Teaching Students that are not literate

CLO · Post by **CLO** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 1:10 am

This is my first year teaching ESL , I teach in the USA to Spanish speaking students. All of my students are intermediate to advanced. Today a new student arrived at our school he does not speak any English and is illiterate. I have worked with monolingual students before, but since he is illiterate in his first language, I have no idea where to start with him. The student is 16 and in 9th grade.
Thank you for any advice or experience you can share with me! I feel inadequate as an ESL teacher in this situation!

Senorita Daniels · Post by **Senorita Daniels** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 7:06 pm

I've worked with kindergarteners and first graders who aren't literate, and the biggest thing with them is learning the alphabet and the letter sounds. It helps to take things one letter at a time, so you don't inundate them with information, especially since they aren't used to the school environment like the others. I have a fifth grader with okay reading skills and a seventh grader with questionable skills (I tried to see how he reads in his L1, but after one word, he refused to read any more). With these two, the biggest difference in their reading after one semester with the younger and one year with the older, is attitude. If the student is willing to learn, he or she will be easy to work with and start picking it up. Pray that this student is a hard worker in class.

Sally Olsen · Post by **Sally Olsen** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:18 pm

I would highly recommend that you find a tutor, grandmother, mother, someone who is free during the school day who speaks and reads Spanish to tutor him in his own language. If he learns to read in Spanish he will have a much better time eventually in English because he will understand all the things you have to understand to read. Of course, you can proceed with teaching him to read in English at the same time. There are literacy books in the library for adults and he is an adult at 16 with adult subject material and illustrations so check them out. They often have tapes included so he can work on his own for some time during the period and enter in class activities as he can when the others help to explain what to do in Spanish. I would question why he is illiterate in Spanish though - usually someone will have picked up something if there aren't serious difficulties. Perhaps you should have him tested in Spanish to find out if he is dyslexic or if there is some other reason he can't read.