Claire Croal, English for Academic Purposes Publisher at Cambridge University Press, shares Cambridge authors’ top tips for literacy development, providing example activities from Unlock. You can play a large part in supporting your students with their literacy development. Here are some ideas to make the most of this important role:
1 Value literacy work in the classroom
Literacy – the ability to read and write – is the very foundation of successful language development. However, skill in reading and writing requires many hours of effort and practice. Make time in your weekly timetable for literacy development, and emphasise its importance to your students.
2 Integrate reading with listening and speaking
Listening skills support reading, and in the early stages of literacy development, students’ literacy can be developed more effectively by reading and listening at the same time. Give students access to audioscripts when they are listening, and encourage them to read aloud too. This will help to familiarise students with the correspondence between the written and spoken word.
Try this activity from Unlock 2 Listening & Speaking Skills that shows how the skills can be integrated.
3 Learn about your students’ first languages
You don’t need to be fluent in another language to be able to know the differences between it and English, and how a student’s L1 impacts on their literacy development in English. There are a large number of sources of this information, e.g. Learner English. Getting to know the L1 will help you understand why your students make mistakes in English with, for example, letters and sounds, word recognition, spelling and punctuation, and allow you to identify the specific areas your students need to develop and provide the right kind of practice.
Unlock is informed by expert research into your student’s first languages to make sure the course meets your students’ needs. Here is an academic writing skills activity from Unlock 3 Reading & Writing Skills that provides specific practice on punctuation.
4 Ask your students to read aloud to you
This will help you diagnose problems with their reading and provide the right practice: a student who ignores punctuation, skips words and doesn’t chunk language into appropriate, meaningful units lacks comprehension and effective eye movement; a student who misreads words or substitutes others which have similar letters has not mastered word recognition.
This listening activity from Unlock Basic Literacy focuses on developing effective eye movement and improving word recognition.
5 Use the same exercise types again and again
Once you’ve identified the areas your students need to develop and provided exercises that work, stick with them. With literacy, effectiveness is more important than variety, and using the same exercise types and order builds students’ confidence and allows them to truly engage with the literacy focus.
6 Focus on learning 5 ‘sight words’ every week
Knowing sight words is key for literacy development: these high-frequency words, e.g. know, was, are non-phonetic, meaning that they are difficult to sound out. By learning to recognize the shape of the whole word without hesitation means students can read faster, and this can aid comprehension.
Here is an activity from Unlock Basic Literacy that focuses on learning sight words.
7 Be supportive and patient
Recognize that students work and develop at different rates and that achieving literacy in a second language is a substantial feat that takes significant time and effort.
Unlock has a Reading and Writing book from A1 to B2 level, and for absolute beginners, we have a dedicated Unlock Basic Literacy book making it easy to give your students the support they need. Find out more about Unlock.