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
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