Part of the Academic English online conference with Cambridge, Gary Pathare gave an interesting talk on Basic Literacy in English Language Teaching.
Learning English using current language teaching methods and materials generally requires learners to have mastered basic English literacy (the ability to encode and decode English script). Learners are often required to write, not only to practice the writing skill, but also to provide personalized examples etc. For adult learners with literacy issues, levels of motivation and achievement may suffer. This topic is gaining relevance for more and more English Language teachers. He discusses this and outlines ideas for teaching approaches, and strategies that can help address the issue.
In his webinar Gary explains what basic literacy includes for example word recognition and letter formation, then goes on to talk about handwriting, spelling, copying, punctuation, sounds and spelling and writing models giving practical activities to help teach these to adult learners.
Gary was asked if he had any tips on how to make it easy and fun for younger children:
“I prefer a step by step approach to writing, I don’t believe in giving people long pieces of writing to write and spending hours correcting it, it is not productive. I much prefer to give short sections of text and work on a paragraph level, giving them lots of models which they can achieve. Although not necessarily fun, paragraphs are better than long texts as they are more achievable and gives the student satisfaction.”
Find out more about Academic English with Cambridge
You can watch the next webinar in the series; Motivation in EAP and the use of intrinsically interesting ‘academic light’ topics and engaging tasks by Adrian Doff