Job Discussion Forums

[Madame J]

Hi there,

I'm in week two of teaching a beginner for an hour a day, and I'm now scratching my head as to what on earth to do with her now most simple, picture based vocab sections of my school's textbooks have been exhausted. In fact, I'm a little stunned as to how few starter books seem to include illustrations. I've tried looking online for picture worksheets, but it seems that most ESL sites seem to work under the laughable assumption that all beginners are five years old.

So, I don't suppose anyone would be able to suggest any great resources that might be worth a try? I would also be very keen to hear suggestions of activities I could try to make the lesson a little lighter for a student of such a low level. Would love to try card games in particular, but again google has revealed very little.

Many thanks!

[Glenski]

Just how much of a beginner is your student? That is, what can/can't she do?

What is the purpose of her studies? Reading? Writing? Conversation?

How old is she?

Do you teach every day, or once a week?

Can you get your hands on some very low level graded readers? Oxford Reading Tree has a good selection; I think level 1 has no words at all in it.

Do you or your student have a picture dictionary?

[kazpat]

I feel your pain. I teach several beginners one on one. As far as resources go I ran into the same problem as you. My solution unfortunately was this, google images, cut and paste, make everything myself. Lexis for the airport, restaurant, city, etc. were all created from scratch and geared to my adult learners. While it was time consuming the good news is that I have the resources saved for the next adult beginner.

The same goes for dialogues and readings. Type them myself, save them and then tweak them for the various learners.


As for as lighter lessons, while at first my beginners cannot put together a coherent sentence they certainly can sing an entire Rhiana song. I ask them what music they like, make some clozes, pre-teach vocab and do some listening.

[Sashadroogie]

Assuming that the learner in question is an adult, then why not go with a Beginners level course book? New English File, Cutting Edge or even Headstart. At this level, students need all the visual support that they can get, so there is a lot of security in having a course book. Plenty of pictures and illustrations in those publications. Save you lots of time too...

Good luck.

[HLJHLJ]

I also made my own cards, I had a very small group, each with very specific vocab needs and also some literacy issues. The regular books weren't a lot of use.

There was 1 activity I used that worked pretty well. I started with a picture of a house (drawn badly by me), it was drawn cut-through so you could see the rooms inside. Then I had a little picture of a cat that was cut out. We both had a set and took it in turns to hide our picture and put the cat in a room, then describe it. The other person had to put the cat in the same place.

So it started off quite easy, the cat is inside, the cat is outside, etc. Then as we progressed through the lessons, added more and more vocab, naming the specific room, having more than one cat (big/small cats, black/white cats), and eventually with prepositions. e.g. The small white cat is in the big bedroom on the chair by the window.

It got quite complex in the end, but because it had been built up with baby steps it was never too hard, and it was a nice consolidation activity to do a once or twice a week.

Later on I did a similar version with gardening tools around the house/garden/workshop. We started that at a higher level, but as they already knew the activity it was easy to add it in.

[spiral78]

I'm not a fan of course books in general, but I agree in this case with Sasha that a decent beginner book can provide a very useful scaffold. It should be based around general, basic language that the students can use in real-life everyday situations (meeting and greeting, weather, basic shopping, etc), and provide visual support in terms of illustrations and practice exercises to re-inforce what they've studied. It can be extremely helpful at this stage for students to have something concrete to review as needed at home, and a coursebook can really become a useful tool for review and consolidation.

I have supplemented coursebooks with one or two other texts, but I think it's best not to overwhelm low beginners with lots of different types of materials. One text that works for a whole range of lessons is the coloured international weather page of any good newspaper. It can be used over and over for a whole range of language practice - temperatures, weather conditions, travel themes, clothing themes.

[Madame J]

Thanks everyone. I stopped teaching the student pretty soon after I posted this, but there are some good suggestions for if (or when) I run into this situation again. By the way, I'd used materials from a few different beginners' books, but I have to say I'd found them quite lacking. There seemed to be very few vocabulary sections with pictures, which I really do find invaluable at this level.

[johnslat]

How about the Oxford Picture Dictionary:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Oxford-Picture-Dictionary-English-Spanish/dp/0194343553

(There are different versions besides English - Spanish)

I've used it as the only textbook for some courses.

Regards,
John