STRATEGIES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Techniques and strategies which make abstract concepts more readily understood by English language learners include the following:

1. Building background to move students from the known to the new.

2. Previewing vocabulary to identify and teach students essential words and terms before they encounter them in the text. These are often more than the new “key terms” words and phrases that native English speakers at the grade level already know.

3. Using illustrations and visuals including photographs, drawings, artwork, posters, graphs, maps, videos, computer programs, and reproductions of documents to provide a context for learning. Students new to English literacy can focus on reading captions and labels in their textbooks, which often capture the main ideas of a lesson.

4. Using realia (real objects and materials) to reduce abstractions and make new concepts more explicit. Use of realia helps students relate classroom teaching to real life and their own prior knowledge and experience.

5. Using graphic organizers including matrices, Venn diagrams, tables, charts, story maps, outlines, study guides, and webs to maximize comprehension, visually organize information into meaningful conceptual groupings, and foster a collaborative, interactive style of learning. Study guides for individual lessons, similar to computer derived handouts, can also be distributed to students to use in organizing notes as they read.

6. Using manipulative materials/hands-on activities including props, multimedia presentations, experiments, building models, and demonstrations to build background and context.

7. Using nonverbal cues, such as gestures, body language, and slowed pace of speech, to aid student comprehension.

8. Using repetition and review of concepts and vocabulary. Provide bilingual dictionaries.

9. Group activities including team projects, cooperative learning, and peer tutoring to promote interaction between class members. These strategies ensure that students get adequate practice speaking the new language rather than relying on teacher lectures as the model of learning.