Job Discussion Forums

[NorthofAmerica]

I have some classes with older students who want to do topic discussions and readings however their level is not that great. The last two weeks I have brought in readings that seemed alright to me only to have them bomb in class because the language was too hard. Does anyone have any ideas or links to places where I could get articles in English that are not too difficult. Think of maybe a 10-12 year old's reading level. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[canuck]

A quick way is to copy and past articles into Microsoft Word, and edit them yourself. The oddly enough section is quite good for entertaining topics that aren't too long. Just edit them to fit your class requirements.

http://news.yahoo.com/i/583

[Doglover]

[TokyoLiz]

I taught returnees and upper intermediate EFL for juniors, and they quite liked edited selections from www.bbcnews.com. For the returnees, I used the raw articles from the Science/Nature and Asia/Pacific sections, and for EFL kids, I edited and glossed some articles. The kids especially liked archaeology, current events (especially disasters) and technology.

The images are always interesting, too.

Click on the bottom of the articles for printable or email versions.

[furiousmilksheikali]

A few points need to be made about using articles in class.

The first thing that you said is that you have brought in readings that seemed alright and then bombed. Did you give the students any time to pre-read these pieces first? Some articles which can be above the level of most students can still be used if the theme of the piece is properly explored before any reading is done.

This can be done fairly simply by getting the students to make mindmaps in pairs on the theme of the article. Before the lesson you should also have scoured the article for any words you think the students will have trouble with or any unusual turns of phrase. Pre-teach these extensively.

Make sure you also have a lot of comprehension questions to keep the students engaged in the content of the article.

Alot of teachers make mistakes when giving reading exercises by:

Choosing a reading that their students have no interest in (The situation in Turkmenistan may be fascinating for you, but your students may not give a *beep*).

Choosing a reading with too many technical words that have very little application outside of the subject.

Choosing a reading that is too unorthodox in style (particularly film or music reviews or gossip pieces with zeitgeisty slang).

And this one:

[NorthofAmerica]

Thanks for the good ideas everybody. FuriousMilkSheikali, a lot of those points are really helpful.
Though they often seem the easiest, sometimes adult classes are tough to make relevant and helpful.

[Doglover]

[johanne]

Just wanted to add a little bit about looking for a 10-12 year old native level. When you teach Grade 5 or Grade 6 your aim in reading lessons is very different than that of teaching ESL adults. Basically, your typical 11 year old has a wide ranging, idiomatic vocabulary and is in the process of aquiring a more academic one. Adults ESL speakers, except at quite a high level, are lacking a lot of this everyday use idiomatic vocabulary. There are many texts aimed at 10-12 year olds that even high intermediate ESL students would find hard to understand, for example pre-teen magazines full of kids jargon or a young adult novel containing the slang of the time it was written. In Elementary schools around the world what children are reading at this age is quite sophisticated as they are working on learning inferences and a deeper, thoughtful comprehension of what they have read in fiction and in non-fiction, for example, read newspaper articles critically, looking for the missing information as well as what is actually there. Natives speakers are expected to have factual comprehension (the what, where, when) of texts within their vocabulary by the end of Grade 3 and then spend their time working on the whys and hows of what they have read as they acquire more vocabulary. This is very different that adult ESL learning where students are often working on the factual comprehension of a text and in many cases reading is vocabulary work as it is the lack of vocab that is stopping their comprehension - not an inability to put themselves in the place of the author or to critically think about the information presented to them in a non-fiction text.
If your purpose is to stimulate discussion, pick a very simple, but interesting, text with limited vocab to teach and then structure your lesson to provide the necessary vocab and grammar to allow the students to express their ideas. If your purpose is to develop their reading comprehension be prepared to accompany the text with a great deal of vocab activities and provide a context for the article or story or whatever that the students can relate to.
I think one of the best places to find these kinds of articles in Thursday in the Daily Yomiuri where they have taken a few articles and watered down the vocab especially for adult ESL. There are also books of articles and texts designed for ESL adults with controlled vocab. IMHO this is much more appropriate than using children's reading material meant for native speakers.
Just my two cents from someone who has spent considerable time teaching both these groups.

[TokyoLiz]

When the OP said older students, I assumed senior high. My prejudice, since I teach high school

A formula for teaching current events in news articles -

Pick a text from Yomiuri or Japan Times (Thursday supplement with glossed vocab).

1. Preteach the vocabulary - use a variety of exerises including vocab match, multiple choice and definition.

2. Then formulate discussion questions in which you embed vocabulary, one word per question, and have them formulate full sentence answers, ideally using the target word.

3. Read the text together.

4. Check comprehension, starting with factual questions and ending with inferrential questions.

5. Extend the topic with questions that elicit personalized responses (What would you do? What do you think?), ideally recycling the new vocabulary.


Like Joanne, I would never give adults a text aimed at children. The text may be low interest, the content idiomatic and opaque, and grumpy students may feel you are patronizing them.

I have taught The House at Pooh Corner to teenagers at their request, and fairy tales to adult students who were interested in children's literature. In other words, based on the students' desire to read these texts.

[gaijinalways]