Reading and Writing for English learners

One of the cornerstones of my ESL classes is reading in English — independent reading of self-selected books for pleasure. I do not have any requirements for how long a student takes to read a book, there is no competition. and there are no comprehension questions or tests. The only accountability criteria I hold students to are (1) keep a reading log with a listing of book currently being read and brief comments about books completed and (2) participate in occasional "book talk" sessions by talking about books they have read or are reading now, or about their reading experience in general. I structured the extensive reading component of my class after the model suggested by Stephen Krashen. See, for example, his article titled "The Case for Narrow Reading." I use leveled readers such as those published by Cambridge and Penguin (actually Pearson Longman), supplemented by finds at garage sales and second-hand shops. After more than two years, it is still successful. I've had students tell me that they go to the library now and read more at home. One student bought books, read them, and then contributed them to my class library. During Book Talk in my beginner class last week, a student was telling the story of her book to her group. She told it in Spanish, but she had all the essential elements of the story, which she had read in English. I wrote about the nuts and bolts of my reading program in February 2008, and I still manage it basically the same way. The major difference now is that meet with one class only nine hours a week instead of fifteen, and with the other class six hours, so I have had to reduce in-class reading time and started a card catalog system for them to check out books to read outside of class in addition to our limited in-class reading.

An activity that involves speaking, writing, grammar review, and reading is the classic Mad Libs, which you can buy in most bookstores. You can also find some online versions that are devised specifically for English learners, such as this lesson plan from Kenneth Beare at about.com. These are fun to do in class for parts-of-speech review. There are many examples of mad libs for children, but here's a site that has mad libs for adults. You can also create your own from a paragraph of your choice.

Topics Magazine is an online journal written by and for English learners. The list of contents includes international themes, writing, travel, food, speaking out on controversial issues, learning English, idioms and expressions, and more. Reading of a selected article could be used as a stimulus for discussion, role play, or writing in the classroom. Oh! There's also a Teacher's Corner with teaching ideas and projects.

Want to give your students a showcase for their writing? Try the pbs.org Destination America site. Students can put in their own stories about their immigration experience. For example, here's Jesus's story, posted by one of my beginning-level students from several years ago.

Coming back to Krashen, he has extended his support of Free Voluntary Reading to include Free Voluntary Surfing of the Web as a source of comprehensible input for intermediate and advanced English language learners. For those who doubt, he suggests this test: try it with a language of which you have an intermediate level of knowledge. Search for topics in which you have a compelling personal interest—not professional development, not academic—"something genuinely interesting, but not essential." When you become sufficiently involved in what you are reading, you will eventually lose your compulsion to look up the meaning of unknown words. As in Free Voluntary Reading (aka Narrow Reading), you will forget you are reading in another language.