This learning plan is intended for tutors who work with learners who have generally had limited or interrupted formal education in their native countries and are developing reading and writing for the first time while learning English. Working with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) literacy students is different from tutoring non-native English-speaking students who are learning English but already have literacy in one of their other languages. Literacy students bring unique strengths to the classroom and face unique challenges as well. In some contexts learners with limited or interrupted formal education are called ESOL literacy students, while in other contexts (Canada in particular) they're called LIFE learners, to stand for students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education. The material in this learning plan comes from “A Handbook for Tutors Working with Adult ESOL Literacy Learners” by Margi Felix Lund.  The material is used with permission. The handbook contains many more helpful suggestions for tutors. You can find the entire handbook here or by clicking on its picture.

 

Learner Strengths

Learners with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (LIFE) have usually had limited or no access to formal education, but despite this, they will have acquired certain skills and strategies related to their individual life experiences. It's important to value and respect this previous learning and recognize the significance of these skills and strategies in their new countries. Most LIFE learners have had an enormous range of experiences in their lives, often including trauma or witnessing trauma, and all have managed to negotiate survival and make their way to a new country. What they lack in formal education, they will often compensate for in courage, determination, and experience (Learning for LIFE: An ESL Literacy Handbook, 2009, p. 78).

 

The Role of the Tutor

Your role is to support your learner to achieve his/her personal and educational goals. Many of those goals may require reading and writing in English. In addition, working with a tutor in a learning setting can serve as a bridge between your learner's life in a new country and his/her past experiences.

These are some of the goals that your learner might have: 

• Developing oral English and literacy skills
  • Learning how to meet transportation, medical, shopping, and other basic needs
• Knowing and feeling known in a foreign country
  • Developing cultural knowledge and communication skills
  • Developing a relationship of trust with a community member (i.e. tutor)
• Getting a job, or finding a different job
• Succeeding in ESOL courses
  • Developing school skills
• Supporting children and other family members
  • Assisting school-aged children with homework
  • Interacting with teachers and other parents
• Passing the citizenship exam

 

Select topics that are relevant to your learner's life 

Adult English literacy learners bring a wealth of life experience with them to their tutoring sessions. Be careful not to discredit this experience by selecting irrelevant topics that are not motivating. Be sure to ask your learner the kinds of things s/he would like to read and write about so you have a good idea about how to make your lessons relevant to his/her life. Encourage your learner to bring in items that s/he wants or needs to read in his/her everyday life (e.g. grocery store ads, a note from a child’s school, a job application). Working towards reading and writing items for real-life purposes can be particularly motivating and rewarding to all learners, especially those who are new to literacy. To help your ESL literacy learner achieve his/her goals, first, try to figure out what your learner’s goals are. This information will come from a variety of sources: talking with your learner, talking with program administrators, and observing your learner’s skills, abilities, and interests. Your learner’s goals may change, so be sure to keep your eyes and ears open for those changes.

 

What to ask

If you’re working with a lower level ESL literacy learner, you need to pay attention to his/her oral English skills when asking questions.
Questions will differ depending on the level of your learner. Make your questions concrete and easy to understand. If available, you might use a translator to ensure that your learner understands the question and you understand his/her answer.

Possible questions:

• Does anyone help you with reading and writing? Where or how do they help you?
• What do you want to read? What do you want to write?
• Why do you want to improve your reading and writing? Why do you want to go to school?
• Did you go to school in your country? In another country? Tell me about when you went to school. (Try to gather as complete a picture as possible of the learner’s educational background.)
• Do you have a job right now? Do you like your job? What kind of reading and writing do you need to do in this job?
• Do you want a job in the future? What kind of job do you want? What kinds of reading and writing do you think you will need for that job?

It's important to recognize that your learner may not be comfortable sharing information about his/her personal circumstances or barriers before s/he knows you well. In some cases, learners prefer to keep this information entirely private. Aim to gather information that is useful for your planning and tutoring without pressuring your learner, and be open to receiving new information as you and your learner get to know each other and your learner becomes more comfortable with you. Many tutors find that if they share some of their own personal information and stories, their learners are more comfortable discussing their needs and background information.

The content for this learning plan is drawn from A Handbook for Tutors Working with Adult ESOL Literacy Learners by Margi Felix-Lund.  It can be found here. Portions are adapted with permission from Bow Valley College (2009, p. 34-35; 2011a, p. 24-25).

This video demonstrates one way to find out about your learner’s literacy skills. The focus is on reading and a tutor can work on writing what the learner already knows how to read.  

The resources below include a wide variety of tools that you could use to assess native language and English literacy.

 

How to ask questions is as important as what to ask. Be aware of your learner’s level of English when asking him/her questions. Make sure the questions are meaningful to your learner so s/he can express his/her needs. Avoid situations where you ask about the hypothetical or conditional questions that start like the ones below.  Try to be very concrete.

Avoid these types of questions:

• “Imagine that you could …”
• “What if you could …”

To help you, feel free to use all kinds of aids, such as:

• Realia: Use actual items that learners may see or need to manage in everyday life and find difficult, such as utility bills, bus schedules, applications or common government forms. While you're asking your learner questions, increase the complexity of the questions or tasks by moving from real, everyday objects to photographs to illustrations.
• Photographs or pictures: Use large, easily understood photographs of situations learners might see, such as doctors’ offices, the supermarket, the apartment building, etc.
• An interpreter or a first language analysis: An interpreter can be very helpful to better understand your learner’s needs. To learn more about your learner’s literacy in his/her other language, ask your learner to write his/her name in his/her language and to write a story or description. Even if you cannot read your learner’s first language, this will give you information on how easy or difficult it is for your learner to write. This will give you an idea of your learner’s first language literacy level.
• Native language literacy screening tools that are available in many languages.  See the resources that are linked on the resource tab.

Share results with your learner

Whether your needs assessment has been formal or informal, it’s important to talk with your learner about the needs you will be addressing during tutoring sessions. Explain why you're doing what you're doing in your tutoring sessions and how it relates to your learner’s goals. It can be challenging to discuss this with learners who have limited oral English skills or a limited understanding of what is required to achieve their goals. Use simplified language, provide pictures and visual diagrams, and regularly review the learning needs you and your learner have identified. This will help your learner understand how what s/he is learning relates to his/her needs.

The content for this learning plan is drawn from A Handbook for Tutors Working with Adult ESOL Literacy Learners by Margi Felix-Lund.  It can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/margifelixlund/home/handbook Portions are adapted with permission from Bow Valley College (2009, p. 34-35; 2011a, p. 24-25). Used with permission.

 

Once you have an idea of what your learner needs and wants to learn, where do you begin? The purpose of the learning plans on effective tutoring is to offer some principles for working with your ESL literacy learner as well as strategies for concrete ways to put the principles into action.
 

Teach oral language before written language
ESOL literacy learners have spent the majority of their lives learning through spoken language. Tap into that strength and focus on developing English oral skills before you introduce print. When you first bring print into your tutoring session, it’s very important that your learner already knows the words and their meaning in the text. One way to make sure that your learner knows the meaning of the words is to use a text that is developed from his/her own spoken language. This is called a learner-generated text or a Language Experience Story. For example, write something that your learner says to you and that becomes the text that your learner can read and write.
 

This learning plan is drawn from A Handbook for Tutors Working with Adult ESOL Literacy Learners by Margi Felix-Lund.  It can be found here.  Used with permission.

 

Use routines

Creating a consistent routine will help your learner know what to expect and can encourage your learner to feel more in control of his/her learning. For example, if you begin each tutoring session by describing the agenda, your learner will be able to pick up on the routine.  Whenever possible, give your learner responsibility over part of the daily tasks, such as erasing the whiteboard. These tasks can help learners with limited formal education learn how to “do school” (Elson & Krygowski, 2012). Additionally, when your learner becomes familiar with the routine of the tutoring  session, his/her attention is freed up to fully engage in the activities.

 

It can be challenging to find age- and level-appropriate reading material that is relevant to adult literacy learners’ lives. Therefore, learner-generated reading material provides text that they can comprehend. It is based on the idea that students read their own spoken words. Using learner-generated texts avoids learning to read and write vocabulary and grammatical structures that your learner does not know.

The Language Experience Approach (LEA) is a technique or strategy that promotes literacy development through the use of personal experiences and oral language. This technique draws on your learner’s experiences as the basis for text you can use for writing and reading activities.  This means that you write down your learner’s experiences. The language experience approach helps your learner connect spoken language to written language. The text represents your learner’s own vocabulary and grammar. The strategy begins with oral language first and is ideal for whole-part-whole activities. Sources for language experience stories are endless. Tutors might use a real experience, picture, photo, video, student drawing, discussion topic, anecdote, or shared experience such as a field trip as possible prompts to generate LEA stories.



This learning plan is drawn from A Handbook for Tutors Working with Adult ESOL Literacy Learners by Margi Felix-Lund.  It can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/margifelixlund/home/handbook.

 

Other types of Student-generated Texts

The following examples of learner-generated texts have been adapted from Vinogradov (2010).

Shared experience such as projects, field trips, demonstrations – Using the Language Experience Approach, the learner talks about an experience, and then the tutor asks the learner questions that help flesh out the story of what they did or experienced.

Student news (Croydon, 2005) – On Monday, the tutor asks, “What is your good news? What is your bad news?” The learner can either write or dictate his/her answer to the tutor. The responses then can be used as the text in tutoring sessions.

Picture stories – The learner looks at picture stories and then dictates a story of what s/he sees happening while the tutor writes down what the learner says.

Texts for wordless books – The learner writes words to go with particular pages of a wordless book or matches the words with the page it belongs to.

Photo books – The learner and/or tutor brings in photos which they use to generate language and text.

Adapted from Vinogradov, P. (2010). Balancing top and bottom: Learner-generated texts for teaching phonics. In T. Wall & M. Leong (Eds.), “Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition: Proceedings of the 5th Symposium” (pp. 3-14). Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RogfSbTUxRYxcZ_bKJKk1qMBM4mT2WdR/view

 

Whole-Part-Whole is a balanced approach for teaching literacy. With this approach, you should start with a familiar topic that is relevant to your learner’s life. You might use:

• a shared experience
• a picture story
• responding to a photograph
• a journal entry
• text for a wordless book
• a photo book

Whole

Discuss the topic with your learner and make note of some of the words or phrases that he/she says. Write down the full "story" that your learner tells. Once your learner is very familiar with the oral language of his/her story, you can move to working with it in print. Read the story out loud, pointing to each word that you say. After doing this several times, ask your learner to read along with you.  Don't correct your learner, just let him/her try to read with you. When your learner seems ready, you read a phrase or sentence and ask the learner to repeat the phrase, pointing to each word as s/he repeats it. 
 

Examples of “Whole” literacy activities include:

• Pair reading out loud
• Silent reading
• Reordering sentence strips
• Copying
• Tracing
• Developing sight word vocabulary
• Answering comprehension questions

This learning plan is drawn from A Handbook for Tutors Working with Adult ESOL Literacy Learners by Margi Felix-Lund.  It can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/margifelixlund/home/handbook. 

 

Part

After your learner is able to recognize and read the words in his/her story, focus in on specific features. This is the “part”, where you take words or phrases that are meaningful to your learner, and use them as the basis for focusing on the parts of the words. You might help your learner focus on vowel sounds, consonant clusters, syllables, or identifying rhyming close words. Be sure to focus on just a few things at a time. Including these kinds of "part" activities in each tutoring session is very important, but they must be done using familiar language that your learner is comfortable with. 
 

Whole

After focusing in on the parts of language, move back out to the “whole” by continuing to discuss the topic and re-reading the story together. This approach can take time for you and your learner to master. It’s important to remember that when you’re using the whole-part-whole approach you should be careful to use only language that your learner is very familiar and comfortable with.
 

 

 

After your learner is comfortable reading his/her story, you can start writing activities.  Writing activities can be things like copying one or more words from the story, listening to one or more words from the story and writing them down, or tracing the letters in a word on a handwriting practice sheet. The type of activities will depend on the level of your learner. Include activities that are a little bit challenging, but not overwhelming. 
 
Additionally, introducing text from oral language ensures that the text is the only new aspect of the activity and transitions well from whole to part and back to whole. For many part and whole strategies, see pages 24-27 in A Handbook for Tutors Working with Adult ESOL Literacy Learners by Margi Felix-Lund

 

Repetition is necessary for all learners, especially for ESOL literacy learners who are generally not familiar with language learning in a formal situation and do not have the language learning skills that come with that experience. Consistently introducing new language is not helpful for learners. Be sure to use the same language in many different ways, probably longer than you expect to. 
 
Teaching English Language Learners: A Handbook For Volunteers, 4th Edition includes a variety of activities, including 

• Appendix I: Activities that introduce new language 
• Appendix II: Activities that give controlled practice (i.e. the “part” in whole-part-whole)
• Appendix IV: Activities to practice basic literacy skills 

This learning plan is drawn from A Handbook for Tutors Working with Adult ESOL Literacy Learners by Margi Felix-Lund.  It can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/margifelixlund/home/handbook. 

 

Include no more than one new piece of information at a time

Remember that many literacy learners have limited experience with formal education. Therefore, many activities that are commonly practiced in school settings will be new to them. If you attempt to try a new kind of activity while also introducing new content, your learner will likely be overwhelmed by too many new things at once. When developing tutoring activities, a general rule to follow is that an activity should only present one new aspect to your learners. For example, if you are going to introduce new content (e.g., new vocabulary words), then the format of the activity should be familiar to the learner (e.g., handwriting worksheet or fill-in-the-blank). Similarly, if you use a new type of activity (e.g. vocabulary notecards), then the content (e.g. the words and images) should be familiar to the learner.

 

Bow Valley College. (2018). A Practical Guide to Teaching ESL Literacy. Calgary: Bow Valley College.
Retrieved from https://globalaccess.bowvalleycollege.ca/sites/default/files/ESL-Literacy-Book-August-24-2018-Digital_0.pdf

Croydon, A. (2005). Making it real: Teaching pre-literate adult refugee students. Tacoma, WA: Tacoma Community House Training Project.
Retrieved from http://www.tacomacommunityhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Making-it-Real.pdf

Elson, A. B., & Krygowski, N., (2012). Low-level learners: Prioritizing teaching topics. In P. Vinogradov & M. Bigelow (Eds.). Proceedings from the 7th annual LESLLA (Low Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition) symposium, September 2011 (pp.183-202). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.
Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XXGXuEvI9VAmMojouSm5JfHZRNTekN8j/view

Vinogradov, P. (September, 2009) Balancing Top and Bottom: Learner-Generated Texts for Teaching Phonics.  Presentation at the international LESLLA Symposium, Banff, Alberta.
Retrieved from http://ccsfintervention.pbworks.com/f/Vinogradov-balancing%20top%20%26%20bottom.pdf

Literacy NOW (2008). Teaching English Language Learners: A Handbook For Volunteers, 4th Edition.
Retrieved from http://www.tacomacommunityhouse.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/ESL-Handbook.FINAL_.pdf

Vinogradov, P. (2010). Balancing top and bottom: Learner-generated texts for teaching phonics. In T. Wall & M. Leong (Eds.), Low-Educated Second Language and Literacy Acquisition: Proceedings of the 5th Symposium (pp. 3-14).
Retrieved from https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RogfSbTUxRYxcZ_bKJKk1qMBM4mT2WdR/view