Great questions, Jenny, about helping your tutors move toward
learner-centered teaching approaches. Encouraging teachers to select themes
in their materials that correspond to learners' interests and goals would
heighten learners' motivation -- and possibly increase their retention. It
also might help tutors become more flexible in their teaching style and give
way to the more open-ended, creative activities that you seek.
 
On that note, you might start by talking with tutors about the value of
doing a needs assessment, so that their work with learners can spring from
what the learners want. You could encourage conversations during the
tutoring sessions about where the learners use English -- at work? At the
grocery store? At the doctor's office? With their child's teacher? When they
read/pay bills? (You could have teachers use visual prompts during this
conversation -- e.g., pictures of different daily activities, so that
learners can point to or talk about the topics they want to study in
English.)
 
As a follow-up, you could use the approach that you outlined so nicely of
having learners dictate sentences about where they use English (or what they
want to do in English). As they do so, teachers can write the sentences
(it's great if you could do this on a board or flip chart paper) and have
students copy them.
 
Those learner-generated "stories" can serve as the springboard for a variety
of follow-up activities, both written and oral: Cloze activities (typing the
stories and leaving out words for learners to fill in); sentence-scramble
activities (learners sequence the sentences in a story or the words in a
sentence, which have been cut into strips); dialogues or information-grid
surveys pertaining to the story (e.g., learners could have a chart with a
column headed, "Name" and other columns headed, "Where do you speak
English?" "When do you need to write English?" etc., and ask each other the
questions and record the answers).
 
In terms of helping your teachers use learner-generated text for
conversation and writing, you can point them to an excellent online resource
available on the CAELA website, Picture Stories for Adult ESL Health
Literacy, by Kate Singleton. Although the subject matter of the stories
pertains to health, there is a short, simple introduction that outlines the
Language Experience Approach (LEA) and the procedures for using it in class
with students. See:
 
 <http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/Health/healthindex.html>
http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/Health/healthindex.html

 

Here are some related resources that provide concise explanations and
concrete examples:
 
1) Needs Assessment for Adult ESL Learners, by Kathleen Santopietro Weddel
and Carol Van Duzer, at:
 <http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/Needas.html>
http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/Needas.html
 
2) The Language Experience Approach and Adult Learners, by Marcia Taylor,
at:
http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/LEA.html
 
What are some other ideas for creative conversation and writing activities?
 
Betsy Lindeman Wong
Lead ESL Teacher
Alexandria Adult and Community Education
 
  _____  

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Jennifer Hubler
Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 3:02 PM
To: EnglishLanguage at nifl.gov
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 1977] reading, writing,conversation and
independence



The ideas you're all sharing are great-I'm learning many ways to improve my
instruction.

 

I am new to this job and subject (3 months). I have a small, fairly new
program (one year) with learners in small groups (3-5) with volunteer
tutors. They are very dependent on their workbooks and textbooks, and prefer
to go lock-step through the lessons. I'm coaching the tutors and students
about skipping lessons or segments that are not relevant or appropriate. I
want to introduce some creative writing and more conversation. Any ideas
about writing that won't be too intimidating for tutors and students? I made
up a story with one student using his vocabulary words. I wrote, he
dictated, and we took turns making up sentences. He read it fluently after
hearing me read, then reading with me, then practicing once on his own. How
do I teach the tutors to do this? And how do we introduce more conversation
that is relevant and interesting to folks who have depended exclusively on
curriculum texts? I think both need to start with building the tutors'
familiarity, skills and comfort level with the processes and expectations.

 

Jenny Hubler, Adult Literacy Coordinator

 

The Women's Center

1723 Hemphill

Fort Worth, TX 76110

 

817-927-4040 x262

jhubler at womenscenter.info

 

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