Strategies for Elementary Teachers w/limited ESL experience

kgroller · Post by **kgroller** » Sat Aug 23, 2003 9:18 pm

I've recently been asked to give a presentation on strategies that an elementary teacher can use in a regular classroom to help their ESL students.

The audience is a class of pre-service education majors. Any suggestions? I have always worked with students whose focus was learning English. I have not worked with students who are learning English and using it as their main medium to function.

Kelly

Roger · Post by **Roger** » Sun Aug 24, 2003 5:09 am

What's 'preservice majors'?

dduck · Post by **dduck** » Sun Aug 24, 2003 6:00 pm

Roger wrote:What's 'preservice majors'?

If I were to guess, I'd say that 'service' means actually doing the job, 'pre-service' means, oh dear these guys have no experience. And 'education major' speaks for itself.

kgroller wrote:I have not worked with students who are learning English and using it as their main medium to function.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that you're worrying too much. Very few students, if any, learn English just to learn English. Most will use their new skills to: get promotions, live in a new country, make new friends etc. I think your new class is the same, the only difference being you know clearly why they want to learn English. I suggest you build your lesson around this aim.

Regarding your question, I suggest you firstly write/describe the strategies you use now and in the past and secondly do some background reading and add in any new information you come across that strikes you as useful.

Iain