When writing was taught in 1:1 situations, the teacher was able to tailor the session much more to the needs of the individual learner. This teacher is talking about a session she has just run for an individual student with poor writing skills.
| T: | She will write stuff and she’ll write quite quickly and then won’t be quite sure what it is that she’s written. So she was going back over it and I was trying to help her to get some sense of what she wanted to say because she could’ve had quite a volume of writing, but it won’t necessarily really come together for a reader or for her, either. So that’s the approach. Our types of students, they’re very, very different and it requires a very different approach for each person, but usually what I try to do is supply her with some words that she needs and sometimes if she hasn’t already done the piece of writing I’ll sit with her and kind of talk with her about what she wants to write about and actually help her to create a word bank. | |
| I: | Is that what you were doing when I saw you writing? | |
| T: | Yeah and so that’s what I usually do in the first step. But she had actually already done the first step, so I was actually establishing a word bank for her so that, ‘cause some people know enough about the word that they could go to a dictionary and find the word. Like the wee girl in the yellow, she was going to do that, because she’s got that sort of skill, she can approach a dictionary and know enough about a word in there, but the other lass, needed to have them written down and once they’re written down, she can read them, usually, or sound them out at least legibly and so a dictionary is not really an option, so, a word bank. |
We did not observe any classes solely concerned with the teaching of ESOL skills, although many of the classes and 1:1 teaching did involve learners whose first language was not English – in some classes these students were in the majority. In many cases, there did not appear to be significant differences between how these learners were taught and their non-ESOL counterparts.
In several of the classes, the ESOL students were seen as very capable readers and who mainly needed practice in their speaking skills.
| T: | They are all very good readers. They’re working on correspondence English programmes, which do involve reading with a tape. Play it in their ear and they read it, as they’re hearing it. Yes, the [nationality] students’ programme is from correspondence, so they do a lot of reading of the newspaper. And then our strategy with them, is to work with them, discussing the article and try and get obviously the comprehension and also the discussion, the conversation that can be hard sometimes ‘cause they just sort of want to work from their books and so it can be really difficult. |
One interaction between a 1:1 teacher and her student illustrates the implications of teaching ESOL learners to read English. In this interchange, the teacher is endeavouring to build up word families, but the student’s limited English vocabulary restricts the usefulness of the exercise.