Reading and Writing

<b> Forum for elementary education ESL/EFL teachers </b>

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TeacherScrev
Posts: 14
Joined: Wed May 09, 2012 7:45 pm

Reading and Writing

Post by TeacherScrev » Tue Jun 26, 2012 1:58 am

Reading and writing are two of the four domains that ELL students need to practice inside and outside of the school environment. The past year, I have been surprised at various things that have come up in the ESL classroom. I had two Level 1 (Entering) students based on the WIDA English proficiency scale. They quickly learned how to network with friends and peers using Facebook. I thought it was great that these students were building relationships outside of the classroom and were using English as their primary means of communication. I did not, however, anticipate who much confusion there would be when these students when these students would write in class using the same jargon that they have seen people write on Facebook. Text-talk has also come up quite often during writing. Written work had become laden with words such as “wanna”, “gotta”, and “LOL”. I realized that the students needed a lesson where colloquial language was discussed. The students had to be taught about when and where these language nuances where appropriate. Next year, I plan on introducing this lesson at the very beginning of the year. I also plan on revisiting this subject often throughout the year as I think my students need frequent practice on the difference between formal and informal conversational “rules”.

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