Your knowledge of the learner’s background will help you form more questions or modify the questions so that they are more applicable.

Option 1 Interview with ESL learner

Why choose this option?

Meeting a learner face to face will be more immediate and memorable for tutors than watching a video.

Materials and equipment

Adult ESL learner who will volunteer to be interviewed
The questions listed in the introduction to this activity: Sample interview questions for getting to know ESL learners

Preparation

Try to find an intermediate or advanced adult ESL learner who will volunteer to share her experience of learning English and who has been in Canada for over two years. Look over the questions listed in the introduction and adapt or add to them, as necessary. Before the workshop, go over the questions with the ESL learner and allow the learner to practise answering them. Also, talk about how you will introduce the learner. If you do not have an ESL learner who can volunteer, you might have to settle for a tutor or another person. Choose someone who has spent a year or more living in a place where they had to work in a language that they had to learn.

STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS

  1. Tell tutors that today they are going to learn more about what it is like to be an ESL learner.
  2. Introduce the ESL learner (or person who has lived in another place and used a language that is new to them). You may want to tell tutors the guest’s name, first language, country of origin (if appropriate), job, whether she has children, and so on.
  3. Guide the interview using the questions that you have selected. If the learner is confident in his or her English-speaking abilities, you may invite tutors to ask questions. Make sure that you obtained the learner’s permission to do this before the session.
  4. Thank the learner or other speaker.
  5. After the learner has left, ask tutors for comments or questions that the interview brought to mind.

Facilitation tip

Taking the time to find just the right learner to interview and then adapting the questions will improve the interview.

If you have time in a previous session, you can involve tutors in generating questions for the ESL learner. They are more likely to tune into responses to questions they have posed. You can still use the sample interview questions to supplement what tutors have suggested.

By seeing the questions in advance, the guest can decide if there are some questions she would prefer not to answer.

If you have a large group, you could invite a panel of three or four ESL learners and divide into small groups in four different corners of the room. The groups can rotate among the guests every 15 minutes. This approach allows more people to speak and may be less intimidating for the guest.