Happy Monday, Everyone!  And welcome to this discussion on working with
literacy level learners. As teachers and mentors to adult ESL teachers, one
of the questions that we frequently hear is, "What can I do with my literacy
learners?"  We hope that the discussion that we will all have this week will
address that question and more. 

 

Where to start?  How about the way we start a class, by activating prior
knowledge and experiences and clarifying some of the expectations and goals
of our discussions over the next few days?  Following is the description of
a representative adult ESL literacy level class.  We offer it as a
discussion starter.  Take a look at it and think about what questions and
comments it brings to your minds.  For example: 

 

- What would be running through your mind, as the teacher walking into this
class?  

- What pieces of information do you think are important here?  

- How would you find out the students' needs and goals?  

- What would you do the first night? 

- What would you do to make students feel comfortable and secure? 

- How similar or different is this from your experiences with literacy level
classes?  

- What other points would you add or revise in a scenario like this, based
on your experiences?

 

The Class/Classroom

The class is offered as part of a lifeskills-based curriculum.  It meets in
a high school classroom two nights a week for two hours each night for a
total of twelve weeks.  Learners buy a textbook and workbook at the
"literacy" level of an integrated textbook series used by the program.  They
have access to class sets of picture dictionaries and the teacher has access
to a variety of reproducible literacy materials and flashcards. The
classroom walls have a lot of high school-oriented print, so much so that
the adult ESL teacher often uses flipchart paper to cover it up, so students
don't experience overload.

 

The Students

The students all tested as literacy level students, but still exhibit
important differences.  For example, Amina has never been to school in her
native Somalia, does not speak any English, and does not read or write in
any language. Gustavo went to school for three years in El Salvador. He
speaks almost no English and has minimal literacy skills in Spanish.  Maria
also went to school for three years in El Salvador, but she converses easily
in English and has a wide vocabulary. She can sight-read some high-frequency
words in English and Spanish but cannot sound out words in either language
that she does not know. Laxmi is a professional from Nepal who speaks and
writes Bengali, but she doesn't know the Roman alphabet and speaks very
little English. Alemseged is a senior citizen from Ethiopia and while he
says he studied English among other subjects in his native Ethiopia, he was
unable to read or write responses to even the simplest placement test
questions. Rena was a language teacher in her native Tunisia. She has strong
oral English language skills and is very comfortable and happy using her
speaking and listening skills with her less accomplished classmates.
However, when asked to read or write, she becomes more hesitant and less
confident.

 

As we said at the beginning, this is a way to get the conversation started.
Think of it as that picture that starts out most units in ESL
textbooks---there are all sorts of possibilities!

 

Looking forward to our discussion.

 

MaryAnn Florez

and

Betsy Lindeman Wong

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