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In order to really support our low-literacy adult ESOL students' learning, we need to think about everything that goes into writing a word. Watch this video for a breakdown of these pre-literacy skills so that you can better assess your learners' needs and target areas for growth!
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This video shares one of my favorite activities for any class, but especially for mixed-literacy ESOL classes. You'll see that because it focuses on the meaning of the words and the spoken form, it allows low-literacy and literate learners to be on a more even playing field. It's a great way to help low-literacy learners memorize new vocabulary in a fun way so that they can later move on to doing print literacy work with this, now familiar, vocabulary.
The Language Experience Approach is a flexible, effective, and kind approach to literacy development. I know it’s uncommon to call a teaching approach kind, sweet, warm, etc. but when you see how it works, you’ll see what I mean - it puts a lot of faith in the students and clearly values the knowledge and experiences that they’re bringing to the table. The very poetic underlying assumptions are the following (Roach Van Allen, from Wikipedia):
The core practice that I focus on in the Language Experience Approach (LEA) is that students share an experience, they describe that experience to the teacher, the teacher writes it down, and then this text is used for a variety of literacy development activities. What does this accomplish? The learners’ thoughts and experiences are centered in the class.
It’s flexible:
Where do you start with low-literacy learners? And, especially, where do you start if your low-literacy learners are mixed in with students who ARE literate in their home language? My answer is meaning. This video gives a quick introduction to what I’ve started calling a “meaning-first” approach to adult ESOL instruction. Let me know if it’s helpful and if you have any questions! [email protected]
A new student comes into your class and sits down - what's their literacy level? Because many sites place students based on their speaking ability, but don't have a formal literacy assessment, it's possible for low-literacy learners to go unnoticed for quite a while! This means it's up to the teacher to very quickly determine whether any of their students have limited literacy in their first language so that they can give the student the help that they need. This video gives a quick tip for the first step: identifying any students who may have low literacy in their first language. If you'd like to know more, please reach out at [email protected].
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