic about how rewarding it is, and I always learn
something from my students.” Now Herzfeld-Pipkin’s students can
learn even more from her with the publication of another book in
her latest series, Destinations.
“Finding books that fit the needs of community college ESL
classes was difficult,” said Herzfeld-Pipkin who has been in the
ESL field since 1976, with stints at San Diego State, UCSD, and
Miramar in addition to Grossmont College.
“Grossmont College has an excellent ESL program which covers
several levels of proficiency. At each level there are specific
skills and topics that are outlined in a program sequence of
skills, and in our official outlines. Because the available
texts do not cover all the areas we want to teach, teachers
usually order two separate texts and in some cases, even then
not everything is covered at a particular level.
Herzfeld-Pipkin explains, “We also found that the available
texts were not academically oriented enough,” she said,
“especially in the subject matter they covered. They were
teaching how to write essays, for example, but asking students
to write about their favorite holiday or color or superstitions.
I wanted to give them materials that would prepare them for the
courses they were going to take when they finished my class,
such as General Education requirements. I decided to write my
own materials by following a different academic theme for each
unit: psychology, U.S. history, business, environmental studies,
etc.”
“My prior books have all been ESL texts,” she said. “The first
was a reading text, the second focused on idioms through
listening and speaking, and the third was a grammar text.
“Destinations prepares students for academic achievement in the
classes they will enter after ESL. These academic content areas
prepare students for the next step in their education,” she
said.
“When the publishers saw my materials, they realized that they
fill a gap in the field,” said Herzfeld-Pipkin, whose book is
the newest entry in the Grossmont College Authors Club. “We
decided to make this into a three-level series of books. The
lower level will cover mostly paragraph writing, the second
level (the book that just came out) provides paragraph review
and focuses on essay writing, and the highest level will cover
more about essay writing, paraphrasing, writing from sources,
etc.
In addition to focusing on academic themes, the books are
uniquely connected through themes and vocabulary.”
Herzfeld-Pipkin worked at Grossmont in the 1980s as a part-time
English instructor and returned here as a full-time ESL
instructor in 2000.
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