This module will help you to understand communication issues facing students from non-English speaking background (NESB).
ESL Teaching Strategies
- Write key words on the board and use visual and other non-verbal cues, wherever possible, to present key ideas
- Provide written notes, summaries, instructions, and pre-reading
- Use the students' native languages to check comprehension and clarify problems
- Communicate interest in students' linguistic development and set expectations
- Respond to students' language errors
- Use directed reading activities
- Use audio taped texts to combine aural and visual cues
- Establish a supportive environment for language learning
- Use cooperative learning strategies
- Encourage students to rehearse information or instructions orally
- Use peer tutoring
NOTE: The following content is adapted from English as a Second Language Learners: A Guide for Classroom Teachers
Available at: http://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/esl/policy/classroom.pdf
Whilst you watch the video, consider the following questions:
Basic Questions:
- What advice would you give to a new academic having difficulties teaching a class with a large number of NESB students? Explain why.
- Write ten unspoken questions from new NESB students during the first days of class.
- How can instruction be adjusted to meet the cultural characteristics of international students?
Extended Questions:
- How would you strike the balance between the need to provide enough content and ensuring that you are been understood appropriately by NESB students in class?
- If teachers group students on the basis of language ability, how might this impinge on other traits such as dependency, collaboration, understanding or sociability?
- If a class were composed entirely of NESB students, how would you evaluate academic performance taken into account linguistic communication limitations?
- Point out some ways in which teachers could inadvertely support the stereotypes of international students by projecting classroom messages such as:
- They rote learn and lack critical skills
- They appear to focus excessively on the method of assessment
- They don't understand what plagiarism means
- They do not easily adjust to local conditions