Thanks Heide for taking the time to post this information.  You've done an excellent job of providing examples to clarify some of the challenges of language learners.  In fact, I plan to send portions of your post to our teachers here in TN.
 
I recently came across a book titled Learner English: A teacher's guide to interference and other problems, edited by Michael Swan and Berneard Smith and published by Cambridge.
It is written especially for the practicing non-specialist teacher who needs an introduction to the characteristic problems of a particular group of learners.  I believe the book addresses the characteristics of 22 languages.
 
I would be interested in knowing if anyone is familiar with this book.  I'm thinking about using it to help develop a training module on language interference and would appreciate suggestions.
 
Sandra Fugate
ESOL Program Coordinator
University of Tennessee
Center for Literacy Studies


--- On Sat, 1/31/09, Wrigley, Heide <heide at literacywork.com> wrote:

From: Wrigley, Heide <heide at literacywork.com>
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3798] how difficult is English? (long post)
To: "The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List" <englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Date: Saturday, January 31, 2009, 5:22 PM








Hi, all – what a rich and interesting discussion!  Thank you Martha 
 
With an extra hour or so at the airport I just had to jump in here to talk about the two or three things I’ve learned in my work learning languages, teaching ESL and doing demonstration lessons in German with teachers, studying successful programs and reviewing the research. 
 
I’ve not read all the posts, but am hoping we can remember that while we know a great deal about second language acquisition, literacy development, and learning in general, we also know that there is a great deal of variability in the way individuals come into a new language.  So how difficult a language is to learn (or how difficult it is perceived to be by a learner) depends on a number of factors, including aptitude, attitude and motivation (or the “need to learn”) – factors addressed in various posts at the beginning of the week.  
 
But there are some “objective”  factors as well (and no, I don’t want to get into a discussion on phenomenology at this point J).  How difficult a language is to learn depends in great part on how close or far the home language is from the target language. For example, someone who speaks German and has learned a Romance language will, (for historical reasons), find English grammar and vocabulary not all that difficult to master (though exceptions abound). True there are thousands of idioms in English and lots of exception but for the most part English IS rule governed and the rules aren’t all that complex.  Just like President Obama was incredulous when the DC school system closed down because there was a bit of ice on the ground, those who have had to study German often find English much easier. While German is phonetically regular, mastering grammar and sentence structure can be a huge challenge (German  varies its articles (der, die, das)
 according to gender, case, and singular or plural, giving the learner something like 24 options she has to choose from in order to hit the right form.
 
So yes, sound/symbol relationships in English are not transparent and getting used to the way the sound of a vowel will shift depending on the environment in which the vowel occurs can mess with your mind.  All the more reason, I would think to start with meaning and start with “compelling” oral language before moving to print. 
 
Presenting interesting information orally, supported by real items, pictures, graphics, and drawings can help beginning level students understand what’s going on and can anchor (spoken) words and concepts in their mind. Introducing print slowly and matching print with meaningful images, items, or ideas (a picture or drawing of something you love accompanied by print) can  help to make the association between oral language, reality, and print stick.  Once quite a bit of the new language sticks, the patterns of a language, whether they are phonological (sounds/symbol relationships), grammatical, or lexical (vocabulary) can then be highlighted,studied and practiced. Getting help in “noticing” these patterns (and building language awareness in the process) can be a great help to those who have a hard time abstracting rules on their own – or those, whose need to be analytical keeps them from immersing themselves in the new language and just letting
 the acquisition process happen.  
 
I know from my own work, whenever I am doing oral work with learners (story telling, conversations, discussing pictures of momentous events), only those who have studied the language before ask “why do you say it this way?” (and if you have Russian students you know what I mean). In my experience, once we try to communicate in L2, the  learners who are new to the language tend to hang on by their fingernails trying to figure out what being said or are too busy to get their point across to wonder how exactly to say something – if it’s important for them to make a point. 
 
 I think it’s worth thinking about how we can create interactions inside and outside of the classroom that allow low literate learners to be successful in a new language and spend some time on that process before we move to “activities”  that they have such difficulties with - gaining meaning from print.  – This I know for sure, if  I were in China, trying to learn Chinese to get by (and not having 10 years to invest in the process), I would drown in a class where the teacher starts teaching literacy before I had at least some sense of how one can use Chinese to communicate an idea. I would want to hear what it sounds like, how it flows, how it is used to get meaning across and I would want to learn something I can use from Day 1 – ordering a beer say or buying some of those steamed dumplings with BBQ pork inside …………  Then if you can show me how to recognize the symbol for Sale so I can buy those cool Chinese tennis shoes or help
 me recognize the name of my street (as it’s written on the street) sign so I can find my way home that would be a good start. 
 
They are calling my flight … 
 
Bread and Roses – that’s my idea of a good language class – and I would want to start with the Roses 
 
Best to all 
 
Heide 
 
Heide Spruck Wrigley 
Austin Airport at the moment 
 
 
 


From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Dan
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2009 2:40 PM
To: cgv757 at yahoo.com; 'The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List'
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3796] Re: The divorce of language from meaning
 
I always tell my students the most difficult language to learn is the one they are trying to learn whatever that language may be.  I really do not believe that English is the most difficult language to learn and would not set up students with the idea that they probably are not going to be able to learn English even if they try.  
Dan Wann 
 

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of cece valentine
Sent: Saturday, January 31, 2009 3:39 PM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3794] Re: The divorce of language from meaning
 





One more thing-- i always begin my new classes with the statement that English is the most difficult language to learn.  There are different sounds for one letter for example.  I also tell them to follow the page left to write while I read because some languages have the reader to go right to left. It also helps, Steve, to put a sentence in Russian on the board and ask someone to read it. (This is for tutors as well.) Unless U have a Russian student or national there, no one has a clue.  This is to show just how a nonliterate person feels when U expect him or her to remember the alphabet and the combinations to make English  words in just a few days.  

 

c valentine

cgv757 at yahoo.com

--- On Thu, 1/29/09, Jill Watson <jillawatson at comcast.net> wrote:

From: Jill Watson <jillawatson at comcast.net>
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3753] The divorce of language from meaning
To: "'The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List'" <englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Date: Thursday, January 29, 2009, 7:03 PM


Philip’s post reminds me of the sense of loss and tragedy I witness, and get, when students from oral, relational cultures begin to understand that the way to get ahead in hyperliterate “first world” societies includes learning to use language in a new and dehumanizing, often profoundly sad way, a way which asks them, for the first time perhaps, to consider and use language in a way divorced from meaning.  What I mean to say is that the communication environment many of us were born and educated into is suffused with 2 fallacies:  1) an overly triumphant positivism with regard to the underarticulated promise of a “better world” held out by the postcolonial nations to the rest of the “underdeveloped” world, all of which is underwritten since the advent of chirographic culture and the printing press by the notion of inexorable, modernizing progress, and includes such very well-meaning formulations as “eradicating illiteracy,”  which I
 saw quoted just yesterday in The Jakarta Post; (this issue I am raising very briefly here is expounded in many of our great scholars from Foucault to Ali Mazrui to the Scollons to Walter Ong, and  2) a profound, barely recognized cynicism with regard to our own capability for life-sustaining wisdom in the post-modern occidental paradigm (here I am indebted to Marshall McLuhan, David G. Smith, Vine DeLoria, Homi Bhabha, Chet Bowers, and others).  
 
You may accuse me of hagiography.  Perhaps I too am suffering from the ennui and alienation that characterizes so many in the western academe.  Call me crazy (and I do maintain that true polylinguals, as I am, are insane by many a personality measure…).  But I have to fling my arms and exclaim—my god, sometimes, in my openest, most lucid, most receptive moments, I am acutely aware that my preliterate, no formal schooling, refugee, utterly marginalized adult learners possess something that I have spent a Middlebury, Sorbonne, Goethe Institute-educated, OED-reading, intensely intellected lifetime to finally come to appreciate--  literacy may help us “get ahead” (and we’d better start concentrating hard on why that is and what that means), BUT ILLITERACY IS NOT A DISEASE, and illiterate people are not ill.  Indeed, the way of life that does not depend on things to be written to be true, in which “literally” does not mean “truly,” and
 meaning is born by smell, skin, the cast of eyes, and the willingness to spend time together, may hold some of the keys to our very survival here in the hyperliterate west.  There may be a need to have true semiotic diversity for our noetic universe to survive, just as we are becoming more and more aware of the need for biodiversity for our natural world to survive.  
 
Please note that I have spent years and years as a teacher of reading to ELL newcomers!  I want students to be empowered by literacy!  But if literacy alone is cast as the cure-all for everything, we have missed a big point in the deeper meaning for what we are doing in education, namely, a true, unconditional exchange of knowledges and cultures (the oral and the literate cultures)—not only what we (literate teachers) have to teach them (orally rooted students), but what they have to teach us.  Philip sounds like a magical and beautiful teacher, because he has been willing throw open the doors of his heart and classroom to the lifeworlds these students truly bring (not only the ones that people like me can document in research), creating a full-body experience of authenticity where something is REALLY HAPPENING (not just reading about things that have been textualized), a true Language Experience Approach, which includes language used meaningfully
 in experiences.  This is, dear friends, the only way oral people have every used language, and I have to say, I sometimes envy that.  Without hesitation I can say that I admire and envy the unquestioned belonging I see in many newcomer communities.
 
A final note:  the great French neurologist Alfred Tomatis many years ago documented the amazing Tomatis effect, which demonstrated the interconnectedness of the ear, the skin, and the psyche, which when all in balance bring about “attuned well-being.”  This sounds mystical, and it may be, but in scientific terms it also has to do with the power of tonalities of voice as connected with receptivity of skin and ear to either cause extreme malaise and dysfunction, or bring about harmony and well-being.  In some ways, in our first world society, we are “dying from what we love” as David Smith puts it—the very things we elevate most and count as most important have unintended consequences that harm us, while some of the ways of living that would sustain us are unpalatable for ideological or other reasons.  As Chet Bowers says, if you want to figure out a good way to live, study a culture that has lived sustainably on the same patch of ground for
 1000 years, and has the lowest rate of suicide.  Food for thought…
 




From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Anderson, Philip
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 12:32 PM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3735] Re: ESL for low literacy students
 
Dr. Edwidge Crevecoeur-Bryant has done several studies on low literacy students in Florida .  I remember from one of her presentations that non-literate students typically went to the middle of a piece of paper when they were asked to point to something on the page, or to write something on it.  Edwidge can be reached at the Univeristy of Florida – Gainesville .  Her email is ecbryant at coe.ufl.edu. 
 
When I was in the classroom teaching adult ESOL in central Florida , I had non-literate students that started to enter my classes that were being held in the community room of a farmworker housing neighborhood.  The class was open-entry, open-exit.  I already had 15 or so students that were literate, and about 5-10 non-literate students began to come.  The non-literate students did not come by themselves, but always in the company of a relative or friend.  This class was the only evening adult ESOL class in a town of 16,000, and it was sponsored by the community college in the area.  The town had an immigrant population of 4,000, or 1/4th of the total population.  Most of the immigrants were from Mexico , Haiti , and Guatemala .   The non-literate students in the class spoke Haitian Creole mainly, with two or three students speaking indigenous languages of Mexico or Central America . I had the class year-round, four nights per week for about 3
 years.   
 
After one year,  it was clear to me that the non-literate students were not making the “progress” I expected them to make.   I began to search for resources and to ask colleagues for help. Heide Spruck-Wrigley’s book “Bringing Literacy to Life” (1992, Aguirre International Press) was a big help to me.   Anotther helpful text was Basic Literacy Workbooks A and B, by Joan Saslow, of Pearson Educatiion.  Picture dictionaries also proved helpful.  
 
“Connect the classroom to the student’s lives!” was one of the main tecnniques I learned from it.   When I began to do real-life needs-based  projects with the non-literate students, ones that helped them do something they really wanted to do in their everyday lives, everything began to fall into place.  Some of them simply wanted to be able to sign their name in cursive “like everyone else.”  Others wanted to hold a Bible and read a special verse they already knew by heart.  Or one of their special hymns from their church hymnal.  Others wanted to be able to write out their social security number on a form.   
 
I finally began to prepare any number of different exercies to practice the same thing.   We did a variety of exercies that got them up and out of their chairs to practice, practice, practice.  We taped a line on the floor and had contests of throwing wadded up paper balls at pictures of letters, objects, people.  We used a digital camera to take a picture of each other showing some type of injury or symptom: toothache, headache, backache.  The next day we pasted our pictures on the wall and threw our paper balls at the pictures upon request of another student.  We used sandpaper letters and numbers. 
 
I learned at an ESOL training that the skin is a key receptor of information, and when we use our skin to touch or feel somehting we are trying to learn, we remember it better.   We put information on “body pegs” on our head, our shoulders, our hips, our laps, our knees and feet. And we proved to ourselves that we could truly remember new vocabulary better than if we sat and copied the words on paper.  We used color, we used songs and chants, we used boxes of real things from home, we used magnetic letters, we used my son’s LEGO blocks with letters and words written on them to build words and sentences.   We squeezed rubber balls while we chanted and marched around the room.   We stood up and clapped for ourselves when we finished an exercise.  We formed two or three groups in the room and had shouting contests to see who could chant the loudest any motivational phrase that seemed to fit best with the work we had done that evening.  
 
Another precept I learned during that time was never to deny a student an opportunity to do an exercise that he or she thought was “necessary.”  Many ot the non-literate students had an image of what people are supposed to do in “school” such as tracing, copying, memorizing, holding books and silently reading, going to the board and writing.  I was trying my best to be a cutting edge teacher and I was excited to use many exercises that brain research showed would produce better results faster. However, if the student’s perception of what “school” meant was not validated, the student’s anxiety level remained high, and they were not as pleased with the class as I thought they would be.  
 
Dr. Beatriz Diaz, Adult ESOL Coordinator of Miami Dade County public shools,  has developed a Teacher Resource Kit specially designed for teaching low literacy ESOL students.  She can be contacted at bdiaz.dadeschools.net.  I have the list of resources to make a kit, as well as the final report on that project.  I would be glad to send it as an attachment to anyone off line, if desired.
 
On a personal note, my mother-in-law, an elderly Haitian woman lived with us  for a couple years.. “Grandma” could not read or write in any language, but before she had a stoke, could look at a dress in a store and sew it without a pattern.   She lived in a small village that had one store that did not even sell writing paper for school children.  While she lived with us, she and my wife always went out early on Saturday mornings to local yard sales.  One Friday evening, Grandma gave us all a big surprise.  She began to suspect that my wife wasn’t going to go to yard sales the next morning. She went to the pile of newspapers, sorted through the stack, found the section that has yard sales listed, and brought it to my wife.  She had been observing how my wife got information about yard sales, and she had learned what to do to get the information.  But after six months or so with us, she was beginning to use the newspaper to get what she
 wanted.
 
Philip Anderson
Adult ESOL Program
Florida Department of Education
Tel (850) 245-9450
 





From: robinschwarz1 at aol.com [mailto:robinschwarz1 at aol.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2009 8:38 PM
To: englishlanguage at nifl.gov
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3719] Re: ESL for low literacy students
 

Barbara-- I missed this yesterday when I was reading and responding.  This is terrific and right in line with quite a few studies showing that one behavior typical of non-literate adults is that they do not scan visual fields in any systematic way unlike literate adults, who scan according to whatever system they have learned in (L to R, top to bottom, R to Left) .  You have given some wonderfully concrete ways to address this training.  I find that this lack of scanning habit extends for a long time-- I think  I wrote yesterday about a lady I tutor who has great difficulty even after several semesters of school and after teaching herself to read.  When she looks at a page with activities on it, she is as likely to start at the bottom as the top and she sees no logic yet in those exercises that have you look at a model in the left column and then find something similar or opposite or whatever in the row to the right.  She goes all over the page! 
 I will try this with her next week!   Robin Lovrien Schwarz

 

 
-----Original Message-----
From: Barbara Caballero <barbaracaballero at sbcglobal.net>
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List <englishlanguage at nifl.gov>
Sent: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:10 am
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 3604] ESL for low literacy students
Good morning,

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      It's easy to forget the importance of training our students to move their eyes 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      from left to right when they look at words, text, charts, cartoons.  A good idea 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      is for the teacher to move his/her closed-finger, flat hand along beneath the 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      material, from left to right, whether teaching one-to-one with a book, or in the 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      classroom with a board.

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      With pictures, continue this technique.  If you want your student(s) to practice 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      saying "red" and you have a picture with red things in it, guide your student's 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      focus around the picture by moving your hand clockwise around the picture, left 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      to right.  This helps them get in the habit.

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      Even as students make progress and begin to look at full paragraphs, I continue 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      to use this technique so that they learn to read to the end of the line and come 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      around to the far left of the line below.  

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      This technique is also useful when practicing choral reading, to improve 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      fluency.  ESL karaoke.

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      It's basic, but important.

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      Barbara Rotolo-Caballero

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      English at Work

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      Austin, Texas

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      ----------------------------------------------------

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      National Institute for Literacy

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      Adult English Language Learners mailing list

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      EnglishLanguage at nifl.gov

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      To unsubscribe or change your subscription settings, please go to 

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

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      Email delivered to robinschwarz1 at aol.com

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

    

  

      

 




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