Teaching writing to pre-literate adults

[kannesee]

Hello,
I've been teaching ESL for about a year now and I just love it! I'm teaching a new Workplace English class, though, and I'm running into some interesting challenges that I would love some help with. The first problem is that the class is very multi-leveled. I'm used to that for the most part, but the problem is that nearly all the students are level 4 and have excellent spoken English and 4 of them are level 2. If I had a volunteer in the class I would break the group into two, but since I don't...I would just appreciate your creative ideas!

The second problem is that all of these students are pre-literate or at least have a difficult time writing in their native language and are pre-literate in English. I have really never worked with students who have such a high level of conversation in English but are so scared to write! I was talking with some of my co-workers who graduated from the same TESOL program and we were trying to remember what we learned about teaching writing. Honestly, I think our program prepared us for teaching students with a strong education in their native country and really not for the group we are working with, which is mostly Mexican immigrants with maybe a 6th grade education. It's an interesting situation and I'm struggling to make the class meaningful and challenging for all the students. Help?! Thank you.

[Tara B]

Look in the refugee issues forum. They are discussing this very thing!

My experience is that when it comes to teaching literacy, elementary teachers are an untapped resource for us--someone who teaches reading, like K-3.

Just remember your students need a "balanced diet" of literacy--

Tara

[Sally Olsen]

I think you need to read some things on literacy which is a different field of study. I would recommend that you have someone teach them to write in Spanish first. I know they will complain but if you can convince them that they will learn English writing much more quickly in the end if they have literacy in Spanish first, you will all be further ahead. I used to get volunteers in and have them correct the written homework that my students did in their other language so it didn't take up much time from the English class. The volunteer worked with them one-on-one because their literacy skills were at different levels as well. The students wrote about their experiences of coming to the new country which seemed to be a cathartic experience for them as well and they shared these with each other to make a book for new students. They wrote out places to visit and people to see who would help them get settled and experiences of their children in school and how things were different in the new country. The volunteer translated titles so that we could hand a new student something useful to read in their own language when they talked about a problem. We encouraged them to write to relatives, to write letters to the editors in newspapers of their language, to write tourist books, school manuals, hospital manuals and so on but all in their own languages. Of course, they have to translate some and it soons turns into a translation exericse and then easily to English.