A few days ago I was searching online for decent ESL excercises that I needed to present for another class. I encountered several useful webpages which contained free grammar excercises, vocabulary tests, & basic readings for the ESL student. There was one particular website that included a selection of bilingual excercises offered in a number of languages. Being that I am in the process of learning Arabic, I decided to attempt a vocabulary exercise in Arabic/English. To my appeal, there were several categories of topics to choose from, which allowed me to thoroughly practice my Arabic vocabulary. Looking back at my endeavor that day, I find it ironic how a website designed to assist speakers of other languages to learn English can also have the reverse effect of guiding English speakers to learn another language!
One of the underlying rewards of teaching an ESL class is the mutual language exchange that can occur between teacher & students. As I will be imparting knowledge & competence of English to my ELLs, there is an inevitable potential that I too will get to learn certain words & aspects of my students' native languages, especially from students in the lower proficiency levels. Bilingual instruction tools, such as the website I found, are an excellent method for beginner ESL students to bridge knowledge from their native language to English. Likewise, these interlanguage resources can serve the purpose of orienting the instructor on some of the features of his/her students' native languages. With this knowledge at hand, an ESLinstructor can form a more accurate idea of how his/her students might be perceiving the English language material that is being taught.
Jonathan,
ReplyDeleteI thought this was interesting that you considered the ability for ESL teaching to be a rewarding experience for both student and teacher. I think that a lot can be beneficial for this kind of education. English is a very hard subject to internalize because of all our sarcastic and idiomatic expressions that weave in and out of our language, not to mention how slang is increasingly adapted into regular speech. I recently wanted to learn a new language and was relatively interested in Italian and French. I was pleasantly surprised that so much information and free online lessons were available within a simple internet search. I think that your students will be able to absorb so much from simple mannerisms when teaching English as opposed to just trying to speak the language fluently. Interesting approaches with technology will definitely pique their interest as well as motivate their learning.
Jonathan, glad to see you are making connections to your ESL classroom.
ReplyDelete