New Language, New Literacy : Teaching Literacy to English Language Learners [1 ed.] 9780887511240

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NEW LANGUAGE, NEW LITERACY

Teaching Literacy to English Language Learners

Jill Sinclair Bell

Pippin Publishing

Copyright © 2013 by Pippin Publishing Corporation P.O. Box 242 Don Mills Ontario M3C 2S2 www.pippinpub.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, including photocopying and recording, or stored in any retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

Edited by Evelyn Maksimovich Designed by John Zehethofer Typeset by Gwen Peroni Illustrations by Jim and Jennifer Loates Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Bell, Jill, 1946– New language, new literacy : teaching literacy to English language learners / Jill Sinclair Bell. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-88751-124-0 1. Literacy. 2. English language--Study and teaching as a second language. 3. Elementary education of adults. I. Title. PE1128.A2B4475 2013

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

428.0071'5

C2013-901486-1

Contents Acknowledgments 5 Introduction 7 Section One: Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners Chapter One: Finding Out about Literacy Learners 13 Chapter Two: Understanding Literacy and the Learning Process 29 Chapter Three: Teaching the Adult Learner 39 Section Two: Deciding What and How to Teach Chapter Four: Determining Content in the Literacy Classroom 47 Chapter Five: Teaching Preliteracy Skills 55 Chapter Six: Teaching Reading 67 Chapter Seven: Teaching Writing 93 Chapter Eight: Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More 111 Section Three: Developing a Successful and Coherent Program Chapter Nine: Planning the Program 127 Chapter Ten: Ongoing Assessment 137 Chapter Eleven: Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom: Sample Lesson Sequences 153 A Final Word 177 Appendix A: Useful Activities 179 Appendix B: Useful Resources 191

Acknowledgments

I am particularly grateful to Dr. Barbara Burnaby, who was the coauthor of A Handbook for ESL Literacy. Barbara has been most generous in allowing me to make use of portions of the Handbook that continue to be relevant after 30 years. In addition, she has reviewed the manuscript for this book and shared her resources and ideas. She continues to be a most valued colleague and friend. I would like to express my appreciation to Grainne ODonnell, Program Manager of Adult ESL programs at the Toronto District School Board, who has collaborated with me on a number of literacy-related projects in recent years. Grainne helped me gain access to ESL literacy programs and introduced me to many teachers in the area. Together we developed and delivered a professional development program for ESL literacy teachers, which allowed me to field test many of the ideas in this book. I would like to thank the teachers who participated in that program for their willingness to share their ideas and their challenges. My particular thanks go to all the teachers who welcomed me into their classrooms and allowed me to observe their teaching and their students. Especially, I would like to thank Louise Dikschei and Arshia Azam of the Learning Enrichment Foundation; Noor Kahn and Osman Duale of the Somali Immigrant Aid Society; Tish Carnat and Pat Morrison at the Parkdale Library; and Jinjiang Du, Sylvia Porras, Christine Mizon-Stein, and Edda Mindreau of the Bickford Learning Centre. I would also like to thank Joanne Millard, Cheryl Richman, Joan Lee, Eliza Martinez-Reyes, and Pamela Richardson, all of whom helped me to make contact with a wide range of teachers of literacy to English language learners.

Acknowledgments 5

I am most grateful to Evelyn Maksimovich for her thorough and careful editing of the manuscript, and to Jonathan Lovat Dickson, who has been unfailingly patient and supportive through a rather long book development process. And as always, I am grateful to my husband, Bob, for his unwavering encouragement and support. Jill Sinclair Bell Toronto April 2013

6 Acknowledgments

Introduction

One of the greatest challenges facing teachers of English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) is the presence in the class of literacy students. So many of the ways in which we usually teach rely on learners being able to access print in some way. We are used to being able to call on a textbook, to write instructions on the board, or to distribute work on sheets of paper. We urge our students to study at home, to be on the look out for environmental print, to work on the computer, or to make their own selection of activities. All of these approaches to our curriculum presuppose at least minimal literacy skills and, as a result, all of them require serious modification to be feasible for literacy students. Stripped of such familiar supports, we may find ourselves uneasy teaching literacy classes, and feel overwhelmed by the amount of preparation we find necessary when it is no longer appropriate to rely on commercial texts. And yet, literacy classes can be some of the most rewarding to teach, and the approaches that work for literacy classes work well for many other xxxxxx A note on terminology: There are many abbreviations in use in the field of English language teaching. The term ESL (English as a second language) is a useful catchall term, commonly applied to learners, teachers, and programs. It does not, however, reflect the situation faced by many of our learners, who are approaching English as a third or fourth language. Consequently, for the most part, I refer to students as English language learners or ELLs. When referring to programs, I need to differentiate between general ESL programs, where the focus for beginners is likely to be on oral proficiency, and targeted literacy programs, where the focus is on the development of basic literacy skills in English. I refer to the latter programs as literacy for ELLs or ELL literacy programs.

Introduction 7

levels, too. Because we cannot rely on textbooks, typically we teach more thoughtfully and more effectively, with better attention paid to the learners’ needs. New Language, New Literacy: Teaching Literacy to English Language Learners is intended as a practical guide for teachers of English language learners (ELLs) who need help with basic reading and writing skills. It demonstrates how to identify learner needs and how to assess current skill levels, including any literacy skills in the first language. Teachers are shown how to select and adapt their curriculum to reflect the needs they have identified in their own learners. While theoretically grounded, the book is very focused on the practical needs of the classroom teacher, exploring the necessary content knowledge to be taught and the methods by which it can best be covered. New Language, New Literacy grew out of a much earlier book I wrote collaboratively with Dr. Barbara Burnaby titled A Handbook for ESL Literacy, first published in 1984. There have been significant changes in both students and milieu since that time, and these changes have had an impact on how we, as literacy teachers, approach our classes. Readers who know the earlier book will find some familiar material, but New Language, New Literacy also includes completely new material on the basics of literacy, placement and assessment, technology, lesson and block planning, and special students and resources. It also includes increased detail regarding multilevel classes and activities. The new material has been developed after observing a wide range of literacy classes for ELLs and after consultation with many teachers, whose help was invaluable. I hope that, like its predecessor, this book will prove to be useful as a resource for practicing literacy teachers and also as background to the field for teachers in training. In North America, the successful completion of a Grade Eight education is widely considered to reflect the minimum standard of literacy required to fulfill the needs of daily life. A significant proportion of immigrants, however, arrive without having had the opportunity to spend eight years in school, successfully or otherwise. Their educational opportunities may have been affected by factors such as poverty, gender discrimination, health issues, or political disruptions. Consequently, even in their first language, these learners would not meet the minimum societal expectations of literacy, and of course their skills are significantly more limited in the second language. There are many places in the world where one can live a rich and fulfilling life without having literacy skills. People may have lived in rural settings where there was little exposure to print, so the issue rarely arose. Alternatively, they may have lived in villages where print was 8 Introduction

ubiquitous, but where the local teacher or religious leader completed any necessary literacy tasks for all villagers. In such settings, literacy skills are not crucial for survival. When people leave their homes and migrate to the major cities of the English-speaking world, however, they find themselves in a very different setting, one where it is assumed that all individuals can read and write. Suddenly the basics of life, such as finding shelter, seeking work, or cashing a paycheck, all involve the use of literacy. Even something as simple as food shopping, previously done in a market with everything on display, becomes a challenge in a place where much of the food is packaged in boxes with labels. In addition to these everyday tasks, new immigrants are often required to deal with government bureaucracies to sort out issues such as immigration status, welfare applications, training entitlements, and family reunification efforts. Typically these interactions involve an extensive literacy component. While the typical learner is a relatively recent arrival, literacy classes for ELLs may also include people who immigrated years ago. In the case of the latter group, usually a change in personal circumstances forces or enables the learner to decide that now is the right time to acquire literacy skills. Many women return to the classroom when their children are old enough to attend school and they are no longer restricted by childcare obligations. Others arrive in literacy programs when they lose the person who used to handle literacy tasks for them, perhaps because a spouse died or an adult child moved away. While there are some points of similarity between the literacy teaching that goes on in schools for children and the literacy teaching that goes on in adult ELL classes, there are of course many very significant differences both in the individuals involved and in the task of literacy learning itself. As a teacher of adult learners, you need to take into account not only the maturity level of your students, but also the restricted time frame that they have available to study, and the urgent need they have to put their learning to immediate use. Literacy in the first language builds on significant oral competence that is almost certainly absent in the literacy-learning situation in the second language. For this reason, textbooks designed for first-language speakers are of very little use in the ESL classroom, forcing teachers to develop materials and approaches that are tailored to the specific needs of the individual class. New Language, New Literacy aims to assist you in doing just that—identifying the needs of your learners, and developing approaches and activities that address those needs. Section One: Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners helps you understand some of the Introduction 9

necessary background to teaching literacy to ELLs. Chapter One considers likely learner histories and the effect of such experiences on current learning skills. It offers guidance in the assessment of firstlanguage literacy skills to reach an informed judgment about learner needs. Chapter Two provides the theoretical understanding of basic literacy principles that will allow you to make informed decisions, while Chapter Three outlines the essential differences between adults and children as learners, to assist you in your selection of approaches. Section Two: Deciding What and How to Teach guides you through the practical issues of teaching. Chapter Four considers the content of literacy classes, while Chapters Five through Seven focus on the basic methods and approaches by which to help students learn that content. Chapter Eight looks at particular classes that might be challenging and considers the best approaches to address these situations. Section Three: Developing a Successful and Coherent Program looks at the broader picture. In Chapter Nine, the process of planning a program is explored, while Chapter Ten looks at ongoing assessment to ensure that the program is meeting learners’ needs. Chapter Eleven demonstrates what these ideas might look like in a real classroom, with sample lesson sequences from different ELL literacy settings. Appendix A: Useful Activities fleshes out the methods discussed throughout the book with suggestions for useful and enjoyable activities. Appendix B: Useful Resources offers a wide range of resources for you and your learners, available both in print and online. Being a literacy teacher for English language learners is a challenging but highly rewarding role. Whether you are an experienced literacy teacher or are new to the field, I hope you will find this book to be a useful support.

10 Introduction

SECTION ONE

Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

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CHAPTER ONE

Finding Out about Literacy Learners

Teachers of adult English language learners (ELLs) often find that their students have widely different backgrounds and make progress at different speeds. As well as demonstrating varying degrees of competence in the English language, students also vary in terms of their length of time in the country, their first language (often known as the L1), their age, and their previous experience with education.

The Importance of Learner Background Learners who can read and write fluently in their first language are going to find literacy in English a much easier task than learners who have never learned to read and write in any language. Even if these students are not familiar with the Roman alphabet (the alphabetic system used for English) but instead use a different alphabetic system or a syllabic or ideographic one, their literacy is still helpful to them. Nearly always, learners with good literacy skills in their first language have acquired those skills in a school setting. Thus they have learned how to study, they know what to expect from teachers and textbooks, and they have an understanding of how literacy works. This knowledge and experience can be largely transferred to learning a new language. Learners who have solid literacy skills in their first language are able to record the new information they are attempting to learn in class, which reduces the load on their memory and allows them to make more rapid progress. Personal circumstances and individual learning styles also affect progress. In fact, there are many factors affecting learners’ progress in learning to read and write English that you will want to take into account in planning your program. While each learner brings a particular Finding Out about Literacy Learners 13

pattern of individual factors, it is nonetheless helpful to be aware of some of the broad profiles of literacy background that learners might display. Common Literacy Profiles English language learners come from a range of different cultures, each of which may make different uses of literacy. Some come from large cities filled with print, while others come from small, rural areas where books are very rare. Understanding the patterns of literacy use in the ELLs’ home communities will help you understand their individual profile of needs and skills. The most common patterns of literacy use demonstrated by literacy learners can be described as preliterate, nonliterate, semiliterate, functionally literate, and non-Roman alphabetic. A PRELITERATE PROFILE

One of the most obvious distinctions is whether the language spoken in the home community has a traditional written form. In communities where the language is not normally written down, sometimes called preliterate societies, people rely on oral memory to share knowledge. People from these communities, such as the Hmong, will often have exceptionally well-trained memories, and they may have a rich, poetic heritage through which the stories of the culture are passed on. However, they will have very little understanding of the purposes or conventions of literacy. This is not merely a matter of such relatively straightforward issues as being unable to use literacy-linked banks or to complete social assistance applications; rather, it is a lack of understanding of the purposes for which print is used. In many cases, such people will find it difficult to understand the meaning of diagrams or symbolic artwork. They will have difficulty even with the illustrations in the literacy textbook, confusing perspective and size for example. Because of the enormous difficulties that people from preliterate societies face in attempting to leave their home countries, they normally come only at times when significant political upheaval gives them no other choice. Most ELL teachers will, therefore, rarely encounter such people in their classes. A NONLITERATE PROFILE

More commonly found in ELL literacy classes are people who demonstrate virtually no literacy in their first language, but who have grown up speaking a language for which a written form exists. This is usually described as a nonliterate profile. Even though the learners themselves may not have developed any meaningful literacy skills, they may have noticed street signs and advertisements in their hometown or village. 14 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

They may have seen other people reading the newspaper or heard sections of the newspaper read aloud, leading to some understanding of the kind of information that newspapers provide. They may have attended a temple, mosque, or church where text was read aloud, and they may have shopped in places where some of the food had meaningful labels attached. Even without directly trying to use literacy themselves, such people will have developed some sense of the purposes for which literacy is used. Shohjon, a woman in her fifties, is a refugee from Afghanistan. She grew up in a small village where there was no local school. Her brothers traveled to a larger village nearby to study, but she was not allowed to join them. However, she would see them working on their assignments, and sometimes they would read aloud to her. Her father was a religious man, who would sometimes read from the Koran and the entire family would pray at the mosque. Shohjon stayed in the village helping her mother weave the carpets that supported the family. At age sixteen, Shohjon moved to her husband’s home and started a family. As a result of the lengthy conflict in Afghanistan, Shohjon and her husband lost their home and ended up in a refugee camp from which she made her way to the United States. She studied a little in the refugee camp and now has some familiarity with the alphabet. Shohjon can write and recognize her name. She enjoys the social interaction with the other women in the literacy class she attends, but makes very slow progress and has great difficulty following the teacher. A SEMILITERATE PROFILE

The largest group of students in most literacy classes for ELLs consists of those who have had a few years of elementary education. Often, such schooling has been sporadic, interrupted by family responsibilities, such as helping with the harvest or with the care of siblings. Or formal education may have been cut short by political turmoil, poverty, or ill health. For all but the youngest learners, many years have likely passed since the learners attended school so that much of what was once known may have been forgotten. Nonetheless, these learners understand, even if imperfectly, that the written word relates to the spoken word and that literacy allows for the transfer of information across time and place. This is sometimes called a semiliterate profile. These learners usually regard literacy as something desirable, reflecting status and opportunity. Finding Out about Literacy Learners 15

However, such learners typically lack study skills and tend to avoid reading or writing whenever possible. They may recognize certain words, but usually they do not have the skills to attack new words. Carmencita is a forty-five-year-old woman from South America, who works as a house cleaner. Her schooling was interrupted at the age of nine, when Carmencita’s single mother could not support the family any longer. Carmencita was sent to work as a servant. She has lived in Canada for twenty years and has learned a fair amount of spoken English, though she speaks with a strong accent and makes many mistakes. Her marriage ended a few years ago, leaving her with a child to support. She would like to work for a cleaning service that will provide her with a more regular income, but she knows that some reading and writing skills will be required. Carmencita would also like to be able to help her son with his schoolwork. For these reasons, she has been attending ESL classes two evenings a week, but she is making slow progress with literacy. She is beginning to doubt that she will ever learn. A FUNCTIONALLY LITERATE PROFILE

Some of the stronger learners among those with elementary education may have developed basic literacy skills in their own language, which give them the concepts of words and sentences. They may know survival sight words, such as road signs and washroom labels, and any vocabulary specific to their job. They may be able to take or leave simple written messages, but they rarely read for pleasure and avoid expressing themselves in writing. They may find it difficult to fill out forms or follow written instructions competently. The strongest students in this group demonstrate a functionally literate profile if they are able to use print to fulfill the needs of their everyday life. Mebrahtu, a man in his early thirties, comes from Eritrea, where he worked in a garage. He attended school in his home country and can demonstrate the ability to write in his own language, although his letters are uneven and suggest a lack of practice. He says that his schooling was interrupted when the family moved from their home village and that he has forgotten much of what he used to know. He is keen and outgoing, and will attempt any task that he is assigned. Mebrahtu will copy anything that the teacher puts on the board and is eager to have the correct spelling for words.

16 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

A NON-ROMAN ALPHABETIC PROFILE

The final type of learner who may be attending an English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) literacy class is someone whose first language is written in a system other than the Roman alphabet (a non-Roman alphabetic profile). For all such learners, the unfamiliar English-language script will add an additional challenge to the learning of literacy. Those whose schooling introduced them to a different alphabet, such as Russian, Arabic, or Korean, will have the extra challenge of learning the new visual symbols. But these learners will understand the notion of a sound–symbol correspondence and have some familiarity with phonics (the understanding that letters on the page represent particular sounds). For those who have learned to read in a language such as Chinese, which primarily uses meaning-based symbols instead of sound-based symbols, it is necessary to learn a completely different way of matching written symbols with their spoken equivalents. While most literacy learners from non-Roman alphabetic backgrounds will demonstrate the limited or interrupted schooling patterns typical of other student groups described above, in some educational systems even well-educated learners from places like China may initially be placed in literacy classes to introduce them to the Roman alphabet and the use of phonics. John is a sixty-two-year-old man, initially from mainland China, but more recently from Hong Kong. He writes a beautiful Chinese script using the traditional complex characters that are no longer taught on the mainland. John’s daughter sponsored him to come to Australia. He lives in an area where there are many Chinesespeaking immigrants, and he is able to fulfill all his literacy tasks, such as banking and shopping, through the use of the Chinese language. John reads a Chinese-language newspaper daily. He has a great respect for education and attends a literacy class to improve his English, but he has significant difficulty sounding out words or breaking syllables into their component sounds. Nonetheless, John is making rapid progress compared with the other learners in the class. He makes good use of his first-language literacy skills to maintain word lists and to take notes.

As is evident from their individual learner profiles, Shohjon, Carmencita, Mebrahtu, and John will clearly have different needs and any decisions about teaching them should take these needs into account. Many ELLs are not capable of expressing their needs, so planning an xxxxxxxxxxx Finding Out about Literacy Learners 17

ESOL literacy program requires discovering as much as possible about what each learner brings to the class and what he or she hopes to take away from it. As the profiles indicate, learners are not all the same; even those with similar backgrounds may have very different hopes and needs. Impact of the Learner’s Educational Background Identifying previous experience with education is usually the starting point when assessing a learner’s background. Obviously, the more literacy knowledge that learners have in their first language, the more of a base you have to build on. This is not to say that there is no challenge left in developing literacy in another language. The challenges are many and varied. But for those learners who know that meaning can be derived from printed symbols, the basic understanding of how literacy works is in place. First-language literacy in itself provides a tool that supports new language learning. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH EDUCATION

Learners who do not have successful previous experiences with education lack basic learning skills. If they have no educational experience, they have to learn how to study. If they have spent time in school but without achieving much success, they may doubt their ability to learn and have to overcome personal resistance to a situation that makes them feel uncomfortable. Because most programs offering ESOL tend to avoid placing well-educated learners in literacy classes, you are likely to find that the range of literacy skills that students demonstrate in their first language is on the low side. Some learners will have virtually no firstlanguage literacy, while others will have something approaching functional literacy (the ability to use print for survival purposes). A similar range of skills is likely to be evident in your learners’ abilities to read and write in English, and of course learners will not necessarily have equal abilities in both languages. Prior experience with schooling does more than simply teach literacy. If learners have had a successful experience with education previously, they are likely to have developed classroom competence and confidence. While all models of education have a certain cultural component and no two systems are exactly the same, learners who are comfortable in the classroom are likely to have reasonable expectations of classroom relationships. They are neither frightened of nor overly familiar with the teacher. They understand that certain behaviors are expected of learners and recognize that to some degree individual preferences have to be subordinated to group interactions. They have been exposed to study skills such as note taking, time planning, and learning review, and may 18 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

use these techniques to support their learning. They are likely to have reasonable expectations of progress. Learners with little or no prior schooling can demonstrate very different patterns. They may be very restless in a classroom setting, finding it difficult to concentrate or even just to sit for a number of hours. While some will quietly get up and leave the room when sitting becomes unbearable, others will treat the classroom more like a cafeteria and make the rounds to loudly socialize with others who share the same first language. The attitude to the teacher may suggest exaggerated respect for an authority figure, but may also be less than respectful, especially to younger or female teachers. Learners who are unfamiliar with schools may be very reluctant to engage in activities that do not seem to address their immediate needs. They often lack an understanding of assigned tasks or their purposes. Such learners are unlikely to have the study skills to support their learning and will have difficulty retaining material covered. They are likely to be frustrated at the rate of progress they make. Those who have had unsuccessful previous schooling attempts are likely to seriously doubt their own abilities to succeed. IMPACT OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

The type of educational system in which learners studied will also have an impact on their progress. Learners from Chinese backgrounds, for example, will have been introduced to literacy via an ideographic system in which each individual character represents a complete word or concept. Rather than learning twenty-six different shapes and then focusing on how to manipulate them, children attempting literacy in Chinese have to learn a whole new complex shape for each and every word. The demand on children’s memories is enormous, and it shapes the way in which education takes place. Learning in the initial stages is about memorization and careful reproduction. Learners who have come from this and similar systems do not expect to be asked to construct original text or to play a role in the selection of school activities. They are likely to see their role as very passive. Other educational systems are very different from both the Chinese and Western patterns, and each will have affected learners in different ways. No matter what educationalsystem background learners have, it will have shaped their expectations of the classroom and their assumptions as to what constitutes appropriate behavior for a learner. Impact of the Learner’s Language Background The particular language background of the learner will also be important. Students who speak languages like Spanish or German that are related to Finding Out about Literacy Learners 19

English have less to learn. The basic structure of their language is likely to be similar, giving them a familiarity with sentence structure, tense, and other underlying factors of English. Learners from these language backgrounds are also far more likely to identify cognates—related words that have some similarity to vocabulary items in their first language. If such learners have had any exposure to literacy, they will be familiar with the same alphabet English speakers use and will have been introduced to how words break down phonetically. Learners who speak languages unrelated to English have much more to learn. If they speak a tonal language, such as Vietnamese or Punjabi, they will have difficulty with intonation patterns and sentence stress, for example. Speakers of these languages use tone at the word level to distinguish between otherwise identical words. English speakers use tone to signify sentence-level meaning, turning statements into questions just by letting their voice rise at the end of a sentence, as in “You want a coffee?” English speakers also use intonation to indicate sarcasm and other emotions, as in “Charming, isn’t he?” Tenses and articles may be another area of challenge, as these are unknown in many languages. An English sentence such as “I went to the shop yesterday” would be accurately rendered in many East Asian languages as “Yesterday I go shop.” Personal Profile The adult learner’s age, health, intelligence level, personality, and learning style all have an effect on progress in the class. Older learners may not hear well or may have difficulty with small print. Some learners who find it difficult to follow spoken instructions may value a visual approach. While you cannot change such personal preferences or challenges, you can try to recognize the effects and identify teaching and learning approaches that may be helpful to a wider range of learners. Contextual factors will also play their part. Learners will have a wide range of outside responsibilities that may affect their attendance and the amount of time they have available to study. Some learners will have considerable exposure to English speakers, while others will live in a community that is exclusively made up of those who speak the same first language. Some will have group support, others won’t. Some will have major financial worries, dreadful housing, and constant concerns about loved ones far away. All of these factors can affect learners’ performance in class.

20 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

Developing a Learner Profile To plan adequately, you need at a minimum to determine which language your learners speak at home, their first-language literacy skill level, and their prior educational experiences, as well as any personal information. The big challenge, of course, is how to uncover this information. Some larger programs may have reception classes or intake interviewers, but for many English-literacy teachers, new faces arrive in the classroom with very little in the way of a personal dossier. All too often, literacy teachers are faced with a nervous individual who speaks minimal English and is unable to convey anything significant about himor herself. Finding an interpreter would obviously be helpful, but how do you determine which language is at issue? It may be possible to recognize Asian or African facial features, but typically you will have no way of knowing which of the many languages in a given culture is relevant. There are a number of approaches you can use to help in this situation. Some of them are rough-and-ready approaches just to get started. Others are more thorough, but require more time for preparation and administration. Typically, the pattern will be to use something rough and ready in the first few days, when you are struggling to get a new class launched, but then you will want to make use of more finely tuned instruments once time allows. The first step is to gather any information that may be available on first arrival. If you are lucky enough to have an interpreter available, you will obviously be able to gather some of this information quite easily. Even if your program does not have interpreters on staff, there may be a large number of learners from the same language group attending the program. If so, it may be possible for learners to call on a more advanced student to help out. In such a situation, it can also be very helpful to ask a member of the community to create a small, written form in the first language. Two or three simple questions, such as asking for a learner’s name, address, and country of origin, can generate a surprising amount of information when used appropriately. Asking the interpreter to provide a rough, phonetic approximation of how this might sound will also be useful. Assuming you have neither interpretation resources nor prior knowledge of the likely language group, you will need to work a little harder and take advantage of any opportunities that present themselves. Knowing that they are coming to register on the first day, new learners may bring their passport or visa, or perhaps be accompanied by an xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Finding Out about Literacy Learners 21

English-speaking relative or friend. These are opportunities that may not be repeated, so it is crucial that office staff members understand the importance of gathering all available information. Alternatively, they should consult with you before interpreters leave. Strategies to Identify First-Language Literacy Skills The first priority is to try to get a sense of your learners’ first-language literacy skills, as this will reveal important information about their prior experience with education. It will also reveal their cultural expectations for learning. In the absence of a formal first-language literacy assessment tool, you can gather a significant amount of information from careful observation. (See Appendix B: Useful Resources for information on firstlanguage assessment resources.) Start by assembling a selection of written materials in various languages that you think may be relevant to learners in your area. The Internet provides easy access to written materials in a wide range of languages, such as settlement information, health-care material, search engines, web directories, and news. (Use the search term multilingual resources, or see Appendix B: Useful Resources for some helpful links from different parts of the world.) Governments are a particularly useful source; most of the information will also be available in English, so you can have a good sense of what text your learner is working with. If you have an Internet connection in the classroom, you can start by calling up a website (such as one of those listed in Appendix B: Useful Resources) and showing learners the list of available scripts in which the material is offered. Draw attention to scripts that you think learners might recognize, and print out material in which they show interest. If you do not have Internet access, print out a selection of pieces in advance, along with an English translation for yourself. Show these to the new learner and wait to see if there is a reaction. Learners with even minimal literacy skills will quickly recognize a familiar script and usually point to or reach out for it. Those whose language is not represented will typically search and then give some signal that what they want is not present. You can gather information by how rapidly they reject inappropriate samples as well as by their demeanor when they select a text source. Assuming the new learner does choose a text sample, indicate that he or she should copy the first section of the text. If necessary, begin copying the original text yourself to demonstrate. Carefully observe the learner’s behavior.

22 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

The following sets of questions will help guide your observation. Initial reaction

• Was the learner instantly able to point to a particular script as recognizable, or did you have to push? • Was there any apparent interest in the text? Was there any facial or physical reaction when the learner was first given the text to read? • Was there any attempt to scan for meaning before beginning to copy? (Look for eye movements.) • Was there any attempt to hold on to the document and continue reading after the writing task was over? Manual dexterity

• In what position did the learner hold the pen or pencil ? Did the learner hold the writing tool comfortably, or was the body hunched over in concentration? • How heavy and how even was the pressure applied to the paper? • How rapidly was the material copied? Physical output

• What is the general appearance of the copied text? Is it laid out in a format comparable to the original? (For example, is the title on a line of its own?) • Does the writing demonstrate a consistent relationship to the lines on the paper, or do the lines of writing straggle up and down? (Bear in mind that some languages are written through the line and others hang from it, so the key issue is consistency rather than placement.) • Are the letters or characters of similar size and neatly aligned? • Are any of the shapes overwritten? • To the best of your knowledge, is the material being written in the appropriate direction? It can also be valuable to ask learners to read aloud material in their first language, especially if you have been able to get a rough, phonetic transcription of the text. While you will likely not understand what you hear, you will be able to make a number of judgments about the confidence with which learners approach the task. Do they stumble and hesitate, or do they produce a rapid stream of sound?

Finding Out about Literacy Learners 23

The information available from such rough-and-ready classroom exercises is limited, of course, but it will allow you to begin planning activities for the learner with a fairly good sense of what kind of firstlanguage skill base you have to work with. Strategies to Identify Literacy Skills in English As well as getting a sense of a learner’s first-language literacy skills, it is important to determine if the learner has any literacy skills in English, the target language. There are a number of formal second-language (L2) assessment tools that can be purchased, such as the BEST Literacy Test from the Center for Applied Linguistics. Also useful is the Canadian Literacy Benchmarks Literacy Placement, which offers carefully graded tasks that increase in difficulty, from basic letter identification to numeracy-related activities linked to shopping. (See Appendix B: Useful Resources for more information on these tools.) As valuable as such tools are, if you have a large group of learners needing assessment, you will have difficulty finding the quiet one-onone time needed to administer the tests. Luckily, you can also gather a considerable amount of information informally in your own classroom through observation of the learners as they attempt tasks. Do they work methodically and neatly, or do they seem frustrated and baffled? Are they constantly copying from another learner or asking for assistance? Do they spend long periods of time gazing off into the distance? A careful scrutiny of written products also allows for informed judgments to be made after the learners have left. It is important to bear in mind the origin of the sample when scrutinizing it, as you will interpret the findings differently if the work is original or if it has been copied or dictated. When you know the work has been copied, you cannot assume any comprehension of what is written or any control of the language that appears. Nonetheless, you can still garner useful information. First of all, how accurate is the copying? If there are errors, do they reveal any pattern? For example, are letters missing significant strokes or demonstrating unusual forms, such as being reversed, that may suggest a lack of alphabetic knowledge? Or is the pattern that pairs of letters are transposed? This is a very common pattern among first-language learners, which suggests the learner is trying to hold entire words in his or her head and is not just copying letter by letter. Do the errors tend to appear at the end of the sentence, suggesting an attempt to copy larger chunks of material? If upper-case letters and lower-case letters are substituted for each other, you have proof that the learner knows the pairings and is generating letterforms without copying every stroke. 24 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

Other things to look for include the presence or absence of word boundaries, which provides clues as to comprehension; signs of erasure, which suggests proofreading; or careful reproduction of line breaks regardless of placement on the page, which suggests lack of comprehension. When you look at a piece that has been dictated, as well as looking at the features listed under copied material, you can learn a great deal from the spelling. Obviously, correct spellings tell you about material that is well controlled, but errors are also informative. Has the learner made an attempt to write an unknown word phonetically (kat for cat), suggesting that he or she has a good sense of sound–symbol correspondence but is simply unfamiliar with the conventional spelling of the new word? Or are errors more typically based on visual processing, such as god for dog, suggesting an attempt to learn new words as entireties? It is unlikely that new students in a literacy class will be able to offer a significant sample of original work, but even the shortest note will demonstrate some of the knowledge of vocabulary and syntax that the learner possesses. Completion of a short form, for example, will help you decide whether the learner is familiar with the conventions of the genre, even if the information provided is simply a name and an address. WRITING SAMPLE ANALYSIS: FAZLI

The example of student work in Figure 1.1 (see overleaf) was provided by Fazli, an Afghan man in his late thirties. Some of the material was copied from the board and some from a neighbor’s notebook. Before reading the next paragraph, examine Figure 1.1 and see what you can deduce about Fazli’s literacy skills. First of all, it is clear that Fazli is able to copy words with some degree of accuracy. There is only one misspelled word (twe for two), and he demonstrates his proofreading by a number of cancellations or corrections. One corrected error is the transposition error in the word nine. This written sample is reduced in size, but in the original it is noticeable that Fazli’s letters are larger than is normal, and he makes little distinction in size between upper- and lower-case forms. He positions most letters carefully between the lines, even those such as g or y that would normally have a tail that falls below the line. Fazli demonstrates the ability to line up words neatly, as in the first set of number words written vertically. He possibly demonstrates some understanding of what he is copying when he aligns the spelled-out version of the numbers next to the numerals, though this may simply be a copying pattern. At first glance, Fazli’s writing seems to be all over the page with no sense of directionality. However, rotate the page and you Finding Out about Literacy Learners 25

Figure 1.1

can see that wherever possible Fazli begins at the top left corner, suggesting that thrift rather than ignorance is at play here. In the first set of number words, upper-case forms are used appropriately at the beginning of the word, but of course this is copied material. If you look at the distribution of other upper-case letters, the pattern is less clear. Some words are written all in upper case, others all in lower case. It is reasonable to assume that Fazli is reflecting the appearance of the original here. Of interest, however, is the word Toronto, written once 26 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

exclusively in upper case and a second time entirely in lower case. No original source would have failed to begin the word with an upper-case letter, so we know that Fazli relates lower- and upper-case T. Similarly, he places an upper-case G in an otherwise lower-case eight. This suggests that he is writing letters, not just copying shapes. However, the cursive writing that he has copied from his neighbor shows an exaggeration of the tail on the lower-case t, suggesting that cursive letterforms are unknown to him. Clearly Fazli is eager to form letters properly and is willing to practice words many times in an effort to make them look better. The work he has done on the number eight suggests not only his recognition that this number is not well formed but also his determination to improve. Finally, note the randomness of the information placement on the page. While the numbers are worked in sequence and with logical placement on the page, the other items, such as body descriptors or place-names, seem to have no connection to this material. In fact, one might have expected to see them on a different page. This may once again be a matter of careful use of paper, but a more likely explanation is a lack of comprehension of what the words mean. Needs Assessment Once you have discovered all you can about the learners’ literacy skills in both their first language and English, you can begin thinking about what kinds of needs they are likely to have that can be addressed in class. One of the most important decisions that you have to make in regard to learner placement is the balance of literacy and oral-language skills that will be most suitable. If you work in a program that is large enough to have a choice of both elementary ESOL classes and literacy classes, your choice will have an impact on placement. In smaller programs, literacy-level learners will likely be placed in the basic or beginner class, and the needs assessment will be useful for deciding what range of activities to incorporate into the curriculum. In general terms, with needs assessment you are trying to decide which will be the most critically urgent areas to be addressed. When learners are able to express themselves, you will be asking for their input as to what they want to learn. But for true beginner students, you have to make the best predictions you can and be willing to revisit those assumptions as you get to know the learners better. Although your learners come to you as students of literacy, assessing their oral skills will be an important part of the needs assessment. Do students have sufficient oral vocabulary and control of basic syntax for literacy instruction to be meaningful? Learning to write words that are Finding Out about Literacy Learners 27

not personally meaningful guarantees that these words will be rapidly forgotten. It is very important that you build up the learners’ oral fluency at the same time as you address their literacy development, so that they are always working with text that is meaningful to them. As detailed in the sections on methodology in Chapters Five through Seven, if the learners do not know any English at all, it will be critically important to support any written material with oral development. It is also important to consider whether the learners have basic learning skills and strategies, or whether attention will be needed in that area, too. And of course you will want to take into account their situation in life and consider the basic life skills that they may need urgently. If possible, try to discover what they want to use literacy skills for and what their personal situations are in terms of family support, employment, and so on. All of this information will help you understand what your learners need and will help you plan for successful classes.

28 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

CHAPTER TWO

Understanding Literacy and the Learning Process

Literacy, of course, involves both reading and writing, and it is highly recommended that these skills be taught as much as possible in an integrated manner. When learners attempt literacy, the skills that help them read will also help them write. Much of the underlying theory also applies to both processes. Nonetheless, for the purposes of simplicity, I have divided this chapter into two major sections: one that focuses primarily on understanding the reading process and one that focuses on writing.

Understanding Reading Teachers of ELLs use the word reading to refer to many different skills. Think of the various texts you have read today and the different ways in which you read them. Perhaps you glanced at the mail, looked up the time of a bus in the transit schedule, read a couple of chapters of a light novel, and struggled through a complex article or two. Each of these activities demanded a different type of reading skill. Consider, for example, the way in which you might read a newspaper. Perhaps you begin with the headlines. Headlines often force people to read carefully; they include only the barest essentials, so it is necessary to read every word to make sense of them. The information given is so sparse that sometimes headlines have to be read two or three times to get the intended meaning from the words provided. Once you have located a headline that promises an interesting article, you might skim through the text of the article quickly, meaning you are reading basically for the main idea of the piece. If you were asked detailed questions about the article, you would have to review the article to find the answers.

Understanding Literacy and the Learning Process 29

Next, you might check the weather report to see what the temperature is going to be, or you might look up the sports results to see how your favorite team did in its last game. With these types of articles, you make no attempt to read every word. Instead you scan; that is, you slide your eyes over the passage looking for the specific piece of information of interest to you. When you come down to reading individual words, you probably use a very similar approach. Your eyes do not read every letter in a word before you identify the word any more than you read every word in an article before you identify the main point the author is making. Instead, your brain in effect makes its own headlines. It selects only those crucial features of a word or a phrase that you need to recognize the meaning. This can be demonstrated very easily. Briefly glance at the following string of random letters. fzgihrctuwdh

You probably identified only five or six letters at a time. Now glance at the following string of random words. yet paper snow drive yacht when through

The same brief glance likely enabled you to identify at least twice as many letters. If the words create a meaningful sentence, readers can often identify as many as twenty or thirty letters at a glance. The child was riding a yellow bicycle.

If the brain had to process each letter individually, it simply could not process information quickly enough for fluent readers to read at the speed they do. Instead, the brain recognizes chunks of material and processes these chunks rather than individual letters. Exactly the same process applies when readers try to remember what they have read. The brain can hold only six or seven items in short-term memory. Trying to put too much information into your short-term memory results in the displacement of other items. Imagine you have looked up the phone number 682-7349. You go to the phone muttering “682-7349” and can hold this number fairly well. Suddenly, the operator comes on the line and says that you must add the area code 555. By the time you have absorbed this new piece of information, you have forgotten the original number and have to look it up again. 30 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

The same thing happens with reading. If the brain had to process every word letter by letter, by the time readers arrived at the end of a long word, they would have forgotten the beginning. It should be apparent, therefore, that fluent readers are not reading every letter in the words they see. Yet many speakers of English as a first language were taught to read using the phonics approach; that is, the process of sounding out each letter in the word. The word cat, according to this approach, is made up of cuh-a-tuh. Of course it isn’t. No child says she saw a black cuhatuh. Claiming that c gives the sound cuh is misleading. If you know how to pronounce cat in the first place, you might be able to work backwards to cuhatuh, but providing these kinds of rules to learners to help them break down new words is not as helpful as teachers might hope. This is not to say that phonics is not of use in learning to read. It does play a part, and it can be a very useful tool, but it should not be the only route or even the primary route teachers follow when instructing those for whom English is a second language. How do fluent readers read, then, if they do not rely on phonic skills to break down the words? First of all, they do not come to a piece of text with a completely open mind. The actual format of the piece gives readers a number of clues that enable them to guess at the probable content, based on experience. You expect to read something different on a package of cake mix compared to what you expect to read in the newspaper. Illustrations offer even more clues as to the probable content of the material, while a text full of numbers gives readers different expectations from one with letters. In other words, fluent readers begin reading with a fair idea of what they will find. Many possibilities are ruled out simply by observing the way in which the material is presented. Fluent readers formulate their first guesses as to the likely content of the material before they actively begin reading. When fluent readers actually begin to read, they continue the process of making educated guesses, and of reading just enough to confirm or negate their predictions. They base their predictions on three sources of information: graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic. Graphophonic information refers to the actual letters on the page. Assuming the reader knows the alphabet, she or he knows that each written symbol has a certain sound attached to it. As the brain processes the letters in words, it is helped tremendously by knowing not only which letters are to be expected, but also which letters cannot possibly appear. If the brain recognizes the first letter of a word as b, it knows that, in English, the next letter cannot possibly be c or d or f or g or many others. In fact, there are only eight possible letters that can come after b at the beginning of an English word. The further into the word, the Understanding Literacy and the Learning Process 31

smaller the number of letters that can follow, and the easier it is for the brain to recognize quickly what the word must be. Therefore, fluent readers guess at what a word is likely to be and read only enough letters to confirm their guess. The second source of information is syntactic, which refers to the order of the words in the sentence. Because English has set patterns of words that are acceptable, you can probably derive a fair amount of sense from the following passage, even though most of the words will be new to you. In the Deret Hade A wazit was charling at some derets in a deret hade. She laged out a nimby deret and barded it to the hade waber. “Do you snarg this in a shep 16?” she meaved.

Obviously you don’t know the meaning of this text, but even so, if you were asked “What was the wazit charling at?” you could probably answer “some derets” without too much difficulty. Although so much of the vocabulary in the sample passage is unfamiliar, most English speakers could answer this question, and the knowledge that allows them to answer is syntactic knowledge. When reading material in more familiar language, fluent readers can identify in advance what kinds of words are likely to arrive. They know that after the word the they will read a noun, an adjective, or an adverb, and their predictions as to the likely word will ignore verbs, conjunctions, and articles. The third—and in many ways most important—source of information available in written texts is semantic, which refers to the actual meaning of the words. If you are reading an article on gardening, you expect words like plant, soil, and cultivate, but not plane, boil, and calibrate. You can make logical predictions based on the content of the text, and you don’t have to read every letter to distinguish plant from plane. Strong versus Weak Readers Strong readers come to the text with certain expectations. They make use of information from three sources—the letters on the page, the word order, and the meaning. They go through the text rapidly, making educated guesses as to the likely content as they go, reading just enough to confirm their predictions. Sometimes, of course, they will predict inaccurately. They may guess home for house and read on, not even noticing their mistake since it didn’t affect the meaning. Sometimes their predictions will lead to nonsense, and they will have to go back into the 32 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

text for further information. What they don’t do is attempt to read word by word. Thus their short-term memory is never overloaded and they don’t find that they have forgotten the beginning of a sentence by the time they reach the end. Weak readers, by contrast, tend to rely heavily on the spelling of words as their major source of information. They read every word in the text and often work letter by letter, trying to make out the word. They are so occupied with the struggle to decode, or sound out words, that they cannot concentrate on meaning and frequently lose the thread of the sentence before they get to the end. When readers of different skill levels are asked to read aloud, the differences are clearly demonstrated. Strong readers make a surprisingly large number of errors in the sense that what they read is not exactly what is in the text. These errors, or miscues as they are called, often consist of slight paraphrasings of the text rather than nonsense mistakes. In contrast, weak readers may make fewer miscues, devoting much more attention to the written word. But the errors they make are more significant, changing the meaning of the text or reducing it to nonsense. This is the real difference. Fluent readers read for the meaning of the text, not for the individual words. Beginning readers are so busy struggling with the actual words that they have little chance of absorbing the meaning. Current research into reading indicates that literacy teachers should encourage learners to read for the meaning of the text, rather than allow learners to devote their energies to perfect word-byword decoding. Reading Theory and the Adult English Language Learner As has been noted, a fluent reader, reading in her or his first language, makes use of three bands of information: graphophonics (letter shapes and their associated sounds), syntax (word order), and semantics (meaning), in addition to bringing certain expectations to the text based on experience with format and physical location. It is clear, however, that L2 learners are not able to make use of these various information bands as easily as their L1 counterparts. To begin with, adult second-language learners may not be able to make predictions as to the likely content of a text based on format if they have no previous experience with literacy, or if literacy conventions are different in their culture of origin. When L2 learners come to attack the actual print, their limited knowledge of English will obviously make matters more difficult for them. Information available from the semantic band relies on control of vocabulary. Whereas someone reading in her or his first language can Understanding Literacy and the Learning Process 33

easily guess the meaning of one unknown word from the context of the sentence, ELLs are likely to be faced with a number of new vocabulary items and a host of unknown possibilities for every strange word. L2 learners are likely, too, to have trouble with English syntax, so that word order will not give them the kind of help that it gives L1 speakers. When unable to predict even which kind of word will come next, L2 learners are going to require more information about a word before they can identify it, and they are less likely to be aware of their errors. Given the challenges posed by the semantic and syntactic bands of information, L2 literacy learners tend to rely heavily on graphophonic information—the actual spelling of the words. Since they have difficulties with predicting, they are likely to attempt to sound out or decode each and every word, and consequently they are subject to problems of shortterm memory overload. In their focus on sounding out words, they severely limit their ability to get meaning from the text. If you teach second-language literacy learners exclusively by phonics, you will strongly reinforce this focus. It is important, therefore, that you enable L2 learners to make use of other reading strategies that allow them to read for meaning, as a fluent reader does. As you consider the specific problems of the adult second-language literacy learner, you will see differences between the learner who is literate in another language and the learner who is not literate at all. L2 learners who are literate in their own language begin with certain advantages. They are trained in the visual discrimination of significant features in letterforms. They understand the concept of a particular sound being represented by a particular symbol. They have expectations of certain content being presented in certain formats. Most important, they expect print to yield meaning. This may sound so self-evident as not to be worth mentioning, but it is not unheard of for nonliterate learners to assume that reading simply means decoding symbols into sounds. Literate learners also have a number of word-attack skills. They know that the surrounding context of a word will often give information as to its meaning, and if their first language uses an alphabetic system, they will know that breaking down a new word into syllables can make the task of decoding easier. It is reasonable to expect, therefore, that learners who are literate in one language will already have all the various reading strategies at their fingertips. In practice, however, it appears that even good L1 readers will fail to make use of these strategies if they are faced with an L2 text that is too difficult for them. Often, these learners will revert to what might be called “the weak-reader strategy”—reading word by word because they cannot predict the vocabulary or syntax. It is therefore important 34 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

that the task text be challenging but not overwhelmingly difficult, and that all learners be urged to read for meaning, irrespective of their literacy level. For learners approaching literacy for the first time, there are some obvious special needs. They may require training in the prereading skills of shape recognition and discrimination. They may have no concept of left–right orientation, and they will not have the concept of sound–symbol correspondence. They may not know what a word is. Adult ELLs who have never been exposed to print are less likely to have the poor self-image often found in English-speaking learners with low literacy. But learners who have had unsuccessful experiences with literacy in their first language often doubt their ability to learn to read in a second language. These learners require special motivation. Whatever the degree of your learners’ previous literacy, you can expect some interference from the sound system of their first language. For example, learners who have great difficulty discriminating between the short i sound in bit and the long ee sound in beet are likely to have problems when faced with words in print containing these sounds. Seeing the word grin, they are likely not only to pronounce it as green but also to understand it as green. Exercises that encourage learners to consider the meaning of the text, not merely what it sounds like, are obviously needed here. Listening exercises to encourage sound discrimination are also helpful. To sum up, all L2 learners are attempting the reading process without the background language knowledge of the L1 reader. Thus prediction, the basis of fluent reading, is that much more difficult. The best way to offset this is initially to provide texts in which the syntax and the vocabulary are largely familiar, so that learners grow accustomed to making use of all the bands of information available to readers, rather than relying only on the graphophonic information band. Familiar vocabulary and syntax patterns are easily provided if you develop reading material that reflects the language patterns and vocabulary that the learners demonstrate in their spoken English. As learners make progress in extracting meaning from the text, you can then incorporate more new items and encourage them to use the familiar context to help in identifying new words.

Understanding Writing Full proficiency in writing will include the ability to express ideas coherently in print, to arrange thoughts logically, and to produce a clear text shaped in a manner acceptable to the culture in which one is living. Understanding Literacy and the Learning Process 35

Adult ELLs will benefit from a curriculum that recognizes that this is the ultimate goal and that encourages them to see writing as something they can use in the real world. Writing exercises that encourage learners to think and make judgments about their writing can be usefully included even in fairly elementary ELL classes. Typically, however, the bulk of time in the literacy class will be spent on the underlying skills of learning to encode text; that is, to produce the correct printed symbols to represent the sounds. In the early stages of learning to write, the learners’ attention will be devoted almost entirely to the production side of the process, and there will be little brainpower to spare for the task of critically analyzing the content of what they produce. Think of all the demands made on new writers. Even assuming that they know what they want to say when they begin, they must then cope with letter formation, spelling, word order, punctuation, capitalization, and possibly even paragraphing. As learners acquire more practice in coping with these demands, they find the process easier and are gradually able to concentrate more on improving the content of what they write, at which point they are probably ready for a regular ESL class. How do we as teachers guide ELLs to this point? Basically it is a matter of writing practice combined with reading. The more learners write, the easier they will find the process. In effect, the brain is learning new habits. The process is not unlike learning to drive a car. Initially, having to perform six different things at once is overwhelming, and yet after a little experience, drivers find they can perform the required tasks in sequence without any conscious thought. Similarly, when it comes to writing, the brain doesn’t instruct the fingers to produce one letter after another in sequence. Instead, the brain learns whole patterns of movements and is already sending messages to the fingers to produce the second and third letter of a word when the pen is tracing out the first letter. By frequent writing, learners train their brains to work in these sequences just as drivers are trained, for example, to cope with the various actions involved in preparing to overtake another car. If writing improves with practice, then where does reading come in? Reading helps learners recognize acceptable word patterns and acceptable spellings. Many people, when asked how to spell a word, will check it in print to see if it “looks right.” The brain has learned from frequent reading which combination of letters makes up a particular word just as it knows which combination of features makes up a friend’s face, even though describing the combination may be difficult. Writing is often considered to be a more difficult task than reading. The writer has to make use of the same conventions of letter order, word order, and meaning as the reader does, but because writing is a 36 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

productive skill, the demands made on the individual are stricter. Many literate readers are able to understand a sentence pattern in a foreign language that they cannot produce. Similarly, they may have no trouble reading words that they cannot spell. In some ways, though, writing can be a simpler process than reading, speaking, or listening. When struggling to write in a second language, learners can avoid difficult constructions, find alternatives for unknown vocabulary, and generally choose their own route based on their capabilities in the language. Unlike reading, where the content may be a mystery to the reader, in writing the writer controls the content. Also, writers can make as many attempts at the writing process as they need to achieve a finished product that satisfies them. Unlike speech, where it is necessary to produce content and form all at the same time, writing can be approached in stages. In a first draft, the focus may be on the content of what is being said. In later drafts, attention can shift to improving the spelling, grammar, or legibility. All these can be incorporated into later drafts or into a final tidy copy. While some cultures do stress the importance of working holistically, many learners find the idea of producing a rough draft and a clean, corrected copy very appealing, as it enables them to attempt something challenging yet still end up with a piece of writing of which they can be proud. Writing and the Adult Second-Language Learner When L1 speakers first learn to write, they normally devote all their attention to the simple task of getting the letters correct. Even a child has a firm grasp of sentence structure and a wide vocabulary to call on, so that concentration can be focused on the demands of spelling and legibility. For the second-language learner, however, the demands are much greater. “Whereabouts in the sentence should the verb come, and what tense should be used? What’s the English word for that action, anyway?” The L2 learner is struggling for control of all the different aspects of writing at once, aggravated by the adult mentality that wants to produce something meaningful, not just repeat simple phrases. As in learning to read, students who are literate in their first language have skills that can help them in English. They know how to hold a pen correctly and they have the fine-muscle control necessary for legible handwriting. They understand the concept of a word and recognize word boundaries. Their own language may be written in a different direction from English (right to left and/or in vertical rather than horizontal lines), but they expect a consistent pattern of direction and usually find it easy to change to left–right directionality. The learner who Understanding Literacy and the Learning Process 37

is not literate in any language is unlikely to have any of these skills and will accordingly need more practice. Many adult L2 learners have difficulty distinguishing certain sounds. They may hear no difference between /b/ and /p/, for instance. When they come to write words containing these sounds, they have no way of judging from the sound of the word which letters are required. While it is possible for them to learn new words that include the difficult sound on a letter-by-letter basis, this is a very time-consuming process and does not help them attack other new words. If you can do work on listening to help them distinguish the appropriate sounds, the learners will find spelling an easier process. Spelling is also a matter of knowing the acceptable patterns of letters in the language. When L1 English speakers attempt to write a new word, they know that certain patterns such as qm are never used in English, and they restrict their choices accordingly. L2 English learners have to learn what combinations of letters and sounds are permissible in English. They may be able to use nf to start a word in their first language, but it is never an acceptable combination at the start of an English word. This kind of knowledge is not something that can be usefully taught in a formal way, but will develop from exposure to printed English. The limited English vocabularies of second-language learners also slow their progress. L1 English speakers can learn whole groups of words that share common features—having conquered the silent gh spelling convention, they have a tool to attack right, sight, fight, light, and might. ELLs may not have these words in their vocabulary, making it less easy for them to generalize. Most of all, English language learners are hindered by their lack of control of syntax or grammar. Strange constructions that work quite adequately for them in speech, supported by intonation, facial expression, and gesture, can be incomprehensible in the baldness of print. Learners need to learn the basic structural patterns of English and develop a sense of what constitutes a sentence. It is obvious, therefore, that even in a class devoted exclusively to literacy, there is a critical role for oral language work. If the learners are to spell correctly, they will need listening exercises to ensure that they hear words properly. If they are to form adequate sentences, they will need speech work to try out sentence patterns and develop vocabulary. Whether focusing primarily on reading or writing, you will achieve greater success in the early stages if the print reflects language with which your learners are orally familiar.

38 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

CHAPTER THREE

Teaching the Adult Learner

Before examining the differences between children and adult learners, it should of course be stressed that in many ways good teaching methodology is the same for all age groups. All learners do better when the teaching is cooperative and learners can share in the process of information exchange, rather than when the learning is passive and teacherdirected. Giving learners the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience makes the learning more pleasant and effective. It is important that students contribute to the classes and play an active role, not just in the instructional activities, but also in exchanging ideas, solving problems, and teaching others. Although in general terms this learner-centered approach is valid for both children and adult learners, there are areas where adults have special abilities that ELL teachers can capitalize on, as well as special needs that must be met.

Life Experience One of the most important differences between adult learners and children is the storehouse of experience the adult learner possesses. All adult immigrants have proved themselves able to survive in at least two different cultures. Many are far more traveled than their teachers are. They have learned to judge people, think independently, and weigh facts critically. It is important not to forget these abilities, even though the learners cannot express themselves verbally in English. The goal in adult education is for the learner to move from dependent to independent and self-directed learning. While a child has little experience to draw on and will have difficulty working independently, an adult has years of Teaching the Adult Learner 39

experience working independently and should be encouraged to bring this independence into the learning situation. The more adult you can make the classroom atmosphere the better. Choose adult topics as the vehicle for language, focusing on material that relates to identified needs, such as settlement information, or identified interests, such as societal issues or sports. Avoid falling into the trap of simplifying content in an attempt to simplify language. Acknowledge the complex mix of advantages and disadvantages that accompany most adult decisions, whether the topic is immigration, family life, or employment.

Learner Involvement Adult learners who have functioned as self-supporting, independent adults in their countries of origin may feel that school is an inappropriate place for persons of their age. They will therefore be particularly sensitive to anything that seems to imply that you, as their teacher, regard them as children. This is not just a matter of avoiding talking down to learners or not using children’s primers. It is much more a matter of giving learners responsibility for their own learning. Ideally, learners will shape the learning process to reflect their own needs, selecting both content and learning style as appropriate. This may seem an unrealistic goal when adults arrive in your class unable, for language reasons, to tell you what they can do, much less what they want to do. However, you should bear this principle in mind, consciously working toward learner independence by involving them in decision making and critique. Even at the most basic level, you might offer choice between two activities or set aside some class time for free reading, providing a selection of reading material for browsing. As learners become more confident in your class, you can allow them to choose the topic or approach. For example, if they feel unhappy working in small groups and prefer to work alone, you can give them that choice. If you can see yourself as the facilitator of their learning rather than as their teacher, you will be able to encourage them to take some responsibility for themselves. Make suggestions rather than give orders. Allow the students to demonstrate their adult skills and abilities, and let them teach you about the things they know. Don’t play the infallible teacher! If you can admit your mistakes, the learners won’t feel so foolish when they make mistakes, too. People learn from their mistakes, so this is an area where learners should be involved, monitoring their own progress, maintaining their own portfolios of work, and routinely carrying out self-assessment activities. 40 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

As you encourage learners to look critically at their own learning processes, you should expect, too, that they will be able to make judgments on the program as well as on their progress. Adult learners are far more likely to question teaching decisions than children are, and they need the opportunity to do so. Chapter Ten outlines some of the most effective ways to encourage ELLs to give you feedback.

Physical Factors There are a number of physical factors to be borne in mind in the adult classroom. The most obvious is simply the physical size of an adult. Too often, classes held in school facilities involve squeezing large adults into desks designed for small children. Sometimes the solution can be as simple as requesting the use of the staff room during evening hours, or bringing in chairs from the auditorium. Reading and writing is a sufficient challenge without being physically cramped in the process. Another physical factor to bear in mind is the possibility of older learners having impaired hearing or eyesight. As well as making sure that learners know how to go about getting any treatment necessary, try to provide seating arrangements flexible enough to allow such students to choose seats close to you, the board, or the projection screen. A third factor is fatigue. Many adult learners carry a heavy workload in addition to attending classes, and their powers of concentration are likely to be diminished. Variety in classroom activities, opportunities to move around and stretch, and access to a kettle and some coffee or tea, all help to combat learner fatigue.

Nature of the Contract between Teacher and Student In most English-speaking cultures, the occupation allocated to children is primarily that of student. Children are essentially contracted to attend school for a number of years. Teachers can therefore count on having a certain length of time for students’ study patterns to reach fruition. The nature of the contract with the adult learner is very different. For most adults, studying is not their primary role—it is something they have to fit in around the demands of their jobs and families, and normally it is the activity most easily sacrificed when conflicting demands are made on their time. Attendance is voluntary. Learners can skip classes or drop out entirely if the program doesn’t fulfill their expectations. Making the lessons interesting and relevant is obviously the first step in encouraging regular attendance, but inevitably some learners will still miss classes occasionally because of other commitments. This makes it Teaching the Adult Learner 41

difficult to have each lesson build on the previous one; a problem exacerbated by a continuous intake of students. Chapter Nine covers in more detail a number of ways in which you can adapt the curriculum to address this challenge. The primary approach will be the recycling of material previously covered by placing it in a fresh context, supported by group work, frequent review, and individualized tasks. The length of the contract between teacher and learner is another major difference when teaching adults. Few adult learners can spare the time to learn the theoretical principles first and the application later, even if they can acknowledge that this might improve their competence in the long run. Rather, they are looking for a quick return on their investment of time and energy, and want lesson content that they can take out into the street and use immediately. They need to be able to complete that job application form now, even if the printing is still messy, rather than delaying job hunting until their handwriting is perfect. Adults have to be able to see the importance and the immediate relevance of what they are learning to their own lives. Rather than just learn about things, adult learners want to learn how to do things. This of course is the reason that such stress is placed on planning lessons around the learners’ needs.

Motivation Children may be motivated by such external rewards as stars stuck on the page, but adult learners are primarily motivated by internal factors. They study because they want to improve their life, find better employment, find better housing, or help their children in school. These factors, rather than report cards, are what motivate them to work hard. Of course all learners enjoy praise and derive some satisfaction from being told they have done a task well, but this kind of encouragement will not be enough to keep an adult studying if the classes seem irrelevant to the personal goals. Adult learners usually want to know why they are being asked to do something, and they expect that their teacher will make this clear. It may be quite evident to you that a particular language game will practice important sight-word recognition, but if learners do not understand this, they may dismiss the activity as a childish game. It is therefore helpful to get into the pattern of routinely identifying the intended goal of an activity. Some teachers like to begin each class by writing on the board a list of anticipated activities for the day, with the target learning goal listed. This can also serve to reassure those who are unhappy with a xxxxxxxxxxxx 42 Understanding Literacy and Literacy Learners

particular activity that something more to their liking will be coming up soon. Of course not everyone will view activities in the same way!

Learning Styles and Expectations In a single class, an ESL literacy teacher will likely face a variety of behavior patterns and learning styles. Some learners remember things better when they hear the teacher present the material. Others are more visual and do better with written material, pictures, or diagrams. Yet others may learn experientially and need to try out language, not just observe it. Personal preferences for learning patterns combine with cultural expectations around classroom behavior. One learner will sit rigidly at attention and want to repeat each word after you. Another will expect to demonstrate prowess by challenging you at every turn. A third may only feel happy with the security of a workbook to be worked through diligently, while a fourth may have no study skills at all and find it extremely difficult to maintain concentration. A fifth may focus intently on learning by rote but make no effort to discover meaning. It is impossible to adopt a teaching style that pleases everyone all the time, yet it is necessary to be prepared to modify your approach if this makes the learners feel more at ease. Teachers need to use a variety of approaches to address a range of learning styles. Teachers also need to be flexible enough to compromise if this allows learners to operate in their comfort zone. You may not feel that there is a suitable workbook you want to use, for example, but you can satisfy the learners who work this way by providing a folder of worksheets you have prepared. Similarly, if some students are very ill at ease with group discussions, have them work individually on tasks for the first few weeks. Most teachers of ELLs find that they are prepared to adapt to new teaching styles if the transition is made gently, not abruptly. Chapters Six through Eight outline in more detail the ways in which activities can be modified to suit particular learning styles and the many advantages of covering material via different skill areas. In this way, you can take into account the culturally influenced expectations of adults from all over the world, while still trying to address the immediate learning needs of the new environment and the adult need for self-determination.

Teaching the Adult Learner 43

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SECTION TWO

Deciding What and How to Teach

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CHAPTER FOUR

Determining Content in the Literacy Classroom

In upcoming chapters, I will discuss in some detail the methods you can use to teach adult language learners. But what is the content you should be teaching in a literacy class? Is literacy for ELLs mostly about helping learners cope with the literacy demands of the ESL class so that they can develop their spoken language? Or is the focus of the class exclusively on learning to read and write? And if so, reading and writing about which topics? The answers to these questions will vary according to the context. A literacy student may appear in a beginner ESL class where most of the learners can already read and write, at least in their first language. Or the literacy learner may be attending an adult literacy class, where most of the other learners speak English as a first language. Obviously, teachers in these situations will tailor their solutions differently.

Basic Parameters in Determining Content Although literacy learners come from disparate backgrounds and have different needs, there are some basic parameters that shape the teaching of adult second-language learners. Build on Oral Language Work The first of these parameters is the importance of oral work. Whether for reading or for writing, learners have to develop their vocabulary and their control of sentence patterns. For the reading side, they need to expand these skills to enable them to improve their prediction abilities. For the writing side, they need this knowledge to permit them to express their meaning. It is not just a matter of doing oral work in the regular Determining Content in the Literacy Classroom 47

ESL class and then waiting for the benefits to become apparent in the literacy sessions, although this will happen. It also involves using oral language as the springboard for literacy activities. The class can talk about the probable content of a reading passage before learners attempt to read it. Stories dictated by the learners can be used as reading texts. Writing will be easier if the learners have first grappled with the topic orally, trying out new vocabulary and structures. When the content of the reading or writing is familiar, learners have a much greater chance of success. Their attention can be focused on the process of making meaning rather than on the limitations of their language competence. Use Real-Life Material The second parameter to bear in mind is that there is no automatic entry point for learning to read and write. You do not have to begin with three-letter words like cat and dog, when adults will likely be more interested in the words they see on street signs or on the fronts of buses. Reading and writing can begin with any words, even if at first sight the words learners want to learn seem complicated in their spelling. Many of the common short words, such as my, said, and right are irregular phonetically, and yet children are expected to master them easily in their basal primers. The point of entry for adult learners should be their areas of interest and need. Reading material that learners perceive as meaningful improves motivation and breeds success. As stated in Chapter One, adult learners attend literacy classes for many reasons, but often they will have a particular aim in mind: to obtain a driver’s license, to be able to write down telephone messages at work, or to read their children’s school reports, for example. If you begin the reading and writing process using materials based on learners’ needs, you will find that their high level of interest and motivation make the task easier. Conquering the reading and writing of sentences such as See Dan in the tan van will be of little immediate use to adult learners. However, learning to read the labels on generic supermarket products or the prompt screens on automated bank machines will give learners a demonstrable sign of progress, as well as a skill that they can usefully employ outside the classroom. Avoid Material Designed for Children Related to this point of teaching to learners’ needs is the importance of using material suitable for adults. Most of the commonly available material specifically produced for teaching literacy is intended for children and is likely to be to be perceived by mature adults as demeaning. Only when adults specifically state that they want to be able to read 48 Deciding What and How to Teach

stories to their children should children’s picture books be used. There are many other materials available containing limited vocabulary that are of much greater interest to adults. Simple forms such as bank slips, for example, make few demands of word order or punctuation, and can be found or made up with a minimum of vocabulary. Advertising flyers follow a similar format; catalogs are as lavishly illustrated as any children’s book and provide the same amount of context clues. Setting up each learner with an email account and encouraging her or him to send other students brief messages will provide a valuable introduction to authentic print communication. It is important that adult learners do not feel they are being treated as children. They need to know that you respect their more varied interests and are committed to acknowledging their wider experience.

Determine the Sequence of Approach Some of the other basic issues in the teaching of adult literacy, regardless of the specific approach used, are less clear-cut. One issue is the question of whether students should begin writing simultaneously with reading, or should their reading skills be developed somewhat prior to beginning writing. Adult L2 learners have been taught successfully by both methods, and each method appears to have advantages. Proponents of teaching reading first claim that learners do a better job of letter reproduction when they have enough reading experience to recognize which features of a letter are significant. For example, strong readers recognize the lower-case letter t whether they see it written straight up and down or slanted, with or without the curl at the bottom of the down stroke. These readers know that the significant features are the long down stroke and the short cross stroke approximately one-third of the way down. Learners new to literacy have no way of knowing this if the first t they see is in a typeface that has wiggly ends on all the strokes. Only by exposure to numerous forms of the letter t can learners begin to recognize the crucial features that distinguish t from all the other letters. Proponents of developing writing skills simultaneously with reading, however, claim that students learn to distinguish the significant features of letterforms more rapidly when they are called on to write the letters themselves. To some extent, the issue of whether learners should be taught reading first or reading and writing together will be addressed by the demands of the students themselves. Learners who are already literate in their first language will expect to write from the first lesson. Other learners may prefer to gain some competence in reading and are happy to postpone the writing process. Listen to what your learners tell Determining Content in the Literacy Classroom 49

you and choose accordingly. Bear in mind, too, that writing does not have to mean wielding a pen or pencil. Arranging letter cards into words or word cards into sentences is a variant of writing that encourages attention to form without requiring the learner to generate all the material. There is also a range of computer programs that assist students to express themselves. Occasionally, literacy teachers wonder about the choice of script in which to begin writing, assuming that adult learners might value the opportunity to express themselves in cursive. While this was a popular approach in the 1980s, and many textbooks from that era teach cursive writing, it is very unusual today. Good cursive writing takes many years of handwriting practice to develop, and unless the learner has fluency in some other system, it is unlikely that a suitably mature style will be reached within the duration of the classes. There has also been a shift in the writing patterns of the comparison population. More time is spent on keyboards, leading to less calligraphy practice, and many well-educated adults now eschew cursive in favor of neat printing. If adult learners begin with manuscript printing, the material they are reading and the material they are writing will call on the same set of symbols, which has to make the process less demanding. Within printing, however, should adult learners begin with upper case or with lower case (for example, ABC or abc)? Children are commonly introduced to lower-case letters first, with upper-case letters brought in later. While most forms of printed material, such as newspapers, will be predominantly lower case with upper case used only for proper nouns and the first letter of a sentence, technology tends to require upper-case skills to access a computer keyboard or cell-phone keys. Any kind of government or bank form to be completed will also call for block letters. Teaching adults, therefore, requires simultaneous instruction in both upper case and lower case. Provide Variety in Reading Materials Because motivation is such a crucial feature affecting learner progress, it is important to plan your lessons carefully to make sure that what you teach is relevant to your learners’ needs. This is particularly true for teaching content. Too often reading is thought of as reading a book, and yet most people use their reading skills far more frequently for such things as menus, street signs, bank statements, pay slips, cell-phone menus, calendars, television listings, and the like. These are the kinds of texts your adult learners are likely to want to read, rather than great literature. This isn’t to say that literacy learners should not be introduced to the idea of reading for pleasure rather than just reading 50 Deciding What and How to Teach

for information, but in the early stages, they will need encouragement in developing literacy skills that help them in their everyday lives. Once the mechanics of reading become less of an effort, adult learners will enjoy reading for pleasure much more. In the meantime, introduce the concept of “interest reading” by reading to your learners. Short articles from the newspaper, comics, graphic novels, photo romances, cartoons, perhaps a write-up of a favorite sports team’s most recent performance, or even a poem can be usefully read to the class. As the class progresses, these readings may become the basis for oral discussion, and learners may want to create simplified versions as reading or writing exercises. In the very earliest classes, however, students are likely to be most motivated to tackle such materials as food labels that frustrate them in everyday life. Identifying your learners’ needs is not always easy if class members have too limited a command of English to volunteer information for themselves and if interpreters are not available. You can often make some educated guesses, however, based on what you know of the class. Learners with school-aged children are likely to feel a need for help with the letters sent home from school and the associated demand for writing permission slips or notes to the teacher. The learners’ occupations may provide clues as well. For example, cleaners may need to write notes regarding supplies that need replacing. Mechanics may need to jot down telephone messages regarding cars coming into the garage. Unemployed workers or people on workers’ compensation may need help filling out their claim forms, and anyone paid by direct deposit or check will want help with banking procedures. Provide Options An easy way of encouraging learners to indicate their areas of need and interest is to build up a reading file from which learners select items that they would like to read. Such a file might contain any or all of the following: various preprinted forms photographs of street signs illustrated newspaper articles excerpts from classified ads screen shots food packages recipes short stories cartoons

articles on different subjects maps greeting cards medication labels comic strips schedules instructions pamphlets menus

Determining Content in the Literacy Classroom 51

Wherever possible, such items should have illustrations or a format that provides a clue to the content. Any of the items in such a reading file would be a valid and valuable place to begin reading. To accompany such activities, however, you need material that draws on the learners’ own interests and experiences and acknowledges the storehouse of experience that the adult possesses. Adults who have made their way across the world to start a new life in a new country, despite limited educational backgrounds, are likely to have fascinating stories to tell. Sharing these stories and finding ways to record them for future generations can be the basis for many valuable literacy classes. Adults learn more effectively when the learning is cooperative—when they can share in the process of exchanging information—rather than when the learning is passive and teacherdirected. As noted in earlier chapters, giving learners the opportunity to share their knowledge and experience makes the learning more pleasant and more effective. It is important, then, that students contribute to the classes and play an active role. How can this be achieved in the classroom given the confines of a limited time schedule, language problems, and varied interests? Partly it is a matter of being flexible in teaching, so that issues of interest raised by the learners can be adequately explored. It also involves encouraging learners to open up to the class, whether by demonstrating a special skill such as woodworking, sharing a problem such as the assembly of a child’s bike, or finding a new apartment. Often, concrete items such as old photographs or travel documents will encourage students to offer accounts of their own experiences. Stories told by the students and transcribed by you will make excellent reading practice and can also be the basis for written work. Above all, it is a matter of ensuring reading and writing activities address learners’ interests and experiences along with their urgent needs.

Consider Method In Chapters Five through Seven, I will cover the methodological options in some detail and outline general approaches and specific activities. Obviously, your choice of teaching methodology will be influenced in part by the content you have chosen to teach. There are other parameters that must be taken into account, however. As I have pointed out earlier, when deciding on a teaching approach for an adult ESL literacy learner, it is important to take into account both the student’s second-language background and the maturity of the age group before selecting the most appropriate method. Unlike children 52 Deciding What and How to Teach

learning in their first language, whose literacy skills tend to develop in concert, research shows that adult language learners show a very uneven pattern of development. For all the reasons discussed in Chapter Two, adult learners’ vocabulary and comprehension skills lag behind their decoding skills. This means it is important to support the development of the weaker areas by paying attention to oral language and encouraging learners to always seek for meaning. Most adult literacy learners have very limited classroom experience, and what experience they do have is a long way behind them. They don’t have the ability to take notes on material covered in class, and they don’t usually make use of learning strategies, such as reviewing the work between classes. They will typically make very slow progress, and they will need to have material covered many times and in many different ways before they remember it. Two of the most important things for any teacher approaching a literacy class to bear in mind are the absolute requirement of reviewing previous work over and over again, and the importance of presenting material through as many formats as possible. Teaching literacy to second-language learners can seem frustrating if you do not understand just how difficult it is for your learners. To better understand how difficult it can be for learners to remember material from one class to the next, imagine how difficult it would be trying to learn an unfamiliar language such as Gujarati, written in symbols that mean nothing to you, in a situation in which you could not write anything down in your own language. Presenting material in different ways, therefore, is not simply a matter of balancing a comprehension-based activity with one on decoding, important though both may be. Rather, it is a matter of finding five or six or seven ways to cover a particular item using different approaches and different activities. (See Multiple Ways to Teach Personal Pronouns on page 118 of Chapter Eight for a detailed example of how this might be done.) The remaining chapters in Section Two outline the range of possible approaches to the teaching of literacy and provide guidelines for selecting tasks and activities suited to various learning profiles.

Determining Content in the Literacy Classroom 53

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CHAPTER FIVE

Teaching Preliteracy Skills

There is considerable evidence that children in literate societies begin to develop literacy awareness well before they encounter formal literacy instruction. If they are introduced to books or see adults making use of literacy, this will help them understand the purposes for which people use print. Children in literate communities are often given crayons or pencils as playthings, and they are encouraged to develop the finemotor skills that are required to develop handwriting. They are also learning to discriminate between shapes, and their early scribbles tend to take on the characteristics of the writing system in use around them. Adults who were raised in situations where literacy opportunities were limited have not had this informal apprenticeship and will need some preliteracy support.

Key Aspects of Preliteracy Before adults with no exposure to literacy can hope for much success with their first written words, they need to have developed a range of preliteracy skills to support their literacy learning. One aspect of this is physical and relates to the muscle control needed to hold a pen. If you have ever struggled to use chopsticks effectively, you will know that finemotor control of that kind takes a considerable amount of practice. For those who have done little or no writing, using a pen efficiently has a similar learning curve as learners struggle to get control of the hand position, the strength of grip, the wrist angle, and so on. A second aspect is developing competence with the necessary strategies that support literacy. When you as an educated person are faced xxxxxx Teaching Preliteracy Skills 55

with a new literacy-related task, you have a range of strategies that you automatically make use of. If a word is unfamiliar, you may sound it out, or you may search for a familiar piece within it to help you place the meaning. If you hear new information, you may record it for later memory checking. These strategies help you decode and encode text, and they help you express and understand meaning. A third aspect is around training the eye and the brain to pay attention to small details and to understand their significance. For experienced L1 readers of English, the difference between two similar words such as stop and shop seems very evident. However, when these same discrimination skills are applied to a different writing system that may contain unfamiliar shapes, it is more difficult to distinguish differences. Look at the Japanese characters in Figure 5.1 and see what challenges you encounter in distinguishing the odd one out. Then try to copy the characters and see what problems you face.

Figure 5.1

Unless you are already familiar with an Asian language, it is likely that you faced a range of problems, such as wondering where to begin the character or how to shape the particular stroke. You might have found difficulty remembering the complex visual image or lost track of the relative size of the parts. All these challenges face learners who are new to English language literacy, and they are of course magnified for those who have no previous literacy experience. Preliteracy activities support learners in developing the necessary skills and strategies to approach literacy learning. Because such tasks can seem demeaning to adult learners, it is important that they be allowed to make progress as rapidly as possible. They should not be held back on exercises that are not challenging to them while the rest of the class catches up.

Prereading Skills There is a range of skills that underlie reading that we tend to take for granted because, for the most part, they are not explicitly taught in our xxxxxxxxxx 56 Deciding What and How to Teach

school systems. It is assumed that, prior to beginning school, children will have acquired some of these basic skills simply by exposure. Children raised in literate societies are bombarded by representational images and demonstrations of how text is approached and used. Long before young children can write recognizable words, their scribbles begin to reflect specific features of the writing system of the culture in which they live. (For example, English-speaking children generate wordlike clusters of shapes written along an approximately horizontal line. Chinese-speaking children generate square shapes evenly spaced.) In similar fashion, long before they can read, young children from literate households will mimic readers and pretend to read from picture books. These behaviors demonstrate how much they have learned about how literacy is approached. Learners who come from societies in which little or no use is made of literacy have not had this informal apprenticeship. They will often need to be explicitly introduced to skills such as shape discrimination that underlie reading. A completely nonliterate student who has spent all of his or her life recognizing that a cow is a cow, whether it faces left or right, will not instantly appreciate the significance of the difference between p and q without it being pointed out. Learners who are literate in their first language already have training in this regard. If their first language uses the Roman alphabet, they may need no prereading training at all. Learners whose first languages do not use the Roman alphabet, however, may need practice with such things as direction and letter formation, and could benefit from some of the later exercises in this section. They may need work on visual discrimination of features that are significant in English but not meaningful in their first language, such as the relative size of upper-case S compared with lower-case s. Shape Discrimination The first step in prereading skills training is to develop the learner’s ability to discriminate between shapes. It should not be assumed that a learner does not have this ability simply because he or she is nonliterate in the first language. Many learners are skilled at hobbies and crafts, such as embroidery, which have already developed the skill of shape discrimination. Others will find even the first exercises challenging. Initially, shape discrimination should focus on major differences, such as between circles and squares. Later, it should focus on features that are significant for letter shapes, such as left- or right-facing characters. It is not advisable to spend time on features such as thick or thin lines, which have no significance for letter recognition.

Teaching Preliteracy Skills 57

One possible component of an early shape-discrimination exercise might require learners to identify the different shape from among a series of similar shapes (see Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2

You might then ask learners to find a similar shape from a series of different shapes, which is a slightly more difficult task (see Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3

58 Deciding What and How to Teach

Gradually increase the level of challenge by increasing the choice of items, decreasing the size of items, and making the differences less noticeable (see Figure 5.4).

Figure 5.4

In the final stage of shape discrimination, give learners actual letters in a commonly used typeface (see Figure 5.5).

Figure 5.5

At this point, introduce upper- and lower-case letters in addition to numerals. Such exercises do not formally teach students what the letters Teaching Preliteracy Skills 59

or numerals are, but as the eye is trained to recognize significant features of the shapes, the letters and numerals become familiar and are therefore more easily learned. Introducing Personal Language While working on shape discrimination, consider simultaneously introducing the written form of personal language, such as name, address, and phone number. Following oral work on “What’s your name? My name is ,” write the word name on the board and point out to learners the word name on their discrimination exercises. The first time you introduce an exercise dealing with the written form of personal language, write each student’s name on the paper. For subsequent exercises, direct learners to copy their names onto their papers. Gradually introduce the words first, last, address, and so on, in a similar fashion, until learners reach the point where they can complete a brief form, such as that shown in Figure 5.6.

Figure 5.6

While the learners’ first attempts at copying such information are not likely to be very satisfactory, all learners will recognize the value of what they are writing and will feel that they have gained something concrete from the class (a feeling they may not derive from shapediscrimination work). Also, the wide variety of letters and numerals likely to be employed in such personal information gives learners a chance to recognize letters when they are first introduced as part of the alphabet. Introducing the Alphabet When students come to learn individual letters, it is not necessarily advisable to approach the letters in alphabetical order initially. There does not seem to be very clear evidence as to which letters it is best to begin with, although some teachers claim that learners experience less confusion if similar letters are presented together and the distinctive 60 Deciding What and How to Teach

features pointed out. The letters m and n, for example, can be taught as a pair that shares the features of straight lines in upper case and lines and curves in lower case. It is highly recommended that you not begin with a letter such as c, which has more than one sound. When introducing a letter, present it on the board in upper case and lower case and immediately place it in a word, preferably the name of one of the learners. Say something such as “This is the letter t. This is big T. This is small t. T is the letter that makes the first sound in Tomas. Do you know any other words that begin with the same sound as Tomas?” It is not a good idea to identify the letter as making a tuh sound, which is obviously a distortion of the way t actually functions in Tomas. Instead, various words beginning with t can be used to model the sound. Learners can then check their name and address cards to see if the letter t appears, and then listen to see if they can hear the sound. A system of index cards can be used to help the memory process. After coming up with a number of words that begin with the chosen sound, learners choose one word as their particular memory prop, preferably something that can be easily drawn. They then make a card showing the letter, together with their chosen keyword and an illustration as an available reminder of the sound (see Figure 5.7). Later, other t words can be added to the card, and the cards can then be arranged in alphabetical order.

Figure 5.7

It is reassuring for students to be aware that there is a finite number of symbols to be learned. A demonstration of the entire alphabet, and the information that every word in English is made up of a combination of some of these twenty-six letters, is valuable. Make it clear to Teaching Preliteracy Skills 61

learners that each letter has only one name but that it may make more than one sound, and that each letter has an upper- and lower-case form. Generally, of course, you will want your learners to be familiar with alphabetical order, so they can use such resources as dictionaries and telephone directories. Having the alphabet permanently displayed across the top of the board is helpful. (Appendix A: Useful Activities contains other detailed suggestions for teaching alphabetical order.) Introducing Numerals Numerals are somewhat easier to teach, since they do not hinge on a particular culture or language. Even though learners may not be skilled in arithmetic, nearly all of them will understand the idea of numbers and will simply need to learn the new names and symbols. Since Arabic numerals are in wider use than the Roman alphabet, you will find some learners who, while faced with a completely new alphabet, will be quite at home with the numbering system. For those to whom Arabic numbers are unknown, it is useful to build up a card file showing the numeral plus an equivalent number of dots (see Figure 5.8).

Figure 5.8

Playing cards are useful tools in teaching numbers, and the cards can be put together in pairs to make double-digit numbers if necessary. (See Figure 11.10 on page 169 for an example.)

Familiarity with Representational Images Most commercially produced literacy materials rely heavily on images to illustrate the meaning of the language being presented. Sometimes the pictures help to explain the new vocabulary items, and sometimes they tell the learners what to do. For example, a disembodied hand might indicate, “Write here.” These illustrations are not always as clear as one would hope. Some learners come from cultures where artwork consists solely of pattern representations, and they have therefore had little exposure to 62 Deciding What and How to Teach

the idea of representing three-dimensional shapes on a flat surface. A simple line drawing of an apple, for example, might be perceived merely as a circular shape, not as a symbol of a known fruit. Because simple line drawings are the most economical form of illustration, many literacy textbooks make considerable use of them. However, they may not be as understandable to people with limited literacy backgrounds as they are to fluent readers. Many texts also make use of symbols to indicate meaning. For example, a building with an H on top would be a hospital and one with a cross would be a church. A woman with a stethoscope around her neck is most likely a doctor or a veterinarian, and someone flourishing a piece of chalk is a teacher. Clearly, these are cultural symbols that will not be shared by many of your learners, and the symbols will need explanation. There are also more subtle assumptions embedded within illustrations, however, as you will immediately see if you look at those in many of the popular literacy texts. For a start, the size of the real object may bear no relation to the size of the portrayal. Many illustrated vocabulary lists provide a same-size image for every item, regardless of its actual size. People are therefore represented as being the same size as large buildings and small animals. Only if items are in the same illustration will the items be drawn in proportion to one another. Within any given illustration, size variation may represent small and large, but it may equally well arise from an attempt at perspective and represent proximity or distance. Needless to say this can be very confusing for learners, who may think they are learning the English words large and small, when they are actually being given the words for here and there. Similar confusions have been reported in regard to whether shading indicates a glass that is full or one that is dirty, and whether the label identifies the vessel or the liquid within it. For all these reasons, preliterate learners need exposure to the conventions of representation. Don’t assume that a picture is automatically understood, but do what you can to make the meaning more explicit. Where possible, it is helpful to work with the actual object, then move to the full-color photograph, and only then to the line drawing.

Prewriting Skills Much of the work described under Prereading Skills will help students approach writing. The particular demands of writing are concerned primarily with fine-motor coordination, to enable the writer to make smooth, regular shapes, applying the appropriate pressure for the chosen implement and writing surface. Many learners find letter formation Teaching Preliteracy Skills 63

easier if they begin attempting to form the shapes on a large scale. Rather than attempting individual letters at the start, attention should be paid to producing the general type of required movements. Circles progressing from left to right and slanted lines all moving in the same direction are usually the first exercises (see Figure 5.9).

Figure 5.9

You may find that asking learners to draw such shapes in the air is a satisfactory introduction. (Ideally, stand with your back to the class to model the appropriate hand and arm movements.) There is no possibility of mistake in an air-drawn shape, and the learner gains practice in using the entire arm to write, rather than working with the rigid fist seen in some literacy students. Using the board for large-scale drawing is usually the next step, which again encourages learners to work for ease and flow, rather than tight control. There is a limit, though, to how much board work adults will tolerate, and it is necessary to watch out for signs of dissatisfaction among the students. Once learners begin to work with pencil and paper, they may need to be shown how to hold the pencil and how to angle the paper slightly to allow ease of movement for the arm. Again, some loosening-up exercises (as in Figure 5.9) will be useful before learners progress to letter formation. In the early days, there is really little alternative to tracing and copying. There are a number of websites that offer printable templates of dotted-line text for learners to trace over and then copy. You may find that having your students begin by using their fingers to trace the letters on a textured surface, such as on sandpaper or velvet, helps them to remember the shapes. The multisensory approach is further reinforced if learners repeat the name of the letter as they trace it. When learners are copying letters, you may see them beginning at what you consider the wrong part of a letter. Some idiosyncratic approaches are more significant than others. Getting into the habit of drawing the letter o clockwise rather than counterclockwise really won’t make much difference to students’ eventual writing speed, especially if you are teaching printing rather than cursive. Consistently drawing an m by starting at the right-hand side will cause problems, however. Students may not have sufficient space to complete the letter if it is situated in the middle of a word, and they will find the transition to cursive extremely difficult if they are working in the wrong direction. 64 Deciding What and How to Teach

Learners can build up some sense of the approach to letters if they are aware of the importance of left–right direction within letters as well as within words. For particularly sticky problems, you may have to resort to arrows showing the direction of the pen stroke, or numbering strokes in order of performance (see Figure 5.10).

Figure 5.10

Occasionally, there are problems with this exercise, as learners may attempt to copy the arrows and numbers too, not yet being aware of the significant features of the letters. An understanding of what constitutes a given letter will come as the learners are exposed to various typefaces and to the irregularity of the teacher’s printing. This understanding will be reinforced by the students’ writing practice and should soon cease to be a problem. Determining the Need for Preliteracy Work Many of your learners will not need instruction in preliteracy skills and will be able to proceed immediately to alphabet work. Those who will benefit most are the learners with no prior education. Learners from many backgrounds may confuse similar letter shapes and similar words, but those in need of preliteracy activities will have difficulty discriminating even among dissimilar shapes. They will also demonstrate difficulty holding the pen and maintaining even and consistent pressure on the page. When you see these signs, you should consider providing some preliteracy activities to address the evident need. Bear in mind that this is not an all-or-nothing proposition. There will be a phase where learners spend some of their time discriminating between geometric shapes and some working with letters (carefully chosen and printed in a large typeface). Similarly, generating smooth, circular patterns can help all learners loosen up their wrists prior to writing tasks.

Teaching Preliteracy Skills 65

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CHAPTER SIX

Teaching Reading

When you consider your approach to teaching reading, it is very important that you bear in mind the specific situation of the learners. Unlike English-speaking children learning to read in the local school, your students are mature adults who want to be able to put their learning to immediate use in their lives outside the classroom. In addition, they are learning through the medium of a new language, in which they have limited competence. Both of these factors will have a significant impact on your selection of teaching approaches.

Approaches to Reading It is apparent there are two main ways to approach teaching reading. You can begin with whole pieces of language, which are then broken down into individual words, syllables, and letters. Or you can begin with the individual letters and sounds and build up to the words and sentences. If you are like most L1 English speakers, you probably learned to read by the second method. You learned the sound for d and o and g and worked through duh-o-guh to reach dog. You approached new words in a similar way, by beginning with the most basic elements and building up. It is tempting to conclude that since you may have learned to read fluently by this method, it will therefore be a successful method with students. However, adult learners in English programs are not children with years of full-time study ahead of them in which to conquer literacy. Nor are they native speakers of the language they are learning to read. They lack the enormous advantage L1 English speakers have in terms of language familiarity. As noted in Chapter Two, L2 English learners are not as well equipped as L1 English speakers to make use of the semantic or syntactic bands of information. Teaching Reading 67

Teaching exclusively by phonic analysis puts emphasis on the decoding aspect of reading and ignores the meaning. While literacy learners obviously need to be able to decode words enough to recognize them, an undue focus on sounding out will lead to a lack of comprehension. Sadly, this is just what research reports is the most common pattern in adult second-language learners who tend to do much better on tests of decoding skills than they do on tests of comprehension. It is quite possible to read something aloud fluently without having any understanding of it. Armed with a couple of rules of pronunciation, you could probably do an admirable job of reading a Latin text aloud, but you wouldn’t necessarily have any idea of what you were saying. Nor is this situation restricted to reading in an unknown language. To illustrate this point, imagine that George, a Hollywood movie star, is offered a new contract by the studio. Faced with “The party of the first part, hereinafter referred to…” George phones his lawyer for advice and is told, “Read it to me.” George complies. The lawyer then explains the major points and suggests the changes George might request. Obviously, both partners in this exchange have played a part in the reading process. George’s sounding out of the text was of no use without the lawyer’s comprehension of the sounds. Both partners read this material. George read the sounds. The lawyer read the meaning. Second-language literacy learners facing unfamiliar text are often in a position similar to that of the movie star, and they tend to respond in the same way. George was not facing a completely unknown language. Many of the words in the contract were familiar vocabulary to him. Many of the sentence patterns were familiar. He even had some sense of what he expected to find in the contract. And yet, the sprinkling of unknown legal terms, the unusual use of words otherwise familiar, and the occasional unfamiliar sentence structure were enough to make him give up any attempt at understanding the document, beyond sounding it out. This is what can happen to ESL literacy students. Faced by new vocabulary, new structures, and an insecure grasp of the topic, these students focus their attention on the sounding-out process. To offset this tendency, it is very important to introduce them to the idea that it is more useful to get the sense out of a text than it is to sound out each and every word. Making sure that learners use all the bands of information available to them (graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic), as well as all the clues provided by context and format, allows them a greater chance of success. Another reason for encouraging learners to focus on searching for meaning rather than on decoding is that only by so doing will they build 68 Deciding What and How to Teach

up any speed in their reading. As was noted in Chapter Two on reading theory, fluent readers do not identify every word. They focus instead on the words that carry meaning. Just as George’s lawyer knew that expressions such as “shall be seen by these here present” could be safely ignored, so fluent readers ignore many of the function words in a sentence (for example, support words such as the, was, being, and of). When readers approach every syllable in a sentence as being of equal importance, they are forced to read more slowly. In addition, they increase the strain on their short-term memories, as they are trying to hold all the sounds and not just those that carry the meaning. Clearly, there are valid reasons for teaching literacy with methods that stress understanding of the text. This is not to say that there is no value in approaches that focus on decoding. Obviously, learners need to learn how to decode, too, and the most successful methodology is one that combines both approaches. What is important is that the learner begins with a meaningful text, which can later be used for decoding exercises, rather than beginning with individual sounds and later building up to complete sentences. An effective second-language literacy program employs a variety of approaches, which are outlined in detail in this chapter. No one approach is valid alone, although for the sake of clarity, each is explored individually. Chapters Nine and Eleven consider ways in which the various approaches can be coordinated.

Reading for Meaning There are a number of approaches to teaching reading for meaning. What they have in common is that the learners work with material made up of words in a meaningful context. The meaningful context may take the form of an entire story that interests the learner, or it may be as small a unit as a single word, if that word is presented in a context in which the meaning is obvious. Labels on washroom doors or learners’ names written under photographs of them are examples of single words in context. More commonly, sentences are used as the minimum unit. Not only is more meaningful information given in such a context, but learners also become used to handling print in terms of thought units. Their reading is more fluent when each piece expresses a complete idea, not a string of unconnected syllables. At first sight, this concept may seem a little overwhelming. How can learners possibly make sense of an entire sentence if they cannot read the xxxxxxxxxx Teaching Reading 69

individual letters or words? In practice, what happens is that the learners are told what the writing says and acquire oral command of it, and then they are asked to work with the words sufficiently to begin to recognize and remember the words individually. Because they begin with knowing the meaning of what they are attempting to read, they can use memory and the sense of the sentence to identify the words in it. One of the most effective ways to get learners interested in attacking print is to use a text made up of their own oral language. This is commonly known as the Language Experience Approach. Language Experience Approach (LEA) As its name implies, the Language Experience Approach draws on the language of an experience that all the learners share. Comprehension of the created text is supported by the memory of the experience, and the meaningful text can then be used for decoding activities. THE EXPERIENCE

The first stage in LEA is to provide or identify a shared experience, so that everyone in the group understands the basic information that will be examined. The experience may have been a class trip to the local supermarket, a demonstration by a visitor, or a major storm from the previous day. When learners share a common background, such as is the case in workplace classes or people living in certain housing developments, their everyday life may provide the shared experience. Pictures can also work well as a stimulus for discussion; or the subject could be a retelling of a story read together or a television program watched as a group. Any topic of interest to your learners can provide the material for this approach as long as all students understand the topic. This is to ensure that when the text about the experience is later generated, all learners are able to use the semantic band of information to help them approach the text. ORAL REHEARSAL OF THE LANGUAGE

The second stage of LEA is to have an oral discussion or rehearsal of the information, through which learners are reminded of the different features of the experience and, in a nonthreatening environment, have an opportunity to verbalize their thoughts on the subject and try out their language. All the learners should have the opportunity to contribute, and it is important that you give them time to shape their thoughts before offering suggestions or passing to a different speaker. It is probably wise not to call on the beginners first at this stage. By listening to stronger students describe what happened, all learners are 70 Deciding What and How to Teach

reminded of the English words for key terms related to the story. They are also being offered basic syntax patterns that will likely make up part of the story later, increasing their confidence in using the syntactic band of information. The focus at this stage is heavily on oral language, although you may want to write a few key vocabulary words on the board for later reference. SCRIBING AND READING THE STORY

In the third stage of LEA, you act as scribe for the learners as they attempt to create a text about their shared experience. Building on the earlier discussion, ask the learners “What happened first?” or “What can we say about this?” Give each student the opportunity to offer something. Write down the learners’ remarks on the board, a flip chart, or the overhead so that everyone can see clearly. Emphasize that you are writing down exactly what each learner is saying. At the end of each contribution, read the sentence aloud, running your finger smoothly under the words as you pronounce them, and checking with the learner that what is written represents what was said. Once you have checked with the speaker that the sentence is accurate, go back to the title and read the entire text again from the beginning. The repeated oral reading of the story serves a number of purposes. First, it gives learners a chance to revise what they have said if, after more thought, they feel dissatisfied with their contribution. Second, it refreshes their memory as to the content of what was said. Third, it strengthens the learners’ belief that writing can represent their own words. Above all, the constant repetition enables learners to make the first links between visual shapes and known words. When the story is completed, read it aloud once more, again running your finger below the words. This does not mean that you point to each word and carefully pronounce it. Rather, read the story smoothly, at natural speed, with your finger sliding rapidly along. After reading aloud the story in its complete form, encourage learners to join you in another reading of it, reading any part they can remember. Most learners remember their own contribution quite well and enjoy reading it aloud. Others prefer to read silently. Obviously, the less literacy students have, the less likely they are to connect the visual shapes of words with the oral words. If the LEA stories are kept fairly short in the early days, the learners’ memories of what they said orally will be stronger, offsetting their lack of familiarity with the letters. At this stage you might read the passage aloud two or three times, and then ask learners to read aloud any individual words they have identified. Because learners are likely to have a limited vocabulary, some words Teaching Reading 71

are certain to be repeated in the text. You might read aloud the sentence in which a word first appears, point to the significant word, and ask learners to search the story to find subsequent appearances of the same word. Other learners might recognize and volunteer parts of a sentence. If learners are left to work together as a group, they can often piece the story together orally. Under any of these guises, students become familiar with the story and begin to recognize certain words. Once the stories are developed, you can use them as the basis for a range of activities, some based on comprehension development and some based on decoding skills. Because all the learners should be familiar with the syntax patterns and vocabulary of the text, they should be able to make use of all three bands of information in the text: graphophonic, syntactic, and semantic. (See page 73 for a variety of activities that can be used for LEA follow-up.) ADVANTAGES OF LEA

There are many advantages in learning by LEA. First, the approach is likely to be quite different from any system by which learners previously attempted literacy. You are, therefore, less likely to meet with resistance of the “I've tried this before and I can’t do it” variety. Second, LEA combines the best of both of the major literacy approaches. It begins firmly with language in a meaningful context, but also provides the opportunity for work on decoding, which will enable learners to tackle new words. Third, it is based on the learners’ own expressed needs and interests rather than on a teacher-imposed topic of possibly doubtful interest. Finally, it gives ELLs an opportunity to attempt literacy without the added barrier of language problems. This is a text they can approach using all the bands of information available to them. The meaning is firmly rooted in the learners’ own global experience; the words they attempt to read are their own words; the vocabulary is familiar to them; the syntax reflects their speech patterns. It is because of the importance of familiar language that you are urged to write down exactly what the learners say and not a corrected form. This does not mean that you should reproduce a student’s accent and transcribe sheep for ship; learners have no expectation of how the word ship should look, and they won’t recognize it any more easily for seeing a phonetic rendering of their pronunciation. They do have an expectation of seeing a pattern of words in a sentence, however, and the story should reflect the syntax that they actually use. It is inevitable that your learners will offer sentences that are ungrammatical, but it is important to resist correcting those sentences. The problem with attempting corrections is that the syntax pattern is no longer a familiar one to 72 Deciding What and How to Teach

students, making it unnecessarily difficult for them to access the syntactic cueing system. When using LEA, you are teaching literacy not grammar. At some other point in your teaching, you can teach the grammatical structure in question, but in an LEA transcription you should be writing what the learners say to enable them to use all the possible clues available. Another important reason why you, as scribe, need to write what is dictated without interfering with or changing the text learners provide is to obtain a record for later assessment. The learners’ volunteered sentences, as recorded in the LEA story, supply excellent information about the students’ current proficiency in the language as well as their progress. Not all teachers of literacy for ELLs agree with this emphasis on writing down learners’ exact words. Some teachers feel that writing down incorrect forms reinforces the students’ mistakes and confuses other learners who thought they knew the correct form. With an adult class, it is fairly easy to make clear to students that the text may well include mistakes, but that the opportunity is always available for the speaker to substitute the correct form. Basically, you have to decide what the priorities are for any given exercise. If the main focus is grammatical accuracy, the language should be corrected. If, however, the focus is word recognition, the sentences should be recorded as spoken. FOLLOW-UP ACTIVITIES TO LEA

Almost any of the numerous techniques used in literacy teaching can be developed from the basis of an LEA story, from phonic analysis of words in the story to writing captions for pictures illustrating it. Many of these activities will benefit from having their origins in such a meaningful context. There are, however, some specific techniques that tie in so closely that they are often considered part of the Language Experience Approach. 1. When the class has completed the oral reading of a story, input it into the computer for further work. Make multiple copies, so that each learner can add the story to her or his file for silent reading later. Consider adjusting the type size and spacing to suit the different skill levels of the learners. 2. Ask learners to copy all or part of the story for writing practice. 3. Have learners work with your transcript of the story to underline all the parts that they can read. This activity will not only help you assess progress, but it will also demonstrate progress to the student. You might use colored highlighters for this process, Teaching Reading 73

4.

5.

6.

7.

with different colors representing different dates on which the material was revisited. Transcribe the story as a cloze exercise, leaving blanks to represent certain words. For beginners, you will probably want to choose content words such as concrete nouns or familiar verbs, so students can predict the missing words from their understanding of the meaning. For more advanced learners, the blanks can be spaced regularly throughout the story, which will force students to pay attention to both content words and function words (for example, was, by, and to). Learners then attempt to read the story orally, supplying each missing word or an acceptable substitute. This exercise provides excellent practice in prediction. Learners may also tackle the cloze exercise as a writing exercise, although the missing words may need to be provided (in random order in a word pool) to help with spelling. Focus on one sentence of the LEA story for further work. Write the sentence on a large strip of card and also write the individual words in the sentence on index cards. Read aloud the chosen sentence, or ask for volunteers to read it. Learners then attempt to match the individual words on the index cards with the master sentence, reading the completed sentence as they do so. In this way, students learn to recognize individual words and the way in which they are arranged to make a sentence. (It is usually easier if one of the more grammatically sound sentences is chosen for this activity.) Make as many copies of the word cards as necessary. Distribute the cards in random order and have learners work in groups to recreate the sentence with or without reference to the master sentence. Add one or two additional word cards, using words from the text. Demonstrate how the word cards can be rearranged to make new sentences. Ask learners to work in groups to generate new sentences, and then have them write the sentences on the board or in their notebooks.

Reading for Meaning Using Found Materials A major value of the Language Experience Approach is that it is based on the learners’ own language and experiences, and thus provides a very useful way to approach reading. There are many kinds of texts that learners will want to be able to read, however, such as street signs, which cannot be developed through LEA. Such environmental print material must be handled rather differently, even though the focus will still be on 74 Deciding What and How to Teach

the meaning. Because this type of material comes in so many different formats, it is difficult to spell out the exact steps for approaching it. There are, however, some general guidelines and examples worth considering in more detail. The kinds of texts that your learners may want to work with include the following: application forms bank slips and checks bus timetables classified ads credit-card slips food-can labels food-package directions images from bank-machine screens instruction sheets letters from school

maps medication labels memos menus popular song lyrics street signs telephone directories text messages workplace manuals or notices

Many of these texts would be overwhelming for beginning literacy learners if presented in their entirety. The first step, therefore, is to restrict the text in some way. You might, for example, choose two or three food-can labels to begin with, prepare a simplified instruction sheet for a familiar procedure, or focus on one very small section of a take-out menu. The next step is to ensure that learners are familiar with the context of the material. They should know where it comes from and what kind of information they are likely to find in it. In the example of the food-can labels, learners will make better progress working with actual cans of food (or at least the actual labels from them), than they would if you carefully printed out the content of the labels onto a clean sheet of paper, where all the benefits of context and format are lost. After restricting the text to a manageable size, the next step is to familiarize learners with the specific content of the material. Begin with an identification of the type of text and the possible location in which it would be found. Have learners then try to predict what the text is likely to be about, using clues such as illustrations and formatting. Once students have some idea of the probable overall content, you can proceed to read the specific text aloud as many times as is necessary, inviting students to follow along. If certain learners need many more repetitions than others, ask more advanced students to read the material aloud, or make use of teacher aides or an audio recorder to help in this process. Once learners are confident that they know more or less what the text says, the focus can shift to individual items in the text. Teaching Reading 75

The final stage in working with found materials is to have learners manipulate the individual items so that they learn to recognize them in different contexts. The general pattern of approach is, therefore, to work down from an overall understanding of the text to a specific knowledge of the individual parts. The sections that follow outline how the process might be handled in the classroom using two different texts. The first type of text—a set of written instructions—requires only reading. The second type of text—the application form—demands both reading and some writing. FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS

Learners who want to be able to follow written instructions first require some familiarity with the kind of format in which the instructions are given. You can restrict the task by beginning with a process that is already familiar to students. In a workplace class, for example, you might draw up a simple set of instructions relating to a task that learners routinely perform. For other types of classes, you might focus on making coffee or using the photocopier. Or you might make use of the context provided by the instructions on a package of cookie mix. If the literacy work can be related to an end product, such as the class making cookies for the coffee break, it will be highly successful. If baking facilities are unavailable, however, an alternative process might involve planting seeds by following the instructions on the package, or following directions on a large-scale map of the neighborhood to find the nearest bank or library. Whatever subject you choose, ensure you start with a reading text that consists of a brief set of instructions for a familiar procedure. This will reduce the demands on the learners to something at which they can reasonably expect to succeed. The next step is to thoroughly familiarize learners with the content. This step might be handled as a class discussion of what learners think the text will say, thus working on their prediction skills. Using the example of the cookie mix, you might ask learners to guess what the package contains and to suggest which ingredients will need to be added, or to guess at the baking time and temperature. This introduces vocabulary items before learners are faced with them in print, and helps their ability to predict. Once you determine that learners are familiar with the content, you can then distribute the cookie-mix packages to small groups of students to examine. If you have a large number of learners in your class, it may be necessary to provide photocopies of the text rather than actual packages. However, to ensure students are exposed to the 76 Deciding What and How to Teach

format, distribute photocopies of the original package rather than transcribed copies of the instructions. Provide adequate time for learners to thoroughly examine the packages or photocopies. Most learners will be able to use context clues to determine which pieces of writing actually represent the directions. Many will identify the numbers indicating baking time and temperature. Some will begin checking their early guesses as to the procedure; others will wait to hear it read aloud first. When you go on to read the instructions aloud, you may wish to record the reading so that learners can replay the recording as many times as they wish while following the text. Learners who were not able to check their predictions previously will be able to do so using the recording. Once learners become thoroughly familiar with both the general sense of the text and the specific information it contains, lead them to focus on individual parts of the instructions. This can be handled in a number of ways: • Ask for volunteers to read certain lines. • Cut up one set of instructions into the individual steps, shuffle them, and then have learners sequence the steps in order. • Divide the necessary information between pairs of learners and have them piece together their information. • Ask comprehension questions (or have other students pose comprehension questions), such as “How much water is needed?” If your venue can accommodate students actually making the cookies, their focus on each step in turn will be guaranteed. Follow-up activities might include a cloze version of the instructions that learners write out, filling in the blanks by choosing words from a word pool or from the original text. Specific sentences from the text could be taken apart for closer examination, with individual words written on cards in the manner described earlier in this chapter (see Follow-up Activities to LEA on page 73). Some words appearing in the text will lend themselves to phonic analysis. For example, bake, batter, and butter can illustrate initial b, or the rhyming words bake and make can illustrate the beginning of a word family. Best of all, an LEA story titled “How We Made Cookies” can provide excellent reinforcement of vocabulary and word spellings. PRINTED FORMS

A text type such as a preprinted form, which demands a response in writing, is usually handled a little differently from a set of written Teaching Reading 77

instructions. The language in a preprinted form is rarely provided in complete sentences, and there may be little contextual information. The learner, therefore, has to be more accurate in word recognition. What context there is should, of course, be thoroughly exploited. As an illustration, consider how you might initially handle learner interest in completing job application forms. Because such forms vary from employer to employer and may be rather lengthy, it is probably best if you prepare a simplified version to begin with. The amount of information that can be included will depend on the level of the class, but a good start can be made even with the simplest of personal data. For a class that is already familiar with the words name, address, and telephone number, you might develop a form similar to Figure 6.1.

Figure 6.1

Although only two unfamiliar items—date of birth and last employer—are demanded in this form, it helps familiarize learners with some important information. They will learn that most forms have a boxed layout. They will also learn the distinction between the use of name and address, without qualifiers, to mean their own name and address, versus the use of these terms under a heading to refer to someone else (in this case, the last employer). They will also learn the significance of shaded boxes headed “office use only.” You might begin with a class discussion of how learners cope with application forms and any other kinds of forms they face. You might guide the discussion toward the types of questions students think 78 Deciding What and How to Teach

might be asked on forms, so that they develop expectations of the text. When you first share the simplified version of a form, point out that what learners are seeing is only the first part of a form, and that many of the other questions raised by learners would be asked in a longer form. Give learners some time alone, or in small groups, to examine the form and to see if they recognize any of the words. Because forms are so sparse in language terms, there is little contextual help for learners. A useful trick is to show a completed form, so that the handwritten entries give another set of clues as to what is required. This is best done on a large screen, where attention can be focused on individual sections, but it can also be provided on a sheet of paper. When students see a completed form, as in Figure 6.2, they are immediately aware of which boxes they need to complete and what kind of information is required.

Figure 6.2

After examining the completed form, students can return to the blank form and read it through together, identifying the information required. You might copy the keywords in the form onto flashcards, to be shown to the group for quick read-alouds. After familiarity is developed in this way, the learners can match the flashcards with another set of cards showing possible answers. Finally, learners could attempt to complete the form, if necessary copying the information from cards provided by you. Alternatively, learners could work in pairs to complete the forms for each other, with one partner asking the questions and transcribing the answers while the other provides the spelling. Teaching Reading 79

Total Physical Response (TPR) Total Physical Response is a method that can be successfully adapted for use with literacy classes even in the very early stages. As its name implies, TPR asks for a physical rather than an oral response to a language item. In other words, the learner carries out the suggested action rather than repeating it or manipulating the language in some way. This method has obvious advantages for learners with limited oral proficiency. Learners can display their understanding of an instruction without being hampered by their inability to produce an oral response. TPR allows you to see instantly which learners have failed to understand (unlike the situation with choral oral responses, where hesitant students are drowned out by more vocal class members). The physical movement helps the student relate the language item to its meaning, which reinforces memory. Finally, the opportunity presented for learners to move around provides a pleasant change of pace from sitting immobile at a desk. STEPS FOR TPR

To use TPR in a literacy class for ELLs, follow these steps: 1. Draw up a list of simple commands that the whole class or group can perform simultaneously. For example, “Stand up,” “Smile,” “Go to the board,” “Write your name,” “Go back,” “Sit down.” 2. Act out the commands while repeating the words orally. 3. Invite students to join in, responding to the oral commands. 4. Have learners perform the commands several times in sequence, joining you in saying them orally if they wish. 5. As learners become familiar with the oral form of the commands, encourage them to call on one another to act them out. 6. Introduce the commands in written form (preferably on large cards so that the writing can be read easily from the back of the class). As each command card is shown, read it aloud and perform the action yourself. At this stage the learners will observe only. 7. Ask the learners to try it themselves. Show each card, pausing before reading it aloud, to allow students time to attempt to recognize it themselves. Have students perform the actions first as a group, and then individually. 8. Show the cards alone, still in sequence, without the oral command. Have learners respond. 9. Show the cards out of sequence, and have learners respond.

80 Deciding What and How to Teach

10. Display all the cards and say one of the commands. Have learners point to the appropriate card. 11. Direct learners to copy the commands onto small cards and to work in groups, giving instructions to one another. As valuable as TPR is, it does present one problem in a literacy class. Unless you have unusually good facilities or are working with a very small group, the commands must be limited to such things as pointing to body parts or moving around the room. This does not always involve the vocabulary items that are normally considered the most immediately useful. Ideally, TPR is used to teach the type of instructions that learners need to be able to decipher in print, such as the steps involved in using a parking meter or getting a cup of coffee from a vending machine. With a small enough group, TPR offers a valuable way of covering such material, but it is unlikely to be feasible for large groups of students. To partially overcome the challenges to TPR posed by space and/or group size, consider making use of easily available props. A set of advertising flyers would enable clothing vocabulary to be covered. Playing cards are useful for numbers. Boxes of crayons can be used to teach colors. Pushing a toy car around a large map can reflect driving directions. To be avoided is overuse of instructions such as “Shake hands with your neighbors,” which learners are unlikely ever to encounter in written form outside the classroom. Dialogues Dialogues have been used in oral ESL teaching for many years. A brief conversation between two speakers is modeled for the class until, through frequent repetition, learners become familiar with the form and can produce the dialogue themselves. Dialogues can also be used successfully in a literacy class, although some adaptations are necessary. Dialogues reflect oral speech and may not present material that learners are ever likely to meet in print. The content of the dialogue thus needs to be carefully chosen. Literacy dialogues also need to be short (four to six lines) and include a considerable amount of repetition. For beginning learners, the focus should be on including a number of useful words supported by the meaningful context of the dialogue. With more advanced learners, the dialogue offers a useful way of helping them recognize and manipulate sentence patterns. The way in which a dialogue is presented varies a little according to the level of the class. If students have limited oral skills, it xxxxxxxxxx

Teaching Reading 81

will be necessary for the dialogue to be presented orally first until they have fully understood it, as in the example that follows.

Presenting a Dialogue 1. Present the dialogue orally. If possible, have a teacher aide play the second role to help make clear that there are two speakers. Otherwise, record the dialogue or use puppets or pictures to indicate the two speakers. Repeat the dialogue several times with as much action as necessary to clarify the meaning. 2. Write the dialogue on the board. In each line, leave blanks to represent certain words, and invite learners to call out the appropriate word for a given blank. It is particularly useful to have blanks representing any unknown words to help focus students’ attention on these words. Read the completed dialogue aloud, sliding your finger rapidly under the words as you pronounce them. 3. Read out one role while the class reads the other chorally. Then reverse roles. After some practice using this approach, split the class in half with each half taking one role. As a final step, have students work in pairs to read the dialogue. 4. Erase those words that were originally represented by blanks and ask learners what the words should be. Learners can volunteer the words orally or write them on the board in the appropriate spaces. 5. Have learners copy the dialogue into their notebooks.

With a class whose oral skills are more developed, rather than first introducing the dialogue orally, write it on the board, allowing learners to call out the words as they recognize them. The class then reads the entire dialogue chorally, guided by your finger sliding under the words. Discuss the meaning of the dialogue and any implications. As a next step, have the class model the dialogue as outlined in step three above. Erase any words that are felt to be difficult or new for learners to replace. Finally, have students write the dialogue, using a separate index card for each line. The cards can then be shuffled and reordered.

82 Deciding What and How to Teach

Interviews Another useful activity, which combines reading for meaning with practice in the other skill areas, is the interview. Interviews consist of setting learners the task of finding out information about one another. Prepare a worksheet that requires learners to ask one another questions. The questions can be very simple or quite complex, according to the level of the learners’ ability. Figure 6.3 is an example of a simple worksheet.

Figure 6.3

This type of exercise helps students get to know one another and provides practice with such basics as dates within an interesting context. Learners also enjoy the opportunity to get up and move around, and class members who find the task difficult can use this opportunity to ask others for help in their first language. Teaching Reading 83

At a more advanced level, an interview sheet such as the example in Figure 6.4 can be used. It is helpful to complete the name of the first student to be approached, to make sure that everyone is involved.

Figure 6.4

Decoding Approaches Decoding approaches are techniques that help a learner attack unknown words. These approaches, which target word recognition and/ or word pronunciation, focus primarily on the graphophonic band of information. Sight Words The sight-word approach is a technique that can work well within either a meaning or a decoding approach. The basic technique is to present a word as a whole and encourage learners to recognize it as an entire word rather than as a succession of sounds. Many of the approaches described in the section Reading for Meaning, beginning on page 69, will lead to the development of sight words (for example, manipulating cards with words written on them), but sight words can be taught in many ways. Any words can be taught as sight words, but the technique is particularly useful for words that are not phonetically regular; that is, 84 Deciding What and How to Teach

words that would be very difficult to sound out. Some of the most common words in English, such as was, of, and who, are not phonetically regular, yet learners will need to recognize them if they are to attempt any reading. It is also useful to develop certain regular words as sight words so that they can function as a standard for developing word families. As learners progress in literacy, they will come to recognize more and more words on sight, including words that they initially learned by sounding out. Proficient readers develop an enormous bank of sight words and rely on them almost exclusively in their reading, sounding out only words that are unknown to them. Encouraging learners to recognize sight words sets them on the road to building up such a bank. You will probably find that your learners can recognize a few words on sight already; for example, STOP or SALE. They have learned to recognize these by frequent exposure to them in a clearly identified context. Teaching sight words should follow the same pattern of frequent exposure and identifiable context, where possible. Not all potential sight words have a clear meaning attached to them. Some of the words most commonly encountered, such as have, to, are, and of, are extremely difficult to explain or illustrate. To provide some context, these words should be presented in a sentence. The sentence could be taken from an oral story shared by the learners or excerpted from something they want to read, such as a driver’s manual. Consider the sentence You must have a license to drive a car. If you write this sentence on the board and read it to the students two or three times, they will probably be able to read along, even if they are not able to recognize the words out of context. You might decide that the words you want students to learn are have and to, so you point out these words and write them on index cards. Learners can each be given a card and invited to come up to the board and hold their card over the matching word written there. Add the new word cards into a group of cards containing familiar words and hold up one at a time for students to read aloud. When learners seem familiar with the new words, ask them to close their eyes and try to visualize the words one at a time. Next, have them write down the words and check them against the board to see if they are correct. Ask for volunteers to come up to the board and attempt to write the words. Finally, have learners copy the complete sentence. New words introduced in this way will need to be reinforced if learners are to continue to remember them. The more common words can be included in other reading work; less common words can be included in the flashcard sessions of subsequent lessons. Teaching Reading 85

Sight words are learned by exposure of all types. Reading words in and out of context, writing them, saying them, tracing them, and even drawing pictures of them all help to reinforce the words. Some students need considerably more exposure than others to learn a new word. Often, learners find the process easier if they can physically manipulate the words by writing them on cards and rearranging them. Suppose students are trying to learn the days of the week. You might put the task in context by asking learners what they have done on specific days. The class might end up with sentences such as John went to work on Monday. On Tuesday, Gina went to the movies.

If all these words are written on cards, it is easier for students to form new sentences by rearranging the cards than it is for them to write out each new attempt. They might rearrange the cards to read Gina went to work on Monday. On Monday, Gina went to work.

If words such as and are in your learners’ vocabularies, you might provide some extra word cards to create sentences such as Gina and John went to work on Monday. John went to work on Monday and Tuesday.

Using cards in this way gives learners a tool to handle the language and gives them the confidence to attempt new sentences. Simultaneously, of course, it reinforces the various sight words and the sentence patterns. Occasionally a problem will arise over confusion of two sight words that are similar in appearance. Pairs like was and saw or then and than often cause confusion. It is usually best to handle this by focusing initially on only one of the pair until that word is thoroughly known, before reintroducing the second word. Sight words can also be developed without any conscious effort on the part of learners if labels are placed on objects on display in the classroom. Printing captions under photographs that are of interest to the class is also worthwhile. A collage could be built of photographs of street signs and door labels. Learners can then be asked to come up and point to a particular word in the display. As long as the context is clear, the sight words will soon become familiar. Sight words are clearly a very useful tool for readers. As mentioned before, the ultimate goal is for every word to become one that can be 86 Deciding What and How to Teach

recognized on sight. But because sight words do not provide help with other unknown words, it is not wise to try to teach exclusively by sight words, as learners will make slow progress. As learners become more skilled in using meaning and phonetic clues to unlock new words, they will begin to build up sight words by themselves. Phonics No matter how highly developed their skills of prediction may be, learners must be able to decode a number of words in any text if they are to confirm their guesses. Students can learn to decode words in their entirety, or they can approach them letter by letter. Unlike the Chinese writing system, where the written symbol gives little or no information about the sound that it represents, alphabetic writing systems are based on the principle that the letters represent the various sounds in the word. In some languages, such as Finnish, this is almost completely true, and the correspondence between spelling and pronunciation is nearly perfect. In other languages, of which English is a prime example, the correspondence may be rather irregular. Common examples of such irregularity are the various pronunciations assigned to the ough spelling, as in cough, rough, and bough. Spellings may represent more than one sound and sounds may be represented by more than one letter or group of letters. With forty-three English sounds to be expressed by twenty-six letters, some double duty is inevitable. Despite the many cases of lack of correspondence between sound and symbol in English, there are many, many words in English that are perfectly regular in their spelling, and all of the remaining words are at least partially regular. Consonants in particular tend to be regular in their sounds. With only a few exceptions, single consonants either make their normal sound or are silent. Thus, despite the irregularities of English spelling, the concept of sound–symbol correspondence is valuable to learners and is a necessary tool in developing literacy. Because of the regularity of spelling of initial consonants and because initial consonants are useful for prediction purposes, many teachers of ELLs begin phonics work with them. Most consonants cannot be produced in isolation without distorting the sound, so it is best to teach them in the context of a syllable. There is evidence to indicate that ELLs find it easier to break words into syllables rather than into individual sounds, so working with syllables simplifies the learning-to-read process. Assuming that students have done sufficient preliteracy work to be familiar with the letters, you might focus on a chosen consonant such as b. To ensure that learners hear and recognize the /b/ sound, ask them to Teaching Reading 87

identify whether certain words begin with the sound, as in the example that follows. Initial Consonant Recognition 1. Hold up a card on which you have printed the letters B b, or write the letters on the board. 2. Say the following: This is the letter b. This is big B. This is small b. This letter makes the sound we hear at the beginning of the word bank. 3. Listen to these words that begin with b: bank

bill

book

Bob

4. Tell me if these words begin with b: book

house

building

basket

dentist

bank

5. Can you tell me some words that begin with the sound of b?

When learners can recognize the sound of the letter in the initial position, you might give them a list of similar words in written form and ask them to circle those that begin with b. book

Bob

drive

both

look

You might then follow a similar format to demonstrate that b can appear at the end of a word, as in the example that follows. Final Position Consonants 1. Say the following: Listen to the word rub. Can you hear the /b/ sound at the end of it? Rub. Rub. Here are some other words that end in b. Listen for the /b/ sound. fib

sob

dab

tub

cab

crib

2. Did you hear the letter b at the end of those words? Listen to these words and tell me if they end in b. dig

grab

job

sat

slob

swim

cab

3. Do you know any words that end in the sound of b?

88 Deciding What and How to Teach

Word Families Another useful approach is to teach words in families; that is, groups of words that share a number of letters, such as night, right, and light, or mean, meat, and meal. It is best to begin with small, familiar words. Learners may be able to recognize and, in, and at, for example. Because they can already read these words, they will find it much easier to tackle other words in the same word families. Present the word in context, then demonstrate how the addition of extra letters forms new words, as in the example that follows. Presentation of Word Families Based on Familiar Words 1. Present the familiar word in context, such as showing a menu sign that reads Special Fish and Chips $12.99 2. Ask learners to read the sign with you and then alone. 3. Draw their attention to the word and. Write it on the board. 4. Say: These letters a-n-d make the word and. There are other words that have these letters in them. Can you hear the and in these words? hand

band

sand

land

grand

We can make all these words by putting extra letters in front of the word and. 5. Demonstrate new words by writing appropriate letters in front of and on the board. Say: If we put h in front of and we get hand. If we put b in front of and we get band. What word do we get if we put an h in front? And if we put a b in front? What word do you think we’d get if we put an s in front? 6. Work in a similar fashion with other words likely to be familiar orally to learners. 7. Provide learners with prepared cards showing the word and and smaller cards with individual letters printed on them. Have students put appropriate letters in front of and to try out new combinations. Learners might work in pairs, making words for each other to read.

Teaching Reading 89

Student practice with word families can sometimes be made simpler if you prepare a sliding strip through an index card (see Figure 6.5). Print the base word on an index card, leaving space at the front to make cuts that will allow another strip of card to slide vertically through. Print suitable letters on the strip, so that learners can slide the strip up and down to combine the base word with the additional letters to make new words.

Figure 6.5

The pattern demonstrated for teaching rhyming word families is also successful for teaching groups of words that end differently. As well as with unrelated words such as meal, meat, and mean, this technique is useful with common suffixes such as -s, -ed, and –ing. Students manipulate a known word like work to make works, worked, and working. It is useful to focus on suffixes not only because they appear so frequently in reading material, but also because the information they provide is often ignored by learners struggling with a new language. In other words, you are helping learners to get the meaning out of what they are reading rather than just helping them recognize the sounds of the letters. Word families are an area where there are numerous computer programs available to support learners. Learners can manipulate the letters, hear the sounds, and talk along with the computer in a nonthreatening environment. Most of the software is intended for children, however, so it is necessary to review the programs carefully in advance to ensure vocabulary and illustrations are suitable for adult learners.

Reading Critically One of the skills that all learners need to develop is critical literacy. It is one thing to develop the ability to read and understand a piece of text. It is something quite different to have the skills to decide whether to xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 90 Deciding What and How to Teach

believe it or not. If teachers bring only reliable text sources into the classroom, they may unwittingly give the impression that everything in print must be credible. This is particularly important because all learners are a potentially vulnerable population. A learner in one of my classes received a phone call that informed her that she had won a Caribbean cruise. This was followed up by a document that she had to sign, which she swiftly completed and returned. She agreed to pay some “minor” charges such as port fees and provided a credit-card number to cover them. After getting to Miami at her own expense, it turned out that the cruise was a one-day excursion out of Miami, and the port fees and handling charges she had paid would have covered the true cost twice over. Six months later, the same student was trying to sell “gold” pens in class. Once again, she had been duped by unscrupulous advertising and had been convinced that if she purchased a hundred of these pens, she could sell them at an enormous profit. Of course the pens were cheap and faulty and as she was unable to sell them, she ended up out-of-pocket. This learner may have been exceptionally gullible to be caught twice, but it is exactly people in her position who are targeted by scam artists. Get-rich-quick schemes are attractive to those with little money. Weak literacy skills make it unlikely that these learners will read the fine print. Because English language learners can be targeted, it is very important that they be encouraged to look at text critically and to ask in whose interest a text might have been produced. They should get used to asking themselves questions such as “Is this true?” and “Who wrote this?” “Why?” It may seem that this is a sophisticated notion to be teaching learners who are in the elementary stages of literacy. However, their mailboxes are just as full of “amazing offers” as everyone else’s. ELLs need to become familiar with the process of sorting out junk from legitimate correspondence. ELL teachers are doing these students a disservice if they develop the learners’ literacy skills just enough to allow them to get scammed. One of the best ways to begin teaching critical-reading skills is to bring some biased or unreliable text into the classroom so that you can demonstrate that not all text is to be trusted. You might gather up your junk mail for a few days and bring it to class along with a few pieces of real mail. Sort it out in front of the learners, asking them to vote on whether it goes in the garbage unopened or not. Try to make explicit what the clues are that allow you to identify junk. Pick out key vocabulary items that appear on envelopes and key formatting clues to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Teaching Reading 91

advertising. Choose a simple news story about a common scam as a way to start a discussion about the topic, or bring in food packages and discuss the eye-catching messages displayed on the front. Of course critical literacy is not just about resisting scam artists or being aware of advertising. Even text typically considered authoritative reflects the biases of the author or publisher. Newspapers may be allied with a particular political party and act as the party’s mouthpiece. News broadcasts may consistently include items that show a target group in a negative light. Even school textbooks may display bias by presenting history from the perspective of the victors. If your learners have enough oral competence, you can have a discussion about different ways of telling a story. This might consist of a simple attempt to consider, for example, how two drivers in a collision might recount events differently. At a more complex level, political events lend themselves well to such reinterpretation, and you may be able to find two headlines from different newspapers that suggest a different version of events. Whichever way you approach it, your aim will be to help learners recognize that all text has a certain bias within it, and that part of understanding a passage is recognizing where that bias might lie.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Teaching Writing

Just as reading involves both decoding the symbols and understanding the meaning, so writing involves both expressing meaning and learning how to encode it. As with all aspects of second-language literacy, you need to make sure that learners understand the meaning of the material they are working with, so oral work underlies the writing just as much as it does the reading. Ideally, all writing will begin with familiar language, introduced through talk and reading, so that the learner continues to strengthen the assumption that making marks on paper is about communication and not mere handwriting practice. The various language skills are, or should be, so closely linked in the literacy classroom that much of the writing that learners do will arise naturally from their reading and oral work. Chapter Six outlined a number of ways in which learners could have a writing experience based on their reading activities. Because reading helps learners with spelling and word order, they have a better chance of success in writing if the words they are attempting to write have first been reviewed in print. With beginners, this normally implies reading the material and then copying it, using the original for reference. With more advanced learners, the writing may involve a complete reworking of the original text, with sentences rearranged and recombined to form an original piece of work. What both experiences should have in common is an opportunity for the learners to review both the oral and printed form of the language they intend to use before they attempt to write it.

Teaching Writing 93

Selecting the Appropriate Focus When learners are asked to write, they are asked to demonstrate control of a number of components simultaneously. In a piece of original writing, these variables are content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, punctuation, spelling, and letter formation. Beginning literacy learners cannot hope for success when attempting to provide all these simultaneously, and yet they need to learn to cope with all of them eventually. The solution is for you to provide control of most of these factors in the early stages, allowing learners to focus their attention on controlling one or two aspects of the process. In the Language Experience Approach (LEA), for example, you take responsibility for format, letter formation, spelling, and punctuation. The learners concentrate on content, sentence structure, and vocabulary. When the learners copy out some part of the LEA story, they are focusing on letter formation. A cloze version of the LEA story, with certain words blanked out, focuses the students’ efforts on letter formation, vocabulary, and spelling. By using exercises of this type, which enable learners in the early stages to concentrate on one or two aspects of the writing process, you can provide practice with all the demands without making the task overwhelming. (For more information on the Language Experience Approach, see Chapter Six.) Focusing on Letter Formation Most letter-formation practice begins with copying. The material to be copied should be relevant and meaningful to learners. Oral language provided through LEA is ideal. So is relevant personal information. You might provide the students with copies of forms on which you have entered their personal information, and then ask them to copy the material onto an identical blank. This helps to develop familiarity with the layout of forms as well as letter formation. Copying can also be used outside the classroom. Learners might copy door signs around the building or nearby street signs, and then return to class with their writing for a guessing game in which they give other learners clues as to where they found the items. There are a number of advantages to asking learners to begin writing with whole words, particularly personal information or their own oral language as captured in an LEA story. In so doing, you are strengthening their understanding that writing expresses actual oral language. You are encouraging them to see letters as grouped into meaningful units, rather than as isolated sounds. However, this focus on a global approach can produce problems if learners consistently have difficulty in accurately reproducing the letter shapes. It may be necessary to backtrack 94 Deciding What and How to Teach

occasionally to demonstrate letter formation or the placement of letters on a line. You may find, for example, that having been given a computer printout of an LEA story to copy, learners are too faithfully reproducing the typeface’s letter shapes; or that the lack of lines on the printout has not given learners sufficient guidance as to where the letters they write should sit in relation to the lines on their page. In this case, you would have to go back to some of the prewriting activities that provide help with these specific problems. Some care should be taken in the selection of the typeface, as there is some disagreement as to which is best. Many teachers opt for a simple sans-serif typeface, such as Century Gothic, because the letterforms reflect the printing the learners are attempting. Other teachers prefer a serif typeface, such as Times, because research suggests it is easier to read and it is of the kind most commonly met outside of textbooks. Many compromise by routinely using a serif face for reading input, but selecting sans serif for material to be copied. Forming letters is tiring work for students who are not used to doing much writing, and frustration and fatigue on the part of learners may impede your attempts to encourage them to explore written language a little more independently. You can give such learners (even those who haven’t fully conquered the letter-formation process) a chance at attempting more ambitious written material if you relieve them of the task of transcription. You might, for example, provide familiar words written on cards that learners can manipulate into new sentences. You can also act as scribe, recording words in large print as the student dictates. The words can then be cut into separate units and resequenced. If learners are confident with the upper-case letters on a computer keyboard, they may enjoy using a word-processing program, which will both shape letters for them and alert them to misspelled words. Providing words written on adhesive labels also works well. Even the traditional technique of cut-and-paste can provide a welcome relief to hands weary of clutching a pencil. As well as giving students a break from physical writing, these methods encourage learners to see written language as something that can be manipulated into saying exactly what they want it to say. It even gives them an early introduction to the idea of editing their work. Working in groups is another way to share the load and help learners avoid fatigue over letter formation. Learners can work with a series of pictures that tell a story, with each student being responsible for writing or copying the caption for only one picture, but sharing the responsibility for checking others’ work in such areas as spelling. Teaching Writing 95

Control over letter formation is, however, critical to the writing process, and eventually the learners will have to train their hand muscles to cope with fairly lengthy writing passages. It is important, therefore, to provide ample opportunities for physical writing practice, even if it involves only simple copying in the early stages. You are likely to find that students enjoy copying and consider it very useful. Particularly for learners from Asian backgrounds, copying has a long tradition of utility in the classroom. While copying, learners are becoming increasingly familiar with letter shapes, spelling patterns, acceptable letter combinations, and word boundaries, as well as lexis (vocabulary), so there are many benefits. As learners become more proficient at copying, you can increase the demands on them. One task you might ask them to do is to provide the format. If working with short notes, for example, you might provide a sample letter layout and then ask learners to copy the text in Figure 7.1, formatting it to match the sample:

Figure 7.1

Alternatively, you might ask learners to provide some of the vocabulary by supplying them with a text with blanks for certain words (a version of a cloze exercise). The text should be based on language they have produced orally, or on material that they have previously read and discussed so that they understand it thoroughly. The easiest version of this activity provides the missing words in a list in random order and asks the learners to select the appropriate word for each blank. Here the focus is clearly on understanding the vocabulary and using it correctly. A more difficult version asks learners to choose the appropriate word from a larger pool of words, some of which are not at all relevant to the passage. Finally, learners can be asked to supply the word from their own memory or understanding of the text. As well as vocabulary, the student at this point has to provide the spelling. A still more challenging form of copying gives learners the text in a scrambled form. It may consist of sentences with words scrambled or, for more advanced learners, sequential passages of up to ten lines, with sentences in random order.

96 Deciding What and How to Teach

Many beginning literacy students find it challenging to recognize word boundaries, which are difficult to hear in speech. Learners may, in fact, write sentences as one long word. A useful copying activity can be made of presenting phrases or sentences that are run together. For example, you might ask learners to copy out the following sentence but to separate the words as appropriate. Thankyouverymuch.

If the material that the learners are to write is provided orally as a dictation, the demands increase dramatically. Spelling becomes a major challenge, word boundaries may cause problems, and punctuation may be required. All you provide is content, vocabulary, and sentence structure. A demand is also made on the listening skills of the learner. Because of all these components, and of the great handwriting demands, it is particularly important that material used for dictation be thoroughly familiar to learners. Ideally it will be material that they have previously copied, though perhaps rearranged somewhat. An effective method for bridging the gap between copying and dictation is to provide the dictation in written form for learners to refer to if necessary. The easiest way to do this is to write each line of text below the space on which the learner is to write, as in Figure 7.2.

Figure 7.2

The preprinted text can then easily be covered with a sheet of paper. Learners may attempt the dictation and use the preprinted text to check their answers, or they may read it first, cover it, write, and then check. Writing practice can also be provided in the form of games and puzzles. Word bingo is one game that works well. Ask the learners to create a grid of nine or sixteen squares on a sheet of paper. Choose a category, such as vegetables, body parts, or items of clothing, and have learners write in each square the name of a different item in the category (see Figure 7.3 overleaf). If necessary, provide a pool of words to xxxxxxxxxxxx

Teaching Writing 97

choose from on the board. (If you do this, make sure learners vary the order in which they write the words so that each bingo sheet is different.) When each learner has completed an individualized bingo sheet, call out items and direct students to cross them off on their sheets. The first learner with a complete row crossed out in any direction wins.

Figure 7.3

Crossword puzzles can also be used, although they are not recommended for the early stages of literacy when learners are still struggling with left–right directionality. A little later, however, a simple puzzle with picture clues can provide spelling and writing practice in an entertaining way (see Figure 7.4).

Figure 7.4

Focusing on Content and Sentence Structure As suggested earlier, if someone else acts as scribe, learners can focus on the content and sentence structure of writing long before they can form letters. The writing need not always take the form of an LEA story. 98 Deciding What and How to Teach

Learners can dictate original material into a recording device, possibly retelling the plot of a movie they have seen or describing a favorite television show. If the class includes more advanced learners, it may be possible to set up pairs of students with one of the pair dictating and the other transcribing. Good subject matter for such assignments includes favorite recipes (later to be made into a class cookbook) or brief histories of learners’ lives. Pictures can also be an excellent stimulus for learner work on content and sentence structure. There are a number of print resources available of interest to adult learners that provide sequenced pictures illustrating events (see Appendix B: Useful Resources). Learners can work individually with a recording device, describing what they see, or they can work as a group, perhaps describing one picture each. More advanced learners might attempt to write a caption for each picture, particularly if you provide keywords (see Figure 7.5).

Figure 7.5 Teaching Writing 99

Photographs taken by and of the learners are even more useful. Students can be asked to bring in snapshots of their family or their home country, which can be captioned and displayed on the classroom wall as a collage. (Caution in requesting family photographs is obviously called for, however, if learners have fled trouble in their home country and may have distressing memories of family members who did not escape.) Photographs of a class trip provide an excellent opportunity for practice in sequencing events. After thorough oral discussion of the event, the photographs can be arranged as an illustrated story, with each person being responsible for writing the text for one photograph. Beginners can dictate their sentence to the teacher or a more advanced student, and then copy out the recorded sentence. At a more advanced level, learners need practice in selecting essential content and arranging it in acceptable sentences. A good example of such tasks is taking phone messages. If the learner hears “Hi, this is Susie. Can you ask John to call me back when he gets in?” the task of writing the message is much more difficult than that involved in simple dictation, even though the information is the same. Learners must decide which parts of the message need to be recorded. They must then rearrange the material in acceptable sentence structure and format. Other forms of note taking that are useful for students to learn involve seeking information and writing down the main points given. The source can be usefully varied between listening input and reading input. Recorded phone messages, such as school “snow” lines, movie theatre listings, store hours, and so on, can provide good practice in identifying the spoken answer to particular questions. Using the Internet is clearly a useful skill for learners and a logical place to seek written input. Learners’ skills in this area can be slowly developed with a very careful selection of sites. Learners, for example, might be asked a “question of the day,” the answer to which is always to be found as the headline on one of two or three bookmarked sites, such as an international news site, a local weather site, or the home page for the Internet provider. Work on sentence structure can be provided by giving learners scrambled sentences to sort out and copy. Ideally, the words are provided on cards, which the learners can rearrange to get the feel of the sentence before they write it out. Alternatively, students can be given a pattern sentence into which they slot various substitution words. They might begin with a sentence from their oral work or a text they have previously read, so that the meaning of the original sentence is clear to them. For example, learners might produce a sentence such as She was wearing a big hat. 100 Deciding What and How to Teach

Initially, you would check learners’ familiarity with this pattern by giving them the sentence on cards for reordering (see Figure 7.6).

Figure 7.6

The learners can then be given substitution cards to place in the sentence. At the easiest level, these cards would all be designed to slot into one place—a series of adjectives to replace the word big, for example. At a more advanced level, alternatives can be provided for all the words in the sentence to create new sentences on the same pattern, such as John is carrying the red box. If you were to ask learners to write out all the different sentences that can be produced with these substitutions, they would find the task very tiresome. Manipulating cards, and perhaps reading the created sentences aloud, reinforces the structure without demanding too much in terms of letter formation. Focusing on Spelling The ability to spell develops through frequent exposure to words; the brain learns to recognize and produce the correct group of letters for a given word. All literacy activities, therefore, benefit the spelling process. But there are activities that have spelling as their primary focus, and most learners will need some of them. One of the first hurdles to overcome is the learners’ fear of making a mistake. Many literacy students who happily copy from a text stop dead when asked to attempt a word by relying on their own resources. Encourage learners to take risks and at least attempt new words, employing various strategies that you give them. These strategies include having learners • try to decide from its sound which letter a word begins with, and at least get that down • write down any other letters that they can hear • break the word into syllables for possible clues • recall rhyming words that they know how to spell (for example, attack now by analogy with how) or that begin in the same way (for example, attempt real by comparison with read) • read aloud what they have written to hear what it sounds like • ask somebody for help • use a dictionary Teaching Writing 101

If you are to encourage learners to be risk takers, it is important that they do not feel that an incorrect spelling is a failure. It helps if you make it clear to learners that sometimes English spelling is simply irregular, and that the one spelling accepted by convention as being correct is merely one of a number of alternatives, each of which could be phonetically valid. A number of techniques are available to help students learn the spelling of particular words. Because people learn in different ways, not all of these techniques will work equally well with any given learner. Some students learn best by visual stimuli; they need to look at a word in print and attempt to put a photograph of it in their memory. For others, sounding out the word is more useful, much as an L1 speaker might mutter a-nem-on-e to check on letter order. Writing out a word numerous times is a technique that works for many learners. Others prefer a more analytical approach, thinking of the meaning of the base word and adding on suffixes and prefixes. If a learner appears to rely heavily on one particular strategy, it can be useful to present new words in a format that complements this. In working with a large group of learners, however, the best tactic is to provide opportunities for using additional senses to attack new words. You might, therefore, draw learners’ attention to the word; suggest that they sound it out carefully, noticing which letters are used; close their eyes and try to visualize the word; and then look again at the word for confirmation. Finally, learners can attempt to write the word without looking at the original, check back, and if necessary, write it again. When learners are copying new words in the early stages, they tend to look at the text, write down the first letter, look at the text again, attempt the second letter, and so on. This does not give as much help in learning spelling as trying to copy an entire word, or at least an entire syllable, at one time. The brain needs to see letters as meaningfully grouped if the spelling is to be remembered. It is recommended, therefore, to encourage learners to attempt copying an entire word at a time. Some of the ways in which you can make attempting spelling easier involve giving the learner part of the required information. You might give words in which only certain letters are missing (for example, The _us is stop_ing). Or you might provide all the letters of the word, but ask the student to order them correctly. Word jigsaws also work well in the early stage. Use a cut-up index card for each word (see Figure 7.7).

Figure 7.7 102 Deciding What and How to Teach

As learners advance, the help provided by physical format can be reduced and the card can be cut into straight strips (see Figure 7.8).

Figure 7.8

Another way of providing help is to indicate the number of letters in a word, such as in the exercise on opposites in Figure 7.9.

Figure 7.9

Crossword puzzles provide the same kind of information regarding the number of letters required in a word. Sometimes it is a good idea to provide a crossword that has a few of the letters already completed, to help learners get started. Themed word-search games also help learners focus on spelling, although in literacy classes it is best to have all the words written horizontally (see Figure 7.10).

Figure 7.10 Teaching Writing 103

Asking learners to keep a personal word dictionary is also useful for spelling, as well as for making them familiar with alphabetical order. You may find index cards ideal for this purpose, as new words can be easily placed in the right order. A small address book with pages already labeled for each letter can also work well. Because learners often like to try to study a few new words on their own time, such as while riding the bus, it is useful if the dictionary is small enough to be carried around easily. Word families are not always as useful a tool for second-language learners as they are for first-language speakers, but the approach can be used with some success so that a student learns a whole group of new words simultaneously. As with reading, it is most useful to begin with a known word, such as in, which is then expanded to include bin, chin, thin, and any other related words in the learners’ oral vocabulary. To sum up, learners need opportunities and strategies to attack words in many different ways. Above all, they have to be prepared to take a chance, which they will only do in a supportive environment. The more they read and the more they write or attempt to write, the easier they will find the process of reading and writing.

Writing for an Audience Most of the activities described so far in this chapter involve learners in writing material with no specific audience in mind. These are learning exercises, no more. However, if students are to use writing in their dayto-day lives, they need to become aware that the purpose of writing is to transmit meaning over time or space. Learners need to understand that people write to send information to someone who is not within speech range, or to record information for a future time. The purpose in writing affects the way a message is recorded and the amount of information that is included. Learners will ultimately need to take into account the potential audience for their writing, and so it is important that you begin to include some activities that involve actual communication, however minimal. A common way to begin is by asking learners to communicate with one another. Many literacy teachers set up a mailbox system in their classroom, using small pockets attached to large sheets of Bristol board (see Figure 7.11). Each pocket is labeled with the name of one of the learners, and there should also be a pocket for the teacher. At the end of each class, learners write a brief message to a randomly assigned fellow student. (The names can be printed on laminated slips of xxxxxxxxxxx 104 Deciding What and How to Teach

Figure 7.11

paper and drawn from a hat.) The messages are slotted into the appropriate mailboxes until the next class. This gives learners the opportunity to think about their message between classes and to make any corrections to their message before the next class gets underway. At the start of the next class, students gather to check their mailboxes and read their message(s). Even if the learners can only wish one another a carefully copied Good morning, they will learn to personalize their message by adding the name of the student to whom the message is addressed and their own name as the author. As learners become more competent, they can choose from a range of messages to copy, or they can create an original message. You may find that beginners will try to add additional flourishes, such as writing in colored inks or adding stickers or tiny doodles. More advanced learners will add good wishes or perhaps share a comment on the weather or news. Students are asked if they would like to share the messages they have received. Because you are building a sense of audience with this xxxxxxxx Teaching Writing 105

activity, it is important that the writers acknowledge each other. You might model the procedure by saying, “My message is from Mebrahtu. It says ‘Good morning, teacher, from Mebrahtu.’ Thank you, Mebrahtu.” Many teachers purchase postcards or greeting cards when they find them on sale, and provide these as the writing paper for learners. The image carries a message of its own and makes the note a pleasure to receive, even if the text is rather skimpy. You can of course also write notes. You probably do not want to commit to writing to every learner every day, but perhaps once a week each learner might receive a longer note from you in which you provide a personalized comment or an announcement of what is going to happen that day in class. Dialogue journals are a variant on letters from the teacher, and are valuable with slightly more advanced learners who can begin to craft a simple message in print. Each learner has an exercise book, which is used exclusively for correspondence with the teacher. Learners write brief, private notes to the teacher in the book, and receive individualized replies within a couple of days (see Figure 7.12).

Figure 7.12

Encourage learners to begin by telling you something about themselves. For example, a learner might write I have one brother. When you reply, try to elaborate on the learner’s comment with some information of your own. You might write I have one sister. Her name is Livia. She is younger than me. Is your brother older or younger? In your brief note, you 106 Deciding What and How to Teach

have shared a little personal information, which makes the learner feel that there is real, ongoing communication. You have introduced possibly new vocabulary in a meaningful context that is likely to catch the learner’s attention. You have also provided a question for the learner to answer, making the reply easier as the content is suggested in advance. Often, the learner’s contribution will contain errors. Because the focus of dialogue journals is communication, not grammar per se, it is not appropriate to correct the work. Instead, try to model the appropriate format in your response. If the learner writes I two sister have, you might reply You have two sisters! How nice. Dialogue journals give learners a very definite sense of a specific audience for their writing, and most students enjoy the sense that they have their teacher’s ear. Unlike the shared mailbox letters, dialogue journals are usually considered private, and learners often use them to confide information that they do not wish to share with the class. Using Technology to Address a Wider Audience Learning how to use email is another activity that helps students develop the sense of an audience. Even beginner learners can learn how to access an email account if you set up the accounts in advance. Using one of the easy-access free providers, such as Yahoo! Mail, Google Gmail, or Microsoft Hotmail, set up an account for each learner using the first name as the username and the last name as the password. If you do this with the caps lock on, the letters on the keyboard will match the letters that appear on the screen. Make sure all learners know how to spell their name using block letters, and that there are no spelling variants, such as Muhammed/Mohammed, that need to be taken into account. Provide learners with an index card showing the block-letter version of their name, if necessary. If all learners have accounts on the same system, the computers can be routinely set to the email log-in page. Screen shots can be posted above the computer, showing what the screen will look like at each stage. On most systems, the pattern is very simple once the log-in page has been reached. Consider posting instructions above the computer (see Figure 7.13)

Figure 7.13 Teaching Writing 107

Of course, learners will encounter problems, but usually one learner will be able to help another if you don’t immediately rush over. As learners become more confident, you can teach them how to click “reply,” craft a simple message, and then click “send.” Eventually, students will learn to initiate emails to you or to other correspondents. (If they reach the stage where they are sending messages to personal friends or relatives, you should show them how to change their password to protect their privacy.) In many ways, email is an updated form of the mailbox system described in the previous section. As learners’ competence builds, they can be asked to send email messages to one another, but the instant nature of the communication offers fewer teaching opportunities than the ceremonious opening of all the print messages. A better solution is to find another literacy teacher with a classroom of learners at a similar level, so that the learners can be paired with electronic pen pals. In this format, the email medium offers real communication possibilities. Social networking sites, such as Facebook, provide similar opportunities to exchange messages and to share pictures, clips, and links. In an effort to increase learner comfort with technology, one young teacher I know, Helen, has set up a social networking site for her class members. She has password protected it in case anyone has immigration issues or other reasons for remaining anonymous, and some of the learners have chosen to identify themselves by pseudonyms or nicknames. In addition to these precautions, Helen is very careful to ensure that learners realize the inherent risks in posting material online, and uses the site as a way to teach critical-media skills. Within the site, each learner has a personal page on which he or she can post pictures or snippets of news. Learners can post a personal photograph if they feel comfortable with that choice, or they can choose a picture they like from Helen’s selection of scenery, animals, and other images. Learners are given class time to read and post, and are also encouraged to log on outside of class and to comment on one another’s news. (A field trip to the nearby library was important here to show them how to access computers outside of class.) Helen uses the site to share news and to alert learners to upcoming events and activities. Occasionally, she will embed a link that might be of interest, such as an upcoming local event or a YouTube video she thinks will be of interest. When a learner has a birthday coming up, Helen pastes an announcement with a link to an electronic card, and encourages other learners to write a short message of congratulations (following her model, if necessary). Primarily, however, Helen uses the site as a technology-supported version of a dialogue journal. It is a way to model language, encourage 108 Deciding What and How to Teach

expression, and build relationships. While she can still send the private notes that are the norm in dialogue journals, if pressed for time she can paste a general remark that encourages input from everyone. Helen might post a picture of her cat, for example, and ask the learners if they have any pets. She has found that it takes learners some time to become comfortable with the computer and the networking, but she believes that the rewards are worth the initial effort. Not only do the learners get a chance to practice their English, but they also develop valuable technology skills that will be important for future communication needs. Technology can also allow learners to keep in contact with their friends and family members in their home countries. There may have been little technology in the home village when learners left, but the use of cell phones and the Internet is rapidly becoming global. However remote the home village, it is now very likely that there is someone capable of reading an email or text message and passing the news on to family members. News of the home area can also be gathered from the Internet, both in print and speech. English-language text articles may be overwhelmingly complex, but videos from local-language television stations will certainly be accessible if you can help your learners locate the appropriate websites. Learners may not develop their English while watching the broadcast, but learning to navigate the Internet independently is a very valuable literacy tool, largely carried out through the medium of English.

Teaching Writing 109

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More

As well as the generic challenges of teaching literacy to learners who do not have a solid grasp of oral language, there are some particular situations that you may face. It can be difficult to give learners adequate support when there is a wide variety of skill levels present in the class and the needs of other learners must also be addressed. In addition, individual learners may have special needs due to factors such as health, age, or personal circumstances, all of which can affect their progress and their preferred learning style. Teaching in such situations requires you to be flexible in approach and pragmatic in implementation!

The Multilevel Class Even if you are fortunate enough to begin a course with a class of students who have comparable levels of skills, you are likely to find that within a few weeks some students demonstrate more rapid progress than others, since such factors as first-language literacy and oral competence affect the learning patterns. If you are like most teachers, you will not even begin with a class designated as a literacy class. Rather, you will have a general ESL class with a sprinkling of “literacy” students struggling to follow. The reality, then, is planning for a wide range of abilities. Sometimes the best solution is to break up the class into smaller groups working at different levels, or into pairs of students progressing at their own pace. The solution does not have to be group work, however. A number of the teaching methods outlined so far are quite suitable to use with multilevel groups, if all members of the class fall into the basic ESL category.

Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More 111

Basic Teaching Methods The Language Experience Approach (LEA), explained in Chapter Six, is one useful method for teaching multilevel groups. Students contribute according to their oral competence, reading back those parts of the story that are within their capabilities. The same LEA story can help one student learn sentence patterns while another student is still working hard at recognizing individual words. Because the beginning student is never being asked to read the entire passage, there is no sense of failure in finding so many words indecipherable; rather, there is pride in making out any part of it. Total Physical Response (TPR), also explained in Chapter Six, is another basic technique that works well in multilevel classes. More advanced students will respond quickly to the commands, thus providing further demonstrations of meaning for the beginning students. Because TPR does not call for an oral response, students who are weak orally but have a fair passive knowledge of English will enjoy demonstrating their prowess. Interview questionnaires (see Chapter Six) are another method suitable for multilevel groups, as students can proceed at their own pace. The more advanced student will interview every class member, possibly even recording answers in complete sentences, while the beginning student will be equally challenged by the task of identifying and getting a response from four or five individuals. If the spread of abilities is very wide, a second section can be provided on the sheet, to be attempted only if the main exercise is completed. As an example, consider a class working with the question What did you have for breakfast? The further task could consist of manipulating the data in some way; for example, Which students ate eggs? Which was the most popular drink? and so on. Alternatively, it could send the students back to the interviewing process to get more information: Who cooked the breakfast? What did you eat for lunch? Or it could extend the original question to include people outside the classroom—office staff, other teachers, janitors, and so on. SHARED TASKS

Even when the range of skills in the group is very wide, there are a number of tasks that can be attempted by the class as a whole that provide opportunity for all students to contribute at their own level. Students might be asked to search the newspaper to find some specific item of information, with the literacy students spending most of their time on the first part of the task: identifying the correct section. The class might be given bus and train schedules and asked to plan a trip, with xxxxxxxx 112 Deciding What and How to Teach

basic-level students having responsibility for identifying the price from a fairly simple flyer. Making a class “newspaper” (to be pinned on a bulletin board) can be a regular activity providing valuable language practice for a class with a range of abilities. While the more advanced students are writing articles, the others can be writing headlines, comic strips, advice columns, horoscopes, and captions for photographs. Quite apart from the language displayed in the end product, such a process of organizing and producing a project is very useful linguistically. Making photographic stories or captioned collages are other projects in which students can enjoy working together, while choosing tasks to suit their own skills. TEAMS

Splitting the class into teams that compete to complete a task correctly is a very easy way to provide motivation and to make sure that basiclevel students join in general classroom activities. Simple competitions, such as spelling bees in which you assign spelling words according to each student’s ability, provide the opportunity for even the most basiclevel student to contribute to the team’s success. Other team games suitable for mixed levels include those in which cognitive skills are as important as language skills. Useful tasks include puzzles or variations on the classic Kim’s Game, in which you display a large, detailed picture for about five seconds, and then challenge teams to write down everything they can remember in the picture, using words, phrases, or sentences to obtain extra points. GROUP WORK

As valuable as whole-class activities can be, students also need to attempt work designed particularly for their literacy level. This normally involves dividing the class into equal-ability groups or cross-ability groups. In equal-ability groupings, all members of the group have approximately the same level of ability and can attempt a task jointly or individually with the same general explanation and instructions. By grouping learners in this way, you can set the same task at different levels of difficulty, or you can set tasks giving practice in different skills according to the needs of different groups. As an example, consider a class working on a theme of health care. Following oral work on obtaining a prescription from the pharmacy, you might want the whole class to work toward being able to read the instructions on the label. The depth to which this can be achieved will obviously vary according to each student’s level, so you will want to xxxxxxxxxx Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More 113

group learners by their reading ability. While the most advanced group works with manufacturers’ labels and the intermediate group works with prescription instructions, the beginning literacy students might match poison symbols with words or connect instructions about timing and dosage with illustrations of clock times. Alternatively, you might group students according to their need to practice a particular skill. For example, you might set up one group to role-play a phone call to the pharmacy while a second group listens to an audio recording of a doctor giving instructions on the use of medication. A third group might work with a series of photographs related to the theme, sequencing them and writing captions. Breaking the class into groups in this way provides all students with the opportunity to do work that is relevant and challenging, but still offers them a chance to experience success. For this reason, grouping is an indispensable technique for the teacher with a multilevel class, even though it often demands a great deal of preparation. Most teachers find it well worth the time spent. In the examples considered so far, the small group functions much like a traditional class. You set the task, demonstrate or explain it, and then leave the students to attempt the work more or less individually while you provide instructions to another group. The grouping is done only to produce a homogeneous group, the actual size being irrelevant. There are, however, many activities that function better with a smaller group—discussion, role-play, problem solving, and so on. Often, for this type of interactive activity, a cross-ability grouping, where advanced and basic-level students are mixed together, can be more valuable. The advantages in oral work are easy to see, but this type of grouping can also be useful for tasks focusing on reading and writing practice. Any of the tasks suggested for the whole class, such as planning a field trip or writing a class newsletter, can be usefully given to a small group. Such a group might attempt to publish a recipe sheet, for example. Basiclevel students could dictate favorite recipes orally for the more advanced students to transcribe. Other students could be involved in layout, making clean, corrected copies of rough drafts, proofreading text, and so on. Ideally, you would allow group members to work out the division of labor by themselves. Another area where cross-ability groups are particularly useful is in playing board games. Most commercial games involve a fair amount of reading practice, and many can be adapted to feature language you want to see covered. With a mixed-ability group, reading problems do not paralyze the entire game, and the element of chance evens out linguistic differences. 114 Deciding What and How to Teach

PAIR WORK

Pairing students is useful if you wish all students to attempt a particular task but know they will need varying amounts of time. Normally, all pairs of students are given the same task to do, as the logistics of organizing pairs to do different tasks wastes too much lesson time. In addition to allowing students to work at their own pace, pair work has other advantages. Students can interact and learn from each other. The need to work together to complete the task encourages effort and provides a low-stress environment in which to try out new language. This is an important experience for students who do not feel capable of performing before the whole class. There are a host of activities that two students at a similar level can do, from putting their heads together over a discrimination exercise, to searching through an online catalog. In general, the tasks normally allocated as individual work are approached more enthusiastically if set as pair tasks. Many activities rely on the pair arrangement. Pair activities useful for literacy students include interviewing each other and recording the information; sorting and matching sets of symbols and shapes; and holding up flash cards for a partner to identify. A particularly useful task type is the information gap, where each student knows part of the required information and must find out the missing information from her or his partner. Using the example in Figure 8.1, both students receive a menu containing different gaps. Keeping their sheet hidden from their partner, students ask questions of each other to discover the missing information in their menu.

Figure 8.1

By asking questions such as “How much is the hot dog?” and “What costs $4.50?” both students try to complete the menu. Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More 115

Pairing advanced students with basic-level students is usually more valuable for speech activities than it is for literacy activities. It is of course possible to give such an unmatched pair the task of planning something or producing a letter, but in practice the advanced student either does the task entirely or takes the role of tutor so seriously that the basic-level student makes progress at the advanced student’s expense. It is not that involving more advanced students in some tutoring is never to be recommended, but the tutoring should preferably not encroach on the student’s own study time. Mostly, the unmatched pair arrangement is useful for cooperative games in which both students are trying to achieve the same goal, but the demand is much greater on one member of the pair. The basic-level student may, for instance, have to arrange some cut-out letters to duplicate the arrangement shown on a master sheet held by the advanced student, who must provide detailed verbal instructions. This type of activity provides excellent oral and aural practice for both students, but is not easily adapted to reading and writing. You may prefer to make use of equal-ability groups, or else plan individual activities for basiclevel students. The preceding ideas are just a few of the ways in which you can address the needs of literacy learners in a multilevel class. For a more detailed discussion of multilevel teaching, please refer to my book Teaching Multilevel Classes in ESL (see Appendix B: Useful Resources).

Learners with Special Needs Sometimes it seems to ESL literacy teachers as if everyone in their classes has special needs, and sometimes it is difficult to distinguish between ordinary slow progress caused by the challenge of the task, and particular difficulties arising out of more personal circumstances. Because many learners have relocated as a result of war or political upheaval, it is possible that they may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or other forms of mental illness that affect their progress in class. When learners have limited English, it can be difficult to find out exactly what the problem is. Some of the groups most frequently needing special attention include senior citizens, those with suspected learning disabilities, and those who attend class reluctantly. Working with Seniors Many ESL literacy classes include a few seniors who attend regularly but still seem to make slow progress. Typically, these learners do not complain; indeed, they tend to become very attached to their teachers 116 Deciding What and How to Teach

and are reluctant to move to other classes or programs. Despite their apparent commitment to the classes, they demonstrate little evidence of making progress. This can be a rather frustrating situation for the teacher, as I know from my personal experience. I would teach what I believed was a good lesson on Monday, but when I reviewed it on Tuesday it seemed to have been totally forgotten. I would find a new way to teach it and be heartened when there seemed to be some recognition of the material, but by Wednesday, the learners would apparently have forgotten it again. While I was fully aware of how difficult second-language literacy can be, especially for those who have been away from school for forty years or more, nonetheless I would find myself getting discouraged and if I am honest, a little exasperated. Having taught a topic to the best of my ability, I really didn’t want to teach it again and again and again. I was also conscious that other learners in my class were being held back. In many ways, the slow progress shown by some seniors provides a situation similar to that in the multilevel classroom, and the suggestions listed in the section The Multilevel Class, beginning on page 111, will be useful on occasion. However, there are factors that are specific to older people that must be taken into account. ELLs who are seniors are growing old in a culture that is not their own and where they do not speak the language. They may have anticipated an old age where they would be respected elders in the community, but instead find themselves sidelined by language difficulties and shifting intergenerational roles. Instead of being an integral part of an extended family grouping, they may find themselves living alone, seeing little of their adult children, and being unable to converse with their grandchildren when a family gettogether does take place. Poverty may also be an issue, especially for older women, who may find themselves being expected to take on responsibility for tasks that were formerly handled by a partner. One of the first challenges is to understand why your particular learners attend class. Are they facing real needs for English literacy, perhaps to deal with housing, banking, and pension issues? Or is their motivation to attend class more social? For some older learners, the social interaction may be a significant motivating factor, and while they are happy to learn English, they may not have any urgent need for it. Seniors may also be affected by the aging process in ways that impede their learning. Their eyesight or hearing may not be as good as it once was, making it very difficult for them to keep up with the class. Careful choice of seating near you or near a window can be surprisingly helpful in such cases, as can providing assistance in getting glasses or a hearing aid. Older adults can also get stiff when asked to sit for too long, Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More 117

especially on the hard chairs that are common in many classrooms. Senior learners may be reluctant to stand up or to draw attention to themselves by admitting their stiffness. Encouraging learners of all ages to stand and stretch or to move around the classroom can be very helpful. Some teachers conduct a formal “everybody stretch” session each hour or so. Others simply plan a game or other activity that prompts all class members to get out of their seats. Age affects mental processes, too, though not as severely as is sometimes imagined. Indeed, there are studies that suggest that the cognitive strategies that older students bring to classroom work enable them to perform better than younger students on certain types of language-learning tasks. Generally speaking, older learners are more successful with holistic approaches rather than disconnected memorization tasks. Encouraging them to work on a project such as gathering traditional songs or folktales, and then translating them into English, is likely to engage their interest and allow them to demonstrate their strengths. Such a task will also provide the interaction that your learners may crave and should strengthen the social bonds in the classroom. The most important modification that you might make for seniors is one that will benefit all learners in the class. This is routinely to present material in a range of different ways. Instead of teaching personal pronouns once from a worksheet, and then repeating the lesson the next day for those who have not yet learned the vocabulary, it is better to find ways to revisit the same information through different approaches that both maintain interest and call on different learning approaches. The following sequence might provide such opportunities. MULTIPLE WAYS TO TEACH PERSONAL PRONOUNS

1. Display a large family photograph (preferably your own) on the board or document camera. Point to the different people in the family, saying “she” or “he” as appropriate. Repeat and encourage class members to join in if they wish. Draw two columns on the board, one headed by each word. Draw a stick figure above each word to indicate gender. 2. Write in large print the words she and he on index cards, and distribute them among the class according to gender. Walk around the class, pointing to each card and reading the word aloud. Encourage learners to join in chorally and then individually. Hide some cards and ask learners to identify the proper pronoun. Point to a person, say “she” or “he” and have the class say “yes” or “no” to indicate accuracy. Repeat the process, but this time simply show xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 118 Deciding What and How to Teach

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

a card and don’t read it aloud. Shuffle the cards and have learners pick the appropriate card. Once this seems easy, introduce additional cards with her and him and manipulate the cards in similar ways. (For more advanced classes, you can introduce further gendered vocabulary such as husband, wife, man, woman, sister, brother, Mr., Mrs., boy, girl, and so on as appropriate.) Have learners take an index card and place it on the ledge below the board under the appropriate stick-figure drawing. Ask learners to stand up or sit down when a card showing their gender is flashed. (You can begin by having pictures on the cards in addition to words if learners find this difficult.) Ask learners to line up under the appropriate picture for their actual gender. Then distribute random cards and have them line up under the appropriate picture for their assigned gender. Cut out magazine photographs of people of all ages. Have learners assign index-card labels to suitable people. Follow up with a worksheet where learners complete a similar task using a pool of provided vocabulary that they copy into place. Using stick figures on the board, have volunteers come up and write any gendered words they know under the appropriate figure. Allow copying from the cards initially, and then ask learners to leave the cards behind and attempt to write the word from memory. Try the same task as a team game if this seems easy. Have learners toss a beanbag to one another, choosing a target who matches the word you call out (for example, if you call out “mother,” toss the beanbag to a female). Write target vocabulary on a toss cube and have learners read aloud the word that lands on top (see Figure 8.2).

Figure 8.2

Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More 119

10. Work with the class to generate simple sentences on the board that employ the vocabulary; for example, Ngistee is a woman. She is twenty-five. Distribute cut-up sentences for the learners to resequence and then copy into their notebooks. 11. Generate a chart to be posted on the classroom wall titled “Introducing Our Class.” Have learners help complete the chart by interviewing one another and writing a couple of relevant sentences using models provided. Illustrate the chart with photographs. This range of tasks is designed to provide information through different sensory approaches, and to offer a gradual increase in the difficulty of the required task. New vocabulary is introduced within a context and through both auditory and visual channels, and is supported by illustrations to ensure comprehension. The learner demonstrates comprehension initially by physical body movement and manipulation of cards, then by speech, then by copying, and finally by writing. In this way, it is hoped that interest can be maintained as each lesson builds on its predecessor. Learners with Learning Disabilities When learners make significantly slower progress than expected, teachers often wonder if perhaps there is a learning disability (LD). One would of course anticipate that some second-language learners will struggle with this issue, but given the slow pace of literacy progress typical of adults with minimal first-language education, one should be hesitant to make assumptions in this area. Whereas first-language speakers with years of school exposure who still demonstrate literacy difficulties are by definition not learning in the anticipated way, there are no norms for people with minimal education in their first language who are attempting literacy as adults. Little experience of schooling combined with limited first-language literacy leads to very slow progress in the development of second-language literacy skills, whether or not there is a learning disability in the picture. Although there is a great deal of information about teaching literacy to learners with learning disabilities, there is not very much available that specifically addresses adult learners with learning disabilities attempting second-language literacy. What can be extrapolated from the material that is available is that learning disability is an umbrella term that is used to describe a wide range of challenges. Some learners have difficulty with processing material visually; others have more challenges processing information that they receive aurally. Some may have 120 Deciding What and How to Teach

difficulty with the organizational aspects of learning, or they may be easily distracted and unable to maintain their attention on the task at hand. Because learning disabilities are complicated, it is challenging to perform an accurate assessment even in the first language. With English language learners, the difficulties are compounded by cultural and linguistic challenges. Obtaining a reliable assessment of exactly which challenges learners are dealing with is difficult. As a result, it will not be easy to develop carefully tailored, personalized solutions. Luckily, however, there are some generic approaches that appear to be helpful in most LD situations. Many of the approaches suggested earlier for seniors are, in fact, suitable for any LD students you may have in your classroom, and you can feel confident that such approaches will do no harm even if your assessment is inaccurate. By making use of a multisensory approach to teaching, you will be providing learners with input through at least one of their preferred areas. Make sure that material is always presented through both visual and auditory channels, supporting your verbal explanations with illustrations and written examples on the board. If at all possible, add in kinesthetic approaches, such as having the students physically manipulate cards or follow a TPR command. Not every lesson will involve every channel of communication, but as you revisit the material over time, you should aim to introduce these different approaches. Try to accommodate learners’ needs by having pictures and audio recordings available for students to work with. If you are using printed material, keep it clean and simple, without too much information on the page. Avoid poor-quality photocopies with extraneous material. Above all, bear in mind the basic rule for teaching students with learning disabilities: repeat, review, reteach. There are a number of websites that discuss this issue in more detail (see Appendix B: Useful Resources). Working with Younger, Disaffected Learners Sometimes it seems that some of the younger learners in adult ELL literacy classes are there primarily because they are required to attend in order to receive a social-assistance check or other financial support. They are at an age when their schooling was probably severely disrupted by the factors that made them emigrate from their home country. Often they have had less than successful experiences in schools earlier in life, and they find the classroom an uncomfortable place to be. As a result, they resist learning and are unwilling to make any effort to engage with the lesson. Poor punctuality and attendance patterns aggravate the problem this poses for their teacher. Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More 121

There are no magic bullets for fixing this problem, but there are some basic principles that should be considered. • Younger learners become physically restless and need to be able to get out of their seats and burn off energy. Games and approaches like TPR that allow students to move around are helpful, but consider bringing in a basketball or something similar for them to take outside for a ten-minute break. • Commercial teaching material tends to be written for teenagers or mature adults. Young adults may feel excluded from both groups. • Younger learners identify themselves as workers not students and may need to see the real-life value of activities. One of two key approaches may be useful. One approach is based on the lessons learned from working with high-school dropouts. For this population, considerable success has been achieved by employing the “alternative school” model, which is strongly geared to making the school setting more employment-like, and making learners responsible for their own progress. Key features include classes set up to allow for attendance on a drop-in basis, self-access material to allow selection of topic, and a strong use of technology. Learners who may resist doing worksheets or struggling through textbook exercises may nonetheless use smartphones to check on their sports teams, to find out when the next bus is due, or to download music. Allowing learners to build on their interests in these areas is key to engaging them with the class. The other valuable approach is the project-based approach, in which the ostensible task is the production of something; the learning is incidentally embedded. You should begin by identifying an area of interest to students. Depending on their age, gender, and background, this might be anything from robotics to popular music. The next step is to identify a project that students could complete that would require publication in some form. For younger learners, a YouTube video is a great activity. Any skill they have can be turned into a YouTube demonstration with a guaranteed audience at the end. Even if they begin with a non-language activity, such as a computer game, creating a tutorial for how to handle some challenge within the game will involve them in discussion, scripting, and graphics. If students can begin with an activity that actually uses language, so much the better. Print is of course an alternative for those who are not tempted by technology, but hands-on projects such as designing and growing a garden, working on an art project, or planning a community party may be more engaging and will offer many literacy opportunities to exploit.

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As a final step, encourage learners to take ownership. Stand back and be a resource rather than a teacher.

Working with Other Teachers to Address Challenges While the students themselves can be challenging, as in the situations discussed throughout this chapter, there are other challenges that ESL literacy teachers face. Some teachers feel isolated, because they are the only literacy teacher in the institution or area. Others, especially those new to literacy teaching, can feel overwhelmed because preparing materials for literacy classes can be very time consuming. Even when you know exactly what materials will be suitable for your learners, it takes time and effort to gather together samples of real-life print (realia), determine which sections to work with, paste them onto cards, and so on. (Needless to say, it is important to get into the habit of saving your materials, perhaps grouping them into boxes by content topic.) Identifying other teachers with similar challenges can be of enormous assistance in addressing such problems. Many ELL literacy teachers find exchanging materials helpful. One teacher might develop a theme kit for health care while another prepares materials on food shopping. After they have both finished teaching their particular topics, they swap the materials. If you work for a large organization, perhaps you and your fellow teachers can build up a library of such materials that all literacy teachers can borrow. You may have to adapt the library materials to the demands of your own particular class, but the borrowed kits should give you a good head start. If you work for a school district or other organization that has a number of literacy classes, perhaps you could organize a Materials Development Day, where teachers come together to exchange ideas. If the organizer can provide items such as catalogs, flyers, bank slips, and so on, along with such raw materials as card, glue, scissors, and markers, then teachers can enjoy an opportunity to discuss their teaching while creating useful activities. Participants are likely to have a wealth of ideas to share, but if necessary, the ideas in Appendix A: Useful Activities can provide a starting place. Useful as such get-togethers may be, teachers of literacy to ELLs need to come together for more than just materials production. We need to recognize that if we do not lobby for improved conditions for our literacy students, no one else will. Are there external conditions that make life more difficult for our students than it need be? Is the classroom adequately equipped? Is the length of the program appropriate? Do the xxxxxxxx Challenging Teaching Situations: Multilevel and More 123

learners have access to needed daycare or welfare counseling? Are those who make program decisions well informed about the particular needs of ESL literacy learners? All too often, the literacy class is not seen as part of the regular spectrum of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), but sits uneasily somewhere between ESL and adult education for first-language speakers. This can lead to inappropriate decision making around curriculum, funding, evaluation, class size, class length, and so on. The methodological approaches that are suitable for L1 speakers who need literacy support are not the best approaches for ELLs. Our learners do not have the oral language background, so a combination of oral work and literacy work is critical for them. Our learners tend to over-rely on decoding approaches so they need a focus on comprehension. When these differences are not well understood by administrators, teachers can be pressured to use certain textbooks or to evaluate using particular tests. It is difficult for an individual teacher to resist such pressure, which is one of the main reasons why all teachers should join their professional associations. Working together, teachers can become well informed about the issues that affect literacy students and can present their case more persuasively to defend their students’ interests. As well as playing a lobbying role, professional associations are a great source of knowledge and ideas for teachers, who can feel very isolated. Most national associations have smaller local affiliates offering conferences and workshops that allow teachers to build up a professional network. A considerable amount of support is also available online (see Appendix B: Useful Resources for suitable websites). Being part of a professional community gives teachers much-needed support that enables them to perform at their best.

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SECTION THREE

Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

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CHAPTER NINE

Planning the Program

If you are like most ESL literacy teachers, you are no doubt skilled at thinking on your feet and adapting your teaching to unexpected developments. Nevertheless, it is still important to plan out your program. This is not just a matter of being prepared for tomorrow’s class, but of taking the time to determine what the students need, how best to address those needs, and what might be realistically achieved given the length of the program and the time available. Good planning should always begin with the long-term objectives. Any particular lesson or block of lessons should be seen as fitting within this long-term framework and working toward achieving the long-term goals.

Long-Term Planning Begin your long-term planning by asking yourself some questions about the learners, about yourself as a teacher, about the setting in which the learning takes place, and about the subject matter itself. This process helps you understand what the goals are over the long term and what constraints you may have to take into account as you plan. Learners There are three key questions to ask in relation to learners. What needs do your learners have that the curriculum must address? Planning a curriculum that directly attempts to address your learners’ needs is the single most important thing you can do. I have discussed needs assessment in some detail in Chapter One. You will remember that learners have both social and academic needs, which xxxxxxxxxxxx Planning the Program 127

must be borne in mind. You cannot address only the academic needs when learners are still struggling with housing or money issues. What strengths do your learners already have that you can build on? Every learner brings particular strengths and though these may vary across class members, it is still helpful to bear both individual and class strengths in mind when planning. One learner may have some firstlanguage literacy skills to build on, or be a skilled needlewoman with good visual discrimination. Perhaps there are some socially minded class members who will encourage others in small-group activities. Maybe there is someone who has limited literacy but good spoken English who can provide translation, or perhaps there is an interesting mix of linguistic backgrounds that will facilitate the use of English as a lingua franca or common language. What learning styles do your various learners prefer? Some people are visual learners. Others prefer to hear new information. Still others do best if touch and physical movement are involved. For many teachers, using print in the classroom is so natural that they tend to focus on simplifying the print and ensuring it is clear and well spaced. However, you may also need to support the print, not only with illustrations but also with a great deal of talk, lots of card manipulation, and plenty of real-life objects. The more ways in which you can cover your material, the more ways in which learners can come to understand and remember it. Teacher You also have to bear in mind your own patterns as a teacher. Consider, for example, what you do best. Are you energetic, organized, flexible, or creative? Are you happy to teach an unexpected topic on short notice when a student comes in with a problem, or do you prefer to postpone such topics until you can offer a carefully planned lesson? What atmosphere do you want in your classroom: a warm, supportive environment in which everyone feels very comfortable, or a dynamic set of conditions in which learners are independently making choices for themselves? Some of this will be determined by the needs of your learners, but you should also recognize that you have particular strengths and that you will probably do a better job working within patterns that feel comfortable to you. As well as your particular strengths, it is also important to consider any weaknesses you may have. Think about the way in which you teach when things become hectic. Do you perhaps teach to the middle of the class and let individualization slip? Do you pull out a favorite resource book and photocopy a bunch of worksheets? If you know what your 128 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

weaknesses are, it is easier to recognize when you are falling short and to keep yourself on track. Setting Another consideration to bear in mind is the situational factors that have to be taken into account. You might be in a program where classes are five or six hours long, so that it is difficult to maintain learner interest. Perhaps there are so many learners in the class that it is difficult to give adequate attention to individual students. Or perhaps you have a multilevel class, and are attempting to address many different needs. Research suggests that, on average, ESL literacy students attend classes about two-thirds of the time only—though of course that average includes some students who always attend and some who attend very irregularly. How can your planning take that reality into account? Here are some key questions about setting that you might ask: • What does my physical classroom look like, and how can it be adapted to better support learning? • What does the immediate environment offer to support learning? • What resources are available that I can call on? • What patterns of attendance do learners typically demonstrate, and what effect will that have on my curriculum? Subject Matter The final area to consider is the subject matter. Exactly what are you hoping to teach? Does your program define your task as primarily literacy based or primarily ESL based? Ideally, of course, you will be able to cover the oral work that both links to and underpins the basic reading and writing, but you still need a good sense of where to begin. Does the group know the alphabet? Where do learners stand with regard to vocabulary, grammar, and phonics? Do they know how to study? Do they want numeracy as well as literacy? Deciding on the basic thrust of the curriculum is sometimes challenging, if you are unsure about the components of a particular task or the best sequence in which to cover those components. A useful tool to help you address this problem is benchmarks, which are an organized set of descriptors that break down language and literacy learning into small components. These components are then sequenced into the most common patterns in which they are learned, and grouped in a way that allows you to summarize progress so far. Benchmarks allow you to place learners on the continua of literacy and numeracy learning so that you can set goals and track progress. Some benchmarks suggest teaching and Planning the Program 129

.

learning activities to address specific competencies, and are therefore useful both for curriculum planning and as an assessment resource. (See Chapter Ten for more information on benchmarks.)

Medium-Term or Block Planning The questions under Long-Term Planning, beginning on page 127, will help guide your planning for the semester or the whole year. Within that long-term plan, you should have a series of blocks of perhaps four to six weeks that focus on key themes or topics of interest. If housing is a concern for students, you might spend some weeks focusing on the language and literacy needed to find a new apartment, negotiate with a landlord, understand a rental agreement, and so on. Teaching in this way has many advantages. As well as exploring a topic that is interesting and contains useful content knowledge for the class, the block allows for the same vocabulary and concepts to be encountered in many different activities and skill areas. The multidimensional exploration of the topic strengthens the link between oral and literate and provides the opportunity for people to learn in a variety of ways. The revisiting of related material is particularly helpful when irregular attendance is a problem. When planning a block theme, it is helpful to get topic ideas from class members whenever possible. Themes drawn from settlement needs or life-skills information are usually a high priority, but you might be surprised to discover that you have a group of keen gardeners who want to work with seed catalogs, for example. Whatever topic you choose to cover, you are primarily choosing a vehicle to carry the basic language, so each topic will be incorporating similar language and literacy development. There may be some topic-specific vocabulary, but the new words will be set within similar syntax patterns that practice basic statements and questions, and so on. After you have identified the theme for the block, your next task is to decide what the students’ needs are in this area. What can you realistically hope to teach within the time available? What minimum knowledge is required to function in this area? If you are covering health care, for example, you might select “take medicine safely” as a key area, and identify the following requirements: • • • • • •

identify the instruction panel on various medications identify the person for whom the medication was prescribed understand basic dosage instructions recognize the meaning of additional warning stickers develop a written timetable for medication ask questions at the pharmacy to clarify dosage

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Having chosen your topics, you would then brainstorm possible teaching ideas. For a task such as “understand basic dosage instructions,” you might think of the following: • match pictures of pills, capsules, inhalers, and so on, with appropriate word cards • play a bingo game with related vocabulary • match written cards with various real-life medication containers • create a worksheet of medication labels—circle those that are taken once daily, and underline those that are taken twice daily • sort medicine packages by frequency-of-use recommendations • role-play a conversation at the pharmacy asking about dosage • create a cloze exercise based on the conversation at the pharmacy above, with a focus on keywords • conduct a Total Physical Response (TPR) activity in which students select an appropriate number of candy “pills” in response to written and spoken prompts At this stage, just jot down as many ideas as you can, doing your best to think of multiple ways of covering any topic. Don’t restrict yourself as you can prune out unsuitable ideas later. Remember that literacy learners need to encounter the same material in many different forms, so think of a range of activities for each knowledge point. As well as considering all the skill areas and all the preferred learning approaches, consider activities that are done best in large groups, in small groups, in pairs, and individually. If you can vary the approach, you will be better able to maintain learner interest. If you find it difficult to think of ideas, there are many sources of help. Appendix A: Useful Activities contains various ideas that are adaptable to almost any topic, and Appendix B: Useful Resources lists print, video, and online resources you can access. If you key the quoted phrase “ESL literacy activities” into a search engine such as Google, you will get thousands of sites suggesting different activities. After you have come up with all the ideas you can think of, choose the best ones for your particular students. Look for a balance of skill areas and a balance of learning patterns, and remember that you probably need to cover each piece many times if your learners are to gain enough practice to become confident with the material. When you are planning a longish block on a particular theme, it is often good to build up to a culminating activity that marks the end of the block. This provides some incentive to complete tasks and maintains learner interest. You might hold a small, social event to which guests are invited to admire displayed work, or you might schedule a field trip to Planning the Program 131

a related location. As a culminating activity for the medication-themed block outlined earlier, students might visit a local pharmacy where they ask a dosage question or try to find products for particular ailments. Often these culminating events require significant preparation, such as writing invitations or practicing oral questions. For this reason, it is useful to plan blocks in reverse, scheduling the culminating event first, and then working backward to allow adequate practice or preparation in the preceding days.

Short-Term Planning: Day and Lesson Plans Your block plan will give the broad strokes of what you hope to cover over the next few weeks, but it is at the short-term level that you will be setting your specific, measurable objectives. What do you hope to achieve with this particular lesson? What will the learners know after the lesson that they did not know before? How will you know whether they have succeeded? Have you built in a way to check on learner progress? Once you have identified the objectives for the lesson, you can begin to select and sequence the specific activities. The goal is to give learners the chance to practice any new language in both spoken and written form, so that all aspects of their ESL competence can develop together. Varying the skill area on which you are focusing also helps to maintain learner interest. Literacy learners are unaccustomed to spending long hours in the classroom, and their attention span may be shorter than expected. Also, they learn slowly, so you cannot simply keep moving on to new material whenever they seem restless. Instead, you have to cover the same material in new and interesting ways. As well as moving between the four skill areas of speaking, reading, listening, and writing, you should bear in mind that there are options within these choices. Writing might include anything from completing a cloze exercise to sequencing preprinted sentence strips, while speaking might be pair work on a game or singing aloud to music. You can also vary the source of information rather than reading everything aloud yourself. Make use of technology to bring in other voices, with excerpts from videos, news broadcasts, YouTube clips, and the like. Another variable that you will want to manipulate in your planning is to use different grouping patterns throughout the day. You might begin with a whole-class introduction to a topic, and then ask learners to practice the relevant language in pairs or small groups before turning to their own worksheets or books. Also bear in mind the importance of physical movement. Allowing, encouraging, or even requiring people to get up out of their seats should be a basic component in your planning. 132 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

Your movement opportunity may be as formal as leading the class in a few tai chi moves that allow everyone to stretch, or as informal as providing a kettle and some coffee or tea to which class members are free to help themselves whenever they wish. Even something as basic as using a toss cube or beanbag to liven up a vocabulary exercise will help as learners stretch to duck or catch the object. Team games at the board, where everyone takes a turn writing something, will get all the learners out of their seats and will often contribute some hilarity to the mood as well. Interview questionnaires or treasure hunts that require learners to find specific written words outside the classroom are other techniques that get learners moving. When you are planning your day, you will usually want to sequence the selected material to reflect concentration patterns. You might introduce new material at the beginning of the class when the learners are fresh, and then maintain their interest later in the day by choosing more lighthearted or interactive material, such as games or songs. Many teachers in full-day classes talk about the post-lunch slump and schedule specific activities to counteract it. Making Modifications Chapter Eight outlined a number of ways in which activities can be modified to make them suitable for a wider range of learner ability. Even in a class that is supposedly composed of learners at the same level, you will likely find minor differences that affect progress. Good planning will recognize that some learners will work more rapidly than others or have different skills to bring to the task. While you cannot individualize activities for everyone in your class, it is helpful to check your lesson plans routinely to see whether the activities can be modified to suit weaker or stronger students without too much extra work. As noted in Chapter Eight, it is possible to expose all students to the same stimulus of a story, film, or picture, but ask them to follow up with different activities. Alternatively, you might develop activities with a first part that all students must complete, plus a significantly more demanding second part to be completed if time allows. Also, do bear in mind that there are some activities, such as many role-plays, in which the workload is inherently uneven, so tasks can be assigned as appropriate. At the very least, you need to consider what you will ask your faster learners to do when they finish ahead of the others. Many teachers set up a collection of self-access material that learners can move on to in such situations. Others have a small library of varied reading material for browsing, or they offer access to language-learning computer programs. Planning the Program 133

Bringing the Various Components Together It may seem that there are simply too many parameters to juggle in making a daily plan, but of course you will develop routines as you get to know your class. Many teachers find it useful to draw up a simple template (see the sample lesson plan in Figure 9.1) to help them think about and balance the various components.

Figure 9.1 134 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

A good lesson plan will incorporate your objectives and your assessment tools, as well as provide you with space to make notes on how things worked out. Looking back over your comments is a great way to review what you actually achieved over the course of some weeks. Reviewing your notes will also help strengthen the lesson-planning cycle as you move on to a new theme. The sample lesson plan in Figure 9.1 is a very simple plan, and you may prefer something that provides more guidance. There are many lesson-plan templates available through the Internet that offer varying degrees of complexity to suit both your particular temperament and teaching situation. If you do not have a designated teaching space but use the basement of the local library, for example, you might find it helpful to include a section in your template on required materials to help you think through everything you need in advance. Whichever planning format you choose, it is important that you know what it is that you want to achieve with the lesson. In addition, as I will discuss in the next chapter on assessment, you need to consider how you will know if you have been successful in achieving that objective. Make sure, too, that you review your comments written at the end of the class, so that if patterns of student difficulty or inadequate time allowances become evident, issues can be quickly addressed.

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CHAPTER TEN

Ongoing Assessment

In Chapter Two, I discussed the importance of conducting a careful assessment of learners when they first join a class to identify what they bring to the task and what their initial literacy goals are. This information will enable you to plan a suitable curriculum for learners, following the process suggested in Chapter Nine. But conducting an initial assessment and setting up your initial program is just the starting point. It is, of course, equally important that you continue to assess learner progress so that you can ensure your program is successfully addressing learners’ needs. If you have overestimated a learner’s skills, you may be providing instruction that is too difficult. Or you may belatedly discover that a learner has children and desperately wants help interacting with the school. Your planning needs to be responsive to such issues. Because there is such a wide variation in learners’ personal and educational backgrounds, and because some literacy-level learners make very slow progress, it is difficult to know with certainty whether a learner is progressing at the best possible rate. You may assume that slow progress is inevitable, and overlook other factors at work that could perhaps be addressed by a change in teaching style, content, or materials. Learners do not always tell us when our classes are too difficult, irrelevant, or dull. However, careful observation combined with an attempt to seek learner feedback may give you some surprising insights. As time passes and you get to know your learners better, you will refine your understanding of their abilities and needs, and this increased understanding will inform your ongoing planning.

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Limitations of Standardized Testing In some programs, teachers face external pressure to demonstrate learner progress. Student funding may be linked to evidence of progress, or there may be pressure to facilitate comparisons across programs. This type of testing is often summative, in that it measures a learner’s progress at the end of a course of study. The results of such a test are often used to compare one learner to another or one program to another. Typically, as teachers, we are more interested in formative assessment; that is, assessment that forms or shapes what we will do next. Another important distinction to be aware of in the light of current pressure for standardized testing is the distinction between competence and performance. A test of performance measures the ability to complete a particular task on a particular occasion, as when we sit an examination. Learners might produce strong performances, but factors such as nervousness, ill health, or misunderstanding could lead them to perform badly, even if they know the relevant material. By contrast, a competence-based assessment attempts to measure the learner’s actual understanding of the material, and allows the learner to demonstrate that competence over a range of situations and performances. Most literacy teachers find standardized, performance-based tests of limited value as these tests discount the wide range of student experiences and needs. All tests have a cultural component and are less reliable on multicultural populations. Many literacy tests were initially intended for first-language speakers with literacy challenges. Such tests may make heavy use of illustration and minimal use of print, but they assume familiarity with print-based items such as store receipts, possibly unknown to those who shop in markets and local stores. As discussed in Chapter Five, the artistic conventions common to our illustration system may not be familiar. Numeracy tasks such as calculating a tip may be baffling to those who come from places where tipping is unknown. When we test learners through the medium of a second language, we face an enormous challenge to distinguish between lack of understanding and lack of language to express that understanding. In addition, a great deal of what literacy learners are learning is not easily demonstrated on such a test. For example, one of the challenges for initial-level literacy learners is to understand what portion of a letter shape can shift with the typeface and what portion will always be constant. For example, different typefaces turn upper-case F into F, F, F, F, or even F, and when first faced by the more elaborate forms, learners do not know which aspects are critical to reproduce. The process of becoming familiar with different typefaces, and the gradual increase in skill at producing acceptable letterforms, is not a yes/no process to be 138 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

measured. In similar fashion, learners are becoming increasingly familiar with the uses of literacy and the range of strategies that might support their learning. None of these incremental moves along a spectrum of skill strength can be effectively measured on simple tests. For this reason, many literacy teachers avoid formal, standardized testing of performance, preferring to rely on a combination of in-class measures built into their regular classroom routine. As outlined in the section that follows, these measures include careful observation of learners, learner conferences where learner feedback is sought, and careful record keeping.

Purposes of Ongoing Assessment: Defining Continuous Assessment Goals Your overall goal in committing to an ongoing assessment process is to ensure that each learner is making the best progress possible within the available time, taking into account that particular learner’s starting point and skill level. You are not trying to measure learners against one another, and you are not trying to make them all reach some particular goal. Instead, you are considering their academic, emotional, and social progress, deciding whether each learner is making a committed effort; whether the material you are providing is relevant and well understood; whether there is demonstrable control of the competencies being taught; and whether each learner is able to interact well with other learners within the classroom setting. Another critical goal of ongoing assessment is to maintain learner commitment and motivation by ensuring that learners recognize the progress they are making. Developing literacy is a long, slow process in which progress is made in tiny steps. Learners may have unrealistic goals that cannot possibly be fulfilled, or they may fail to recognize their own progress. Sometimes they become discouraged even when they are actually doing very well. It is common for learners to measure progress based on easily countable items, such as the number of new words they have learned, not realizing that they are also developing a great deal of underlying knowledge that cannot be so easily measured. Reviewing work with learners can do more than just motivate them, however. It is human nature to enjoy doing tasks that can be completed successfully, and to avoid those that are more challenging. For example, it is often the learner with the neatest handwriting who continues to use precious class time to practice in this area. Continuous ongoing assessment allows you to identify areas that are consistently being poorly handled, and to guide the learner toward a focus on the relevant area, not simply the most rewarding one. Ongoing Assessment 139

Adult learners are frequently skilled at hiding their shortcomings in literacy, and their defense mechanisms may operate in the classroom. It is difficult to be the one learner to stand up and admit to not understanding the teacher’s point. The temptation is to nod and smile and feign understanding, especially if more advanced learners are vocal in their comprehension. Soon the weight of material not understood becomes so heavy that the student cannot possibly follow subsequent lessons, and she or he falls back more and more on attempting merely to cover up a lack of knowledge. Only constant review of individual progress can alert you to this situation. Finally, continuous assessment allows you to routinely critique and adapt your program, enabling it to focus on the specific needs of the particular group of learners you are working with.

Methods of Ongoing Assessment There is a wide range of methods that support the process of assessing learners on an ongoing basis. Your selection of methods will be affected by the size and type of class you teach and the frequency with which you meet. Whatever your teaching situation, however, it is important that you commit to a regular assessment routine that includes some element of self-assessment on the part of the learners. Class Feedback Meetings While time pressures might make you reluctant to hold class meetings, a short period in which learners are encouraged to reflect on their learning will have many valuable outcomes. Your ultimate goal is to enable learners to function outside the classroom. Encouraging them to become responsible for their own learning is one of the most useful things you can do for them. The frequency with which you hold such meetings to review your program and the learners’ progress will be affected by the number of hours that the class meets each week. For more or less full-time programs, a fifteen- to twenty-minute meeting each week will be ideal. Other less-frequent programs might accommodate a brief meeting once a month. The first aim of the meeting is to provide an opportunity for students to have input into the learning process. This gives them an opportunity to raise issues they would like to have covered, to identify tasks that they find very difficult, to express their satisfaction with a particular approach you may have implemented, and so on. As teachers, we become very used to assessing learners, but especially for those who are fairly new to 140 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

teaching, it can seem a bit intimidating to ask learners to assess us. One way to minimize the personal element, at least initially, is to focus the discussion on the learning activities rather than on your delivery of them. Later, as you and your students all become more used to giving and taking suggestions, you can allow the discussion to become more wide ranging. When you first ask learners to tell you whether they enjoyed the class, you are likely to receive vague and uninformed praise. It is unrealistic to expect literacy-level learners to produce a meta-level analysis of your teaching. You have to find a way both to guide them to think critically about the learning process and to allow them to handle the facethreatening challenge of potentially criticizing you, their teacher. All this with minimal English and minimal literacy! The approach that many teachers find most successful focuses on the activities, and makes use of some version of the Likert Scale, where activities are scored from one to five, with five being excellent and one being terrible. Emoticons with a smiley face representing excellent and a scowl representing terrible may help with the vocabulary issue. If your class is relatively advanced, you may want to distribute a learner feedback sheet that lists activities down one side and provides space for learners to tick the appropriate score (see Figure 10.1). Begin with just two or three activities on the sheet. Later, you can increase this to five or six, when learners are familiar with the assessment process.

Figure 10.1

If your class is less advanced, the feedback process is best handled orally, supported by a diagram on the board. Choose the three or four activities for which you would most like feedback. You might want to choose a range of activities with one oral activity, one copying task, and so on. Learners often won’t remember the tasks they have done without Ongoing Assessment 141

a reminder, especially if your meetings are infrequent. Even if they do remember a task, they might not recognize it from your verbal description, so it is always wise to have available some physical object that makes clear which task you are talking about—a photo of the class trip, the storybook you read aloud, or a copy of the worksheet learners completed. Write the names of the chosen activities on the board and display the reminder items while reading the words aloud. Point to the words and emoticons and act out the hated it to loved it range of options learners will use to score the activities. (You may want to focus on how difficult the task was, rather than on how enjoyable, in which case your acting will have to mime degrees of puzzlement.) Once you have made it clear what each number represents, ask for hands to be raised as you point to each number. This type of group feedback is not ideal for you, as you may not be able to track which learner gave which verdict. But, initially at least, you are investing the time needed to make learners comfortable with giving feedback. Raising a hand in a group has a sense of anonymity that gives learners confidence and makes the task less stressful initially. As learners become more comfortable giving this kind of feedback, you can up the ante. You can add more activities to the feedback list. You can distribute an individual feedback sheet to support the board work, thus allowing you to track whether a particular learner consistently indicates difficulty with a particular type of activity. You can start to distinguish between difficulty and degree of enjoyment. Maybe you can even bring in the concept of relevance. If fluency levels allow, you can follow up with the important next questions: “Why did you like it? What should we change? What would you like to do next?” Obviously, if you have someone in class who can interpret your questions, you can make good use of students’ first language to gather information. The second important aim in a review meeting is to prompt learners to look critically at their own performance and begin the process of selfassessment. They need to become conscious of their progress, their strengths, their strategies, and their areas of difficulty. If they can speak up about what they want to learn and what activities they find helpful, they will make better progress in the classroom. Even more importantly, however, they will increase their chances of seeing language learning as a process that is under their own control and which, therefore, can be practiced outside the classroom. All learners in an English-speaking environment are surrounded by examples of environmental print and English language-literacy use in their daily lives. If they choose to pay attention to this material, it has the potential to have an enormous impact on the learning curve. 142 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

If your learners work in notebooks, you might simply ask them to look back over their notebook and see what changes they can observe from the beginning to the current point. Or you may draw their attention to the work done in the previous week. Some teachers like to hold up one student’s notebook and walk through the week’s exercises as a reminder. This can give helpful information about formatting and layout for beginning learners and encourage students to look at their own work in a comparative way. If you are using portfolios as a form of record keeping (see Portfolio Assessment below), this is the ideal time to ask learners to select the piece of work that they would like to contribute. Make sure the piece is dated. A date stamp tends to be well used and will help you avoid any confusion over different international approaches to recording day and month. Before you wrap up the feedback session, always ask learners for their input. What suggestions do they have for you? What activities would they like to have available? Is there specific content they would like you to cover? If your learners are from the same language group, allow for discussion in their first language. It may be easier for one learner to report back on behalf of the group without singling out anyone. Above all, don’t be discouraged if you receive very little feedback in the first few meetings. Your questions are encouraging learners to look critically at their learning and become more conscious of which approaches serve them well. As they become more comfortable with the process, they will begin to contribute more. Portfolio Assessment One of the most useful tools for assessing progress is the portfolio system. At its simplest, this is a file folder in which samples of a learner’s work are regularly placed. An examination of changes between the earliest pieces and later pieces allows both you and the learner to recognize progress. There are many ways in which this basic system can be adapted to suit the needs of a particular class and the approach of a particular teacher. In an adult class, it is generally considered important that the portfolio system is an open system, with each learner having access to her or his portfolio at any time. If you have a filing cabinet, it is a good place to keep the set of files, but a cardboard banker’s box will also work fine. Color coding the file folders will help learners find their own file easily and, of course, you could add photographs to the names on the tabs if you wish. Ongoing Assessment 143

Generally speaking, learners are the ones who choose what goes into the portfolio, in that they are free to add any document they wish. This might range from a piece of work completed in class to a postcard that they were able to read. However, ensure that learners include a range of pieces. You don’t want a complete set of vocabulary tests printed out from the computer and nothing else. Some types of work will be more useful than others. The learners’ copied versions of Language Experience Approach stories, for example, will typically show growth well (see Figure 10.2). If you have learners write a daily journal, then certainly some of these pieces would be valuable. Many teachers like to allow learners to add whatever they wish, but they also reserve the right to nominate certain pieces for inclusion.

Figure 10.2

As well as being useful for learner consideration and reflection, dated samples of learner work are of course a valuable tool for your ongoing assessment. In Chapter One, I discussed ways in which you can gather information from learners’ written work (see Developing a Learner Profile, page 21). The same principles and approaches will apply here. Again, it is important that you know if the piece of work was original, xxxxxxxxxx

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copied, or dictated, so it is useful to jot down any critical information about the context on the back of the dated sample. Sometimes, learners are reluctant to give up their original work if they think it is being taken away from them. Others work in a notebook and understandably don’t wish to tear out pages, so sometimes photocopies are the way to go. Pencil work does not always photocopy as well as we would wish, however, and making photocopies of individual pages from different notebooks can be a time-consuming chore. As indicated above, involving learners in the selection of material for the portfolio can overcome their reluctance to share work. Consider setting up a system whereby, at the end of each week, learners identify a piece they are most proud of and generate a copy for their portfolio. This system has a number of benefits. Learning how to use the photocopier is valuable in itself, but looking back critically over one’s work and making decisions as to which piece represents the best progress is an important step in becoming a thoughtful, selfaware learner. Learner–Teacher Conferences Self-assessment occurs in a number of contexts, and the selection of the best piece to go in the portfolio is part of this process. However, learners also need to set themselves goals and decide if they are making acceptable progress toward those goals. Learner–teacher conferences provide an opportunity to encourage learners into a pattern of true self-assessment. Conferencing with individual learners is time consuming, but it is a valuable part of the assessment process. Ideally the conference will be held outside of class time when there is little chance of being interrupted. This allows you to focus on individual learners and affords learners the privacy to share concerns. In addition to the learner portfolio, attendance records, and other tracking tools, there should be a formal learner self-assessment sheet. If the learner has adequate language, the self-assessment sheet can be completed prior to the conference; otherwise, it can be approached jointly with you during the conference. It is very helpful to match what you have gathered from careful observation and scrutiny of written samples with the learner’s own assessment of progress. For the self-assessment task, identify eight to ten competencies that might be expected of learners at their level and invite them to indicate, xxxxxxxxx

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using tick marks, whether they find each task easy, OK in certain circumstances, or difficult (see Figure 10.3). Benchmarks such as those referenced in Appendix B: Useful Resources can be helpful as a guide to the selection of appropriate competencies, though the language will need considerable adjustment.

Figure 10.3

The tasks or competencies on this sheet should largely be familiar ones that are often attempted in class, and they will stay the same across a number of repetitions of the self-assessment. This allows the learner to become more confident with the language of the sheet, to make comparisons of various sheets across time, and to recognize progress as it occurs. The example above has just three gradations for the learner to choose from, but of course the five-point scale can also be employed. Ideally, the sheet will allow the learner to identify some areas of 146 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

competence and some areas that are currently being addressed. However, there should also be some competencies that you plan to address in future classes to give the learner something to work toward. In the conference, before moving to the specifics of the portfolio or self-assessment sheet, begin with some general questions about how well the learner is getting along. For example, “Is all well at home? Have you used your English outside the classroom? Have you read or written anything outside the classroom? Are there things you particularly want to learn?” The bulk of the conference will be taken up by a discussion of the selfassessment sheet and the portfolio. Go through the items with the learner, and indicate where you agree with her or his assessment. Choose pieces from the portfolio that demonstrate growth, and ask the learner to comment on noticeable changes. Point out areas where you see growth that perhaps the learner has missed. The learner may have noticed that written pieces are longer, but you may notice an increase in vocabulary or in the complexity of the sentence structure. Share your observations of classroom behavior, and suggest strategies that you think might prove helpful. After praising strengths, try to identify the learner’s weakest areas, so that together you can decide what the learner will focus on in the coming weeks. Write down your agreement on the self-assessment sheet under “Recommendations.” Make sure you provide a last chance for questions before completing the conference. Teacher-Maintained Records Because the portfolios are available for learners to access as and when they like, it can be difficult to maintain the confidentiality that learners would normally expect if you include personal information or critical observations. Consequently, many teachers also maintain a set of their own records, which are shared with individual learners during the student conferences. The components often include observation notes, attendance and health records, formal test records if available, and notes on any personal issues of significance, such as health issues. What kinds of records are needed? In addition to such common information as records of attendance, you need information on three key areas: what you taught, what you observed, and what kind of work learners produced. RECORDING YOUR TEACHING

Tracking what you teach usually falls into two categories: first, what you planned to teach, and second, what actually happened. Most teachers are quite good about making lesson plans, but all too often there Ongoing Assessment 147

seems to be no time to record what actually happened. Which activity was interrupted by the fire alarm? Which seemed to become very boring after five minutes and had to be abandoned? What did we do that worked so well we let it run for much longer than planned, and what did we throw out to make room? If you are responsive to the needs of your learners, you are likely to discover that your plans become significantly modified in the course of delivery. As noted in Chapter Nine, it is always a good idea to have a section of your lesson plans reserved for after-the-fact comments. Tracking what you taught and how well it seemed to work gives you a sense of what is perhaps being neglected, which activities seem to maintain learner attention, and so on. In addition, looking critically at your lesson plans helps you realize the limitations of your own teaching. Do you have a tendency to do the same few activities over and over again? Is each day the same as the one before it? Do you over-rely on the textbook? Do you have great plans for group work that never seem to happen? Do you get hung up on the grammar aspects of English and forget the real-life focus? Doing your own self-assessment and looking at your lesson records with a critical eye can do a lot to improve your teaching. OBSERVATION

As teachers, we spend a lot of time observing learners. After settling everybody down to work, we typically watch the class for some minutes to ensure all is going smoothly before we begin to work with individual students. We look up every few minutes to see that all is well or to identify any problems. However, we do not always record what we see. When we are using observation as part of continuous assessment, we need to both focus our observations and record them. Each student in the class should be observed regularly, and this means that you need to set up a schedule to ensure that certain learners are not forgotten. Depending on the length of the class, you may feel that you can focus on three learners each day. If you have fifteen learners in the group, then this may seem ideal, as in theory everyone will be observed each week. In practice, however, there are certain days when you may be launching new activities and have no attention to spare. There are other days when absenteeism is likely to be more common, or days when prayer requirements lead to frequent departures from the classroom. You can get around this by planning a little in advance and selecting maybe three days a week for observation, working down the class list to ensure no one is forgotten, and jotting down the names of focal learners in your lesson plan. Another simple way to organize 148 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

equal attention is to have a set of cards with the learners’ names on them. At the beginning of each day, take the top three name cards and lay them out on your desk. This will serve to remind you not only to observe but also on which learners you should focus. At the end of the day, put the cards at the bottom of the pile, except of course the card for anyone who failed to attend. After selecting the focal learners, some teachers like to watch everything that a learner does for a period of perhaps five minutes, taking notes while observing. Others prefer to do quick, periodic checks on student progress throughout the lesson, making notes at the end of the day. The latter approach allows for observation of the learners during a range of activities, which is probably more informative so long as notes are not forgotten. The specifics of what you are looking for will vary according to the level of the learners, but essentially you are looking for information in the areas of academic progress, strategic competence, and social interaction. Academic progress

• How quickly does the learner settle down to work? C How successful is the learner in completing the assigned task? • How long does it take the learner to complete the assigned task? • Does the learner write material with confidence? Are there lots of erasures, crossed-out words, or false starts? • What does the finished product look like? Does it reflect generic conventions of layout? • Does the learner volunteer to attempt new activities? Does she or he volunteer to help others? Will the learner stand up in front of the class and speak or write on the board? Strategic competence

• What strategies do you see the learner using? Dictionary? Word chart? Copying from others? Verbalizing the language orally? Looking back through the notebook? • What happens when the learner is faced by something new or difficult? Does she or he ask for assistance or sit inactively? Is help sought from you or other learners? Which language does the learner use to seek help? Does she or he have a particular “go-to” person in the class? • Does the learner maintain a file of work, or are worksheets abandoned after class is over?

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Social interaction

• What happens at break time? Does the learner interact with other learners? Does she or he have a leader or a follower role? • What is the learner’s attitude? How enthusiastic is she or he? • How does the learner handle group or pair work? Does she or he contribute much? You will not encounter all of these situations every time you observe a learner. But if you observe a range of activities on different days of the week and at different times of the day, you will gather more information than if you always watch the same learner from 10:00 a.m. to 10:05 a.m. every Tuesday. It is also helpful to look back over previous observations to see what kind of information was gathered and what was omitted, so that you know in which area to focus your observation. It is important to maintain your observation notes in a manner that allows you to see patterns that may be emerging from the data you are gathering. Is a learner becoming increasingly confident for example, or does the evidence suggest she or he is apparently more discouraged? It is not necessary to write up long narratives of observation. In fact, if you attempt to do so, it will probably lead you to give up the observation altogether as the time pressure will be too much. Instead, try to record your information on a basic checklist based on the questions above. BENCHMARKS

Benchmarks are descriptors of the typical stages of progress demonstrated by learners and are usually based on listing particular competencies in different skill areas. For ESL literacy learners, these competencies might be grouped into language competencies, literacy competencies, numeracy competencies, and strategic competencies. Within these competencies, the various tasks and abilities are carefully organized to reflect the patterns and sequence of acquisition as reflected by most learners. Benchmarks offer a competency-based spectrum on which to locate a student, allowing you to express the learner’s abilities in terms of what can be successfully achieved. If you place a learner at a particular point, you are indicating that the learner can successfully perform all of the competencies (in that area) that fall into the earlier stages. By looking ahead at the next set of competencies, you can identify the tasks and strategies that are likely to be achievable in the near future. In this way, benchmarks can play a useful role in supporting your planning, even though they are not designed as curriculum. It needs to be recognized, however, that benchmarks, no matter how carefully they are designed, are based on “typical” students, when there 150 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

is really no such thing. Prior knowledge and personal interest will affect the sequence of learning, and it would be naive to assume that all learners in a group will progress through the sequence in lock-step fashion. It is also very unlikely that a particular learner will neatly sit on level x, knowing everything that has gone before and nothing that is upcoming. Most learners will be placed at a slightly different level for reading than for writing. Or they will be able to do most of the tasks listed for one level but not all, while simultaneously having control of a few competencies defined as being at a higher level. This sort of “rough placement” is very common, and it does not invalidate what the benchmarks can offer. There are a number of internationally used benchmark frameworks for description of language competence, including the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (CEFR), the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, and the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB). These benchmark frameworks address the full range of language-learning competence in varying degrees of detail. Most useful for the ESL literacy teacher (of any nationality) is the Canadian Language Benchmarks 2000: ESL for Literacy Learners, a document produced by the Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks to focus specifically on the needs of literacylevel learners. The ESL Literacy Benchmarks, as they are commonly known, assist teachers both “to determine the developmental level of their learners” and also to “design appropriate teaching/learning activities” (Johansson et al., 2001, p. iv). The various competencies are described with plenty of examples, making it easy to place your learners appropriately. Sample real-life tasks are included, as well as suggested classroom activities. The Canadian Language Benchmarks can be downloaded free from the Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks website (see Appendix B: Useful Resources) in portable document format (PDF). A printout of the appropriate pages for each of your learners offers an effective method to track progress in a simple way that every learner can understand. Subsequent to the conference with the learner, highlight all the competencies she or he can currently perform. Note the date in the margin and highlight with the same color. On subsequent reviews, use a differently colored highlighter to mark the newly acquired competencies and mark the date again. By the end of the academic year, the learner should be able to see clearly the progress made, and be able to join with you in determining the future focus for learning.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom: Sample Lesson Sequences

As I have said earlier, there is no one perfect method for teaching ESL literacy learners. All the various methods I have discussed have value, and all offer strategies that are useful to at least some learners. What is needed now, therefore, is to consider ways in which these approaches can be combined in the classroom. Pulling the different methods together produces new problems for the teacher. How should the methods be combined? How long should be spent on one activity? What makes one approach better than another for a particular topic or a particular class? The sample lessons that follow illustrate ways in which the various methods can be put to use in the classroom.

Sample Lesson Sequence One: A Workplace ESL Class Type of class A group of fourteen women are in an “ESL in the

workplace” class. The women all work in a garment factory and attend English classes during their lunch hour. They are mostly of Italian and Portuguese background, with an average education level of Grades Four to Five. Their ages range from twenty-two to fifty-four. Literacy level The women are familiar with the alphabet, but

have little reading ability in either their first language or English. They never use English in writing and avoid reading whenever possible.

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Language level Most of the women can express themselves orally, although with many mistakes. Very few have had any formal English teaching prior to joining this workplace class, but picked up their English on the job.

This workplace class began by focusing initially on oral language. It soon became apparent to Jane, the teacher, that the learners wanted to learn to read and write. Jane has, therefore, been working with them in this area, and has reached the point where they recognize a number of sight words and will guess at new words, usually on the basis of the initial letter plus context. The lesson begins with informal greetings and chat as the learners arrive individually and unpack their lunches. Because class is held during the lunch hour, Jane has learned to plan around the need to let the workers eat their meal. The lunch hour slot also means that the class is only about fifty minutes long, so Jane often doesn’t have time to develop ideas as fully as she would like. She spends a lot of time reviewing work done hurriedly on earlier occasions. Jane’s basic plan for the present lesson is to develop a Language Experience Approach (LEA) story to be used for both reading and writing practice. The focus for today will be on meaning-based approaches, as learners generate the language for the story and attempt to read it back. In the next class, Jane will use the story again to work on the learners’ decoding skills, introducing word families and the use of final consonants as a decoding clue. As she struggles to open her lunch box, one woman complains that her fingers are sore, which she says is a result of sewing heavy denim cloth rather than the cord that she usually works with. The other women agree, and point out other problems they encounter with the heavier cloth. The noise level in the room rises as they share their frustrations, sometimes in English but increasingly in Portuguese. Jane realizes that this shared experience is an excellent potential topic for an LEA story and decides to encourage the discussion, so long as it is done in English. A few cries of “Hey! English, English!” cause shamefaced laughter, and the women settle down to a more serious discussion. They explain that they find the denim slower to work with, and consequently do not make as much money on piecework even though the rates have supposedly been adjusted to reflect the more difficult cloth. Jane uses the discussion as an opportunity for oral rehearsal, the prewriting stage that allows learners to review possible vocabulary and syntax relevant to the topic. Sometimes when doing an LEA story, Jane has to work hard to elicit comments from the learners, but today it seems that everybody has 154 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

something to say. When the subject has been thoroughly talked over, Jane asks the women to say things she can write down on a flip chart. Some problems become apparent immediately. Many of the volunteered sentences are phrased in the first person. “I go more slow on denim.” “My fingers, they get very sore.” “I” and “my” are not volunteered by the same person. Jane is concerned that the first-person pronouns will cause confusion when the sentences are read back. She handles the problem by writing Gianna says, “My fingers, they get very sore.” Many fragments are volunteered. “Too hard.” “Denim slow.” Jane doesn’t change the words, but she does try to guide the fragments into a meaningful context by saying, “OK, let’s make this first part about what the denim feels like, and the second part about the way it slows you down. Anna, what did you say about the way the denim feels?” Finally the class comes up with this reading text: Today we sew denim not cord. Denim is very stiff. Too hard. Gianna says, “I no like denim. My fingers, they get very sore. The denim, it go very slow through the machine. It hard to make rate on denim.” Anna says, “Today I break two needle.” “Janina, she make hundred thirty percent on cord, but denim she no make hundred percent.”

In writing out the story, Jane has corrected the obvious pronunciation errors in the speech; for example, “unnerd tirty percent” is written hundred thirty percent. Jane has not corrected the grammar, although she has made a mental note of the regular errors, such as the use of a noun and a pronoun for sentence subjects (“The denim, it....” and “My fingers, they....”) and the problem with tenses and subject–verb agreement. She may work on these in later lessons, but for now her focus is on reading and writing. As Jane wrote each sentence on the flip chart, she read it back to the class. “Anna says, ‘Today I break two needle.’ Is that right, Anna? Is that what you wanted to say?” One of the other learners calls out here, “Two needles. It should be two needles.” Jane asks Anna, “Do you want me to change it?” Anna looks puzzled and repeats, “Today I break two needle.” Jane leaves it as it is. When the story is complete, Jane reads it back to the class twice, running her finger smoothly below the words as she does so. Everyone remembers, “Today I break two needle,” and joins in on that part. Some learners remember most of the text. Jane asks the class what they would like the story to be called, and they agree to call it simply “Denim.” She Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 155

asks if anyone can find the word denim in the story, and a volunteer jumps up, sandwich in hand, to point it out. One of the learners who has finished eating volunteers to copy the word onto the top of the sheet as a title. Jane has the whole class read the story chorally, initially with her strong-voiced support, then gradually fading out her voice as the learners gain more confidence. Jane then asks for volunteers to read aloud parts of the story. The more confident learners volunteer first, while the others wait to hear the material one more time to check that they have it right before they attempt it. A couple of learners do not volunteer anything. Jane asks them if they can find particular words, choosing words like fingers, in which the initial consonant is a strong clue. By now, Jane is nearly out of time. She knows that the learners will be sitting at their machines all afternoon and that the opportunity for some movement will be welcome, so she uses the last few moments for a game that gets them out of their seats. After dividing the class into pairs, Jane holds up a card with a word on it, and each pair sends one person to the flip chart to point out the location in the original text. Soon all the learners are on their feet, ready to race to the chart as the words are called. There is some jostling but much laughter ensues, and there is a noticeable lightening of the mood by the time the workers leave the classroom. At the next class, Jane has the story on display as the workers drift in. She suggests that those who arrive early might like to copy the story in their notebooks. When everyone has gathered, Jane begins by reviewing the story with the group, encouraging the class members to join in as she reads it aloud. One learner is present who missed the last class, so Jane pays special attention to make sure the young woman understands what the story is about. The class reads the story chorally, at first with Jane’s help, then later on their own. Jane then marks alternate sentences in the text with a yellow highlighter. One half of the class reads the yellow portion, and the other half reads the white portion. They then switch roles. By this time, the text has been read aloud in one form or another at least half a dozen times, and even the least confident learners are beginning to remember whole sentences. Jane copies the sentence My fingers, they get very sore onto another sheet of a flip chart and lays the sheet on the table. She also copies each word of the sentence onto a separate index card. She gives one card each to six of the learners and asks them to lay the cards over the appropriate word on the flip chart page. All the learners are given an opportunity to match the words in this way, reading the sentence aloud as they do so. Jane then takes away the sheet with the master sentence and asks the learners to arrange the cards so as to make the sentence.

156 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

When the learners can do this easily, she holds up individual word cards and asks, “What word is this?” She then arranges the sentence with one card face down (see Figure 11.1) and asks the learners what that word should be.

Figure 11.1

Jane repeats this process a number of times, focusing the learners’ attention on different words in the sentence. When she comes to the word get, she asks the learners to close their eyes and think about how it should be spelled before she turns the card face up. After the learners have seen the card and checked their spelling, she turns it face down again and asks them to try and write the word. Deciding to do some work with word families, based on get, Jane shows learners how the ending of get, -et, can be used with other initial letters to make new words. The class covers let, met, pet, and wet, which are in their oral vocabulary. Jane does not attempt to teach bet and set, because these words would involve too much explanation. Instead, Jane points out that the words covered are only some of the ones following the pattern. She writes -et on the board along with the letters w, p, m, and l, and asks learners to make up combinations for others to read. The learners write down these words. Jane then returns to the sentence made up with cards and reads it aloud again. Because she is going to use this sentence as the basis for making a number of other sentences, she decides that it is necessary to correct the grammar. Without going into detailed grammatical explanations, she says simply, “Let’s make the sentence shorter. We don’t need they. Let’s take it out. What does the sentence say now?” After the learners have read the new sentence, she asks, “Do you ever get sore anywhere else?” Various aches and pains are described and she writes out cards for legs, feet, hands, and eyes. The learners then arrange one of these new cards into the sentence to produce My legs get very sore, and so on. Some of the learners have problems with the new words, so Jane draws scribble sketches of the appropriate body part on the back of the card. Jane writes the full sentence on the board, then erases the word fingers and invites learners to come up and write in an alternative. After everyone has had a turn to write (mostly copying words off the cards), xxxxxxxx Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 157

Jane asks for volunteers to write without a reference template. Learners happily call out to help one another. One learner writes in the word back, which is of course a singular noun, leading to a mismatch between the noun and the verb: My back get very sore. Jane is conscious that this is exactly how her learners talk, despite her previous efforts to teach thirdperson singular. Like most language teachers, Jane winces at leaving this uncorrected, but in such a short class she has little time for an unanticipated additional activity on subject–verb agreement. As the learners begin copying the sentences into their notebooks, she compromises by adding in the missing letter quickly. Unlike the LEA story where her focus was on reading, Jane is now trying to teach a syntax pattern, so she feels the correct exemplar is important. All the learners write the sentence into their notebooks, some copying carefully, others working mostly from memory. Jane is conscious that, while very useful, syntax work can be dull, so she plans something lively for the remainder of the class to maintain interest. She uses a beanbag toss to support the new vocabulary of body parts. In the first round, one person tosses the beanbag while calling out the name of a body part. The person who catches it points to the appropriate part on her own body. When all the vocabulary has been reviewed orally, and this seems easy for the class, Jane substitutes written word cards for the recipient to respond to. The workers enjoy the opportunity to stretch and move, and the first part of the game goes well with the learners calling out body parts and pointing. The word-card activity is less successful because, when individual learners hold a card, most of the others cannot see the word on it and cannot tell if the body part to which a learner is pointing is accurate. Consequently, they are left out of the game. Jane changes things slightly by writing the words on the flip chart and pointing to a chosen word for each toss. In a future class, she can revisit this game in a more challenging format by asking people to select the appropriate word card from a pool of body-part cards, or even asking them to write the necessary words on the board. In a spontaneous moment, Jane decides to wrap up the day by singing the old nursery rhyme on body parts, performing it with the necessary actions. In a rather wobbly voice, she sings: Head and shoulders, knees and toes, Knees and toes, knees and toes, Head and shoulders, knees and toes, Eyes, ears, mouth, and nose! Jane deliberately exaggerates her difficulty in reaching down to her toes, making the class laugh. Some of the women who have children are 158 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

familiar with the little song, and join in on certain parts. Jane sings it once more slowly, encouraging everyone to stretch with her even if they don’t know the words well enough to join in. Realizing that this is a great way to build a little physical movement into the class before everyone heads back to work, she promises to sing it with them again soon. The class heads back to work. With such short classes, Jane still has many useful activities she can do related to the LEA story. For the third class, Jane types out the LEA story and makes copies for the class. She also makes another version that has blanks in it (see Figure 11.2).

Figure 11.2

Jane begins the next lesson by distributing copies of the complete LEA text. She asks the learners to spend five minutes with the story, underlining any words they can read. Some learners underline nearly all the story. Others recognize the names, a few words like denim, and the sentence they worked on in the last session. At the end of the class, Jane will ask them to go through the sheet again, so that they can see their progress. The learners will keep these copies of the stories in a file, and the underlining—or lack of it—will also demonstrate their long-term progress when they review the stories in a few months. After learners have had a chance to refresh their memories with the full text, Jane asks the learners to put it away and look at the version with the blanks. Working through this orally, she asks learners to suggest words that might fill the gaps. Not all the suggestions are for words that were in the original, but so long as they make sense Jane accepts them. For example, one learner suggests that it’s hard to make money on Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 159

denim, rather than the rate or quota that was in the original text. As learners suggest words that could fill the blanks, Jane writes them on the board. She then asks learners to complete the story in writing. Most of the learners simply fill in the blanks on their copies, using the pool of words on the board for spelling information. Two of the more advanced learners copy the entire story into their notebooks. Using the modified sentence It’s hard to make money on denim, Jane works with substitutions for various words. The learners come up with “It’s easy to make money on cord,” “It’s hard to make time on denim,” and so on. All these sentences are written on the board, showing the pattern. Learners come up to the board and wipe out certain words, writing in the substitutions suggested by other students—with Jane’s help on spelling, if necessary. Some confusion arises over e, a, and i, as the learners mix up the names of these letters. Jane goes over them one more time. She then asks the learners to look closely at the word make, close their eyes, and see if they can imagine the letters in the word. The students try to write the word and then look back at the board to check. Jane demonstrates how word families can be made by changing the end of a word, too, and asks them to listen for the may sound in make, male, made, and mate. She writes ma_e on the board and the letters k, d, t, and l. Working orally, she asks the learners what words will be made if she adds each of the different letters. Some queries arise over the meaning of some of the words, and Jane sidetracks a little to put some of the words in context, with examples such as “I usually make one hundred and thirty percent. Last week I made only one hundred percent.” “My mate is a male,” produces laughter when explained. More usefully, Jane demonstrates the way the word male is used on preprinted forms, and draws a quick sketch on the board (see Figure 11.3).

Figure 11.3

Coming back to the main topic of the lesson, Jane decides to do some work on numbers, using the sentence I make 130% on cord as a base. The women are familiar with the percentage system, as this determines their wages and is part of the incentive scheme at the factory. All the women volunteer their current percentage rates, and they build up a group of sentences on the board, working on quick recognition of the numbers. 160 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

The learners write their own sentences in their notebooks. Finally, Jane asks them to return to the original copy of the story and underline any extra material that they can now read. By this point, most of the learners are underlining at least half of the story. Jane is aware that not all these words could be read out of context, but is pleased with the learners’ confidence, and knows that many of the same words will crop up in subsequent stories for reinforcement.

Sample Lesson Sequence Two: An Evening Community Class Type of class There are nineteen learners in this evening class,

twelve men and seven women. Represented countries include Iraq, Eritrea, Italy, Greece, Guatemala, and China. Most of the people are in their thirties or forties. Literacy level Most of the learners are at the semiliterate stage.

They know the alphabet and understand that the symbols represent specific sounds. However, they use written English only in very limited circumstances, such as for certain tasks at work. Language level Oral-language levels are very mixed in this class. Some learners are quite fluent; others have a hard time making themselves understood.

This evening class is identified as a general ESL class. David, the teacher, has found that the variety of levels makes it difficult to do many activities that involve the class as a whole, and he relies on group work a great deal to keep all the learners working at a suitable level. For the present sequence of lessons, David wants to cover basic banking procedures. He begins the first lesson with a humorous account of wasting his lunch hour waiting in a bank line-up. Gradually the learners join in and talk about their own problems in using banks. One Italian learner comments that his strategy is simply to explain verbally to the teller what he wants and let her fill in all the forms. Other class members say that they let members of their family do the banking for them, or ask to be paid in cash. Although a few class members routinely withdraw cash from automated bank machines, no one has enough confidence with print to attempt online banking or to use automated tellers for more complex tasks, such as paying bills. David would like to help his students work with these technologies but, because the screen layouts will vary so much from bank to bank, Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 161

he does not think it is a realistic place to start. Instead, he decides to begin with checks and the very simple forms used for deposit and withdrawal. In part, he is actually trying to provide some useful content information, since knowing how to use these forms will help learners enter a bank with greater confidence and perhaps open an account. However, he is even more interested in helping learners develop confidence in completing forms, since so many bureaucratic transactions require skill in this area. The simple banking forms will provide an excellent introduction to the topic. David tells the class that they are going to learn how to write checks. After making sure that everyone knows exactly what checks are used for, he holds up a check and asks the class what information they think a check will have to include. He wants to activate their knowledge and encourage them to come to print with expectations. In previous lessons with the class, David has made the point that most successful pieces of written communication answer the questions Who, What, When, Where, and sometimes Why. When the class has trouble deciding what should appear on the check, he reminds them of those keywords, and the class soon comes up with the following: Who gets the money? What (how much) do they get? When is the money paid? Where will they get the money from? Why, the class decides, is not relevant to this particular piece of writing. One learner volunteers that there is a second Who in this case—who pays the money? The list of crucial information goes up on the board as who the check is paid to, the date, place, how much, and signature. With this framework to guide their expectations, David projects a large image of a blank check (see Figure 11.4).

Figure 11.4 162 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

David begins by asking the class if they can identify where any of the items of information should go. The dollar sign tips off most of the learners as the space for How much? “How about the date?” asks David, guiding the class’s attention to the boxes in the corner. David lets the learners do most of the work, fitting their expectations of the text to the actual sample in front of them. When they have discovered that they can in fact make a fair amount of sense of it, he steps in to clarify certain points, such as the necessity for writing the amount in both words and numbers. He then writes sample entries on the check, choosing the simple amount of ten dollars for this initial example. He gives out blank copies for the learners to fill in themselves, asking them to copy his sample. For the more advanced learners, David hands out a sheet of instructions for writing further checks (see Figure 11.5).

Figure 11.5

While the more advanced learners are working on this exercise and checking one another’s work, David gathers the other learners in a group and works with them on the assignment, using the projected image for reference. One of the problems David expects soon arises. Very few of the learners know how to spell out the numbers. To provide practice in writing numbers, David has prepared a bingo game (see Figure 11.6, overleaf), with laminated cards that can be written on in dry-erase marker and wiped clean after use. He brings the class together to play this game in pairs, with the more advanced learners paired with beginning students. When David calls out a number, the learners have to write the number in words in the appropriate square. Correct spellings are provided at the side of the card. Winners are the first pair of learners to complete a row correctly. After playing this game with the whole class for ten minutes, David pulls out the stronger learners and lets the others continue the game on their own. For the more advanced learners, David sets up an activity using sale catalogs. Learners work in pairs, selecting items from the catalog, writing checks for their purchases, and handing the checks to their partners for scrutiny. To improve the learners’ skimming and scanning skills, David incorporates into this activity a role-play in which one partner is Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 163

Figure 11.6

a customer wanting, for example, a red dress, size ten. The other partner must search the catalog for an appropriate item and announce the price. By the time this activity is running smoothly, the lower-level learners are becoming restless at bingo, and David moves them on to a simplified version of what the other learners are doing. He gives them cards, each of which shows an item, its price, and the amount spelled out in words. They write out checks on the basis of the information on these cards. For the final ten minutes of the lesson, David works again with the class as a whole, practicing orally the kind of language that is involved in writing a check. In the next class, David wants to cover withdrawal and deposit slips. He deals with withdrawal slips first, explaining them as being like checks paying cash to oneself. He follows a procedure similar to the one used in introducing checks, calling on learners to predict what information is likely to be required. David points out that whereas checks may be personalized and preprinted with the person’s account number, withdrawal slips are the same for everyone who walks into the bank, and therefore, need to have a specific account identified. He encourages the learners to always think about what can be expected in a piece of writing, and to look for those elements rather than dive straight into a welter of new words. David points out the importance of finding keywords—in this case, the boldface label WITHDRAWAL, printed at the bottom of the form. He gives groups of learners a selection of forms from various banks, asking them to pull out all the withdrawal slips. Then he asks learners to compare the forms from different banks to see 164 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

if the forms follow the same format. Some minor changes in layout are noticed, but the learners have little difficulty in recognizing which spaces are intended for date, signature, amount, and so on. David asks everyone to make out a slip to withdraw fifty dollars. David then breaks up the class, distributing some deposit slips to the more advanced learners with instructions to see what they can make of them, using the strategy of prediction and confirmation. With the other learners, he checks the withdrawal slips they have completed and asks them to transfer the same information onto a slip for a different bank. This provides handwriting practice as well as experience with different formats. David gives them a task of doing two more slips for different amounts and sets them up with partners to compare the finished products. Then he goes back to the more advanced learners to see how much sense they have made of the deposit slips. They talk as a group about how the slips can be used for simple deposits or for the more complex transaction of depositing checks and taking part of the funds in cash. Letting one of the learners work as scribe, David guides the group through the completion of a deposit slip. He then gives them a batch of the checks they completed in the last class and asks them to fill out a deposit slip for each amount, while he checks on the other learners. Spelling out the numbers is still a problem for many of the learners, and David decides that this needs more work. Because context is not much help in working out exactly which number is referred to, David approaches the words on a straight decoding basis. He decides to get the learners reading the various words first, before writing them. He prints the spelled-out form of the numbers one to ten on index cards and gives them to the beginning group to put in numerical order. For the more advanced group, he puts a variety of random numbers between one and one hundred on cards, and asks learners to sort the cards into numerical order. Once this is done, he tells learners in each group to choose a card and hold it up for the others to identify. When students hesitate, he suggests that they look at the initial letter; for example, “It begins with an f. What can it be?” David then writes the numbers on the board, as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

one two three four five six seven eight nine ten

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

eleven twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen

20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

twenty thirty forty fifty sixty seventy eighty ninety one hundred

Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 165

Although David is trying to demonstrate the patterns by which numbers are formulated, there are some inconsistencies, of course. Eleven and twelve do not follow the pattern of the “teen” numbers. Four drops its u when it becomes forty. Nonetheless, there are major patterns that are well demonstrated in this chart, and David draws the learners’ attention to those patterns, focusing particularly on the -teen and -ty endings as in sixteen and sixty. Learners start to copy the chart in their notebooks while David is talking, and he gives them time to finish. Then he sets up an exercise in which learners are given the number form and have to complete the appropriate written form. Early examples are quite simple and can be done by all learners (for example, 6 si_). Gradually, the examples increase in difficulty to keep the more advanced learners challenged (for example, 200 t__ h______). The final examples give almost no help (for example, 682 ___ _______ and ______-___). The class completes as many of these as they can in about fifteen minutes. Some learners ask if they can take the sheet home and finish it, using the chart as a guide. David then brings the class back to work that is focused more on meaning. He displays a short, written account of the bank story he had told them in the last class (see Figure 11.7). He has built into the story many of the words they have met in their work on checks and bank slips, such as pay, date, deposit, and so on, to see if they can recognize these words in a different context.

Figure 11.7

David reminds the class about the incident, retelling the story for one student who was absent during the last class. He gives the learners a few minutes (quietly) with the story, to see if there are any parts they recognize, before he reads it aloud for them. Then he reads it aloud twice, sliding his finger under the words as he says them. He asks members of the class to volunteer if they can read any of the parts. As each part is deciphered, David underlines it, and reads the sentence aloud, periodically asking “What have we got so far?” and reading out xxxxxxx 166 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

the underlined parts. Finally, he reads the entire story aloud one more time. Then he takes additional copies of the story, gets out scissors, and cuts two copies into sentence strips. He gives each half of the class one set of strips and asks them to reconstruct the story. One group decides to do this by having everyone read their line aloud. The other group works by lining up the strips in order, referring back to the original story. This brings the second lesson to a close, but David realizes that the less advanced group never had a chance to work on deposit slips. He decides that in the next lesson he will use a buddy system, getting the learners who have filled out deposit slips to explain the procedure to the others.

Sample Lesson Sequence Three: An Adult Day-School Class Type of class A group of eighteen learners is in a pre-ESL class

focusing largely on literacy. The learners attend classes every day for five hours. Many of the learners are refugees from Somalia and Eritrea. Others come from Southeast Asia and Central America. There are ten male and eight female students, and ages range from eighteen to fifty-four. Literacy level All the learners are at a very basic level in terms of

English language literacy. Some are semiliterate in their own language; one is fully literate in Chinese. At least five have no literacy skills in any language. Language level Most of the learners speak no more than a few words of English. Three class members have some basic oral skills.

Ian, the teacher, has been working with this group of learners for only a few days, one day of which was largely taken up with registration procedures. He has done some work on letter and number recognition, but has concentrated mostly on using oral work to set up a relaxed atmosphere in the class, which he considers particularly important in view of the refugee background and recent arrival of all these learners. In this lesson, Ian wants to consolidate the learners’ knowledge of numbers and help them apply that knowledge to money. He also wants to introduce the learners to some of the teaching methods he will be using regularly, particularly Total Physical Response (TPR) and interview questionnaires. Although most of the learners do not speak enough English to chat in the normal sense, Ian begins the class by greeting each learner individually as the class members drift in. He compliments them on a new piece of clothing or jokes about their expressions, accompanying his remarks xxxxxxxxx Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 167

with gestures and actions that clarify his meaning. Although many of the learners are baffled by his actual words, all appreciate the interest he shows in them and respond with grins and greetings. When all the learners have arrived, Ian holds up one of a set of large cards that he used in a previous lesson to teach numbers. Each card has a numeral and the appropriate number of dots on it (see Figure 11.8).

Figure 11.8

Ian holds up the different cards one at a time and asks the learners to call out the number, chorally at first, and individually later. Some of the learners come from countries that use Arabic numerals and others have cell phones. Because both these groups are familiar with Arabic numerals, they can concentrate on remembering the English words for them. A few learners can be heard reciting the entire sequence—“one, two, three, four,” and so on—to reach the desired number. Ian encourages learners to make quick responses to try and bypass this process. A few learners have difficulty with the numeral forms and are forced to count the dots before they can identify which number is required. At the end of the quick drill, therefore, Ian cuts the cards in half to separate the dots and numerals, and gives them to this group of learners to rematch and sequence (see Figure 11.9).

Figure 11.9

The learners complete this task in pairs, using a master sheet for reference initially, and then working from memory as they find the task becoming easier. Meanwhile, Ian gathers the rest of the class around him and pulls out a pack of playing cards, using the numbers from two to ten only. He cuts the pack randomly and asks the learner on his left to call out the number. Then he hands the pack to the learner who has just responded and indicates that he should cut them for his neighbor to identify. Once the learners understand what is required, Ian breaks up the class into small groups of four or five learners, gives each group a pack of cards, and sends them off to take turns cutting and asking one another. 168 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

Ian has deliberately chosen a task very similar to the one he was doing earlier, because he is using this activity to introduce the learners to what will be one of his basic teaching techniques; that is, gathering all the learners to watch a demonstration of how the small group should perform a task, and then splitting them up to perform the task themselves. Checking on how each group is handling the task, Ian finds that one group has in it a number of more fluent speakers who find the work very easy. He intervenes there, showing them how to hold two cards together to make a two-digit number for identification (see Figure 11.10).

Figure 11.10

Once he has seen that the activity is running smoothly, he returns to the pairs of learners who were matching numerals and dots to see how they are progressing. One pair is still making use of the master chart, and Ian decides that some practice in writing the numerals will help them remember the shapes. He distributes a worksheet, which provides an opportunity for both matching and writing (see Figure 11.11).

Figure 11.11 Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 169

When learners have completed the sheet, Ian brings the class together to stand in a circle around a pile of playing cards, with the cards lying face up on the floor. Because these learners are not accustomed to spending long hours in the classroom, Ian knows it is critically important not to spend too long on the same task. Instead, he tries hard to provide opportunities that incorporate physical activity and allow learners to get up and stretch. When the learners are gathered around the pile of cards on the floor, he chooses one person, saying, “Pablo, give me a five.” Pablo doesn’t understand, so Ian bends down, selects a card with the numeral 5 on it, puts it in Pablo’s hand, and then stretches out his hand repeating, “Give me a five.” The class soon understands the new phrase “Give me” and they all take turns, helped by some translation when they seem to be having difficulty. Ian has a number of large cards with this command written on them, followed by a numeral. He chooses one, shows it to the learners, and reads it aloud simultaneously, encouraging the learners to respond by picking the appropriate card from the pile. When he shows the next card (Give me a 4), he pauses before reading it aloud to allow the learners to work it out for themselves. Soon he is simply showing the cards without reading them aloud. In this first introduction to TPR, Ian is limiting the number of commands until he is sure that the learners are at ease with the method, initially introducing variety only with the change in numeral. Once it appears that the class is confident with this procedure, Ian feels that he can introduce one alternative command as a way of focusing the learners’ attention on the words, not simply the numbers on the card. He therefore writes up a few instruction cards: Take a 3, Take a 6, and so on. He adds an extra pack of cards to the pile on the floor so that there will be enough of each number for most of the learners to take one. Next, Ian introduces the new command, first orally, and then with the instruction cards. Soon the learners are scrambling to grab the appropriate number as Ian holds up the instruction cards. By having the learners display the cards face up, Ian can check visually that they have all chosen correctly. After a little while, Ian introduces one of the original instruction cards—Give me a 6 rather than Take a 6. Some of the learners don’t notice the change, provoking some good-natured laughter. Soon, however, the class sorts out the two sets of instructions, and Ian picks cards at random for a few minutes more. By now the class is ready for a change of activity, so Ian sets up an interview exercise. Each learner is given a class list headed by a single question that he or she must ask of all the other class members. In keeping with the focus on numbers, the question is What’s your telephone number? (see Figure 11.12).

170 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

Figure 11.12

The learners spend about fifteen minutes on this activity. They begin by finding their own name in the list and writing their telephone number in the space next to their name. They then walk around the class, finding out the name of any class members they don’t know and writing or copying the appropriate telephone numbers. Most of the learners cannot read the names of their classmates, but they get by with gestures, asking one another to point out their names. One student still does not recognize her own name, so Ian makes a point of checking that each learner has his or her own number correct. Not all the learners have cell phones or landlines, but all have an emergency contact number, be it that of a landlord, relative, or neighbor, which they have learned. Most of the learners really enjoy this opportunity to move around the room getting to know one another, and there is a fair amount of conversation in first languages. This doesn’t worry Ian. There are enough different language groups that all learners have to resort to English with at least half their classmates, and this provides ample language practice of the item in question. A couple of learners remain seated at first, so Ian encourages them to come along with him while he gets started on completing his own sheet. Once they have the idea, he leaves them to continue alone. He finds that a couple of learners are relying very heavily on translators, particularly one of a pair of sisters who is asking no questions for herself but simply copying from her sister. Ian, therefore, takes the less confident sister along with him and encourages her to ask the questions. Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 171

When the class members have had time to finish their sheets, they sit down again and check off the answers together. This brings the class to the lunch break, which Ian uses as an opportunity to introduce the use of numbers in expressing time, writing on the board Lunch 12:00–1:30, accompanied by drawings of the clock face. He will be covering time in more detail in later classes, but wants to make use of such opportunities to put it in a practical context first. After the lunch break, Ian uses the same physical response method that he used earlier, but changes the cards to read Give me 5 cents, Take 8 cents, and so on. Once again he introduces the commands orally first, familiarizing learners with the language before he introduces the written instructions. A pile of small change replaces the pack of playing cards. Most of the learners are already familiar with the new currency, so this session goes more rapidly than the morning session did. Soon Ian has the learners in small groups, writing their own instruction cards for other group members. At this point, Ian feels it is time for more oral work, so he joins one group, picks up a few coins, and asks “How much is this?” putting on a puzzled face to indicate the question and carefully counting his coins before announcing the answer. The learners soon understand the meaning of the new phrase, and after having them model it chorally and individually, he is able to leave them questioning one another while he conducts the same procedure with the other groups. For the last twenty-five minutes of the class, Ian takes the learners out for a walk along the street, asking them to identify the numbers on buildings, car license plates, and so on. This also provides the opportunity for some social interaction among the learners, and helps them get to know one another and feel at home in the class—one of Ian’s main objectives.

Sample Lesson Sequence Four: A Community Daytime Class Type of class This group of twelve women from a public housing

development meets two mornings a week. Many of the women have small children who attend the ESL preschool provided. The women come from a variety of countries. Ages range from seventeen to forty-five. Literacy level None of the learners has had more than a couple of

years of education. Some of them know the alphabet but not much more. Language level The women have only very basic English. A few learners can make themselves understood, but most of them never use English outside the classroom.

172 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

Kay, a volunteer teacher, has been working on a theme of food with her learners in recent classes, and has built up their oral vocabulary in this area. In the present class, she wants to do an LEA story and get the learners practicing some basic sentence patterns. Before the learners arrive, she hangs up on the walls some food pictures cut from magazines, all clearly labeled. The students drift into the room and look at the pictures, some of them trying out orally the words written underneath. She begins the discussion by asking the learners if they like the various foods shown in the pictures. This develops into an informal drill along the lines of “Do you like fish?” “Yes,” with the learners questioning one another at Kay’s direction. Kay then asks the women what they had for dinner the previous night. The more confident learners tend to answer first, providing a pattern for less confident ones to follow. When everyone has made some contribution, even if it is only to point to one of the pictures and repeat the word after Kay has read it, she tells the learners she is going to write down what they say and asks for volunteers. In an LEA story on such a topic, Kay knows that the sentence patterns are likely to be very repetitive, a factor that she hopes will be helpful as the learners have such limited literacy skills. She also wants to keep the story brief so that the learners will find it easy to remember. She hopes that their memory of the content will offset their lack of familiarity with the written symbols. Kay suspects that the first sentence she writes will probably act as a pattern for the rest of the passage, so she calls on one of the more fluent speakers first. With some help, the following sentence is volunteered: “Last night I eat beef and soup.” Not exactly the perfect sentence Kay had hoped to elicit, but a good enough place to start. Kay writes down on the flip chart My Lan says, “Last night I eat beef and soup” and reads it back to the class, sliding her finger under the words and checking with My Lan that she has written what My Lan intended. The next volunteer, Dominica, is a much less fluent speaker, who gets as far as “Last night …” before becoming stranded. Many of the learners offer help, but Dominica still can’t seem to express what she wants to say. Kay decides that if she cannot record Dominica’s own words anyway, she may as well provide the correct form, so she offers, “I had,” which the learner is happy to accept. Dominica goes on to complete the sentence as “Last night I had fish and rice.” Kay asks for one more volunteer and ends up with the story in Figure 11.13.

Figure 11.13

Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 173

Kay reads each sentence aloud as she writes it, and then reads the entire passage twice. As she hoped, there is a lot of repetition in the passage, which will help make it easy to remember. The words beef and soup are not known to some of the learners. Kay does a quick sketch of a cow on the board but has problems drawing soup, so she asks the more fluent students to translate. Once everyone understands what the text is about, Kay asks the learners to read along with her as she goes through the passage twice. Then she asks if anyone can find the phrase Last night. This is quickly done. Kay asks one of the quieter learners if she can find the phrase anywhere else in the passage—the first step in recognizing letter clusters, rather than relying on memory of the oral words. By picking out such phrases and asking for volunteers to locate them, Kay covers most of the text. When she then asks the class to read the passage aloud together, it is noticeable that the less fluent learners are much more confident than they were on the first try. Kay chooses the sentence Last night I had fish and rice as the basis for some pattern practice and writes each word on an index card, which she positions along the ledge below the board. She asks the learners to read the sentence aloud, chorally and individually, and then she begins covering one word at a time with a blank card, asking learners to fill in the missing word. She begins to substitute cards with different food items in the same sentence, using the food items in the story and the ones shown in the pictures on the wall to help with comprehension. At this point, Kay puts the learners into three groups of four and provides each group with the pattern sentence written on cards, which she shuffles for the group to sort into the correct order. Once this is going smoothly, she asks each learner to choose one of the food items shown in the wall pictures and to copy its name onto a blank card. These words can then be substituted in the sentence. She also provides cards on which the learners are to write their names, so that the card sentence can, for example, be amended to read Last night Yolanda had fish. After the learners have worked with the cards for about ten minutes, setting up new sentences and shuffling them for another group member to make sense of, Kay asks each group to write down two sentences each. Two people in the group will create the sentences, and two others will record them on the board with the help of the creators. Kay asks the scribes to use the board rather than paper, as there are bound to be errors in this first transcription attempt, and it is easier to make corrections on the board. After each group has read the six new sentences aloud, Kay moves her focus from reading to writing. Leaving the six sentences intact, she writes the original pattern sentence—Last night I had fish and rice—on a different section of the board. After reading the sentence aloud, she erases the word last and hands the marker over to a student to xxxxxxxxxxx 174 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

replace the missing word. In turn, each word of the sentence is erased and replaced. Kay has collected a number of grocery-store advertising flyers from which she has cut out illustrations and names of food items. Arranging the learners in pairs, Kay gives one partner a pile of pictures and the other the set of words to be matched with the pictures. Kay follows up this exercise with a sample worksheet, which reinforces the food vocabulary but also reviews the phrase Do you like...? covered earlier in the lesson (see Figure 11.14).

Figure 11.14

By the time this exercise is completed, only about ten minutes are left of class time. Kay uses this time to explain to the learners that in an upcoming class she plans to take them to a local supermarket. She would like to have some photographs taken of the trip to be used in later classes for a captioned photo story that the women can develop themselves. (She will use the photographs first of all to promote oral discussion, and then let the women select a sequence of pictures that they feel tell the story of the trip. The learners will work in pairs to devise captions for each photograph, if necessary dictating the captions to Kay and then copying them out themselves. The pictures and captions can be mounted on a sheet of cardboard to make a complete picture story.) Combining Various Approaches in the Classroom 175

Although Kay is quite competent with a camera, she wants the learners to be as actively involved as possible, so she asks for volunteers to do the photography. Two of the women agree to do this. Kay deliberately throws open to the women the choice of which supermarket to visit, and also the question of where they could stop for a cup of coffee nearby. Although much of the discussion of these details takes place in the first language, Kay is pleased with the learners’ participation and feels that they will enjoy the trip more for having done as much of the planning as possible themselves. In addition to the oral and written vocabulary that the trip will involve, Kay is hoping to use the visit as an introduction to basic map literacy. Accordingly, in her next class, she plans to have the learners map out their route. During the trip itself, she is hoping to have them mark where they find specific food items on a plan of the store. This will involve knowledge of aisle labels and food categories, which she also hopes to cover in the next lesson. As an introduction to this topic, she sets the class a homework task to be done before the next lesson. Each learner is to copy down at least two of the large, overhead aisle signs in her local supermarket and bring them to the next class, where the content of the signs can be used as part of a sorting and categorizing activity.

Key Points in Lesson Planning Each of the sample lessons outlined in this chapter reflects the specific needs of the learners described. It is, therefore, unlikely that any of these teaching sequences will be quite right for your particular class. However, by demonstrating some of the basic principles that effective teachers follow, I hope these examples will be useful to you. As you approach the task of planning and teaching a literacy class for English language learners, keep these important points in mind: • Your ultimate goal in teaching ELLs is always to enable them to function in the real world, not to do classroom exercises. Keep the activities real and grounded in life. • Learners must understand that there is always a meaning to print. Always begin with the meaning. • Remember that literacy skills are built on oral language. • Base your ongoing planning on what the learners have actually understood and learned, not on what you have taught. • Constant review does not mean constant repetition. Find different ways to present the material. Vary the pace. Vary the grouping pattern. Vary the skill area. Above all, remember that your learners are adults. Involve them in the decision making whenever you can. 176 Developing a Successful and Coherent Program

A Final Word

I began this book by commenting that while the presence of literacy students in the language-learning classroom was one of the greatest challenges for the second-language teacher, the presence of these learners also offered the potential for some of the most rewarding teaching experiences. Of course, all language teaching has the potential to be rewarding, but the majority of learners who move to English-speaking countries will develop some degree of oral competence even without ESL classes. Their English may be broken or accented, but they nonetheless eventually build the ability to understand and make themselves understood. They acquire spoken English, almost unconsciously, at work, on the street, or from the media. But none of these day-to-day interactions leads to the development of literacy skills. Literacy simply isn’t acquired in that way. Without a devoted literacy teacher, these learners will never learn to read and write. Identifying the right bus, checking the instructions on a prescription drug, making sense of a child’s report card—these things will always be impossible for them if they do not attend literacy classes. Without basic literacy skills, their lives in their new countries will always be reduced and constrained. Our role is an absolutely crucial one, therefore, and that is why it is so rewarding. This doesn’t mean that there are no challenges. As learners struggle to develop habits of learning, a new language, and a new literacy system—all while simultaneously attempting to support themselves and their families in a new land—they will inevitably falter. They will forget material between one class and the next. Their attendance may be erratic and their fatigue obvious. Their progress may seem painfully slow. When we see these patterns, it is easy to be discouraged and to fail to recognize A Final Word 177

that progress is being made. Too often we think of progress as being demonstrated in clearly identified chunks, of the type that show up on standardized test scores. We forget that much of what is being learned in literacy classes is less easily defined. It’s about such hard-to-measure things as reaching a greater understanding of how literacy is employed in particular situations, of recognizing letters in a wider range of typefaces, and of building increasing confidence in attempting to make sense of environmental print. Every time our learners come back to our classroom, they demonstrate their commitment to the process and their faith that the lessons are useful and relevant. We have to have faith, too. Literacy teachers have the ability to change people’s lives. It is an enormous responsibility, but also an enormous privilege. I wish you every success as you embrace this momentous task.

178 A Final Word

APPENDIX A

Useful Activities

The following are a group of varied activities, all of which work well in a literacy class for English language learners. When you have planned your curriculum and are looking for day-to-day activities that reinforce the material covered, it is hoped that these suggestions will give you ideas for alternative ways to approach a topic. It is important, of course, that you begin your planning with the broad methodological approaches outlined in Chapters Five, Six, and Seven, so that you offer the appropriate balance of comprehension and decoding. Within those approaches, however, you will find a need for shorter activities that allow you to review previously taught material in ways that maintain interest. Not all of the suggestions will be suitable for any particular class, but most of them are adaptable to different content areas and levels, and may stimulate your own ideas. These activities come from a variety of sources, and I am grateful to all the teachers who suggested them.

Sort and Match A number of useful activities are based on the principle of sorting and matching (such as matching vocabulary cards with the appropriate illustration). At a more difficult level, cards can be sorted and categorized (for example, sorting prescription labels according to patient name or recommended dosage). Typically in these tasks, the learner is manipulating cards rather than writing words, so the tasks can be performed with minimal writing skill. All tasks in this category provide good practice in sight-word recognition; most also help with scanning for significant information. Many offer the opportunity for Useful Activities 179

comprehension-based work if the items being sorted include real-life objects or pictures. a) Create two sets of cards: one set showing symbols and the other showing equivalent written instructions (see Figure A.1). Give the learner or group of learners the shuffled cards, and ask them to match each symbol with the appropriate written instruction.

Figure A.1

b) Collect labels from bottles and cans. Draw a simple chart on the board and write the generic names of the products at the top of the columns (see Figure A.2). Have learners identify the appropriate column for each label and copy the appropriate descriptor from the label.

Figure A.2

c) Collect or photocopy laundry labels. Have learners sort labels into hand-washable, dry clean only, and so on. Or, provide written cards that read hand wash, machine wash, and so on, and have learners match each label with the appropriate card. 180 Appendix A

d) Have learners group household labels in other ways, entering the product name on charts (see Figure A.3).

Figure A.3

e) Match store receipts with cards showing price totals. f) Match greetings cards with the appropriate occasion.

Household Bills a) Photocopy a number of bills for gas, electricity, telephone, and cable. Have learners work in groups to sort bills by type (for example, all gas bills together), by date (overdue, due this month, due next month), or by amount (numerical order). b) Give small groups of learners a set of bills and have them complete a chart (see Figure A.4).

Figure A.4

c) Have learners match bills with appropriate preprinted envelopes. d) Have each learner write out a check in payment of one of the bills, put the check plus the appropriate return portion of the bill into the correct envelope, and complete the return address section.

Letter Carrier Put the day’s worksheets or any other item in envelopes addressed to each student (or fold the sheets over and write the name on the back). Useful Activities 181

Distribute the envelopes randomly, letting each learner identify and find the person to whom the envelope is addressed. (This helps new learners get to know one another and also improves their reading skills.)

Menus Gather copies of simple restaurant menus, or draw up one of your own based on a fast-food chain format (usually block capitals). a) Have learners work in groups to choose the best nutritionally balanced meal for a set price. b) Encourage skimming by asking, “Do they sell Chinese food? Do they have any fresh fruit?” c) Encourage scanning with questions such as “How much is an order of rice? What comes with the special dinner?” d) Draw up a list of questions as in parts (b) and (c). Divide learners into teams, and see which team can answer all the questions most quickly.

Select and Complete To give learners some control over the writing process before they can easily formulate their own phrases, give writing assignments of the “select and complete” type (see Figure A.5).

Figure A.5

Alphabetical Order a) Letter-to-letter: Scatter the letters of the alphabet over a sheet of paper (see Figure A.6), and have learners connect the letters in alphabetical order (see Figure A.7). 182 Appendix A

Figure A.6

Figure A.7

b) Alphabet slots: Write the letters of the alphabet on the board or on sheets of paper on the wall. Have learners build up a list of items in a certain category, such as fruits or articles of clothing. Have them enter each item under the appropriate letter (see Figure A.8).

Figure A.8

Useful Activities 183

c) Scrabble letters: Arrange learners in pairs. Direct each partner to pull seven Scrabble letter tiles at random and sequence them alphabetically. Have partners check each other’s tiles to ensure the order is correct.

Calendars Provide each learner with a sample calendar page (see Figure A.9). a) Ask learners questions, such as “What day is the 21st?” or “Is the 26th a Friday?” Have learners question one another. b) Make up a list of appointments, such as Dentist: Thurs. 24th, 2:00 p.m. Have the learners enter these in the appropriate spaces.

Figure A.9

c) If the learners are sufficiently fluent, this makes an excellent information-gap activity. Arrange learners in pairs. Give one partner a partially completed calendar and the other instructions to arrange a meeting at a time convenient for both. Arrange the dates so that there is only one possible time (see Figures A.10 and A.11).

184 Appendix A

Learner A has the following calendar:

Figure A.10

Learner B has the following meeting options:

Figure A.11

Internet Treasure Hunt The Internet is a tremendous resource, especially for more advanced learners. Such learners can be asked to answer a different question every day, with topics as varied as the weather in a particular city, the best available price for a common household item, the time of the last bus, the telephone number for a nearby attraction, and so on. Directions and maps can be downloaded, recipes found, song lyrics recovered, xxxxxxxx

Useful Activities 185

and many other questions answered. Whatever the interests of your learners, you should be able to find some suitable websites (for example, the website of their hometown soccer team, or a favorite television program). Consider bookmarking the sites for easier access, if necessary. Regular visits to the same site to retrieve daily information will allow learners to build confidence. They should be required to manipulate the information in some way that demonstrates their comprehension. One learner might track the guests on a late-night television show, while another makes a weather index of local temperatures. For beginning learners, you will need to provide more support and less challenge. Set a carefully selected site as the home page and teach everyone how to find the home icon so that they can always return there easily. Don’t just choose the school site, which is likely to have little interest for your learners. Instead, choose something that changes on a daily basis. Some of the Internet providers allow you to tailor your home page specifically to your interests, adding features such as weather, a Sudoku puzzle, a horoscope, and so on.

Catalogs and Advertising Flyers a) Have learners search advertising flyers for particular items. Have them tell you the price, for example, of the man’s coat on a specific page, or the price of the cheapest child’s bike in the flyer. b) Cut out pictures from the flyer and then have learners match the pictures with the text. c) Get advertising flyers from two different stores. Have learners compare prices on items appearing in both and report on price differences.

Want Ads a) From catalogs, cut out some pictures of items such as furniture, baby equipment, bikes, and tools. Write up short want ads on index cards, describing the items pictured. Have learners match pictures with the appropriate want ads. (This is a good exercise for skimming and scanning if the pictures are all quite different. It encourages more careful reading if the pictures are similar.) b) Provide extra pictures to those in part (a). Have learners work in pairs to write related ads, using the set of ads in part (a) as models. c) Work with online resources, such as Craigslist or eBay, asking learners to identify the cheapest version available of selected items.

186 Appendix A

Greeting Cards Create a greeting card for any major holiday or special occasion (see Figure A.12). Have learners sign cards and send them to other members of the class, school personnel, or their own friends. Provide envelopes to offer practice in positioning the address correctly, using zip or postal codes, identifying sender information, and so on.

Figure A.12

Television Listings a) Have learners circle the program(s) they watched the previous evening. b) Have learners mark out an evening’s viewing for a fan of Westerns, a sports enthusiast, or a sitcom lover.

Class Map a) Hang up a world map. Have learners mark their birthplace. Draw colored lines across the map to show the route they travelled to get here. Make a legend showing which colors represent which learners. b) Invite the class to bring in picture postcards or photographs of places they have been. (You can download suitable pictures, if necessary.) Stick the cards on the map at appropriate places. Have learners write or dictate captions for the postcards.

Useful Activities 187

Local Area Maps Download a map of the local area. Have learners draw their route to school. Have them give one another instructions to a surprise destination.

Alphabet Cards A set of alphabet cards can be used in many ways. A simple Snap game will help beginners become familiar with letter shapes. Letters placed randomly can be sorted into alphabetical order or used to make known words. A double pack can be used for a memory game in which learners turn over two cards at a time in an attempt to make a match.

Bingo Instead of matching numbers, use bingo cards featuring vocabulary items, such as types of fruit or pieces of clothing. Initially you might have words and pictures, but later offer just the words. A number of the ESL websites listed in Appendix B: Useful Resources offer help and guidance in the development of vocabulary bingo games.

Picture Stories A story told through pictures can be used in many ways to generate language and express meaning. The source can be downloaded images, clip art, photographs, or one of the commercially available picture storybooks (see Appendix B: Useful Resources). Learners can also make their own stories if you bring in a digital camera, and they can mount the results on pieces of card. Stories made up of six pictures work well, as they allow for a storyline without unnecessary complexity. Learners can work individually on a story that interests them, or they can work in a group in which each member is given an individual picture to describe. The pictures are kept concealed from other group members and each student describes his or her image in turn. The group members then work together to agree on the best sequence for the pictures. They can then write simple captions for each picture. Alternatively, you can add speech balloons and have learners develop and act out a conversation.

188 Appendix A

Beanbag Soft, light items that can be tossed around the classroom add a little levity to the lesson and can be used to encourage participation from all learners. If you want to practice food vocabulary, for example, you might work with learners to list on the board all the food items they can think of. Then, as the beanbag is tossed around the class, the person who catches it has to call out one of the food items that has not already been said. This also works well to practice learner names, simple counting, and so on.

Toss Cube Toss cubes work in a similar fashion to beanbags, but you can write particular items on each side of the cube, such as words learners have to read aloud or questions they have to answer.

Classroom Displays Take a page out of the elementary teacher’s book and set up a “Things of Interest” table. Put something different on it every week. It might be an item from nature, such as a bird’s nest or a giant pinecone; a cultural item, such as a Christmas tree decoration; or a personal item, such as a postcard you received from a foreign country. Add a small placard identifying the item, written in very simple language. Take five minutes to talk about the item in class using the same vocabulary. Encourage learners to bring in similar items of interest and to develop their own placards.

Team Games at the Board Simple practice tasks capture people’s interest when they are set up as competitive team games that require different team members to go up to the board in turn. Filling in the gaps in a cloze exercise, generating the correct spelling of a word, and identifying missed items in a sequence are all possibilities for such team games. Make sure that every team member has a turn at the board, but allow stronger team members to call out and assist so as to keep everyone engaged.

Useful Activities 189

xxxxxxxxxxx

APPENDIX B

Useful Resources

Print Resources for Teachers Bell, J. S. (2004). Teaching multilevel classes in ESL (2nd ed.). Toronto, ON: Pippin Publishing. BEST literacy. (2008). Test packets, manual, technical report. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. Brod, S. (1999). What non-readers or beginning readers need to know: Performance-based ESL adult literacy. Denver, CO: Spring Institute for International Studies. Burt, M., Peyton, J. K., & Adams, R. (2003). Reading and adult English language learners: A review of the research. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics & National Center for ESL Literacy Education. Canadian language benchmarks: English as a second language for adults. (2012). Ottawa, ON: Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks. Canadian language benchmarks: Literacy placement tool, Volumes 1 & 2. (2005). Ottawa, ON: Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks. Cole, D. R., & Pullen, D. L. (2010). Multiliteracies in motion: Current theory and practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Croydon, A. (2005). Making it real: Teaching pre-literate adult refugee students. Tacoma, WA: Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. DeCapua, A., Smathers, W., & Tang, L. F. (2009). Meeting the needs of students with limited or interrupted schooling: A guide for educators. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Useful Resources 191

Florez, M. C., & Terrill, L. (2003). Working with literacy-level adult English language learners. Washington, DC: National Center for ESL Literacy Education. Graham, C. R., & Walsh, M. M. (2005, June). Section IV: Teaching NonLiterate Adults. Adult education ESL teachers guide. Adult Education Centre, Texas A&I University. Gunderson, L. (2008). ESL (ELL) literacy instruction: A guidebook to theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Hardy, D., Albertsen, E., & Millar, V. (2009). Learning for LIFE: An ESL literacy handbook. Calgary, AB: Bow Valley College. Hornberger, N.H. (2003). Continua of biliteracy: An ecological framework for educational policy, research, and practice in multilingual settings. Bristol, United Kingdom: Multilingual Matters. Johansson, L., Angst, K., Beer, B., Martin, S., Rebeck, W., & Sibilleau, N. (2001). Canadian Language Benchmarks 2000: ESL for literacy learners. Ottawa, ON: Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks. Kruidenier, J. R., MacArthur, C. A., & Wrigley, H. S. (2010). Adult education literacy instruction: A review of the research. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy. Larrotta, C., & Brooks, A. K. (Eds.). (2009). Bringing community to the adult ESL classroom. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Learning for LIFE: An ESL literacy curriculum framework. (2011). Calgary, AB: Bow Valley College. Massaro, J. (2004). Adult ESL literacy resource survival guide for instructors. Vancouver, BC: Province of British Columbia. Peyton, J. K. (1997, May/June). Dialogue journals: Interactive writing to develop language and literacy. Emergency Librarian, 24(5), 46–48. Pirie, P. (2002). Assessing learning disabilities in ESL. Ottawa, ON: TESL Ontario. Spiegel, M., & Sunderland, H. (2006). A teachers’ guide: Teaching basic literacy to ESOL learners. London, United Kingdom: LLU+ London South Bank University. Woods, A. (2009). Learning to be literate: Issues of pedagogy for recently arrived refugee youth in Australia. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 6(1–2), 81–101.

192 Appendix B

Print Resources for Students Adelson-Goldstein, J. (1991). Listen first: Focused listening tasks for beginners. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Bassano, S. (1994). First class reader: Integrated skills lessons for beginners. Burlington, CA: Alta Book Center Publishers. Frauman-Prickel, M. (1985). Action English pictures. Hayward, CA: Alemany Press. Hartel, J. A., Lowry, B., & Hendon, W. (2006). Sam and Pat: Beginning reading and writing. Boston, MA: Heinle. Ligon, F., & Tannenbaum, E. (1990). Picture stories: Language and literacy activities for beginners. White Plains, NY: Pearson. Ligon, F., Tannenbaum, E., & Rodgers, C. R. (1992). More picture stories: Language and problem-posing activities for beginners. White Plains, NY: Pearson. Lipszyc, C. (1996). People express: Reading and chants for literacy/ESL. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Saslow, J. (2004). Literacy plus, A and B: Language, lifeskills, civics. White Plains, NY: Pearson. Templin-Imel, G., & Brod, S. (1996). Basic Oxford picture dictionary: Literacy program. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Winn-Bell Olsen, J. (1984). Look again pictures: For language development and lifeskills. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Alemany Press. Wong Nishio, Y. (2006). Longman ESL literacy (3rd ed.). White Plains, NY: Pearson.

Video Resources Teaching ESL to Adults: Classroom Approaches in Action This highly recommended series of videos has been developed by some of the top teacher educators in the ESL field. Filmed in real classrooms, the videos show teachers employing different approaches with their students. All videos can be viewed online at no charge. “Building Literacy with Adult Emergent Readers” effectively demonstrates how the Language Experience Approach can be used with literacy-level learners. Other relevant titles include “Lesson Planning for Life Skills,” “Growing Vocabulary with Beginning Learners,” “Working with a Multi-level Class,” “Assessing Learning in the Adult Useful Resources 193

ESL Classroom,” and “Effective Grouping Strategies in the Adult ESL Classroom. http://www.newamericanhorizons.org/training-videos

Online Resources for Teacher Reference Aussie Educator Provides a range of resources for ESL educators and includes links to many other sites of interest http://www.aussieeducator.org.au/resources/teaching/eslresources. html Australian Council for Adult Literacy Lists a variety of events and useful information-based publications http://www.acal.edu.au/index.htm Australian Council of TESOL Associations Features links to lesson plans, activities, and more http://www.tesol.org.au/Teacher-Education/Links/ESL-TeacherResources Center for Applied Linguistics: ESL Solutions Offers a wide range of supports to teachers of ESL and literacy, including access to ERIC digests http://www.cal.org/topics/ell/adult-esl.html Centre for Canadian Language Benchmarks Provides access to the Benchmarks themselves and to a range of other materials for teachers, including the CLB for literacy learners http://www.language.ca/ Centre for Literacy Offers a range of resources, library services, and links to many useful literacy-focused websites. For example, see Adult literacy, learning disabilities, and technology: An annotated bibliography (http://centre forliteracy.qc.ca/sites/default/files/finalsum.pdf), which provides summaries of a range of papers linking these topics. http://centreforliteracy.qc.ca Eastside Literacy Adult Education Intended to offer support to literacy tutors. Some of the support is targeted to first-language literacy, but there is an ESL section, too. www.eastsideliteracy.org/tutorsupport/index.htm

194 Appendix B

ELSA Net Offers resources for both teachers and students. The Adult ESL Literacy Resource Survival Guide for Instructors is a valuable free resource that can be downloaded. www.elsanet.org ESL Literacy Network An excellent source of ESL literacy expertise, with an online curriculum framework that guides teachers through the decision making necessary for planning an effective program www.esl-literacy.com Internet TESL Journal for Teachers of English as a Second Language Offers interesting articles for teachers, as well as activities for ESL students http://iteslj.org/ LINCS (Literacy Information and Communication System) A dissemination and professional-development system providing a range of valuable information on literacy research, practice, and resources http://lincs.ed.gov/ Literacy and Learning Disabilities Special Collection This website provides a single point of access to information on a wide range of resources and topics related to learning disabilities. For example, see “LD Appropriate Instruction—Frameworks” (http://ldlink.coe.utk.edu/instructional_framework.htm), which provides a summary of two recommended approaches for teaching those with learning disabilities. http://ldlink.coe.utk.edu/home.htm Teaching Refugees with Limited Formal Schooling Dedicated to helping teachers work with refugees with limited formal schooling. Primarily aimed at school-aged learners, but many relevant insights offered http://teachingrefugees.com/ Working with Literacy-Level Adult English Language Learners Focuses on effective practices for literacy-level classes with examples of activities and approaches. http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/litQA.html

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Online Resources for Learner Activities A to Z Teachers’ Stuff Provides a source of teaching ideas. The site is primarily targeted at children, but adult learners could use many of the basic literacy tasks. http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/ Activities for ESL Features many activities for students, including bilingual quizzes for those with first-language literacy skills http://a4esl.org/ Handwriting Worksheets.com Offers a quick way to generate good, personalized copying and writing activities for learners http://www.handwritingworksheets.com/ LiteracyCentre.Net Offers activities for learners, including basic alphabet practice http://www.literacycenter.net/lessonview_en.php My Language Provides access to material in over sixty languages, including news. The site is useful for assessing first-language literacy skills. http://www.mylanguage.gov.au/ REEP World An English language-practice website for adult learners www.reepworld.org Settlement.Org Offers settlement information in more than thirty languages http://www.settlement.org/translatedinfo/ Skills Workshop Features links to a wide range of teacher-directed activities. The site also features a numeracy section. http://www.skillsworkshop.org/literacy Skillswise Focuses on literacy and numeracy and offers a good range of activities. Though much of this material is too difficult for literacy students, more advanced learners will find a wide variety of resources (games, stories, puzzles, and so on). www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise

196 Appendix B

Teaching Ideas Provides a source of teaching ideas targeted at children, but with lots of adaptable basic literacy tasks http://www.teachingideas.co.uk TeAchnology Offers teachers printable worksheets, lesson plans, rubrics, and other resources for students of all ages. The site allows teachers to generate puzzles and games using specified vocabulary. http://www.teach-nology.com

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