Teacher Discussion Forums

I teach English to mostly Spanish Speakers, mostly adult men, some over 50 years old. I have recently been teaching a group who understand and speak English reasonably well. You can definitely communicate with them in English, although I sometimes clarify things in Spanish. This is not an educated group; many of them may not read well in Spanish. I usually have a moderately wide range of abilities in my classes.

I have tried to take newspaper articles from the Sports section of the paper, and explain the vocabulary. But the articles are way over their head. Today I took an article and applied the Gunning Fog index to find the grade level. It was 12th grade reading! I hacked the article down to 7th grade level, but that is still too high. And it took a long time.

Where can I find a source of simple reading materials suitable for adults? Material for kids is mostly unsuitable for adults, I think, too cute. My spouse, a retired grade school teacher, suggested 3rd grade level might be good for my students.

Richard

If you haven't found it yet, News for You is very good. It's a simplified weekly newspaper from New Readers Press. The only problem is that it isn't very timely; any sports stories you get will be general, not about specific games or series, because the scores would be old. But I've used it with Asian and Spanish-speaking students. I'm sure you could get a free sample and see if you like it.