Read Alouds

Hello colleagues, Here's a link to a blog post by Barbara Gottschalk highlighting "7 Tips for Doing Read Alouds the Right Way." Gottschalk teaches immigrant and refugee children, and she suggests that even older children benefit from the teacher reading aloud. What about adults?

As Gottschalk points out, it's important for students to be able to see the pictures when reading aloud a child's picture book. This reminded me of the wonderful ESL Literacy Readers which were developed for learners at different levels by our colleagues in Canada. These online books feature beautiful photos and are focused on topics of interest to adults. The lowest level books have a single sentence on each page and feature purposeful repetition.

The audio option gives learners the opportunity to listen again and again to enhance their listening skills. Teachers can opt to print the books to use in class or even offer books to students to take home. 

Do you include read alouds in your practice? What do you see as the benefits of reading aloud to adult English learners?

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition