Creating Learning Partners: A facilitator’s guide for training effective adult literacy tutors

Section 3 Communicating as a Learning Team

This section has some ideas for facilitating communication that are especially useful for new tutors and new learners. It should set tutors at ease about how they will communicate with beginner ESL learners.

Activity A

Trying to understand a foreign language

This short activity introduces the need to learn to communicate effectively with ESL learners. It answers the new tutor’s common question about how to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak English.

Listening to a foreign language
Materials and equipment Audiotape or videotape of someone speaking in a language that is not English or any other language that tutors might speak Tape recorder or TV and VCR Preparation Find and cue a short excerpt of someone speaking a language that is not English or any other language that tutors might speak. Try to find an audio clip. You can use a video clip as long as you turn off the picture, since the point is to show how hard it is to understand someone who speaks a different language and you don’t want body language cues on a video clip to make it any easier. STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS Introduce this section by playing a one-minute portion of an audiotape that is not in English or any other language one of the tutors understands. Before starting, ask tutors to listen and try to understand what the person on the tape is saying. After the segment, ask tutors if they found it difficult to understand. Tell tutors that it is difficult to understand another language, but that there are ways to make what is being said more easily understood. Then let them know that they will be looking at some ideas to help them make their instruction more understandable to their ESL learners.

Listening to a foreign language

Materials and equipment

Audiotape or videotape of someone speaking in a language that is not English or any other language that tutors might speak
Tape recorder or TV and VCR

Preparation

Find and cue a short excerpt of someone speaking a language that is not English or any other language that tutors might speak. Try to find an audio clip. You can use a video clip as long as you turn off the picture, since the point is to show how hard it is to understand someone who speaks a different language and you don’t want body language cues on a video clip to make it any easier.

STEP-BY-STEP PROCESS

Introduce this section by playing a one-minute portion of an audiotape that is not in English or any other language one of the tutors understands. Before starting, ask tutors to listen and try to understand what the person on the tape is saying.
After the segment, ask tutors if they found it difficult to understand. Tell tutors that it is difficult to understand another language, but that there are ways to make what is being said more easily understood. Then let them know that they will be looking at some ideas to help them make their instruction more understandable to their ESL learners.