Teacher Discussion Forums

I am currently heading up a project with a central California ag company to teach English to its employees. The program has been underway a few months, but I have encountered issues with teaching individuals (all are adults) with low literacy levels. A good number of my students have 1-2 years of educational experience and are not prepared for the reading and writing, and my experience as a teacher has always been with more literate students abroad. I am hoping for some suggestions on different approaches that might work with this population. Thanks!

It seems to me that the most successful programs are taught by teachers who work with the students at their jobs and find out their actual needs. After working all day in the field with people, you hear their stories and know what difficulties they are having because they can't read or write and then they will respect you enough to learn from you at night. It will also teach you to teach what is important because you will be as tired as they are.

If you're teaching conversation, it is helpful to use images. You can bring in photographs from places around town and verbally ask students questions. They can talk about pictures in pairs or small groups then share with the class.

Also music is helpful. They can listen to songs and discuss what they heard. What is the song about? What are they emotions expressed? etc.

I teach low literacy adults, ESL and Americans as well
Try enchanted learning web site for picture dictionaries etc.
Start with the alphabet ,numbers etc but be sure to include reading and writing, be it very simple.They will learn especially if they are motivated and feel comfortable with you .It was very good point made in the responses about using their personal experience to connect the lessons.
The other thing is if they have little academic experience they will not know how to reference the grammar books , use models ,dictionaries etc
Once they understand how to study and really use the class as a tool,they will progress much faster.
I try to give lessons that include having to find information in the book or simply directly copy a sentence but use your personal info.
Also how to read a sentence you do not understand by breaking it down. first finding the word you recognize then identifying if it is a verb a noun or an object ,etc
lots of review and repetition !
The cool thing is that they will love you ,this is in my experience a very appreciative group to teach