Teacher Discussion Forums

[mehajaby]

Hi. I am an esl teacher who has previously worked with business people. I am now faced with teachign immigrants, many with no writing reading skills in thier native language, and many with no understanding of english at all. ANy advice, gudiance, book recommendations would be appreciated.

[Fran Bennett]

I have been volunteering in a church-based program for nearly two years. Many of our students are barely literate in their native languages. Their attendance is sporadic since they are often working two jobs with variable schedules.

The books we use have very little relevance to the students' lives, although I can see that the goal is to give the students some cultural information about the US. I tend to take one sentence from the book and work through it, practicing different conjugations of the verb and encouraging the students to speak and use the words. I also end up using the encyclopedia a lot, to find pictures of things in the stories.

The English that the students hear every day at work is certainly non-standard. I wonder if I should be correcting their use of "have" and "has" or "he" and "she." And for the students who can barely write their names, should we give them handwriting practice in printing or cursive writing? I try to watch how they form the letters they already have learned to write, but it's often quite a mix of styles.

I'd love to hear from others with more experience in teaching ESL. Thanks.

[RVD]

Like the previous two posters, I too have had trouble finding relevant material to use with a student who is only semilitterate in her own language. Hoping to find something with true emotional meaning for her, recently we did a unit she really liked about job applications. I downloaded blank applications and she used them to practice. It allowed me to help her build job-related vocabulary lists, to work on the "survival basics" such as properly formatting your address, your SS#, etc.

In addition, I used this lesson as an opportunity to feature some handwriting practice. Up to this point I'd let that slide, but as her native language uses non-roman script, her primitive handwriting detracts from her job applications. Using a 3rd grade theme book for this purpose, she is working on certain troublesome letters. I used a font like D'Nealian script for a job application vocab. sheet and she LOVED it. She prints only, although I have encouraged her to practice a cursive signature.

While I am new at this too, I know enough to know you can not solve all problems at once! One step at a time, one step at a time!

What do the more experienced tutors say?

[Celeste]

RVD-

This is exactly the kind of activity that new immigrants need. I like a conversation series called "Expressways" for working with new immigrants because it includes a lot of survival English conversation patterns.

Other realia I like to bring into the classroom:

Help wanted section of the classifieds.

Rentals section of the classifieds.

Phone bills.

Phone book.

Restaurant menu.

Grocery store flyer.

Community Centre events schedule.

Bank withdrawal and deposit slips.

Bus schedules and route maps.

Food packaging with cooking directions (really fun if you can actually make the food item in class!)

I figured a lot of these things out from having lived abroad myself, and I found that these things were always helpful for me to learn. Now I live in Japan, and I am learning all of this stuff once again.

[Tara B]

I have taught English to people who are illiterate in their native languages and had some frustrating experiences. Since then I have learned a little bit more about literacy.

I think the practical activities suggested in some of the other posts are very good starting points. At the same time, the task of reading is unfortunately going to be somewhat abstract. You need to balance survival activities with some direct instruction in the skill of reading.

The alphabet is of course the place to start. But what most ESL teachers don't know is that it's not just about putting the sounds together. A student who is illiterate in their first language probably has no "concept of word"-- they can't divide a sentence up into the chunks that we think of as words. In all alphabetic languages, concept of word is the hurdle that has to be jumped before the student is ready for alphabetic instruction. A student has to be able to divide up a sentence into words before they can divide a word up into sounds. You can teach phonics until you're blue in the face and it won't do any good if the students aren't ready for it.

There are many ways to increase students' awareness of print so that they can cross the "concept of word" threshhold. You need to work with familiar texts--short texts that the students know or can easily memorize. These can be proverbs, songs, nursery rhymes. . . The students already know the words, so you just practice the task of reading. Make the students follow along with their finger while they recite, even if they can't sound out the individual words. You will be surprised how difficult fingerpointing can be. Also, taking a sentence, cutting it up, and putting it back together again is a good activity.

"Word banks" are also helpful for these true beginners--keep a collection of the first sight words that the students know in a little baggie, and increase it until you get to about 100. Your local elementary teachers are expert reading teachers and can probably give you tons more ideas.

Admittedly, many of these activities will be viewed as "childish," but unfortunately they're the best ways to get students ready for learning to read. And, as I said before, these activities should of course be mixed in with oral language, andvery practical, concrete, day-to-day survival skills.

PS. (Sorry for the double-post; I posted this first in the wrong place.)

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[Konni]

Also DMV booklet with street signs, field trips with street names of places they go in their city, yellow pages with a few listings (too much at first), trip to supermarket, drugstores, all of the ads in the Sunday paper.

[creativemark]

Hello
I took a course in teaching literacy, but I have not had any actual practice in the field. I will hopefully start tutoring as a volunteer for literacy students early this month.

I think it is helpful if you can figure out exactly how much literacy they have. Some do not even have a writing system in their first language so the concept of a writing system is quite new.

Others have have maybe studied in grade school for a couple years, but their studies were interrupted by war or poverty prevented them from attending.

I think it is helpful to teach left to right and top to bottom directionality for some students because their first language may not contain this.

I think a previous post stated it best that it all comes in small simple steps.

I suggest visiting www.language.ca and look at the Canadian Language Benchmarks for Literacy learners. Probably each country has its own assessment of different literacy levels, but here it shows a progression of achievable goals within each literacy level.