Language Experience for ESL Students

Question: How can teachers build on ESL students’ experience and budding English language skills?

Answer: Language experience is a technique in which the students dictate information or ideas, the language of the students is recorded by the teacher on chart paper, blackboard, white board, etc., and then the ideas are re-read by the students from the chart paper, etc.

This technique is appropriate for ESL students of all ages, even adults. “However, the language experience approach is not intended to be the sole approach to reading, for students also need to learn how to read texts written by others.”

Comment: I think I could adapt the language experience approach to my regular English class. This is the first useful technique I have encountered in this article. RayS.

Title: “Instructional Approaches and Teaching Procedures.” AU Chamot and JM O’Malley. Pp. 82-107. In Kids Come in All Languages: Reading Instruction for ESL Students. Eds. K Spangensberg-Urgschat and R Pritchard. Newark, DE: IRA. 1994.