Professional Development for Pre Entry ESOL Karen Dudley

Professional Development for Pre -Entry ESOL Karen Dudley karen. dudley@learningunlimited. co www. learningunlimited. co

Teaching Basic Literacy to ESOL learners • Why do teachers and volunteers need training? • What do teachers and volunteers need to know? • What else is useful – e. g. training & resources?

‘Reading and writing are essential skills for survival in the modern world and there are strong links between illiteracy, poverty and exclusion: the ability to use the written language adequately to perform everyday tasks and make use of the resources of society is a necessary competence. ’ Council of Europe ‘Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants’

Definition of basic literacy in ESOL An ESOL learner with basic literacy needs is someone who has not yet reached Entry 1 and - is learning the sub-skills or mechanics of reading and writing for the first time OR for the first time in Roman script struggles to read and write a small number of key words, a very simple sentence and very simple text independently. An ESOL learner with basic literacy needs may be found in almost any graded or mixed level ESOL class and ESOL literacy class.

What do teachers and volunteers need to know? 1. What ‘basic literacy’ means in an ESOL context 2. Some main theories and approaches to teaching literacy 3. The processes involved in reading and writing 4. Strategies and activities for developing learners’ basic reading and writing skills 5. Where to find suitable resources to use or adapt 6. Where to get training or support …… anything else?

Activities for developing literacy sub-skills • sorting, matching and labelling, e. g. pictures and words, words and images into categories, e. g. food, clothes • games: pelmanism, snap, dominoes, bingo • ‘find the word’ and ‘odd one out’ • ‘find someone who. . ’ • simple texts with accompanying audio: - listen/read/underline key words - read answer yes/no or true/false - re-order words from simple, jumbled sentences in the text - gap-fill whole words using words on small cards • word search games 7

9 ESOL Core Curriculum Entry 1 Link to Excellence Gateway, ESOL section http: //esol. excellencegateway. org. uk/ 11

What else is useful? Learning Unlimited Free downloadable resources http: //www. learningunlimited. co/resources Literacy for Active Citizenship readers (and order form) http: //www. learningunlimited. co/resources/publications Teaching Basic Literacy learners training: http: //www. learningunlimited. co/training-and-cpd/tblel NATECLA (the professional association for ESOL teachers in the UK) www. natecla. org. uk The Council of Europe Free downloadable toolkit: Language Support for Adult Refugees https: //www. coe. int/en/web/language-support-for-adult-refugees/home 10