Hello colleagues, Do you have adult English learners who have limited formal schooling in your class? What has worked well for you with these learners? Do you have questions about how to effectively support those who have limited or even no print literacy in their primary language with the skills they need to achieve their goals? You are invited to post your thoughts here in our community!
We hosted an outstanding event recently with Dr. Helaine Marshall, who is an internationally recognized expert on working with this unique population. THANK YOU SO MUCH, HELAINE MARSHALL! Dr. Marshall shared some highly effective approaches for teaching these learners. Importantly, she also identified approaches to avoid.
Toward this end, Dr. Marshall initially engaged us experientially in the Intercultural Communication Framework (ICF) and then outlined the components of the framework to offer guidance to educators working with learners who have had limited or interrupted formal schooling.
Step 1: Establish and maintain an ongoing two-way relationship
- Infuse the school experience with interpersonal elements
- Administrators and students
- Staff, counselors, teachers and students
- Home-School-Community connections
- Infuse school procedures with experiences that increase interconnectedness
Step 2: Identify priorities in both cultures
- Adapt procedures to accommodate student priorities
- Develop student awareness of school priorities
Step 3: Make associations between the familiar and unfamiliar
- Move from familiar to unfamiliar schemata
- Language
- Content/Information
- Forms
- Build associations between concepts familiar to students and newly introduced concepts
(Adapted from Marshall, 1994; Marshall & DeCapua, 2013)
Dr. Marshall emphasized the importance of educators building awareness of the cultural differences between formal and informal learning. Adult ESOL teachers need to find ways to bridge the gap between our own cultural assumptions and the experiences of the adults in our classrooms. We can do so by beginning with everyday language, content and tasks that are familiar to learners and gradually scaffolding to the academic language, content and tasks that support learners to achieve their personal goals. During the presentation, Dr. Marshall shared several highly engaging instructional routines that can serve as the kind of scaffolds needed.
You can find some great examples of the recommended instructional routines, especially the Classroom Collections Project, in this excellent article co-authored with Andrea DeCapua, To Define is to Know. I’ll be sharing some additional valuable resources in this thread. However, if anyone would like a copy of Dr. Marshall’s slides, please contact her via email hwmarshall@malpeducation.com.
Cheers, Susan Finn Miller
Moderator, English Language Acquisition Group
Comments
Hello all,
In my teaching context, students are placed into levels based on their speaking ability, so there are almost no classes dedicated to students with limited first language literacy, and it's not uncommon to have a beginning level class with 15 literate students and 3 students with limited L1 literacy. I've made a 6-minute teaching tip video on the topic, but here's the basic idea:
There's obviously a lot to say about this topic, but I think the easiest adaptation with the biggest impact is to focus on the meaning and the spoken form of the new vocabulary first. Once the whole class is basically familiar with the new vocabulary, then have them start to work with the written form.
For example, with a literate group of students, you can reasonably start a vocabulary lesson by writing the words on the board and asking students to copy them down. However, for low-literacy students, this would put the most challenging part of the lesson first. If you present the words orally with pictures, play some speaking games with the words, and then introduce the written form, it starts the lesson with the low-literacy learners' strengths (i.e. prior knowledge, speaking, and listening) and builds on this to get to the hardest part (i.e. reading and writing).
I hope this helps!
Best,
William Linn (he/him)
willl@lacnyc.org
Coordinator of ESOL Certificate Programs and ESOL Specialist
Literacy Assistance Center
85 Broad St, 16th fl
New York, NY 10004
www.lacnyc.org
Hi Will, Thank you for this practical post and for sharing the link to your quick tip video. I love how you illustrate the challenge for learners who have limited formal schooling by posing a question to those of us who have limited print literacy with Chinese characters! Start with oral language and pictures!
Cheers, Susan
Hello William,
Thank you for the link. This concerns much of what I was looking for.
Sincerely, Marsha Bill
Hello colleagues, Here are some additional resources Helaine shared with us.
Helaine's Website: http://MALPEducation.com
Video mini-course with interactive elements in PlayPosit
Text-based mini-course with articles and student projects in Perusall, a social annotation tool
Article about Crossing the Mekong Survey Project - Betty’s Hmong Adult Education Class
Article about The Welcome Book - Theme Booklet Project
LESLLA’s website (Literacy Education and Second Language for Adults)
Adult English Learners with Limited Literacy
Using Oral Language Skills to Build on the Emerging Literacy of Adult English Learners
Cheers, Susan
Thank you for posting the resources!
I found the analysis and discussion of formal and informal learning most valuable: The paradigm of informal learning is something that I had not considered before. Also, putting workplace training into that formal education category is again something I hadn't considered before.
The analysis of the decontextualization of formal learning/schooling echoes Jim Gee's (?) work on academic language as decontextualized.
Something that I wanted to ask about is this: Something that I've been starting to work on is incorporating classroom activities that are geared toward developing learner autonomy/independence. Things like, checking one's work with a classmate or an answer key or a model. Making corrections. Practicing tapping out syllables when working on new vocabulary words. (These are drawn from workshops done by Sarah Lynn.) After this workshop, I'm realizing that these are developing that independence that's valued in formal learning.
---Amy West
Hi Amy, Thanks for your comments and questions. It's great to hear you gained a lot from our session with Helaine Marshall. The practical tasks you describe seem to me to be in line with ways to support learners' independence as long as the content -- particularly initially -- is familiar and relevant to them. Furthermore, helping one another through partner and small group work is typical in the collectivist cultures most learners come from.
Best of luck with your classes!
Cheers, Susan
I'm wondering if we can hear more from Helaine about the projects -- the survey and the collections -- and the layers of instructional context, since she ran short of time in the live session.
Hi Amy, I appreciate your comments and questions here in our community. Thanks so much! You asked about some specific examples of the survey and collections projects. There are some resources in this thread that include examples of these instructional activities. In the article, "To Define is To Know," you can read about a wonderful class collections project in which students chose a plant to bring to class -- this could be a real plant or a photo of a plant. The article "MALP for Hmong Students" describes a highly effective survey project -- available here https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED505352.pdf.
Surveys can be quite simple such as having students survey their classmates with even a single question. For example: One of the following questions would be appropriate as students in a new class are getting acquainted with one another.
One thing I love about surveys is the potential we have to teach graphing. I'd love to hear others' ideas about the kind of surveys that can be done.
And what about collections? Students could bring a photo of family, their country's flag, a favorite fruit or vegetable, a hobby or craft, etc. etc. What ideas do others have for a collections project?
Cheers, Susan
Thank you so much for a great presentation. I have been an advocate for adding intercultural communication component to teacher training for many years. I think is it crucial for the instructors, especially those who never lived overseas, to understand the underlying causes of their students' behavior from the cultural perspective.
We will be adding the formal/informal education and individualistic/collectivistic component to out instructor training in the spring!
Hello,
I teach ESL at a community-based organization in Chicago. I will be teaching a four-week summer intensive for NRS 1-2 learners beginning next week that will be three hours per day. M-Th. I will have two BL students in the class. One of them has enough literacy to be able to keep up with the class, but I am concerned about the other student.
"Ms. G" is a 70-year-old woman from Eritrea. She speaks Tigrinya and according to her daughter is not literate in her own language. We do have access to a volunteer tutor who can work with her one day a week, but she will be in my class the rest of the time. There are other organizations that offer BL-level classes, but those are far from her, and she lives very close to our building.
I am an experienced user of Burlington English, and I plan to use it with this class. It does have a Basics unit which is helpful for BL students. I have worked with students like Ms. G before, but never in this type of classroom environment. Fortunately, the class is relatively small, with a current enrollment of six students.
Have any teachers here had similar situations? What suggestions would you have?
Hi Steve,
I've used Burlington English in an online beginner class, but not with low literacy students. I and colleagues saw a HUGE gap in the reading instruction in the Basics level and the Low Beginner level. We were teaching in a program that also used iXL, so we supplemented A LOT with that, especially the videos.
I've recently learned about Reading Bear and I've been using that in my 1-on-1 tutoring with a Basic Literacy student. I really like it, so does my student.
https://www.readingbear.org/ It uses videos and photos of real people/things, NOT cartoons or line drawings, which are difficult to interpret. I've also been using the What's Next Introductory level with my student. My only complaint about it is that it uses line drawings to illustrate the sentences of the story, and again, line drawings are problematic.
---Amy West
Hello all, Another site focused on teaching phonics and English that was actually recommended here in our community a while back is abc English developed by one of our adult education colleagues in Utah, Jennifer Christenson. The site is not free, but Jennifer generously allows anyone to explore the plentiful and well-designed materials for 30 days free of charge.
For two years, I've been tutoring one-on-one with a young woman who was unable to attend school in her country and never learned to read. Initially, I was developing my own materials for our lessons, which --not surprisingly -- took a lot of time. Now Jennifer's fantastic website does much of the work for me, for which I am so grateful. My student now understands that spoken language is made up of sounds that can be relayed in print, and she is beginning to read in both Spanish and English. I'll continue to draw upon abc English as she builds more and more skills in both reading and spoken English.
Cheers, Susan
Hi Susan,
Thank you for the recommendation! We have the abc English phonics books, but I wasn't aware there were also online resources. I'll check them out! My student Ms. G also has poor eyesight (she is 70 years old), and she has very little experience using computers or smartphones, so it might be difficult for her to use a computer or iPad. We were able to get two different volunteer tutors to come in once a week to work with her individually, so she will receive two hours per week of individual tutoring, which will be helpful. However, she understands very little English (she scored a 160 on the CASAS STEPS, the lowest one can score), and since she cannot read, apps like Google Translate would not be of use since there is no audio option available for Tigrinya. She has no formal education.
However, she seemed to be active and engaged in the classroom, so I was very pleased to see that. I had her sit next to another Tigrinya speaker so she wouldn't feel so isolated. Even though the class is mixed with NRS 1 and NRS 2 levels, I decided to start at the beginning of the Basics unit in Burlington English to see where the students were at and how they did. They seemed to be active and engaged. I also asked the students at the end of the three-hour class to rate the difficulty of the class, and most said that it was not too hard or too easy, which I was pleased to know. If some students are finding it too easy, I may move forward more quickly, but it seems right now they are good with the level and pacing. The students can also move forward on their own with the independent practice in Burlington English.
Thanks!
Steve
This is a challenging -- but not impossible-- situation, Steve! You may already have an idea of how well Ms. G understands and can produce spoken English. Since she is a beginner, an important goal will be to support Ms. G to build her listening and speaking skills in English which will then become the foundation for introducing reading and writing.
In my beginning level classes, as we are getting acquainted with one another, I always shared a photo of my family and invited learners to bring a photo of their family to share with me and the other students. It will be interesting for you to discover whether she can write her name in Tigrinya and/or in English as well as her address.
Given Dr. Marshall's recommendations, it's clear that using realia rather than stylized drawings whenever possible is important. For example, if your lesson is focused on clothing, you could bring items of clothing to teach her the names of clothing in English. You can then introduce photos of clothing to use in various activities. I'm a huge fan of vocabulary flashcards with photos since there are so many activities that can be done with them to support learners' developing listening and speaking skills. These flashcard activities can be tailored to address the needs of learners at different levels. (Let me know if you'd like some examples.)
It's great that you have a tutor to work with Ms. G during the class at least once a week. Since you are using Burlington with the majority of students, while the other students are occupied with the independent online activities, you can work one-on-one with Ms. G.
Members, what other ideas can you share with Steve!
Best of luck with this class, Steve!
Cheers, Susan
Hi Susan,
Thanks again for your thoughtful response. I have generally not had students do the independent practice in Burlington English (BE) during class -- I usually ask them to do it at home. However, since I have a relatively small class, I may have them spend some time in class with the independent practice so that I can spend some individual time with Ms. G. We do have some iPads and laptops that I could use with the students during class, and those are easier to use with BE than smartphones.
We do have some flash cards, but if you have any particular product line of flash cards that use photos which you recommend, I'd love to know! I'm even thinking of asking the tutor to take her to the grocery store down the street one day and explore the various items there with her. In fact, since I have a relatively small class, I may ask the grocery store if I can take the whole class there one day.
Thanks again, and I welcome any other product recommendations or any other suggestions!
Steve
Hi Steve, It's great to hear that the students have told you the level of the class seems about right for them. I love the idea of taking Ms. G and maybe the whole class to the grocery store in the neighborhood. I was able to do this when my class was located close enough to walk. I think having the higher-level learners complete the independent activities in BC during class makes a lot of sense, so you have a bit of time to work with Ms. G.
As for vocabulary flashcards, I select words from the lesson -- which could be anything -- food, feeling words, health terms, action words, places in the community, etc. which could be drawn from the lists in the Oxford Picture Dictionary. I search for photos online and make one set of color flashcards for myself. The students get a handout of the same in black and white. I walk the students through labeling the pictures. I then give them a sheet of card stock with the same photos to cut apart and write the label on the back. I provide each student with a small plastic baggie to keep their flashcards. There are a lot of speaking and listening activities we do with these flashcards, so I tell the students to bring the flashcards to class every day. Bingo is super popular as is a grid activity called Match Mine. We work with an empty grid and number the boxes. For lower level students, perhaps 6 or 8 boxes is enough to start with. For example, I tell the students to put the banana in box 5; put the apple in box 2, etc. The goal is for the students' grids to "match mine." Once they understand the process, I have the students work in pairs or in a small group, with one of them giving the prompts.
Since Ms. G is not writing yet, you won't have her write the words, although you or the tutor could do the labeling. In working with her, I would say the word and have her point to the picture. You can also point to the photo and have her tell you what it is. You can choose two photos and ask which one is the _______? She may even be ready to do the Match Mine activity.
I just made a set of flashcards for the student I'm tutoring. This flashcard list has only 6 words which come from the story on abc English we'll be reading together in class.
Best of luck with your class, Steve!
Cheers, Susan