Have you ever had the experience of driving a familiar vehicle on a familiar route, moving along nearly on auto-pilot?  Then something happens to bring your awareness back to the importance of paying attention while driving?  A new pothole, a child running across the street, a cyclist that you hadn’t noticed?  Even though I KNOW that there are blind spots from where I sit in my vehicle, I forget when I am in the comfort zone of driving.   

Teaching also exposes us to blindspots. Recently, I’ve rekindled my interest in the academic research and theory of second language and literacy education for adults with limited formal schooling. I don’t think I’ve caused harm or damage due to my teaching blind spots.  Fortunately.  But, this article by DeCapua & Marshall, (2019)* has given me a  welcome reminder of the easy-to-overlook aspects of adult language and literacy teaching.  

Students with interrupted formal education come with a history of learning in informal contexts; learning that is contextualized, personalized and tangible.  School-based learning tasks are often based on assumptions of the learners’ ability to work with abstract ideas and categories.  In this article, the authors propose intentional, contextualized learning that focuses on developing the school-based ways of thinking that learners need for success in academic, training and workplace contexts.

As I read this article, several times I found myself thinking “yes!” and “exactly!”, and “wow, I hadn’t thought of it that way.”  These are moments that are exciting for me as a teacher.

Let me return to teaching blind spots.  We may get focused on one thing (the development of print literacy) but be unaware of the ways of thinking that underpin not only the learning tasks we create, but the supports we put in place to help with achieving these learning tasks.  For example, we use visuals and icons that depend on visual literacy skills and graphic organizers that depend on abstract categorization skills.  

Learning a new way of thinking is incredibly complex. In my view, this is an additive process, rather than a process of replacement.   We want our students to be successful in school, in navigating training programs and workplace expectations, and in supporting their own children’s education.  This article brought my awareness back to the complexity of the learning taking place.  The authors propose a model they call MALP (Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm) which, in essence, moves from personalized, experiential learning to abstract individualized production while honoring the importance of both.  I appreciate this way of thinking.  We ignore the importance of explicit instruction in school-based ways of thinking to our learners’ detriment. 

On a practical level, the authors propose that learning to define objects is a particularly useful skill in developing school-based ways of thinking.  They suggest a ”collections” activity in which students bring in plants and then discuss the characteristics of the plants, and work to articulate the common features in order to develop a definition.   While this may seem simple on the surface, there are many layers to explore: concepts, vocabulary, grammar and sentence structure.  By the end, students have come up with a definition of a “plant”.  Their product is an abstract, decontextualized definition, but the process taps into the learners’ need for communal, contextualized, tangible learning.  Brilliant!  For many of us, this makes intuitive sense, but I appreciate the reminder and the articulation of what makes this kind of learning task “work.”

I work in an academic-preparation program for young adult literacy learners with low levels of formal schooling.  There’s a lot of content to cover.  There are a lot of gaps to fill.  There’s a lot of literacy development needed. It’s easy to move into content-driven autopilot.  But, there’s much more going on than meets the eye.  A good reminder of my blind spots.  

References:

DeCapua, A., & Marshall, H. (2019). To define is to Know.  In Pettit, Farrelly, Elson (Eds.), Literacy education and second language learning for adults (LESLLA): Proceedings of the 15th symposium (pp. 1-18). Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults (LESLLA).

*(This link will work if you are signed into a google account.  If not, please find this article at https://www.leslla.org/proceedings and see the 2019 proceedings.)

We literacy teachers can be a nerdy bunch.  I fantasize of someday having a classroom with a library of level-appropriate, high-interest books for my students to access during class, and to borrow for at-home reading.  Can anyone relate?  

It can be such a challenge to find the right reading materials for adult ESL literacy learners!   Materials need to be relevant and appropriate.  It’s better if they are for language learners rather than native speakers.  It’s better if they are for adults, rather than children.  It’s best if there’s a variety of levels available so that students can engage in independent reading and build their confidence.

Over the years, I’ve slowly been building my own collection of such reading material.  It’s a work in progress.  Many of the teachers I know also have their own “book box” or “class library” or some such thing and it is fun to swap and share these books.

Online teaching has provided a HOST of challenges for teaching and learning in the world of adult ESL literacy.  Of course, I miss the personal interactions the most.  But coming in a close second is my book box.  I miss my book box!  I used to use it for breaking up the day or giving the fast-finishers something constructive to do.  It’s been difficult to replicate that online.

The one site that I’ve found easy to use is Unite for Literacy.  It doesn’t tick all the book box boxes, but it has such a good variety of reading material in there that it’s a reasonable facsimile.  On the site, you’ll find short picture books on a wide variety of topics.  While the site is designed for children, there are plenty of books on science, nature, and community that are appropriate for adult readers.  I also often encourage students who have children to choose some childrens’ books that they’d like to practice so that they can read to their children.

Here’s a list of things that I really like about this resource:

• All of the books have English audio recordings so that readers can listen to the text as well as read it
• Most of the books have recordings in additional languages
• You can browse the books by general subject area
• The photos are excellent
• The layout of the books is excellent, with clear font and plenty of white space.

Here are examples of the books at a few different levels:

Basic:  People at Work  (one word per page)

Low:  What Colors Do You Eat? (1 sentence per page, with repetitive structure)

Medium:   Let’s Have a Picnic  (1 – 2 non-repetitive sentences per page)

More advanced:  Red Robin (Several sentences per page, non-repetitive structure)

Here are a couple of tricks for navigating the site:

• Click the narration tab and choose a language.  Then the site will display all the books in that language.  To re-set, click the narration tab again and select “no 2nd narration”
• Or, after you have selected a book, click the narration tab to see the narration languages available

Here are a few ideas for ways to use the site with your online class

• Choose a few titles to share with the class together and practice navigating the site. Build relationships by having the class listen to sentences on each page in different languages.  
• Have students choose a book together and practice reading in breakout rooms
• Have students each choose a book to practice for a week, then read to another student

While I love the site and use it regularly, there are a couple of things I would change if my magic wand were working these days.  I would love to have a way to search books by reading level.  I would also love to see more narration languages, especially Tigrinya and Amharic at the moment.

Online teaching and learning is a challenge!  I hope this version of a “book box” will help you provide a free-reading opportunity for your online class.  Happy reading!

It can be hard to explain what I do for a living.  Usually I start by saying I’m an English teacher, or maybe by saying I’m an ESL teacher.  Depending on the nature of the interaction, it may stop there.  If not, I sometimes go on to explain that I teach adults, not children.  Or that I teach adult newcomers to Canada how to communicate in English.  Usually it ends there.  People have some idea of what that might look like.

After that, it gets trickier.  I might tell someone that I work with adults that have little formal education back home.  Eyes start to glaze over.  I may add that the people I work with aren’t able to read and write fluently in their mother tongue.   Sometimes the best way to explain it is to say that I work with people who are simultaneously learning English AND  learning to read and write for the first time in their lives.

Sometimes this provokes a “oh, too bad” kind of response, but it is out of the realm of experience for so many people that it is truly difficult to understand. Even though I’ve been working with adult ESL literacy learners for more than 15 years, I still have moments where I’m taken by surprise by it.  

If I really want to give someone a feel for what we do in adult ESL literacy, I might tell them that I taught a 50 year old how to sharpen a pencil that day.  Or that we spend time every day practicing where to put papers in binders.  Or that learning how to print for the first time can give a person hand cramps.  Or that not everybody knows what the blue sections represent on a Canada map.  Or that people don’t actually know that precisely when the teacher is giving instructions is NOT the time to use the electric pencil sharpener!  Not even if you just learned how to use it that day and it’s really fun.

Most people are not aware that there is a need for this kind of teaching and learning for adults.  Many experienced ESL teachers are unfamiliar with it, too.  

It’s not surprising then that there’s no consistent way of describing this unique area of ESL.  There’s a growing list of acronyms and terms that are used for describing the learners in these kinds of programs.  They include:

• Adult ESL literacy learners.  This is kind of old-school, but actually pretty easy to understand.  Of course the “second” in English as a Second Language has long been viewed as inaccurate and even patronising, given that for many learners, English is a third, fourth, etc language.

• LIFE: Learners with Interrupted Formal Education.  This term has been used in publications by Bow Valley College in Calgary, Canada. It’s descriptive, but can be somewhat awkward to use in conversation. 

• LESLLA – Literacy Education and Second Language Learning for Adults.  This term is used by the LESLLA, an international organization that advances research and practice in the field.  This term is becoming more recognized in the field.  Again, it is descriptive, but can be awkward in conversation and with the uninitiated.

• SLIFE – Students with Limited/Interrupted Formal Education. This term is often used in American contexts, and may refer to children as well as adults. Like the others previously listed, it can be awkward in conversation.

• ALL – Adult Literacy Learners.   This term is used by the Canadian Centre for Language Benchmarks. It works as an acronym, but again, is difficult to use in informal conversations.

If you add in the acronyms used for the wider field of English language education – ESL, EAL, ELL, TESL, TEFL, TESOL – it really can become a big bowl of acronym soup! 

In this blog and throughout this site, I’ve decided to go old-school and use the term adult ESL literacy learners. Though imperfect, I like its descriptiveness and ease of conversational use. 

What I love about teaching in this field is that I can take nothing for granted.  Not even  what to call it!