Plan and Teach Based on Needs
Teaching is most effective when the learner is ready to learn. Otherwise, teaching efforts may feel fruitless or like banging your head against a closed door. This proves tortuous and uncomfortable for both the student and teacher. Once our students understand they need the valuable lessons taught to them by patient tutors, the learning process will accelerate. In other words, [Read on...]
Teaching Sight Words
“The [individual] who can recognize on sight 8 of the 10 words in the sentence before him can read that sentence and, generally, decode the remaining words by means of context, phonics, or illustrations. Most importantly, he can understand its meaning!” says the website picturemereading.com.
Most of us realize the importance of knowing sight words. Instant sight word recognition helps students [Read on...]
Tips to Get Your Student Writing
One of the most difficult parts of the writing process is getting started, and in no case is this truer than with beginning writers. Recognizing this, Natalie Goldberg, in her book Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, gives potential writers some simple but intriguing tips to get them started. These tips include the following:
Keep your hand moving, don’t [Read on...]
Building Comprehension
Comprehension is an essential aspect of literacy. Each of the strategies listed below helps your learner read a paragraph, figure out how to better understand it and take action to remedy difficulties. Try several suggestions in different strategies until you determine what works best with your student.
Summarizing
After reading a paragraph, ask your learner to:
Summarize it while scanning it. Summarize [Read on...]
The Sentence Game
The purpose of this game is to explore and discover the “rules” of sentence formation. The procedure is simple and doesn’t require any prep time:
Write a simple sentence on a whiteboard, such as “It’s a book”. Have the student suggest one or two words, or a phrase, which can be added to the sentence.
The student writes in the new word [Read on...]
TESOL Resource Center
The TESOL Resource Center is an online source dedicated to teachers, tutors, and mentors working with students for whom English is a second language. The TRC has two goals:
1. Support expanded online peer-to-peer learning
2. Provide a clear, simple submission and review process for sharing resources
New resources are being constantly being added to theTRCon an on-going basis. TESOL encourages you to [Read on...]
Building Comprehension
Below is a list of a number of strategies that you can use to help boost your student’s comprehension skills. Each of these strategies helps your learner read a paragraph, figure out how to better understand it, and take action to remedy difficulties. Try some of the suggestions in each of the different strategies until you determine what works best [Read on...]
Word Families
Using word families is a great approach to teaching students to read. Word families (also known as phonograms or “chunks”) are beneficial because they help students recognize patterns in the English Language. Word families are composed of syllables or syllable endings that are pronounced the same way. For example, a common word family is the “an” family. The an family [Read on...]
Voiced and Unvoiced Sounds in English Pronunciation
One of the keys to learning how to read in English is pronunciation. When students can decipher the sounds that are associated with certain letters in words they will have an easier time sounding out difficult words. The English language has many variations when it comes to learning pronunciation, but by mastering just a few rules, students have a good [Read on...]
Teaching Grammar In Context
Grammar is central to the teaching and learning of literacy skills. It is also one of the more difficult aspects of language to teach well. Many language teachers focus on grammar as a set of forms and rules. They teach grammar by explaining the forms and rules and then drilling students on them. This results in bored, disaffected students who [Read on...]
